But as I researched best practices, I learned that it’s better to pick a single niche and cover every possible angle within that niche. Armed with that knowledge, I started exploring how to brainstorm blog topic ideas quickly so you don’t have to constantly come up with new topics.

Now that I know how to find them, I have more topics to write about than I can cover in a year.

As you strive to fill your publishing schedule with content that your audience will love, tailor your blog post ideas to your niche and learn the strategies that will help you find an endless supply of new content that’s certain to rapidly bring in new website visitors. 

40 Blog Post Ideas for Maximizing Website Visibility 

If you’re not sure where to start, start with something basic. You can select the topics that make the most sense for your audience and turn them into the perfect blog post.

Not all of these ideas will work for every niche, but you can find at least one that will.

1. The reason you started your blog
2. How your readers can start a blog like yours
3. A list of goals you’ve accomplished
4. A list of goals you plan to achieve
5. The top ten problems that your readers face (and the solutions)
6. A past failure you’ve overcome
7. A book review
8. A movie review
9. A roundup of the top ten influencers in your niche
10. An Interview with a professional in your niche
11. An embarrassing story or event that taught you a lesson
12. Five strategies that didn’t work for you
13. Five strategies that worked for you
14. Compare and contrast two similar topics (products, services, strategies, etc.)
15. A review of the last product or service you purchased for your blog
16. A list of products or services that solve a problem among your readers
17. The steps to do a popular activity
18. A secret about yourself
19. A list of tips or hacks that make an activity easier
20. A gift guide
21. A roundup of your favorite resources
22. The top ten challenges you face (and a plan to overcome them)
23. A list of inspirational quotes and how they apply to your journey
24. The history of your niche
25. A captivating story that taught you a lesson
26. A rant about a topic you’re passionate about
27. The top ten pieces of advice that helped you succeed
28. The competitors in your niche and what you do differently
29. The steps that led to your current success
30. The top ten hobbies that help you decompress
31. The people who inspire you
32. A detailed overview of your daily schedule
33. A roundup of your top blog posts
34. A description of where you see yourself in 5, 10, or 15 years
35. The top ten tips that help you maximize productivity
36. Your opinion on a controversial topic
37. The top ten things you love
38. A 10-step method you’ve personally used to solve a problem in your niche
39. A checklist of actionable items that solves a problem
40. A roundup of expert opinions on a topic in your niche

Related: These 5 Millennials Started Blogging 12 Months Ago. Now They Make $1,000+/Month

How to Find Blog Post Ideas for Yourself

Even if you’re an expert in your niche, you might find yourself running out of familiar topics to write about. To make sure you always have content ideas, it’s essential to learn where to find blog post ideas that will resonate with your current readers and lure in new traffic. 

Check your Google Search Console for keyword ideas.

No matter how new you are to blogging, it’s vital to set up your Google Search Console (GSC). It’s a free tool that lets you discover the analytics of your blog like visitor clicks from Google’s search results, search position, and keywords.

The most prominent section in GSC is the Performance tab. On this tab, you can view a list of the keywords your blog posts rank for, the number of clicks they’ve received, and their average position in the search results (from #1 to #100). You can sort through the keywords to find new blog post ideas.

Finding keywords does two things at once —  it gives you topics to write about and it helps you attract Google traffic to your blog.

If you want more information, you can learn how to do this step by step in this free 6-day SEO Boot Camp.

Research your competitors.

You can get inspiration for new blog posts by reading through the content of other blogs in your niche. Take the competitor’s URL and search it on Ubersuggest.com to find which articles are bringing the most traffic to their site.

Don’t regurgitate the same information that your competitor shares. Instead, use the content to outline an even better article and then write a new piece from your unique perspective.

Ask your readers/followers/subscribers.

Ask your audience what they need help with the most. You can set up a poll on Facebook, email a brief questionnaire to your subscribers, or prompt readers to leave a comment at the end of your articles. 

You can turn the relevant responses into a new blog post or series of posts.

Use a blog idea generator.

A blog idea generator like the one by iMPACT populates fill-in-the-blank titles that work for any niche. Using the generator, you can turn a single word like “traveling” into a full post idea like “7 Major Packing Mistakes You’re Making Right Now.” 

With just one suggested title, you can find several different blog post ideas.

Review products/services in your niche.

Honest reviews can help guide your readers to make an informed decision on a future purchase. They can also be a great way to generate revenue for your blog if you review affiliate products and earn a commission from your referrals.

Don’t inflate your reviews with positive feedback unless it’s true. You wouldn’t want to encourage someone to buy a product or service based on your recommendation unless you believe it’s worth the cost.

Spin off of your existing content.

Choose the most popular article on your blog and read through it to find supporting content ideas. For example, if you have a list of 20 of the best parks to visit in your area, choose a single park from the list to write a detailed blog post about. As you publish each new article, you can link to it from the original list and give readers the option to read more about each park.

Read through niche forums.

Reddit is a popular platform where people discuss various topics and interests. Search the site for your niche and read through threads to get inspiration for new blog posts.

Quora is another platform you can use to generate blog post ideas. Follow specific topics to see what people are asking every day, and then answer those questions in a post.

Search Google for other forums that relate to your niche. You can use the content to inspire ideas and to help you write blog posts that solve the problem.

Check Google Trends.

Get a list of daily topics on Google Trends and address the subjects that relate to your audience. When you write a timely article, share it with your social media followers, and send the link to your email list requesting shares and opinions.

Note questions in Facebook groups.

Join Facebook groups where your audience hangs out. There are thousands of options from Mom groups to Disney fans to health and wellness support.

You can join the groups and interact or simply lurk. When a member asks a question that relates to your niche, you can turn your answer into a new blog post.

Stay up to date with current events.

Current events that affect your niche can turn into popular blog posts. Follow news sites and watch the news for ideas. When you find something relevant to your niche, write an article about it, and help readers navigate any struggles they might be having as a result. 

Round up your popular posts.

Choose three to ten of your most popular blog posts and tie them together into individual lists. Make sure the topics have a common theme, whether it’s a list of craft tutorials, travel hacks, or popular recipes.

Start a series.

A series of blog posts can last for one week to a month to a year or more. Once you decide on a topic, you choose the details of how you’ll develop the series.

Some examples of a series include monthly book reviews, different ways to accomplish a single goal (like make money), or similar projects that relate to your niche. Create a single landing page that lists all of the individual articles in the series to help your readers navigate the options.

Interview professionals in your niche.

Asking professionals to share tips can help build your blog’s reputation and authority. You can draft a questionnaire, email it to professionals in your niche, and publish each response as a separate blog post. 

You can do an interview series, or use the interviews to create a helpful roundup where readers can see the best tips in one place.

Click through Google’s related searches.

When you search a general topic on Google, you can read and click through the related searches at the bottom of your screen. Start by searching for your niche on Google like “health and wellness” and continue to click the related searches until you find one that inspires a new blog post.

The more times you click through the results, the more specific the suggestions will be.

You can click through as many times as it takes to find inspiration for your next blog post.

Pay attention to the comment section on blogs.

Visit the comment section on your blog and other blogs in your niche and take note of questions and comments. Use those ideas as opportunities to create content that will solve that problem or answer that question for other readers. 

Pay attention to what friends are posting on social media.

You can gather blog post ideas based on the interests of your friends. Watch the questions they are asking and the posts they are sharing on social media to find topics that might resonate with your readers.

Read for 10 minutes a day.

Spend a few minutes each day reading news articles, books, or posts in your niche. Look for content gaps, unanswered questions, and inspiration for new blog posts. 

Make sure to keep a notebook, sticky note, or Google or Word document open so you can keep track of the ideas.

Respond to other bloggers’ articles.

If you have a different opinion on a topic that another blogger published, write a new article in response. You can address the previous blog post or keep it in the back of your mind to guide your writing.

Follow the top influencers in your niche on social media.

Social media is a powerful tool for bloggers to find new blog post ideas. You can easily follow popular influencers and spin-off new topics based on the posts they share. You can also read through the comments on popular social media accounts and posts to get more ideas.

Use Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” feature.

Type in any search term on Google and select the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Read the article or page that Google chooses for an easy way to get inspiration for your next article. 

Don’t analyze the results too carefully; instead, turn the idea into your own and write a new blog post on the topic from scratch.

It’s (Almost) Impossible to Run Out of Blog Post Ideas

Unless you have thousands of articles published on your blog, it’s nearly impossible to run out of relevant topics. And if you’ve covered all there is to know about your niche in just a few hundred posts, then consider broadening your target audience or expanding into a different niche.

You don’t have to come up with ideas on your own. In fact, it’s good to research what to blog about. That means you’re searching for blog post ideas that your readers will appreciate and connect with. When your audience is happy, it keeps you motivated to provide helpful content that also makes money for your blog.

The post 40 Blog Post Ideas for Rapid Traffic Growth appeared first on DollarSprout.

Tell that to Jenny Weg, who makes $2,000 a month with her mom blog. Or Stacy Caprio, a millennial blogger who makes $2,700+ a month with her online deal site. Or even me, as someone who makes over $75,000+ per month via affiliate programs.

With figures like that, it’s pretty clear that these successful affiliate marketers are still in high demand.

But what makes some affiliate marketing businesses pop while others flop?

It all comes down to acute marketing strategies. If you can target your audience, keywords, and SEO strategies correctly, you can still make a significant monthly income with affiliate marketing.

Why Do Successful Affiliate Marketers Need to Be Strategic?

Some successful affiliate marketers earn millions, while the poor performers make a pittance.

What’s the difference?

Your affiliate marketing strategy.

While it’s certainly possible to make money online right now, you’ve got stiff competition.

Consider top affiliate networks, Awin and ClickBank. Between these two platforms alone, you’re competing with 311K affiliates.

That’s before you even begin to consider every other affiliate program, like Rakuten, ShareaSale, Amazon Associates, and so on.

You need to be strategic about the affiliate products you pick, the ways you market them, and the audience you target. Otherwise, you’ll be chasing the same dollars (and keywords) as your competition.

Don’t try to go head to head with legacy brands ranking for keywords that are ultra-competitive.

Affiliate marketing works best when you niche down. Devise clear sales and growth marketing tactics that distinguish you from your competition and create a brand story.

Affiliate marketing is more of an SEO game than a simple monetization strategy.

Find a profitable affiliate niche that you can own and be known for. Then hustle, build your domain expertise, and develop your content and SEO strategy with affiliate revenue at the top of the list.

Remember, this is a numbers game; you’ll need a lot of impressions (or views) to generate high sales.

On average, it takes 352 impressions to get one sale. In this respect, you’ll need to supercharge visibility to drive organic traffic and clicks.

To achieve this, focus on search engine optimization (SEO), link building, and high-quality, affiliate-keyword-optimized blog posts.

8 Best Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Drive Massive Sales

If you’re looking to create more passive income from your online business, here are 8 tried-and-tested affiliate marketing strategies to up your game.

1. Pick a high-performing affiliate niche.

Not all affiliate and e-commerce product niches are created equally. Just because you have an interest in vintage Pez dispensers doesn’t mean there’s a market for massive affiliate sales.

Luckily, you don’t have to fly blind when it comes to finding a profitable affiliate niche. Start by joining a reputable affiliate network and analyze which niches are most profitable.

Remember, the goal is to drive repeat purchases so your PayPal notifications roll in 24-7, even as you sleep.

Use an affiliate network to search for high-paying affiliate marketing programs based on two main factors: commission rates and cookie duration. The commission rate is the percentage (or cut) you make from each sale. Cookie duration is the length of time after a user clicks one of your affiliate links that you get credit for that sale. For example, if your cookie duration is 24 hours, then you can earn a commission as long as someone makes a purchase within 24 hours of clicking your link.

Additionally, if the company you’re promoting offers a monthly subscription (like a subscription box or SaaS company), then after you generate a sale, your affiliate commissions can be recurring. In this case, you get paid every month for as long as they remain a customer.

Let’s look at one of the top affiliate networks, ClickBank, for example.

To find profitable niches, you head to the advanced search section of the Affiliate Marketplace.

The best affiliate niches on this affiliate platform have the highest Gravity score and the highest average profit per conversion.

Note: On ClickBank, the Gravity score refers to how many sales a product has had over a 12-week period. One sale equals a score of ‘1’, so a Gravity score of 70 would mean at least 70 affiliates have made a sale with this product over the last 12 weeks. If no sales are made, the score reduces to zero over an 8-week timeslot. The maximum score you should promote is 100.

As you can see, the health and fitness niche comes up with strong numbers.

Remember, though, that competition can be killer. Rather than trying to battle your way to the top of a very popular and broad niche, you would drill down into the health and fitness sector.

Look at how The Good Men Project promotes profitable ClickBank health products.

The Good Men Project has chosen the niche of ‘enlightened masculinity’, not health.

However, the blogging site still includes affiliate products from this lucrative niche to increase affiliate income.

Incorporating a health blog post into its content campaign, The Good Men Project drives traffic to the second-most profitable product on ClickBank — Resurge.

This is considered a product review post, one of the four main content types when it comes to affiliate marketing.

When you start your keyword research and content planning, make sure to incorporate these four types of affiliate-revenue-generating articles:

• How-to guides (i.e. how to build an email list)
• Listicles (i.e. best email marketing software)
• Product comparison (i.e. Mailchimp vs. Constant Contact)
• Product reviews (i.e. HubSpot review)

As you can see above, with the topic of email marketing, there are plenty of ways to capture traffic with different Google searches.

Related: 40 Blog Post Ideas and How to Generate Unlimited Blog Topics

2. Optimize your landing pages and blog posts.

Your landing pages are often the first impression that visitors get of your affiliate marketing business.

When building your website, be sure to optimize each landing page to encourage visitors to stay on your site and convert to a sale.

First off, let’s settle the age-old argument. What’s better, long or short copy?

The answer is neither. While, in many cases, longer blog posts are rewarded with better search rankings, you need to ensure your affiliate links are high up on the page.

For example, in my post on the best website builders, I include over 13 different options and make sure that each brand has at least three affiliate links in each section:

To analyze which elements are most effective on your website, you can also test out heatmaps and run A/B tests on various blog posts. Add and remove different elements to see how this affects overall conversions.

Firstly, notice that at the end of each company’s review in my post, all CTA links are shaped like buttons. This can increase conversion by 230%.

Secondly, some of the brands include discounts.

That’s because landing pages offering discounts of lower than 50% have average conversion rates of 10%. Once discounts reach 50% or higher, conversion rates start to climb. In fact, a 70% discount can lead to conversion rates of over 40%.

Next, find out which landing page elements get the most activity and how far visitors scroll by using a heat map tool.

And remember, slow-loading landing pages lose traffic. Make sure your landing page loads in under five seconds. One second longer and your bounce rate increases by 16%.

Finally, you can use a WordPress plugin like ThirstyAffiliates to track all of your affiliate links in one place, view reports, and track your clicks and earnings.

Related: How to Make Money Blogging

3. Develop a comprehensive SEO-driven keyword strategy.

To drive organic traffic, you need to appear at the top of Google’s search rankings as 50% of all traffic goes to the top Google search result.

Your keyword strategy is a strong influencing factor on how high you’ll appear up Google’s search rankings. If you want to drive high organic traffic to your affiliate site, your keyword strategy needs to be on point.

You’ll need to insert relevant search terms into your website content so Google can rank your pages for these keywords.

Affiliate bloggers should find it pretty easy to reach optimum keyword density. Add relevant keywords into high-quality content that’s relevant to your target audience. Then, run it through a keyword optimization tool like Marketmuse to add semantic keywords.

Overall, each blog post needs to focus on one target keyword, which should be included in:

• The title (or H1) of the post.
• The URL string (or slug).
• Within H2 headings.
• Throughout the content and in one of the first few paragraphs.

However, you need to be strategic about the keywords that you choose.

Ninety-two percent of keywords get less than ten searches a month. These key search terms won’t drive high traffic to your site. That said, you don’t want to pick keywords that have too much competition as you’ll struggle to beat top performers to the coveted number one spot.

Perform a keyword audit of your website to identify popular search terms to shape your keyword strategy.

Look for search terms with strong monthly search volume and low competition.

You can also use a tool like Ahrefs to view your competition and the current top 10 ranking sites for a particular keyword. Based on this data, check each site’s Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR) to see how authoritative their high-ranking pages are. If you notice that, for a given keyword, every site in the top 10 results has a 75+ DR and hundreds of links, it will be very hard to compete.

Alternatively, the hidden gems are the keywords that have at least one low DR site (under 60) ranking in the top 10 results. That means that with high-quality content and a few links, you might be able to start ranking for that keyword relatively quickly.

Also, don’t overlook long-tail keywords. If you find that your relevant short keywords are super competitive, try looking for search terms with multiple word variants. Over half of all keywords with between 1,000 and 10,000 monthly searches have three to five words.

Believe me when I say it pays off to become an expert in SEO, and the results will pay off in a big way in the months and years ahead.

Each piece of content is like an investment — and if you make smart investments in your content strategy, you can earn affiliate income for years to come. But content isn’t enough, you also need links.

4. Work on link building.

Internal links and backlinks show Google that you have authority in your niche topic, pushing you further up search rankings. In fact, 71% of online marketing specialists agree that Google relies heavily on your website’s link graph to rank your pages.

Content marketing is the top way to generate links, with 75% of marketers using this technique today.

There is a direct correlation between high-quality backlinks and a site’s ability to rank on search engines. If you look at my blog’s Ahrefs profile, you can see that organic traffic has increased substantially. This is a result of high-quality content and the large increase in referring domains and backlinks to my blog:

The more backlinks you have, the more traffic you’re likely to get, as there are more referring sources leading to your affiliate site.

Links are like the currency of the Internet and prove your authority in Google’s eyes. After all, wouldn’t the best content be linked to the most?

There are many different approaches and strategies one can take to link building, such as link building outreach, guest blogging, and creating link partnerships. Ultimately, it comes down to building real relationships with other sites in your niche.

Affiliates are also in the driver’s seat to build great links from the brands they promote. It’s all about leverage. If you can start generating big sales for a particular brand (or even just added them to a high-ranking post of yours), reach out to them and ask for a link or guest post. By providing value to them in the form of sales, they can provide value to you in the form of a link, which increases your Domain Authority (DA) and traffic.

5. Harness social proof.

Social proof refers to the strategies you use to show your buyers that you and your products are trustworthy.

Since 92% of consumers read product reviews before purchasing, this is one of the most important methods of social proof. Customers expect to see how well your products perform before they consider buying.

What’s more, as product reviews are user-generated, they’re a super cost-effective online marketing tactic. Try asking for product reviews from niche influencers in your field to boost your social standing.

Trust badges are another popular form of social proof that can push conversions by 32%. Pin awards, certifications, recognizable client logos, and other indicators of success to your product and landing pages.

Look at how Ardent Growth uses trust badges to capture attention above the fold.

By placing recognizable client logos above the fold, Ardent Growth immediately shows prospective customers how trustworthy its services are. It’s like saying “If SEMrush trusts us to produce SEO results, so should you.”

6. Use pop-ups for lead generation.

When a prospective customer hits your affiliate website, you need to move them down the sales funnel toward a conversion.

Top of the funnel (TOFU) marketing tactics bring customers to your website — think quality content, social media posts, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Once there, you need to convert these customers before they leave.

If you have no way to collect customer data, you only have one shot to move these customers through the funnel before they click off your website.

Lead generation pop-ups capture customer data for future digital marketing campaigns. That way, if a customer doesn’t convert the first time, you can move them through the sales funnel later with sales calls and email campaigns.

To encourage more people to submit their data:

• Include images on your pop-ups
• Set pop-ups to trigger when customers have scrolled 35% of the page
• Add a countdown timer
• Use a multi-step sign-up process
• Optimize pop-ups for mobile

While on-page email opt-in forms can work too, exit-intent pop-ups are where it’s at. With exit-intent, you’re showing your pop-up to every single visitor before they leave. They don’t have to search your site to find your opt-in form; it appears at the time of your choosing. My blog gets over 90% of its email list growth from well-timed exit-intent pop-ups with a strong lead magnet.

7. Create personalized campaigns for each segmented email list.

Once a user opts into your email list, they should be filtered to the correct email sequence and provided with an automated welcome email series.

Ask questions at the lead generation stage to direct leads to the right email list. Use email marketing tools to send personalized emails that reflect these choices.

Half of online marketing experts personalize product recommendations to different audience segments, as 91% of customers are more likely to purchase when they’re offered relevant recommendations.

If you’re sending remarketing emails, best practice dictates that if a customer leaves without purchasing, you should send three remarketing emails — one within the hour, one within 24 hours, and one a week later. Try recommending similar products or offering a promotion to encourage conversions.

Your email funnel should ultimately sell a high-ticket product, but until then, your emails are another great place to add affiliate links. Some ideas for affiliate emails include:

• Product of the month
• How-to guides (with a product needed to complete the task)
• Special discounts and promos

A well-engaged email list can increase your affiliate sales in a big way. Don’t forget to include an affiliate disclaimer in your emails so that your readers know your relationship with the brands you’re promoting.

8. Offer targeted discounts and promotions.

Promotional marketing can boost conversion rates by 522%. And this is true in the affiliate world, too.

Since more than three-quarters of shoppers consider discounts to be a deal clincher, it’s a wise idea to have strategic promotional marketing in place.

Think beyond basic money-off promotions to target offers to your different audience segments.

Fifty-three percent of shoppers say they want relevant offers based on their purchasing habits. Try to work out what sells well with which demographic, and target them accordingly.

After you sign up for an affiliate program, reach out to the program’s affiliate manager and see if they can send you a custom coupon for your audience. If you can get your readers 10, 20 or even 30% off, use that incentive to increase your affiliate conversion rates.

Affiliate Marketing Strategies Fit Into Four Stages

With these tried-and-true affiliate marketing strategies under your belt, you’ll begin to see an uplift in clicks, conversions, and commissions.

Driving affiliate revenue is a four-act play:

• Improve your visibility on Google with creative SEO techniques.
• Optimize your web pages to encourage on-page conversions.
• Capture data for ongoing digital marketing.
• Analyze your affiliate marketing campaigns to see which work the best.

All of these tactics must work in unison. Your keyword and SEO strategy needs to plan for future monetization. Your content needs to be both high-quality and optimized for affiliate links. And you need to build strong partnerships (and links) with other blogs in your niche and the brands you promote.

It’s a hard-earned mix of well-written content, relationship building, hard work, know-how, and a hustle mindset. If you get it right, you just might be able to ditch the 9-to-5 and become a full-time affiliate marketer.

The post 8 Affiliate Marketing Strategies for Explosive Income Growth appeared first on DollarSprout.

Little did I know there are more moving parts to blogging than just writing content.

It took me more than a year to see any significant income from that blog. But once I purchased my first blogging course and hired some help, I realized that my investments would directly drive my blog’s success.

If you’re unwilling or can’t afford to invest time or money into your blog, it can be difficult to turn it into a money-making business. Fortunately, there are plenty of free and affordable blogging resources that can help you start a successful blog.

Resources for Setting Up Your Blog

NameMesh (free): Domain name generator to help you choose the perfect name for your blog. Gives hundreds of available suggestions based on the words you search.

NameCheap (free, pay for domains): Website that sells domain names for as little as $8.88/year. Since domains with common words can be costly, NameCheap suggests alternatives using similar phrases and ideas.

WordPress.org (free): The best platform you can use to build your blog for free. WordPress.org and WordPress.com are two different things. The .org version gives you more control over your website.

HostGator (paid): An affordable website hosting company. You’ll need hosting to get your WordPress.org website up and running. You can use our step-by-step tutorial to start a blog using HostGator.

ManageWP Worker (free): Security plugin that protects your blog from hackers and allows you to save site backups to your Google Drive.

How to Blog Legally (article): Teaches the proper way to protect your blog with the right legal language and pages like privacy policy, terms and conditions, and legal disclaimers and disclosures.

Resources for Designing Your Blog

StudioPress (paid): Premium WordPress themes. These themes aren’t free, but they’re search engine optimized, mobile-friendly, and look professional.

Elementor (paid): User-friendly page builder that allows you to design your blog to your taste. Free version includes the drag-and-drop mobile-responsive editor with basic templates and widgets. There’s also a personal plan that offers additional widgets, templates, builder options, and more.

Elementor Astra Theme (paid): One of the most popular themes to use with Elementor. You can use this guide to get the Astra theme set up.

Canva (free option): Online design software for pins, Instagram posts, printables, etc. Premium option comes with a library of free icons and stock photos.

Pexel/Unsplash/Pixabay (free): Commercial-use image websites to enhance the visual design of your blog. Photo credit or payment is not required.

PowerPoint (or Keynote/Google Slides) (free): Alternative to Canva for creating visuals like pins and blog graphics.

Related: Blogging on Instagram: 6 Tips to Grow Your Blog and Get More Traffic

Blog Monetization Resources

How to Make Money Blogging (article): Teaches beginners how to monetize a blog at any stage using advertising, affiliate marketing, digital products, or services.

Best Affiliate Marketing Networks (article): Teaches bloggers how to earn a commission by recommending other companies’ products and services. Also includes networks you can sign up for to start promoting products on your blog today.

Google AdSense (they pay you): Google’s advertising network that approves new bloggers. It’s easy to set up and start earning cash by following the company’s step-by-step guide. Note, though, that payout can be low and you need to earn at least $100 before receiving a payment.

Mediavine (they pay you): Advertising network that accepts bloggers with at least 50,000 monthly user interactions, known as sessions, as recorded by Google Analytics. The company pays more per ad click than Google AdSense.

Pro Blogger Bundle (paid course): A discounted set of three blogging courses: Launch Your Blog Biz, Pinterest Traffic Avalanche, and Six-Figure Blogger. The course creators, Alex and Lauren from Create and Go, teach everything new bloggers need to know, from starting a blog to growing traffic using Pinterest to turning a profit.

Resources for Marketing Your Blog and Increasing Traffic

Google Analytics (free): Provides visitor insights from your blog, like number of page views and sessions, how long readers stay on a page, and how often they click to additional pages. The analytics can help you track and improve your traffic.

ConvertKit (free option): User-friendly email marketing tool starting your email list and emailing subscribers. Free plan supports a limited number of features and subscribers. If you exceed the subscriber limit, you’ll need to start paying for a monthly plan. Premium plans also come with the ability to create automatic sequences, sales funnels, unlimited reports, and more.

How to Use Pinterest for Business (article): Tips for how to set up and use a Pinterest Business account. Pinterest is a valuable source of traffic for many websites and can help you grow your readership quickly as a new blogger.

How to Get Traffic with Pinterest (YouTube video below): Alex and Lauren share their best tips on how to get traffic to your blog using Pinterest. They give all the details of their strategies in the course, Pinterest Traffic Avalanche.

Tailwind (paid): Post scheduler for Pinterest and Instagram that allows you to schedule content in advance. You can take advantage of the free trial to test their services before spending any money.

Grow by Mediavine (previously Social Pug) (free option): WordPress plugin that embeds social media share buttons above, below, or beside your blog content. This makes it easy for your readers to share your content with others and can help bring in new readers.

Google Keyword Planner (free): Generates lists of keywords based on simple topic searches. Shows the monthly search volume for each keyword.

KWFinder (paid): Search engine optimization (SEO) tool to find keyword ideas based on location and language. Each search shows lists of keywords with search volume and how difficult a keyword is to rank for on a scale of 1 to 100.

Yoast SEO (free option): WordPress plugin that evaluates blog posts’ on-page SEO. The basic version is free and tracks one main keyword per article, and the paid version tracks up to five keywords per article.

8-Step SEO Strategy (video): A 17-minute video that walks you through the most important SEO strategies to rank your blog posts on page one of Google.

Get Your Keywords Together (paid): A $47 step-by-step strategy to find keywords that can drive traffic to your blog using only free SEO tools.

Stupid Simple SEO: The SEO Starter Pack (free): Free 6-day video SEO training that walks bloggers through the basics of SEO.

How to Speed Up Your Blog (article): Five easy things you can do to increase the speed of your blog without hiring a web developer.

Facebook Blogging Groups (article): Joining free groups can be invaluable. You’ll make connections in your niche and can learn from fellow bloggers’ wins and mistakes.

Related: 20 of the Best Blogging Courses for Beginner to Advanced Bloggers

Tools for Writing and Creating Content

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer (free): Analyzes blog post titles based on elements like character count and choice of words to help you choose more click-worthy headlines.

Grammarly (free): Google Chrome extension that tracks grammar and spelling errors in your browser. Premium version offers more intense edit suggestions.

4 Essential Elements to Writing a Great Blog Post (article): Free guide from Jeff Goins, professional blogger and author, on how to write blog posts that capture your audience, starting with the title and ending with a compelling call to action.

Hit Publish (paid): Online course that teaches the details of writing great content in less time. Learn to write to your niche better than the competition, and engage your audience with a well-structured post.

Resources for Managing and Organizing Your Blog

Asana (free): Free project management software for up to 15 teammates to schedule the steps required to complete each blogging task from start to finish. Premium option provides additional features like a timeline view of projects and private projects. Even if you’re doing everything yourself right now, a tool like Asana can help keep you organized and hold you accountable with deadlines.

Slack: Chat platform to easily communicate with the people on your team (once you have one).

Toggl (free): Time-tracking software with the ability to switch on and off between different tasks. Helps keep you focused and productive. You can also track contractors’ times for hourly billing or time management purposes. 

Google Drive (free): Offers 15GB of free cloud storage for documents that can be shared in real time. Log into your Google account to access your documents anywhere.

Google Calendar (free): Create schedules for personal or team use. You can share each calendar with different teammates to organize responsibilities and project timelines.

Fiverr (pay for services): Platform to find and hire affordable graphic designers, content creators, tech support, etc. to grow your blog. Some services start as low as $5.

Dead Link Checker (free): Check your blog posts for broken links to remove or fix. Broken links can hurt user experience, which is a core driver of a blog’s SEO.

Blog Taxes for Beginners (article): Teaches you how to track your income and expenses from day one to make filing year-end taxes easy. You can also offset taxable income with legitimate blogging expenses (including any blogging resource you purchase).

The post 42 Best Blogging Resources for Beginner Bloggers appeared first on DollarSprout.

You probably know that more and more websites are created every day. With new content creators and bloggers jumping into the online world, it’s getting harder to stand out from the crowd.

Most people think that by being consistent and putting in more time and effort, they can eventually beat the competition.

But what if there was a genuine way that you could stand out? What if you could create 100% unique content that people could consume on their way to work, at the gym, or while making dinner?

Today, we’re going to hash out the 7 amazing benefits of having your own podcast and how you can start today.

Should you start a podcast if you have a blog?

Podcasts can be super valuable for any business, as you will soon learn.

However, they can also be a great way for content creators or bloggers to easily “repurpose” existing content to reach a new audience.

Podcasts are becoming more and more popular, and many people would prefer to listen to a podcast than read a long blog post. In fact, Google Trends suggests that interest in podcasts has exceeded that of blogs since the start of 2019.

Just think about it…

If people can hear your voice and listen to you whilst having a cup of coffee, do you think they are more likely to get to know you and trust you compared to reading words on a screen?

This means they are going to be more likely to buy whatever your company offers.

This leads nicely onto…

7 Benefits of Having a Podcast

There are tons of benefits to starting a podcast. This list is not extensive but it highlights the main areas that could help your business or your blog.

And this is even without talking about getting your podcast sponsored or directly monetized…

1. Connect with leaders in your industry

You may have heard this before:

Your network is your net worth.

Whilst you may just see it as a silly quote that people overuse, it has a lot of truth to it, especially in business. The most successful businesses tend to have good relationships with other leaders in the same industry.

A podcast provides an opportunity to speak to experts within your industry who would never take your call otherwise. This can also help you…

Related: These Millennials Started Blogging 12 Months Ago and Already Make $1,000+ Per Month. Here’s How.

2. Learn more about a topic

Many people believe they cannot start a podcast until they understand everything about a certain topic.

While it obviously helps if you have some knowledge in the area, there will likely be areas that you will still be learning about. By taking your listeners through your own journey, it can actually help to connect with more like-minded people. This is also a great way to…

3. Become an authority in your field

If you want to build a brand, then a podcast is a great way to do this. Your personality comes across much more compared to writing and your accent will become part of your brand.

But just producing a podcast can instantly provide authority within your industry. It’s a great way to stand out and connect with listeners regularly.

4. Create new opportunities you hadn’t thought of

Podcasting can help to put your brand and name on the map. This also means people can find you in new ways. I’ve had some impressive people I haven’t even heard of asking to come on my podcast.

It’s also possible that people may invite you to work with them or even do some guest speaking, guest posting, or other forms of collaboration. Often, these are areas you may not have even considered before and can open up new income streams.

Related: How Bloggers in 7 Popular Niches Are Making Their Money

5. Get free stuff

This is definitely not a reason to start a podcast. But if this happens, it can be one of the best benefits of having a podcast.

This was something completely unexpected and unplanned for me, but I’ve had numerous courses or tools shared with me, just as a “thanks for sharing our message.”

6. Increase traffic

You may find that your audience from your podcast may be totally separate from your existing audience.

If you provide some show notes with useful links or content connecting to your podcasts, then you can also get new people visiting your existing website. This is another way for people to find other services or products that you provide.

7. Easy to create

If you already create content on a website or YouTube channel, the great thing is you don’t even need to put in much more work to create a podcast.

You can simply talk about the content from your blogs or use the audio from a YouTube video to create podcast content. It’s even possible to completely outsource this job to someone else, without needing to spend any extra time on it.

Podcasts don’t require a lot of equipment or tools to get started either. If you have a phone or a laptop, you can start a podcast right now.

Before we look at how exactly you can do this, let’s figure out what style your podcast should be.

Related: 7 Ways to Repurpose Your Blog Content and Get the Most Out of Every Post

The Two Main Types of Podcasts

There are many different podcast styles or genres, but really they fall under 2 main categories:

1. Solo
2. Interview

There are other styles such as:

• Multi-host shows (fits more under solo usually)
• Roundtables (could be either format depending on if the guests a regular or not)

So, what’s better?

There is no right answer, but if you are wanting to connect with more people and network, it’s likely you will choose an interview style.

Many podcasts use a bit of both having a guest on sometimes, and at others, going at it solo. Some podcasts will even have seasons focusing on a certain theme and taking a break until the next season.

The key is to make sure every episode serves your audience, the same way that all your content should.

How to Get “Experts” on Your Podcast

Now I can almost hear your mind saying, “This is all great in theory, but how am I supposed to get any experts on my podcast?”

That’s a great question, so let’s break it down a bit, shall we?

Where to find people to interview on your podcast

Here are some places you can find these “experts”:

• Your own network (people you may already be in contact with — the best approach)
• Facebook Groups
• Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
• People releasing something i.e. new book or course (this is a great time to ask because they want the publicity)
• Ask your guests if they recommend anyone else
• Other podcasts you listen to

But the key is to use what you already know.

You may be super active on Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Instagram, so obviously that would be the best place to start. What I quickly realized is that I was already in contact with many people who would make great guests.

Remember, you don’t have to get the biggest “experts” straight away. They just need to know something that would help your listeners (and almost everyone’s story can help).

Related: How One Entrepreneur Build a Business Repurposing Podcasts into Blog Posts for Business Owners

How to ask for the interview

This is a really important step.

You’re probably already aware that sending an email to someone who has no idea who you are rarely gets answered.

I personally don’t believe that cold pitching someone is the best way to go about it.

So here are a couple of examples I have of asking people to come on my show in the past:

I had already emailed Pete McPherson a couple of times replying to his email sequences.

He always replied, so I knew I could reach him there.

I tried to keep it short and to the point and used Grant’s name, as I knew he had interviewed him before.

And this is how I got to have a chat with Jeff and Ben from DollarSprout:

I had kind of already touched base with Jeff and Ben, and I had judged that flat out asking them may be the best approach to not waste their time.

Plus, I knew they hung out on Facebook because I was part of their awesome group.

Tips for getting guests

There are 7 key tips that have helped me to get more guest opportunities:

1. Try to make contact with them before asking i.e. thank them for some work you liked, share their stuff, ask them a question, join their email list, etc.
2. Find out where the person you are asking hangs out (email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
3. Be polite and get to the point (nobody has time to read an essay to figure out what you’re asking!)
4. Replying to emails sent from them is a great way to get a higher response rate.
5. Look out for emails from people that have been on other podcasts (it shows they are willing to go on podcasts)
6. Follow up if you don’t get a response (max 3 attempts)
7. Drop in the fact you have a podcast in your emails signature and any other outreach that you do

In fact, I have had a response from every person I asked if I had already been in contact with them (not the case for cold pitches).

Just remember to keep track of who you asked and when you asked them (I use a simple spreadsheet), and make sure to follow up with them if you don’t get a response.

Follow up about 2 weeks after you have sent the request and never send more than 3 requests in total. It just becomes needy and there are plenty more fish in the sea.

How to Start a Podcast

One of the biggest benefits of starting a podcast is how cheap and easy it is. Creating a blog can be super cheap, but there is always a bit of a learning curve setting that up.

And if you’re like me, you will be interested in finding free or cheap tools to help you do this for podcasting.

Now I’m about to show you how $108 and less than 2 hours can have your podcast set up and sounding as professional as NPR.

There are really only 3 steps to get your podcast out there:

1. Choose your podcast hosting
2. Record and edit your podcast
3. Publish and connect your hosting to different podcast directories

Now, there are some different recommendations from different “gurus” on this. But all you really need is “hosting” to get your podcast out there into the real world.

Tools to Set Up a Podcast

So here are the main tools that are available. They are pretty much the cheapest options around and provide you with more than enough to produce a great-sounding podcast.

Hosting

• Podbean. $108 for the year and unlimited upload plan. I personally use it as it’s the most cost-effective with unlimited storage space. Use this tutorial on how to submit your podcast to different directories…this covers steps 1 and 3…two birds, one stone.
• Lisbyn. $5/ month for 50Mb [one of my podcasts averages around 45Mb for 45 minutes though]…or $15/ month for 250Mb.
• There are free hosting plans on platforms such as Anchor, but they are limited to what you can do and therefore not recommended (similar to website hosting).

Microphone

To be honest, any microphone will be better than your built-in one on your laptop, but it’s not a necessity.

Wearing headphones is important while recording (so you don’t get the echo from the laptop speakers). Any headphones will do.

The ATR-2100 is what gets recommended all the time:

• Just the microphone is around $79
• Stand with pop filter (stops the “P” noise being really loud) is around $19

How to Record the Podcast

• Ecamm recorder for Mac users on Skype for a one-time fee of $39.95 for lifetime access. You need something like this if you are interviewing someone.
• Try these out for Windows (if you are interviewing someone).
• Use any recorder like GarageBand, Voice Memos, or even Audacity (see next point) if it’s a solo podcast.

Software to edit and arrange the podcast

• Use Meetingbird to arrange times you’re available (it’s free and saves a lot of back-and-forth messaging)
• Audacity (Editing. It’s free, easy to use, and awesome)
• Levelator (Another handy free tool. It makes sure the “loudness” is equal from your end and the other person’s if it’s an interview-style)

In total, you’re looking at around $150 to get everything you need, plus whatever microphone you want. And it doesn’t need to look like a recording studio, this is what I look like on a podcast chat.

I thought this was going to be super complicated, but it actually took under 2 hours to get all of that set up.

Networking and Branding Made Easy

Here’s the truth: a podcast can do things for your business that you didn’t know were possible.

You can use it as a tool in any way you wish. Plus, it’s a great way to get up-to-date and important information about your business out there.

Yes, it can take time and effort, but you wouldn’t even be reading this article if you weren’t prepared for that. On the same note, it is possible to completely outsource a podcast if you already produce YouTube videos or are happy for someone else to read your blog posts.

By now you should know:

• The benefits of starting a podcast
• Different types of podcasts
• How to find the right guests for your podcast
• The software and tools you need to start

The reassuring part? It isn’t scary or intense to start a podcast. The fancy intros, sponsors, and sound effects are great if you want to spend time on them, but they aren’t needed to start a podcast that grows your business.

The post How to Start a Podcast 3 Simple Steps (Beginner’s Guide) appeared first on DollarSprout.

Actually, I probably would’ve said, “What the heck is a blog? And how can you make money blogging?'”

Five years ago, I was working as an investment analyst at a financial planning firm. I went to work every day from 9 to 5, dreaded Mondays, and looked forward to weekends that never lasted long enough.

There were a few things I appreciated about my job at the time. Consistent paychecks, health insurance, some of my coworkers.

But for the most part, I was not a fan of the 9-to-5 life. And by that, I mean:

• Feeling underappreciated and like my work didn’t matter
• Not having control over my income
• Having to ask permission to take time off
• Office politics (the worst)

Starting a business seemed like the answer to all my problems. But I never would’ve guessed that business would be a blog. What started as our little blog is now a seven-figure online business.

Our Blogging Story

First off, we (my business partner Ben and I) didn’t get into blogging intentionally. We sort of fell into blogging by accident.

We started our business in 2014. Originally, it began as an investment membership site: people would pay us for detailed stock market analysis and specific insight about where they should invest their money.

Needless to say (since you’re reading this article), that idea failed miserably. In fact, in our first 18 months of existence, we made $29.00.

Obviously, our original idea wasn’t working, so we needed a plan B.

That’s when we stumbled onto blogging. We quickly realized that other people were making thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars per month from their blogs. Our first idea failed, and I wasn’t about to go crawling back to the full-time job I had just quit a year earlier, so we gave it a go.

Blogging was slow-moving for us at first, but we kept reading, learning from others, and testing strategy after strategy until, finally, we figured it out:

Note: This is an old graphic. Today, our websites generate over $100,000 per month. But, this perfectly captures the roller coaster ride that was our first couple of years in business.

That first little hint of success was all the motivation we needed to keep going. From there, we were able to grow our income each month. (Well, most months.)

If we’d had a guide like this when we first started our business, we probably could’ve skipped the first year and a half of pure stress, confusion, and turmoil and gotten where we are now in a fraction of the time. 

We had no idea how to make money blogging when we first started out. Fortunately, we made a lot of mistakes on our blogging journey so you don’t have to. Before we dive into how to monetize your blog, you need to know…

The Top 4 Ways to Make Money Blogging

Some ways to make money blogging are simply easier and faster, while other revenue streams take more time and effort to build.

As a blogger, you have many monetization options to choose from, and you don’t have to choose just one. In fact, it’s wise to have multiple revenue streams. That way, if something happens and one revenue stream drops, you still have other monetization methods in place.

However, we recommend focusing on just one or two in the beginning. Build up one revenue stream before moving on to the next.

There’s no one “right” way to make money blogging. The revenue streams you choose will depend on your audience and blog topic. Let’s take a look at some of the best, most common ways to make money blogging.

1. Advertising

When most people think of starting a blog, this is the first revenue stream that comes to mind. Often it’s not the most lucrative, but it is one of the easiest ways to get started. There are multiple ways to make money with advertising on your blog.

Display Ads

You know when you visit a site and see ads for cars or clothes or something you were just looking at on Amazon?

Those are display ads. Each time you click one of those ads, the website earns a little bit of money, which is why they call it pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

You can see how Erin from Erin Lives Whole uses display ads to monetize her recipe content.

We typically don’t recommend display ads as a way to make money blogging for a few reasons:

1. It makes for a poorer user experience. How many times have you been to a site and could barely scroll through the page without an ad popping up every two seconds?
2. It is totally dependent on your traffic. And you need a significant amount of traffic (tens of thousands of visitors per month) to make any significant income with display ads.
3. It takes users away from your site. You may get $0.80 for someone clicking on your ad, but now they’re on someone else’s site buying their things and making them money.

The easiest PPC method to get started with is Google AdSense. However, to make any kind of decent money with display ads, you’ll need quite a bit of traffic. And by the time you get that much traffic, you’ll make more money going with an ad management company like Mediavine (minimum of 25,000 monthly impressions to join) or AdThrive (minimum of 100,000 monthly pageviews to join).

All in all, display ads aren’t the best way to make money with a blog. There are much better ways to make money blogging than sending people away from your site.

However, it’s also not the only form of advertising.

Sponsored Content

Once you start building an audience, you’ll be able to land opportunities for sponsored content on your site and social media.

This is when companies pay you for tweeting, writing a Facebook post, or publishing an article about their products or services. Putting that content out to your audience helps them build brand awareness and maybe even increase sales.

Take, for example, this article from Alexis Schroeder at Fitnancials. She disclosed at the top of the article that it’s a sponsored post.

We’ve done this with a few companies on our own website, but it’s also not our favorite way to make money with our blogs. First of all, it’s one-off income. We prefer more passive, scalable revenue streams. Secondly, writing that content takes time, and unless you already have an audience, you can’t expect to make much money with this one.

The larger and more engaged your audience is, the more valuable you are to these companies, and the more they’re willing to pay you for media mentions. Therefore, this is not the best monetization method for new bloggers.

Reviews and Giveaways

Another form of advertising on your blog is to do product or service reviews or run a giveaway.

Oftentimes, companies will ask bloggers to write a review on their website about one of their products. In exchange, the blogger gets to keep the product for free. Or for a giveaway, maybe you get a product and you get another to give to the winning reader.

This can be nice if all you’re looking for is free stuff. But if you’re looking for cash, there are better ways to make money blogging.

2. Affiliate Marketing

This is our favorite way we make money with our websites.

Affiliate networks have many products and services for you to promote all in one place. Alternatively, you may earn higher commissions by working directly with the company you want to promote if they have a system for that.

In her article on Extra Petite, you can see how fashion blogger Jean Wang includes affiliate links to clothing items referenced throughout the post. 

With affiliate marketing, you create a piece of content once and earn money from it for as long as it remains useful to your readers. You’ll want to update your articles every so often to make sure the content stays relevant, but it’s still a great way to make passive income from your blog and, we think, one of the best ways to start making money with a new blog.

3. Digital Products

Digital products are another awesome way to make money with your blog. Rather than selling someone else’s product or service, you’re creating something of your own and selling it directly to your audience.

There are many options to choose from when it comes to digital products, but we’re going to look at what we’ve seen and consider to be the top three.

Ebooks and Workbooks

The first product we ever created was an eBook. At the time, we were still trying to sell investment advice online (before we figured out the whole blogging thing), so as we’ve already covered, that was a failed venture.

However, there are many bloggers out there who make great money from their workbooks and eBooks.

One who comes to mind is Rosemarie Groner of The Busy Budgeter. She sells her Budget Boot Camp Workbook for $27, along with various other workbooks and worksheets.

The difference between a workbook and eBook is the amount of involvement or activity on the reader’s end. An eBook is mostly text with maybe an exercise or two thrown in. A workbook helps your reader do or accomplish something by leading them through the process.

In Rosemarie’s budgeting workbook, for example, she leads her reader through the process of organizing their finances and creating a budget. Workbooks and eBooks are a great place to start with digital products since they’re decently quick to make, unlike our next digital product.

Online Courses

This monetization method has become incredibly popular over the last few years. Many of the bloggers making a significant income online do so by selling premium courses.

Alex and Lauren from Create and Go make over $50,000 per month selling digital products and online courses.

It takes more time to create a course than other digital products, but the profit margins are much higher. 

Membership Sites

A membership site is basically a paid online community. Subscribers pay you a monthly fee for access to premium content, which could include weekly classes, workbooks and printables, video lessons, tutorials, or whatever else you have to offer.

Think of it as a mix between teaching and community.

In her ADDICTED Business Academy, Meera Kothand offers pre-recorded and live monthly trainings, a members-only community group, and personalized 1-on-1 coaching.

Memberships can be a great way to monetize your website or blog, but it’s not a good fit for most beginner bloggers. We recommend starting with affiliate marketing and smaller digital products first.

4. Services

While offering services is by far the fastest way to make money with your blog, it’s also the least scalable. Your blog doubles as your portfolio when pitching clients, so you can make money working for others while building your other income streams. Here are some of the best services to offer as a new blogger.

Digital Marketing

In case you haven’t realized it yet, blogging is about much more than just writing and publishing articles. Along the way to building your blog, you learn about social media strategies, design, SEO, content marketing, and about a million other things.

Many of those things fall under the umbrella of digital marketing, and they’re incredibly valuable to other businesses.

Our friend Bobby Hoyt from Millennial Money Man realized that soon after he started his blog. His site wasn’t making any money at the time, so he needed to find another way to bring in some cash. That’s when he started reaching out to other businesses to offer his services doing the things he’d learned from blogging (Facebook ads, writing online content, social media strategy, etc.).

That bright idea turned into a nice little side hustle and allowed him to continue building his blog and growing his online business. He’s now a full-time blogger and makes money with courses teaching other bloggers how to make money on Facebook by running ads for other companies.

Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistants are in high demand for online entrepreneurs. A virtual assistant helps business owners with everything from administrative tasks to design to email marketing.

Your services will depend on your specific skills and experiences. For example, if you have impeccable spelling and grammar, then one of your services could be to proofread articles for other websites.

Jenny Weg, mom and lifestyle blogger, was able to monetize her blog immediately and start bringing in $2,000 per month offering virtual assistant services.

Freelance Writing

This is one of the easiest and most common services to offer as a new blogger. You’re already writing content for your own website, so why not get paid to write for someone else?

Freelance writing is a great way to practice your writing skills and get your name out there. It’s also perfect for building authority if you write for sites in your niche.

And don’t think for a second that “freelancing” is synonymous with “working for pennies.” Some bloggers make upwards of six figures per year as a freelance writer.

How to Make Money Blogging: A Guide to Your First $1,000

Now that you’re up to speed on the different ways to monetize a blog, let’s talk strategy.

If you commit to following every single step in this article, you can money with your blog within a matter of months.

That being said, the first $1,000 you make blogging is probably going to be some of the most difficult money you’ve ever earned in your life.

There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s easier to make $1,000 flipping burgers (I’ve done both).

But, once you hit that $1,000 mark, the sky is the limit.

You’ll be surprised how quickly your blog can grow and your life can change once you get past the initial hurdle of profitability. You just have to stick with it to get to that point.

If you want to escape your 9-to-5 and make a full-time income from home (and eventually more than a full-time income), blogging is one way to accomplish that.

Here are the exact steps you need to take to make $1,000 blogging, even if you’re a total beginner.

Step 1: Choose a blog niche

The biggest mental roadblock I see out there: people thinking they need to come up with something 100% unique that hasn’t been written about yet.

Or worse, thinking that you can only write about something you have a raging passion for.

Here’s something for you: I’m not “passionate” about the subject areas of our blogs (personal finance and blogging/business). Sure, I enjoy both topics, but it’s not like I have a primal calling to write about them. I just enjoy both things, and that’s enough to keep me going.

And yes, there are a million other blogs out there that already cover what we write about. The internet is a really big place, but I can promise you there is room for all of us.

So what should you write about?

If you want to make money from your blog, you need to treat every decision you make like a business decision. When it comes to choosing your blog niche, that means using some common sense:

Here are some things to consider:

• Write about something that interests you. Otherwise, it won’t be enjoyable and you’ll fizzle out after a while.
• Find something that other people are interested in, too. If you choose to write about Himalayan basket weaving for men, you probably won’t have many readers, and you’ll have a hard time earning any income. Try to find something that combines your interests with things other people also care about. For my main blog, I write about money advice. I’m a personal finance nerd and, fortunately, there are people online looking for that type of information.
• You DON’T have to be a world-class expert on your topic. You just need to know a little more about your topic than your readers.

Have a question about whether a particular niche has a good income potential? Post your question in our Facebook group and you’ll get tons of helpful feedback.

Step 2: Set up your blog (if you haven’t already)

Obviously, in order to earn money from a blog, you first need a blog. If you already have your blog set up, then you can skip this step.

If you haven’t started your blog yet, first of all, good on you for doing your research. But eventually you’re going to have to stop researching and start doing. That’s what this step is about.

You may have heard of WordPress but still aren’t quite clear on what it is.

Think of WordPress as the backbone of your blog. It’s the easiest to use (and most powerful) content management system (or CMS) in the world. WordPress is what makes it possible for regular people like you and me to build and run a website without being a web developer.

In fact, you don’t need any coding knowledge whatsoever to get started with WordPress.

You have two main options for starting your blog: “Self-Hosted” on WordPress or “Free WordPress.”

Self-hosted WordPress is the best option if you want to make money with your blog.

Even though you have to pay for your own web hosting out of pocket, going this route allows you much more flexibility in terms of site design, usability, and monetization.

Hosting is also inexpensive, especially if you take advantage of our partnership with HostGator. Depending on your hosting plan, it shouldn’t cost you more than a few dollars a month.

There are a few key differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

With the free version of WordPress, you don’t really have that much freedom to make changes to your site. Plus, WordPress actually owns your site if you use the free version (meaning your site is technically not even yours). With the free version of WordPress, your website link even looks unprofessional; instead of a .com ending, your site will look like “yourwebsite.wordpress.com”.

I can’t think of even one successful blogger (in terms of income) who is using the free version of WordPress.

If you want to make money blogging, self-hosting is the way to go.

For step-by-step instructions, check out our free guide on how to start a blog with WordPress.

Step 3: Create helpful content

At this point, you should have honed in on a niche you feel comfortable writing about, and you should have your blog set up.

After you’ve got your blog set up, it’s time to write some epic blog posts.

If you have the end goal of earning income from your blog, you need to be strategic in the type of content you write and how you write it.

Here’s a basic framework you can and should use for planning out your content, at least to start. The main goal here is to get you in the habit of writing articles that you know people will want to read. You don’t want to waste time writing to an audience of zero.

Simple as that.

Why is this strategy so effective?

Because the leaders in whatever niche you are blogging about are already making money. And probably a lot of it.

They have cracked the code, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to emulate their success.

That said, be cool. Don’t outright copy them.

Another way to find topics to write about

If the goal is to create content people want to read, then another method to come up with blog post ideas is to figure out what they’re already searching for. Using this strategy can help you build free organic traffic from Google.

• Type in some phrases related to your niche on Pinterest and see what comes up
• Search a common phrase or problem on Google and look at the “related searches”
• Use a free keyword tool like UberSuggest

One of the common misconceptions bloggers have about SEO is that you have to pay for complicated and expensive keyword research tools. But that’s not the case. You can use completely free SEO tools to find keywords for your articles. And not just any keywords, but ones that your blog can actually rank highly for.

When you know what people want to read, you’ll never run out of topic ideas.

Create content with a purpose

Every piece of content you create should have a purpose:

• Making money via affiliate sales
• Getting people to sign up to your email list
• Growing your Facebook group
• Building your authority

Remember that with everything you write. Be clear on what you want your reader to do next, and, if necessary, ask them to do it.

Practice makes perfect

Figuring out what type of content to create takes practice. You’ll probably end up writing at least a few articles that you later delete, and that’s okay. We’ve all been there (trust me).

But the more you practice, the more articles you write, and the more you get to know your audience over time, the better you’ll become at creating high-quality content that people want to read.

How to structure your blog posts so people read them

Repeat after me:

I will NOT use walls of text.

Using massive walls of text is the quickest way to kill a blog post.

The way we were taught in school to write is not how you want to write for your blog. Big paragraphs, pages and pages of solid text, etc. are not going to make readers want to stick around.

See what I mean:

So, no long paragraphs. But what about structure? Do you write blog posts like an essay?

Yes and no.

The key here, again, is to break up your articles into bite-size chunks. Here’s a template you can steal:

Write enough posts to fill up your theme’s homepage (so it doesn’t look empty). Then, it’s on to the next step.

Step 4: Pick ONE social media network and OWN it

When Ben and I first started blogging, we tried to be everywhere, all the time.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Quora, Quibb… we were all over the place.

And you know what?

For the longest time, our traffic sucked.  I mean, it REALLY sucked. We weren’t getting anywhere. And we weren’t making any money.

That’s when we decided to try our hand at Pinterest, a platform neither Ben nor I had ever used in our lives up until that point.

And let me tell you, Pinterest changed everything for us.

For new websites, ranking high on Google is just not going to happen overnight, but Pinterest can be your secret weapon. It is, bar none, the best way to get your name out there if you’re a new blogger.

How to dominate Pinterest and grow your traffic

For most new bloggers, I recommend focusing exclusively, 100% on Pinterest to get your first significant stream of consistent traffic. It really is the best use of your time at this stage of your blog.

We’re going to walk through the basics of getting your account set up here, but if you want a step-by-step guide for growing your Pinterest traffic, I highly recommend you check out Create and Go’s course, Pinterest Traffic Avalanche.

Get a business account and set up “Rich Pins”

You want to make sure you aren’t using a personal account to build up your Pinterest profile for your website.

With a business account, you’ll have access to Pinterest Analytics, as well as the ability to create “Rich Pins.” You can also pay Pinterest to promote your pins with a business account, but that’s definitely not necessary. We experimented with about $50 worth of promoted pins before figuring out we could make our pins go viral on our own, without the help of ads.

Rich pins make your pins stand out just a bit more by adding a bold link title in your pin description. Getting rich pins is really easy (and free, don’t worry). You just need to confirm your website with Pinterest.

Create a “Best Of” Board

Once you have a business account, the next step is to create your “Best Of” board.

The purpose of this board is to house only pins that link to content on your own website. This is not the place to pin other peoples’ stuff. You can (and should) make a bunch of other boards for that.

When other users are looking at your account and deciding whether or not they want to follow you, they’re going to be looking for this board to give them a sense for what type of content you’re contributing to Pinterest. In your board description, be sure to include lots of keywords that users might be searching for.

Ideally, you’d like to have at least 50 or so pins on this board. If you don’t have that many pieces of content, then you should…

Make multiple pins for each blog post

This is important for a few different reasons.

First, it’s always smart to A/B test your pins.

“You could write the best blog post in the world, but if I’m not enticed to click on your pin, you’ve just lost the game.”

Experiment with different image backgrounds, different calls to action (CTA), even different keywords in your description.

The other benefit of making multiple pins is that it makes it a little easier to run up your total pin count on your Best Of board. This helps when it comes time to apply for group boards, as you want to have a decent portfolio of pins that you can share.

I generally try to make 2 or 3 pins for each article. But sometimes I make as many as 10 pins if I feel it’s an article that deserves to get some real attention.

Brand your pins to stand out

I’ll admit, I could have done a much better job of this when I was first making the pins for our blog. I just didn’t know any better.

Then one day as I was scrolling through my Pinterest feed and this pin caught my eye:

That’s when it dawned on me how important branding is when it comes to creating your pins, as long as you have great content. The ONLY reason I clicked on that pin and went to her website was because it stood out to me in the sea of pins on my feed.

When we launched BTOP (which we’ve since merged with DollarSprout), I kept Pauline’s focus on awesome branding in the back of my head. Here’s a look at some of our first pins:

There are a few key points I’d like you to note with these pins:

• They all have some amount of our main brand color: orange.
• Pins that have both scripts and block font perform well.
• The background images are all very light/white themed. This makes the text stand out more.
• I don’t have a rigid format for each pin. I switch it up constantly, while still keeping the same theme.
• Each one has both a logo and our .com address to increase brand recognition/awareness.

Having rock-solid branding is important if you want to be recognized on the platform.

A lot of people use Canva or Photoshop to make their pins, but I’m old-fashioned and just use PowerPoint. Whatever works best for you is fine. PowerPoint is what I used in school for projects, so it’s also what I use to make pins. 

Join Group Boards

This is where the real magic is with Pinterest. If you don’t know yet, the number of followers you have on Pinterest doesn’t mean much…it’s all about how engaged your followers are.

Group boards can help with this.

A group board is a board from someone else’s profile that they’ve given others access to post to. So when you join a group board, you get access to someone else’s followers for free.

And while they’re not as effective as they used to be, group boards can still be a powerful tool to help increase your reach and drive more traffic to your website, especially when you have 1,000 or fewer followers.

So how do you get on these group boards?

The first step is to compile a list of boards that you would like to join. The best way to do this is to look at what group boards some of the top accounts in your niche are contributors to. You can also use PinGroupie.com and search for group boards centering around different topics.

Not every group board with a big following is going to be worth your time. A tool like Tailwind will show you each board’s quality score and engagement. If a board has a lot of activity from pinners but very little engagement from followers, don’t waste your time contributing to that board.

Each group board admin is going to have a different way that they want you to apply to their board. Some want you to email them, some prefer a DM, some want comments, and some don’t give you any directions at all.

Mass group board application means a lot to keep track of, so I recommend using a spreadsheet similar to mine below (we applied to well over 100 in this round but this screenshot only shows the first 56 boards).

Once you have your spreadsheet started, it’s time to get to work and start contacting all of these people.

It’s going to take you a long time, and most of the time you will never hear back and you’ll never get added to their boards. That’s just the way it goes, and it’s okay. Cast your net wide and understand that rejection is just part of the game.

Here’s a basic outreach template you can use. However, keep in mind that board owners get a lot of these requests. The more personalized and unique you can make your email (and if you can offer them something in return, bonus points to you), the better your odds of being added.

Hi _________,

I was hoping to catch you and see if you would be open to adding me as a contributor to your ___________ (actually link to the board, they may have several and this makes it easier for them) group board.

I regularly write about __________, ___________, and __________ on my website, and think my content would be both interesting and valuable to your readers. I also like to regularly promote and highlight other members of the community so that everyone benefits from collaborating.

My Pinterest profile: ____________
My Pinterest email: __________

Thanks a bunch,

Jeff

Put Your Pinning on Autopilot

When you’re busy building your blog or your website, you can’t afford to spend your entire day on Pinterest.

This is where a using a Pinterest scheduler comes in.

Instead of manually pinning each of your pins to your group boards all the time (along with finding other peoples’ stuff to pin), there is software out there that takes care of all that for you. And it’s awesome.

We’ve used a few different programs, but our favorite by far is Tailwind.

One of the coolest things about Tailwind is how it can tell you which group boards are performing the best for you. With that info, you can really double down on what’s working (and eliminate what’s not working).

Tailwind also has a similar feature to Pinterest group boards called Tribes. A Tribe is essentially a group of other bloggers in your niche. You all add content to the Tribe and pin content from other Tribe members.

And you don’t have to get the paid version if you’re not ready for that yet. Tailwind offers a free trial, but eventually, you will need to make the investment if you want to grow your traffic. It is easily the best money we spent early on for our blog.

Reapply to Group Boards That You Never Heard Back From

Just because you were rejected the first time doesn’t mean you should give up. There are a bunch of reasons why you should revisit your spreadsheet every few months:

• The board owner might have missed your DM, email, etc.
• Your profile might not have been good enough back then, but it’s much better now.
• They could have just forgotten to add you.

No matter what might have happened the first time, go ahead and get back in touch with them. You have nothing to lose.

Don’t use the exact same script, and be sure to remain polite and courteous.

Step 5: Begin monetizing your blog

You were probably wondering when I would circle back around to actually making money from your blog, weren’t you?

A quick truth: most bloggers never actually make any money from their blogs. 

That’s because they skip straight to the “making money” steps without putting in all the necessary foundational work. And then, when they do the blog monetization stuff and don’t see any income, they give up.

Is it realistic to make money blogging? Yes. Is it easy? Definitely not.

It takes time to make money blogging. Like I said, the first $1,000 you make on the internet is some of the hardest money you will likely ever make. But after that hurdle, there are no limits to your income. A $1K month leads to $2K, then $5K, then $10K, then $25K, then $80k+. I’ve seen it happen many times, and it’s what happened for us.

Before you do anything in this section, you should have done the following:

• Joined our free Facebook group.
• Chosen a topic you enjoy and that appeals to many people.
• Set up your blog.
• Written your first 5-10 high-quality posts.
• Established a presence on one social media site.
• Have at least 5,000 monthly visitors to your site. If you aren’t there yet, revisit Pinterest.

Without traffic, your blog will never make any money. That’s just the truth.

The rest of this section assumes you have the above items done. A solid foundation is imperative for your success.

The best way for most new bloggers to begin making money

As I said earlier, most of our income today is from affiliate marketing, which is a commission-based form of advertising on your blog. This is our favorite way to make money blogging and one that we suggest you start implementing early on.

Essentially, for every sale/lead/signup your blog generates, you get a small fee. Most commissions are between $1 and $100.

This model works best if you are promoting things that directly relate to your content. For example, on DollarSprout, we promote affiliates that help our readers make and save money.

Why do I advocate for affiliate marketing for new bloggers over creating your own product or some other method of monetizing?

Because it’s the best way for you to learn how to sell. Creating your own products takes a ton of time, and then promoting them takes even more time and effort. It’s just too big of a risk. When you’re just starting out, you’re much better off promoting an already successful product and taking a commission on your sales.

Affiliate marketing is just the most practical way to make money for a new blogger. Not to mention you can make really good money doing it.

How to find affiliate products to promote on your blog

Hopefully, you already have a few products in mind that you personally use and like.

If not, go back again to the leaders in your niche. They most likely do some form of affiliate marketing on their blog (probably in addition to selling their own products).

Go back to their most popular posts. What do you see them promoting within these posts?

Chances are, if an affiliate product is appearing in a successful blogger’s most popular articles, that product is making the blogger a lot of money. 

It might make a lot of sense for you to promote the same product (assuming you’re familiar with it and believe in it). Being authentic definitely helps in converting affiliate sales.

Start promoting your favorite products

You should have a list of 5-10 affiliate products related to your niche that you have seen others in your niche promoting that you want to have on your blog. Now it’s time to become an affiliate.

Affiliate networks

Affiliate networks are websites that connect bloggers with companies that advertise via affiliate marketing. By joining a network, you’ll instantly have access to apply to all the affiliates within that network.

Here are the main networks we recommend joining:

• FlexOffers
• CJ
• ImpactRadius
• ShareASale
• Amazon Associates

There are many other networks, but these are big players and should cover most of your needs.

If you come across a company you want to promote and you don’t see them on any of these sites, send the company an email and ask if they have an affiliate program.

Find out which posts of yours are getting the most traffic

This will be your starting point for placing affiliate links on your blog.

Yes, you are going to go back and edit your old posts.

Read those articles again and try to spot areas where there are opportunities for you to drop an affiliate link. Again, authenticity is important — don’t force it.

Go back through all of your articles and find opportunities to include affiliates. This isn’t a quick fix; it will take you some time, but always be on the lookout for ways to improve your old content.

Your content strategy going forward

Your blog is a business.

With that said, don’t forget that your readers come first. Your content should always provide value to your readers, even if they don’t click on an affiliate link.

If your blog devolves into an affiliate spam fest, you will lose readers.

Make sure with every piece you write, you consider what information the reader needs and is looking for. If you’re writing an informational/how-to post (like this one), then you probably shouldn’t include a ton of affiliates because that doesn’t match the user intent.

For example, this article only has a couple of affiliate links so far. But right now I’m going to plug an amazing affiliate marketing course that I took from Michelle Schroeder-Gardner that I am now an affiliate for. (She makes over $50K a month from affiliate marketing). I’m talking about affiliate marketing, she has a course on affiliate marketing. It fits.

And I dropped the link after giving you a ton of value in the article. So it shouldn’t feel sales-y.

Choose one other monetization method

Earlier in this article, we covered other ways to make money blogging aside from affiliate marketing (ads, digital products, services, etc.).

Choose one other monetization method in addition to affiliate marketing and grow them side by side. A service can be a good place to start since that’s often the fastest way to make money with a blog.

Another, more passive option is to go with display ads. Remember, though, that until you start getting a significant amount of traffic, you won’t see much money with this one. However, it is a more passive alternative to offering services.

Once your affiliate marketing revenue takes off, you can slow down on the services and pick up other revenue streams (e.g. sponsored content or digital products), if you so choose.

FAQs

You now have a blueprint for exactly how to make money blogging. To wrap up, let’s talk about some of the questions we see most often from new bloggers.

How much money can you make blogging?

That, and “How long does it take to make money blogging?” are two of the first questions we hear from every new blogger.

The truth is, it depends on:

1. how hard you’re willing to work,
2. how willing you are to fail (because trust me, you will fail), and
3. the monetization methods you choose.

Sure, our websites bring in over $100,000 per month now, but it took us a lot of work to get to that point. Granted, it would have taken a lot less work and time if we had been willing to learn from others a bit earlier on (like what you’re doing right now) rather than trying to figure everything out ourselves.

There are bloggers who make less than us and plenty of bloggers who make a great deal more.

The thing about blogging is that there are no limitations. There are dozens of ways to make money blogging. That’s both incredibly liberating and extremely terrifying at the same time.

If you just want to make a thousand dollars extra per month on top of your full-time job, that’s totally doable.

Want to build a seven-figure digital media empire all while traveling the world? Also doable.

That’s why so many people are drawn to the world of blogging and online business.

Blogging provides freedom.

The freedom to travel, work from anywhere, be your own boss, and not have to stress about money. But that doesn’t mean it’s all rainbows and sunshine. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes of a blog.

How long does it take to make money blogging?

Again, it depends on your goals and monetization methods. If you follow the blueprint outlined in this article, focus only on things that move the ball forward (creating intentional content and getting traffic) you could probably start making money within 4-6 months.

There have also been bloggers who earned six figures within their first year. It’s definitely not the norm, but who’s to say you couldn’t do it, too? How long it takes to make money blogging really depends on you.

What types of blogs make money?

While many different types of blogs can make money, there are certain blog niches that are easier to monetize than others. Just like any other type of business, the most profitable topics are ones that people already spend time and money on or that can help improve their lives in some way, including:

• Health and wellness
• Personal finance
• Business and making money
• Food and nutrition
• Fashion

These are some of the most profitable blog niches, but it’s far from an exhaustive list. The main things to consider when choosing a blog topic are what you can write about/are interested in and what others already pay money to learn.

What is the fastest way to make money blogging for beginners?

The fastest way to accomplish any goal is to focus on the areas that have the biggest impact. In blogging, and especially for beginner bloggers, that’s:

• Writing high-quality content with a purpose (sell, grow your email list, etc.)
• Getting people to your site
• Offering a product or service that solves your readers’ problem (yours or someone else’s, in the case of affiliate marketing)

Of course, offering services is the true fastest way to make money blogging, but this list assumes that you’re getting into blogging to make passive, scalable income. And if that’s the case, everything you do in the beginning should focus on one of the three things above. Not your website branding, not a logo, and not forming an LLC. Stay focused on money-generating activities.

That Is How to Make Money Blogging in a Nutshell

Did I cover everything there is to know about blogging in this post?

No. Not even close. That would be a gazillion-word article that no one would read.

What I did do is tell you everything you need to know to start taking action now. Today.

If you follow every single step in this article (and don’t skip anything), you will have a real foundation for your blog to begin earning consistent, meaningful income.

This guide is right here for the taking. I’ve shown you 90% of what is needed to run a multi-thousand dollar per month blog. I’ve given all the info, for free, and now you just need to make a decision on if you are going to use it.

Seth Godin sums up the concept of blogging perfectly:

Here’s a keyboard, connected to the entire world. Here’s a publishing platform you can use to interact with just about anyone, just about any time, for free. You wanted a level playing field, one where you have just as good a shot as anyone else? Here it is. Do the work.

That’s what we’re all counting on.

For you to do the work.

The post How to Make Money Blogging in 2024 (Expert Guide) appeared first on DollarSprout.

Are you tired of seeing the same lead-generation tactics being blasted in your face by Facebook ads and big-name bloggers?

You know, the ones that say, “All you have to do is include a lead magnet in your post and email subscribers will just come your way in droves. The more relevant the opt-in, the better.”

Lead generation doesn’t have to follow the same process for every blogger, though.

In fact, it shouldn’t.

Enter the star-studded interview series.

You see, readers become less receptive to falling for the same tactics…

If people sign up for the “best” tips on a topic or the numerous make money online checklists, cheat sheets, printables, etc., then they’re going to be a lot less inclined to sign up for yours because they weren’t impressed by the ones before.

You need to be innovative when it comes to building your email list.

That’s why I recommend starting a blog interview series to kickstart your email marketing efforts.

What is a Blog Interview Series?

In the world of content marketing there are, generally speaking, 3 types of articles:

• How-To (How to Start a Blog)
• Listicle (17 Things to Include in Every Single Blog Post)
• Testimonial (How We Made $347,675 Blogging in Two Months)

An interview series takes the third type of article and expands it further into a question-and-answer-style testimonial.

By interviewing someone, you’re getting their opinion (or testimony) on a certain topic. Essentially, they become guest bloggers in the form of an interview.

A collection of those posts then becomes an interview series, generally focused around a certain topic. 

For example, my blog interview series is called Scaling Success Stories, and I discuss topics like growing your business, outsourcing, and, of course, scaling an online business.

My interviewees are entrepreneurs who have successfully done those things.

The Benefits of Having an Interview Series on Your Blog

Since starting my interview series back in March, where I hosted Jeff Proctor as my first ever guest, I’ve realized there are more benefits than anyone (or I) could have predicted. Let’s talk about a few:

Content creation becomes easy

You don’t have to spend hours writing a post. After your initial outreach, you merely have to format your interviewees’ answers.

I’ve been able to pump out interviews in 1.5-2 hours, and that includes graphics creation and promotion.

Creating a template for your process is essential.

Expanded search visibility 

If you’re like me and you target bloggers, you know they get searched in Google, especially if they have a large following.

But other people don’t necessarily target their names as keywords. I’ve gotten Google traffic and affiliate commissions from people searching for terms that Keywords Everywhere says have 0 monthly searches — all by leveraging the power of their branded and non-branded search terms (think terms like Jeff Proctor, DollarSprout, etc.). 

Not to mention, you can also get backlinks, Google’s prized currency, from your interviews.

One of my more popular interviews with Sarah Titus just received a backlink from Arfa at She Means Blogging simply because she loved reading the interview.

Exposure to new audiences

There’s also this underlying reason — an ulterior motive, if you will — for why I love doing an interview series.

The exposure to new audiences is amazing.

As a beginner to intermediate (and even advanced) blogger, being advertised on a big-name blogger’s email list or social media profiles can result in some amazing subscriber increases.

And it has for me.

Every time I’ve gotten good billing in an email or social media post, I’ve seen a jump.

This screenshot is from when Alex and Lauren at Create and Go included me in an email following their interview going live.

The Anatomy of a Well-Structured Interview Series

SEO company Moz refers to their writers as “content architects.”

I think that’s a pretty cool name, but more importantly, it illustrates an effective point: you can’t just write content.

Rather, content has to be carefully constructed to address an entire topic in great detail.

An interview series follows the same guiding principles. 

It has certain structural elements that are necessary for success:

• Choosing the right topic
• Writing the series description
• Crafting the interview questions

If you can nail these elements, pulling off a successful blog interview series becomes a breeze.

1. Choosing the right topic

Kind of like choosing a blog topic, you need to choose a topic for your interview series that is intriguing and compelling, but also has the potential for longevity.

It’s a tricky balance to strike.

My recommendation: find a topic that is underrepresented. By simply talking about something that other people in your space aren’t addressing, you’ll immediately become an authority on the topic.

When I started my series, there weren’t many authority figures teaching bloggers how to scale their online business. So that’s what I set out to do.

Because there isn’t one set formula to scale an online business, it means that I can get a diverse range of opinions on the topic.

That’s what allows for the longevity that I mentioned earlier.

2. Writing the series description

This is the fun part, I think. You get to live the life of a copywriter for a hot minute.

My series description went through many iterations before it arrived at what it is now:

“Imagine if you could learn from the experts on how to grow and scale your business. Every Monday, I invite entrepreneurs who have conquered this challenge to share their stories, from realizing they could make money online to building thriving businesses that positively change their customers’ lives. If you want to quit your full-time job and pursue your business wholeheartedly, read on to learn how you can discover your true purpose, find success, and live the life you want.”

Let’s break this down a little further.

Here are the core components of a well-written series description:

• Intriguing hook (Imagine if…)
• Publishing frequency (Every Monday…)
• Convey a transformation (from realizing…to building)
• Objective of the interview series (read on to learn how…)

Now that we’ve extrapolated the key elements, use this framework to create your own series description. 

Share them in the comments below if you have questions and I’ll happily provide feedback.

3. Crafting the interview questions

For me, I keep the interview questions the same for each and every interview.

What this allows me to do is provide a clear picture of the topic from the perspective of different people.

For example, when I discuss outsourcing, I get various opinions.

Anything from “I’ve only outsourced a logo on Upwork/Fiverr,” to, “I’ve got a full team,” and everything in between.

Same sort of deal when I discuss paid ads.

To successfully obtain differing opinions, you need to craft open-ended questions that allow for wiggle room. 

You shouldn’t really be leaning people toward a certain answer, although I’m guilty of that in one question, and I’ve been called out on it before.

You should aim to have a few background questions, but keep the bulk of them dedicated to the specific topic at hand.

The important thing is to keep the number of questions at or under 10. 

If answered in detail, that will produce an interview of around 1,500-2,000 words, which is a good range for long-form content.

It’s also a length that makes participation for the guest easier. Ten questions isn’t that much to answer, when you think about it.

Securing the Right Experts for Your Interview Series

Truthfully, I think this is the hardest step of the entire process.

It’s kind of like applying to group boards on Pinterest. You apply to many and are accepted to few.

If you don’t know your guests at all before inviting them, count on your acceptance rate to be low. I’ve invited quite a few people to my interview series and I’ve only ever had 3 people reject my invitation.

I’ve broken my process into the following steps:

• Identify prospective interview guests
• Organize your outreach
• Email and follow up with your guests

4. Identify prospective interview guests

I like to look for guests in a few places:

• Facebook groups (ex. Ben and Jeff’s DollarSprout Ultimate Blogging Group)
• Blogging network (people I already know)
• Referrals (from my former guests)
• Previous interviewees (if they’ve done one before, they’re likely to do another)
• Conference attendee lists (ex. ConvertKit’s Craft & Commerce list)

I find that the best guests are micro-influencers, meaning that they have a smallish loyal following.

I think, at that level, they tend to produce the most honest and detailed answers. But that’s just my personal opinion. It could also be reflective of the niche that my interview series is in.

It’s worth mentioning, though, because a lot of people think they have to secure big-name influencers to have a successful series, and that just isn’t true.

Define successful by the impact you have on your readers, not by the caliber of guests on your series. 

5. Organize your outreach

You need to have some sort of system to effectively organize your outreach.

You won’t even get to the “launch your series” phase if you can’t keep track of who’s agreed to participate and who’s already submitted answers.

Speaking of launching, I’d recommend getting at least 1 month of content lined up — with one interview every single day of the launch week. 

(Ex. An interview was published every single day from 03/11 until 03/15 during my launch week).

Here’s a look into how I organize my spreadsheet.

I’ve created a version of this spreadsheet in Google Sheets for you to use.

You can access it here.

6. Email and follow up with your guests

You can use the spreadsheet I linked in the last section to assist you with this process.

When pitching someone via email, you want to keep it short and concise, but clearly communicate the value proposition to the guest.

Here’s a look into my initial outreach email.

In the beginning, as a method of enticing the original guests, you can mention something to the effect of how you’ve secured Guests A, B, and C already.

If it’s people the prospect knows, it might push them over the edge to participate.

You can even save this as an email template in Gmail to expedite your email outreach.

A lot of people probably won’t respond at first. In that case, you can follow up with them after a few days. As a general rule of thumb, I recommend following up no more than 2 times. That makes a total of 3 emails, including the original outreach.

I’ve prepared a sample follow-up email for you to use that’s not intrusive to the prospect’s inbox.

You can access it here.

Format, Publish, and Promote Your Interview Series

This part gets easier the more frequently you do it.

It’s broken down into these sections:

• Format and publish your interview
• Promote your latest interview to the world

7. Format and publish your interview

The first time you format your interview series, it will take some time.

I like to follow this format:

1. Introduction to the series (with a specific templated graphic)
2. Introduction to the guest
3. Interview questions
4. About the guest
5. Affiliate promotion (if there is one)
6. Conclusion
7. Series-specific opt-in

Once you’ve done this format for the first interview, then just copy the post HTML from the text editor in WordPress and swap out the middle sections.

I like to refer to 2 posts as templates, one with the affiliate offer and one without it.

I also will use blockquotes and content boxes to help break up the content. Kristie Hill has a great post on how to use them in your posts.

For publishing the interviews, I try and use a set schedule so I can email my audience about the new interview. 

I also tell my guests when the interview will be live, so it helps with promotion on their end.

8. Promote your latest interview to the world

For promoting the interview, I like to follow this process:

1. Manually upload the pin to Pinterest
2. Email my audience
3. Send an email to the guest
4. Share on social media

Emailing the guest is key.

It encourages them to share the interview with their audience, thus increasing your reach and opt-ins.

For that reason, I like to mention the following in my email to the participant:

• The link to the pin on Pinterest
• The link to the interview
• Copy that encourages them to give it any social and email love they can

At the end of the day, your email should show gratitude and appreciation.

That can also be a good time to ask for referrals for future guests.

A Well-Crafted Blog Interview Series is a Powerful Marketing Tool

If you want to pull off a great blog interview series, you now have the power and information to do so.

An interview series can be an excellent vehicle for monetizing your blog.

In this post, we discussed:

• What an interview series is
• The benefits of having an interview series on your blog
• The anatomy of a well-structured interview series
• Securing the right experts for your interview series
• Formatting, publishing, and promoting your interview series

And, don’t forget the exclusive freebies I created just for this post. There’s no opt-in required:

• Outreach organization spreadsheet
• Email outreach swipe copy

The post How to Start an Interview Series With Leaders in Your Niche appeared first on DollarSprout.

I firmly believe that blogging on Instagram is one of the most important things you can do in terms of marketing your business.

That’s not to say that you should ignore huge traffic drivers such as Google and Pinterest. But when it comes to getting loyal fans and readers, it’s all about Instagram.

Instagram allows you to grow a community around you and your business and connect with readers in a way that’s difficult to do on other channels.

Using your Instagram in the right way will allow you to grow your blog traffic and increase your sales dramatically.

What Does Blogging on Instagram Look Like?

Blogging on Instagram is different from how you would use a personal Instagram account. I have 2 accounts for that very reason.

How your Instagram should look depends on your niche, but it’s useful to think of Instagram as a ‘mini-blog’.

Focus on the content that you are putting on Instagram and how you can use that to direct people where you want. Your Instagram posts and stories should be relevant to your niche and what you are trying to sell.

6 Instagram Blogging Tips to Grow Your Readership

Use the following tips to attract your ideal audience and grow your blog with Instagram.

1. Set your account up for success.

The first step is to look at why you want to grow your Instagram.

Is it a numbers thing? Do you want to make more money? Connect with more people? Build your brand?

Drilling down on the reason behind growing your Instagram give you clarity on what type of content to create. What does success look like based on your goal? Is it more followers, more sales, more traffic?

Create a posting schedule

You will need to post a lot in order to grow your readership. Instagram loves an active account and will reward you for being active and engaged on the platform by showing you to more people.

The first thing that you need to do is decide what to post about.

Every post you publish needs to be for your ideal reader or it will be a waste of time. You need to bring them value and have a strategy behind each post.

The best way to find out what to post about? Ask your audience, and follow other people in your niche who have already built a following on Instagram. Don’t copy what others are doing exactly. But learn their strategy and figure out how you can model it in your own business.

Then, use a tool like Tailwind to schedule your posts to go out at opportune times. By scheduling content in advance, you can hit your target audience at perfectly optimized times, even if you’re not around to do it.

Related: 6 Ways Tailwind Helped Us Build a $100,000/yr Side Hustle

2. Perfect your blog promotion plan.

When you concentrate on your Instagram, it’s easy to get sucked into it and forget the main purpose — to direct people to your blog.

For people to go to your blog, they need to know it’s there. You need to reference your blog and tell people to go there.

Link in bio

There is only one place on your profile that you can put a clickable link, and that is in the website link part in your bio.

You will need to copy and paste your blog link in there, or any link you wish to direct people to.

Use Stories

This is the most important part of your blog promotion strategy.

Stories on Instagram allow people to see the real you, and this is where they will connect with you. Think of it as reality TV. We love to see what people are doing and who they are.

You can use stories for people to get to know you, but the most important thing that you can do in your stories is to provide free information and a ton of value. Point people towards your blog and resources that they can get on there.

Talk about the things that can help your ideal reader and where they can find them.

Adapt new features early on

Any time a new feature rolls out on Instagram, you can gain exposure by using these new features early on before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon.

Instagram rolled out Reels in 2020. Similar to TikTok, you can use Reels to create short videos that promote your business. As the Reels algorithm becomes more sophisticated and more users start creating Reels, it’ll become more difficult to get your content seen.

Related: 50 Smart Ways to Promote Your Blog and Get Free Website Traffic

3. Speak to your target audience in each post.

Aside from consistency, the most important aspect of growing your Instagram is relevancy. Don’t post just to post. Make sure your content solves your ideal reader’s problem.

The best way of doing that is to ask your target audience what they would like to see. You can use surveys to do this and put the link in your bio.

If you are taking them on a journey, tell them where you have been and how you can help them. People will connect with a story, and it’s a good way for them to get to know you.

Remember, everything that you post is for them. Write your posts as though you are talking to one of your readers and this will resonate with them.

4. Understand the importance of hashtags.

You should never ignore the importance of using good hashtags, as they could be the reason that people find you and want to follow you.

The great thing about hashtags on Instagram is that people can choose to ‘follow’ whichever hashtags they want. That means you can show up in their feed even if they are not following you.

If people are browsing through a particular hashtag, this is also where they will stumble across your account.

On Instagram, you can use up to 30 hashtags for each post, but it’s important to only use hashtags relevant to your post. It’s tempting to use popular hashtags, but it won’t attract your ideal audience, which can then hurt the reach of future content.

5. Don’t forget to network.

One of the best tips that I can give you is that Instagram will reward you for the time that you spend on the platform.

The more time you spend on there, the more that Instagram will show your content in other people’s feeds.

Follow other bloggers, like and comment on their posts, share their posts, chat to them via messages, etc.

But be genuine. Don’t do it because you want something from them, but because you genuinely like their content. Ideally, they’ll appreciate it and return the favor, but don’t expect to get anything in return.

6. Differentiate yourself.

Instagram has 1 billion users. While that means there’s a lot of competition, it also means you have the potential to get in front of a lot of people.

In order to find your following, you have to differentiate yourself from other accounts in your industry.

What makes you unique? What can you do differently from anyone else in your niche?

Now is not the time to be humble. Think about what you’re good at, the things that will enable people to connect with you, your unique style or personality. Show those to your audience.

Are you good at writing? Use this to your advantage by writing amazing copy in your posts and stories.

Are you a good photographer? Draw people in with your images.

People love to see the process. They love to see the behind-the-scenes and the not-so-perfect staged Instagram posts that we used to see a lot more of.

Instagram for Bloggers FAQ

Below are answers to the most common questions I get about how to grow your blog on Instagram.

How Can I Improve My Instagram Profile?

The first things that people will see when they click on your profile are your profile picture and your bio.

Make sure that your profile picture is professional and on-brand.

The bio is where you have a few small lines to get the message of your brand across. Use it wisely.

Don’t stuff your bio full of information. Make it succinct and easy for readers to tell what you’re all about. Your profile image and bio are the first impression someone will get of your business and brand, and you can’t redo a first impression.

Write about how you help your ideal reader with their specific problems.

Look at my bio:

I have written how I will help people and what result they can expect from working with me. I’ve also added some emojis to make it fun and appealing to my audience.

When putting together your content schedule, think about creating a theme so that your account looks appealing and so that people recognize your photos in their feed.

I have recently changed mine to more of a white background, as these seem to do well in testing. Try out different things and figure out which one works best for you.

What Should I Post to Instagram?

If you haven’t already done so, you need to nail down your reader avatar.

An avatar is essentially your ideal reader or target audience for your blog. Everything you create should be geared toward them and their specific problems.

When you are creating content for your avatar, you need to brainstorm what their pain points are and how you can help them.

As mentioned, you can do this by sending out a survey to your readers and asking them what their problems are, what they enjoy about your content, and what they would like to see more of.

If your goal is to make money with Instagram, don’t shy away from posting the things you are selling. It helps the reader to see how it’s used and the real-life benefits.

This is how I sell my budget planner on Instagram.

How Do I Promote a Blog Post on Instagram?

The best way to promote your blog post on Instagram is to talk about it on your Instagram stories.

Obviously, the best thing to do is use the swipe-up function if you have over 10,000 followers. If you’re under 10,000 followers, you can still talk about it on your story and direct people to the link.

The only place you can add a link on your Instagram is in your bio. However, you can use a tool like Linktree to direct your follower to a page with multiple links.

The best method I’ve used to get people over to my blog from my Instagram? Sharing freebies.

I have a freebie library with printables that they can download. Once they do, they’re added to my email list. When I share a free printable, this drives people over to my blog.

Also, something that has driven a ton of people recently has been a free email course that I’ve set up.

The secret here is to provide value — for free. I’m not asking anyone to buy anything from me when I share my freebies, but I am asking for their email address. That way I can keep in touch with them and sell them my paid products in the future.

The secret is in your stories. You can share your blog posts in your feed but this won’t appeal to people as much as they don’t enjoy being ‘advertised’ to.

You can talk about your blog post within the photos on your grid, but I personally wouldn’t recommend using an image with your blog post on.

Growing Your Blog on Instagram Takes Consistency

Instagram will get much harder to be seen, especially now that they have been acquired by Facebook.

At the moment, it is heavily underestimated as a major driver of traffic for businesses and building a brand, so the best time to start is now.

With Instagram being the 2nd biggest social media platform right now, you could be missing out on a big chunk of traffic. If your audience is on Instagram, then you should be, too.

The post 6 Expert Tips for Promoting Your Blog on Instagram appeared first on DollarSprout.

We’re not there yet. But we know people who are.

Thankfully, who you are, and how you got started matters very little to your blog’s readers. All they want is content that delivers on the promise you made when they clicked on your link.

That, and they’d like it served to them in two seconds or less, thanks.

Why Site Speed Matters

The site your visitor just came from loaded up in just one second. When yours doesn’t, they don’t think “Aw, bless their heart.”

It’s more like, “This is taking too long, I’m out of here.”

Almost no one understands or cares about the technical differences between your blog and a corporate site. That cluelessness means you have a lot of the same opportunities, which is great.

But it also creates the expectation that you’ll deliver just like the big guys. Every extra second that it takes for your page to load costs you a chunk of your potential audience. Especially if they’re using a mobile device.

Just look at what load times do to bounce rates in the diagram below.

Even if they don’t hit the back button on that first slow-loading page, they tend to visit fewer pages overall. So whether they’re bailing outright, or after only a couple of clicks, slower site performance means fewer page views.

The bottom line when it comes to speed is this:

If you want to grow your WordPress site into something that provides quit-your-day-job money, you cannot let site speed stand in the way.

Related: How We Made $347,675 Blogging in 2 Months

Assessing Your Current Setup 

Most bloggers don’t start with an ideal setup.

I don’t know how anyone could. Writing blog posts isn’t that big of a stretch for most people, but the technical decisions behind setting up a blog are 100% not everyday things.

When you go looking for info, it’s hard to sort the good from the bad.

The net result is that a lot of bloggers wind up with trash site speeds — and, often, no clue how to fix it.

Well, I’m not going to lie. One blog post isn’t going to fix everything that slows a site.

But what we can do in this blog post is:

• Give you a crash course so you’ll understand what hurts speed.
• Offer suggestions for avoiding those things.
• Tell you what to do if you need big/quick wins now.
• Show you where to get help if the basics aren’t enough.

Let’s get to it.

WordPress Performance Considerations

If you didn’t load any extra things into your blog’s pages, they’d be super plain.

Brilliant content alone might be enough for some people. But the reality is, without visual interest, it’s hard to keep most readers engaged.

On top of holding visual interest, there are things you might want to load into your pages to help grow your blog. Opt-in forms for building an email list, for example.

Speed isn’t always about doing (or not doing) a thing. The best way to look at it is as a series of tradeoffs. If you add an image to a post, it adds a little loading time. But it also adds visual interest and maybe explains the content a bit.

The basics are pretty simple. Whenever you can do something on the list below, you’ll make your site a little faster:

• Use fewer things
• Use smaller things
• Load things from a fast server
• Load things from nearby

Yes, everything you load into your blog’s pages decreases speed at least a little. But when you’re smart about your choices, you’ll only add things that are worth it for both you and your visitors.

Tips for Using Fewer Things

• Use fewer plugins. Every plugin loads at least one additional file, usually more. Make sure every plugin on your site is a net positive for you and your visitors.
• Avoid using page builders. They load many extra files and nixing them is one of the easiest ways to speed up WordPress.
• Don’t load more fonts than absolutely necessary. Understand that every style (e.g. bold, italic, light, bold italic) requires an additional file.

Tips for Using Smaller Things

• Optimize images. We use and recommend ShortPixel. Not free, but close.
• Use the smallest image size that works.
• Replace resource-intensive plugins and themes with lighter options.

Fast Server Tips

• Pick the best host your budget allows. I use Lightning Base. 
• Don’t max out your hosting space. Upgrade before you start having problems.

Tips for Loading Things from Nearby

• Avoid plugins and embed code that interacts with other servers whenever possible (e.g. Instagram embeds, ConvertKit forms, Facebook posts).
• Pick a server nearest the majority of your audience. That is, if your host gives you a choice and if you know where your audience lives.
• Put your site on a CDN like Cloudflare, where copies of your site can be stored in locations much closer to visitors wherever in the world they are.

5 Ways to Speed Up a Slow WordPress Site 

Start by taking big swings at typical slow-site culprits like the ones that follow.

1. Eliminate domain redirects.

Do you sometimes use the ‘www’ version of your domain, and sometimes not? Do Google search results show your URLs as http when they should be https?

While it’s great you’ve got redirects in place so visitors wind up where they belong, those redirects all add to loading time.

Go to Google Search Console and make sure your URL was added correctly. Check your WordPress site and make sure both the WordPress Address and Site Address use the right version, too.

Use redirects to cover you when people use something other than the preferred version. But do everything you can to make sure people come to your site via your preferred URL.

2. Serve up optimal images.

Because so much about site speed is nerdy and technical, people grossly underestimate the extent to which images can be responsible for a slow site. Here’s an example.

The optimized pin image on the far right is just 5% of the size of the image on the left.

Now can you see how image optimization done right is the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to speed up your site?

Be sure to use actually smaller images.

Sometimes you think you’re using a small image, but it turns out you’re loading many more pixels than you’d like. This can happen in a couple of different ways.

Dragging the edges of the image in the WordPress editor, for example. That makes the image look smaller. But it’s still loading all the pixels of the larger image.

Don’t drag to resize; use a smaller image size.

Another problem area I see too often is with a theme or widget that pulls in featured images. They’ll use what looks like a tiny thumbnail but is oftentimes a full-size image.

Check the theme or widget settings to see if there are options for changing them so a smaller image size is used.

Automate image optimization.

Set up your image optimization plugin to automatically resize and compress your images when you upload. This way nothing escapes.

Figure out the largest image size you need, and change the plugin settings so nothing bigger is ever served up.

Use JPEG, not PNG.

As you saw in the example above, the PNG format produces huge files when it’s used incorrectly.

PNG is best used for logos and artwork with only a few colors. Not images with zillions of colors like photographs.

3. Evaluate and eliminate or replace plugins.

Go through your site’s plugins and deactivate any you think you can live without.

If you have speed-sucking plugins that handle important functions, see if there is a more lightweight alternative. If not, try to cut elsewhere to make up for it.

4. Install a caching/optimization plugin.

I recommend this as one of the final steps for two reasons.

First, because turning to a plugin first won’t usually produce the best improvement. Lastly, because a plugin can mask problems you really need to address.

I normally recommend WP Rocket for small blogging operations. What is ultimately the best thing for your site, however, depends on a number of factors, including what other measures you’re taking toward optimization.

Also, know that every optimization plugin is a little different. I’ve found some overlap among them, as well as features exclusive to a plugin.

It’s important to weigh out all these factors because optimization plugins often clash.

5. Get your site on a CDN.

Putting your site on a CDN like Cloudflare can provide a performance boost and help you speed up WordPress tremendously. But save it for last. As with a caching/optimization plugin, a CDN might give you enough of a boost to mask issues that need addressing.

Cloudflare’s free plan is more than enough for small blogs.

Readers love blogs — until they don’t.

Readers 100% do not care if, instead of a writing team and 20-person tech department, it’s just you on the other side of the computer screen.

In your PJs at your kitchen table, even. Readers value authenticity. Real people behind a blog. Connection. Relatability.

I could be biased, but I think small, independent bloggers pull off what readers really value way more often than giant blogging teams can. Where small bloggers struggle, though, is with tech.

And the first place tech struggles manifest themselves? Site speed.

Do all bloggers have to care about this?

No. Not if you blog only as a hobby and don’t care about growing an audience or making real money blogging. Otherwise, you must.

Because while visitors couldn’t care less about how you create content, they are both merciless and oblivious when it comes to how quickly you deliver it.

The post 5 Easy Ways to Speed Up WordPress Performance appeared first on DollarSprout.

In April 2019, Pinterest became a publicly traded company.

Promoted pins, Pinterest’s version of paid advertising, is how the company makes money. As a publicly traded company, their concern will be to produce profit for their shareholders. Promoted pins are exactly how they will accomplish this.

Fortunately, Pinterest has made significant improvements to the Promoted Pins infrastructure over the last few years.

They’ve launched several new campaign types including video ads, shopping ads, and conversion ads. Pinterest has also expanded its targeting options to include additional countries, US ZIP Codes, age, and much more.

Many content creators have enjoyed free traffic from Pinterest for years. So, naturally, the question many users have is…

Why Should I Promote a Pin on Pinterest?

Let’s break down the numbers behind Pinterest.

Pinterest recently announced they crossed 250 million users. More importantly, a significant number of Pinterest users have buying power, with over 40% of pinners claiming a household income over $100k/year._[1]

As a visual search engine, Pinterest attracts a consumer base that is actively searching for solutions to their problems. Pinterest users come to the platform with a buyer’s mentality.

In fact, 93% of active Pinterest users use Pinterest to plan purchases and 50% of active pinners have made a purchase from a promoted pin.

In a 2017 study done by Pinterest, they found that advertisers make on average $2 in profit for every $1 spent._[2]

Let that sink in for a moment. It’s comparable to giving someone $50 and them handing you back $100.

In an environment where Pinterest is now publicly traded, content creators rely on Pinterest for traffic, and Promoted Pins offer a significant return on investment, it would be crazy to ignore the power and potential behind the Pinterest advertising platform.

How Do Promoted Pins Work?

There are three main places Promoted Pins currently show up for users: the main home feed, search results, and related pins.

Pinterest advertisers historically have been given two ways to pay for their Promoted Pins: impressions or clicks.

Recently, Pinterest launched conversion campaigns that allow advertisers to optimize for conversions instead of by impression or click.

This means advertisers are able to control for the cost of signups to their email list or how much it costs to get a sale through a promoted pin.

As a Pinterest ads expert, my major complaint with the platform has always been the lack of control over the conversion. Now that conversion campaigns are available, Pinterest will be poised to compete on a level similar to Facebook.

For more details on conversion campaigns, here’s a complete list of the best types of Pinterest ads and when each to use each.

3 Steps for Preparing Pinterest Ads that Convert

You might think the first step for running a promoted pin is to set up the campaign in the Pinterest ads dashboard.

And you’d be wrong.

If you’ve heard bloggers mumble that Promoted Pins are not effective, I promise you it’s because they didn’t do the pre-work necessary to ensure their success.

Running a successful Pinterest ad campaign requires understanding your business objectives and outcomes.

Anyone can go into Pinterest and set up a campaign. It’s pretty self-explanatory. Since Pinterest often changes the look and feel of campaign setup, this article would be outdated in no time.

That’s why I’m going to focus on how to set your ads up to be successful instead.

Step 1. Install the Pinterest Tag

The Pinterest Tag is essential for running Pinterest ads.

By installing the Pinterest Tag on your website, you’ll be able to do two important things:

1. Create a warm audience of website visitors to target in future Pinterest ad campaigns
2. Track conversions (i.e. signups and purchases) people take when visiting your site from your Promoted Pins

First, you’ll need to make sure you have a Pinterest business account. The easiest way to know if you already have a business account is to look at the top left-hand side of Pinterest when logged in.

Do you see an analytics and ads dropdown? If so, then you have a Pinterest business account. If not, follow these steps to set up your Pinterest business account.

Second, you’ll need to locate the header section of your website. This is where you will copy and paste the Pinterest Tag.

Third, you’ll need to create a Pinterest Tag through the Pinterest ads dashboard.

Navigate to the top left-hand side of your Pinterest account and go to ads → conversions → create a new Pinterest Tag. If this is your first time visiting this page, you’ll most likely see a big red button that says generate a Pinterest Tag.

After you create and name your Pinterest Tag, you’ll select the tag from your conversions dashboard.

Select number 1, install base code. Copy and paste the entire code and paste it into the header section of your website.

If you are a WordPress user, you can check out my YouTube video for step-by-step instructions on installing your Pinterest Tag:

Now your website is proactively tracking visitors for future retargeting through Pinterest ads.

Step 2. Find buyer intent keywords

Pinterest is a visual search engine. It’s the third largest search engine in the world following Google and YouTube, respectively.

This means the vast majority of people come to Pinterest with a problem and search for a solution.

The goal of your Pinterest ad is to put your solution in front of the people searching for the problem you solve.

The word or phrase they type in the Pinterest search bar is known as a keyword.

On Pinterest, the results that are shown in keyword searches are images. This is the visual aspect of Pinterest’s search engine.

When prepping for your first promoted pin campaign, you want to make a list of at least 40 keywords that are relevant to the pin you want to promote.

Promoted Pins are built on keywords.

Keeping a spreadsheet of the keywords you’ll be using for your campaign makes it easier for you once you go into the Pinterest ads dashboard to set everything up.

How to Find Pinterest Keywords

Keyword research on Pinterest is fairly simple.

In the below example, let’s pretend we have a meal planner, 10 Keto Recipes in Under 10 Minutes. We want to encourage people to opt into our email list to download our meal planner.

Using the Pinterest search bar, Start researching the problems you think your ideal customer would type in to find your solution.

Right away, you can see Pinterest suggests keywords to me for keto meal planning.

These are keywords you’ll want to write down on your keyword spreadsheet.

I always bold the original keyword I searched for on my spreadsheet so I can keep track of searches I’ve already performed.

Next, you’ll want to take a look at the tiles Pinterest recommends under the search bar. These are additional long-tail keywords you can use for your promoted pin campaign.

Of course, not all the keywords you come across will make sense for your promotion. In order to narrow down the keywords you’ll be using, it’s important to look at the other pins that are coming up under the search results. If a pin does not make any sense for your ad, skip it.

You may also find some of the long-tail keywords returned in the search aren’t relevant to what you’re promoting. For example, in this search, one of the long tail keywords is keto meal planning no eggs. If your keto guide includes egg recipes, this keyword would not be relevant to you. Mark this down on your spreadsheet as a negative keyword. When running a promoted pin, you can tell Pinterest certain search terms you do not want to be shown under.

I recommend coming up with 4-5 main keywords for your campaign and 5-10 long tail keywords under each.

Step 3. Create click-worthy pin images

As you’ve learned, Pinterest is a visual search engine.

Now that you’ve completed your keyword research, the next step in your customer’s journey is to be compelled to click on your pin image. This is the visual part of the Pinterest search engine.

On Pinterest, you can create multiple pins that lead to the same URL. When setting up your Pinterest ad campaign, you can select multiple pins to promote.

5 Principles of Promoted Pin Images

1. Size matters
2. Keyword-focused text overlays
3. A strong call to action
4. Clear photography
5. Branding

Pinterest Image Size

The ideal ratio for a promoted pin is 2:3. Pinterest recommends 1,000 x 1,500 pixels.

Keyword Text Overlays

Text overlays on your pin often provide an easy way for Pinterest users to quickly understand what your pin is about. Pinterest also has the ability to read your text overlays. Using your main keyword on your pin is an easy way to help your pin stand out in the home feed and search results.

Call-to-Action Button

Pinterest also allows you to use “call to action” buttons on pins.

In Pinterest’s ad guidelines, they are very specific about how you can use call-to-action buttons. Pinterest says, “Images with artificial functionality like ‘play’ or ‘download’ buttons, notification icons, search bars, or elements that mimic Pinterest features (like our ‘Save’ or ‘Buy’ buttons).”

An example of an acceptable call to action button would be if you’re linking to a product page, you can use a call to action button that says shop now.

Your main goal for your Pinterest ad is to convince your new website visitor to take a specific action. In order to benefit from paying for the click to your site, you want them to do something like sign up for your email list or buy your product.

Call-to-action buttons make your intent crystal clear to the person who clicks on your pin. There is no sense in paying for clicks from people who have no intent to take the designated action you want them to take.

Quality Photography

It’s important to remember that 80% of Pinterest traffic comes from mobile. The photography you choose for your promotion should be high quality and easy to see on mobile devices.

It is advisable to use photography that demonstrates how your product is being used in real life, if possible.

Below I’ll show an example of how I promote a digital product that is not tangible.

Related: Where to Find Free Stock Photos for Your Blog or Website

Brand All Pins

Your pins should build brand recognition.

Include your logo or website address on every promoted pin image.

Anatomy of a Promoted Pin Image

Let’s look at a real example of a promoted pin image.

In this image, there is a strong call to action, the main keyword is used in the text overlay, and the pin is branded.

As you start to map your first Pinterest ad campaign, ask yourself, “What action do I want my Pinterest visitor to take?”

Now you’re ready to start your first Pinterest ad campaign.

Using Pinterest ads has helped me earn over $1 million from my digital products. If you want to learn how to find your digital product idea and create a funnel to sell it on repeat, join my free training, Digital Product Dash. Inside, I walk you through how to identify your product topic, validate your idea, find your audience, and make money from the time you launch.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Promoted Pins (Pinterest Ads 101) appeared first on DollarSprout.

When you start a blog, there’s a lot to learn about the legal side of blogging.

Are there specific blog laws? How do I copyright website content? The list goes on and on.

It doesn’t help that blogging rules and regulations can be confusing, intimidating, and overwhelming.

Blog policies, copyrights, trademarks…they’re not things you’re expected to intimately know when first getting started.

To help bring you up to speed, we asked Amira from A Self Guru to put together a comprehensive legal guide for bloggers.

In this article she’ll cover the 3 legal policies you must have on your blog before you launch, how to create them quickly, and how to do it all without hiring a lawyer.

3 Legal Policies Every Blog Owner Should Have

Before you start blogging and writing posts, there are 3 blog policies (also known as legal pages) you must have on your website:

•      Privacy Policy
•      Disclosures and Disclaimers
•      Terms and Conditions

All three blog policies above serve a different purpose and are equally important to make your website legally compliant.

However, the most important purpose they serve is to protect you from lawsuits.

We’ll discuss each blog policy in detail below. Then we’ll go over how you can easily and quickly create all 3 policies through my best-selling Legal Bundle.

1. Creating a Privacy Policy for your blog

You are required by law to have a privacy policy on your blog whenever you collect personal information from your website visitors.

There are different blogging rules and regulations that require this such as:

•      EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR),
•      Federal Trade Commission (FTC),
•      California Online Protection Act (CalOPPA),
•      Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),
•      CAN-SPAM Act,
•      among others.

A privacy policy on your blog informs your visitors about what personal information you are collecting from them and how you are going to use it.

Even if it’s just a hobby blog, you are most likely still collecting personal information and need to have a privacy policy to comply with the law.

Personal information that you may be collecting from your website visitors includes:

• Names
• Email address
• Address
• Credit Card information
• Bank details
• Phone number
• Date of Birth
• and more.

There are other ways you are collecting personal information from your website visitors too, such as through Google Analytics, cookies, Google AdSense, etc.

As part of your Privacy Policy, you need to include key legal provisions that explain your reasons for collecting the personal information from others, how you safeguard or disclose that information, how you ensure GDPR compliance and visitor rights, and how you ensure your compliance with all the applicable blogging rules and regulations.

So if you have a blog, make sure to have a Privacy Policy template written by a lawyer that meets all of your specific legal requirements.

Privacy Policy Lawsuits

Without a privacy policy, you risk being fined and sued, like the owners of this website. They were fined $130,000 by the FTC for not complying with the legal requirements of COPPA because they allowed children under the age of 13 to register on their site without parental consent.

The FTC regularly brings lawsuits against online companies for not having a proper privacy policy that protects consumers. Take a look at Google here for example and Facebook here being sued for these reasons.

But what if my blog is small?

The FTC made it abundantly clear that no matter how big or small, all companies must follow the privacy rules and regulations to protect consumers.

Additionally, non-compliance with the GDPR results in huge fines up to 20 million Euros or 4% of the annual revenue, whichever is greater.

Remember, by not having a proper Privacy Policy on your blog, you could be legally liable for things like:

•      Failure to safeguard the credit card information entered by others on your site
•      Misuse of information by third parties on your site
•      Intentionally or unintentionally disseminating confidential information of your users

Therefore, it’s important to meet all your legal requirements regardless of where you are located or how small your site is so that you don’t end up in legal hot water.

The easiest way to do that is by having a lawyer-written Privacy Policy template on your blog before you launch.

2. Blog Disclosures and Disclaimers

Blog disclosures are legally required just like the Privacy Policy. This is the second blog policy or legal page you must have on your blog if you publish:

• Articles with affiliate links where you earn commissions if someone purchases through your link
• Sponsored posts for which you were compensated, or
• Content for which you receive free products, discounts, or anything else in exchange.

Under the FTC, you are required to disclose your affiliate relationships, sponsorships, and any other endorsements you received to ensure transparency, honesty, and prevent misleading advertising for your readers.

For example, any time you are about to share an affiliate link for a product you recommend on your blog, you must first give your affiliate disclosure at the top of the post or right before or next to your affiliate link.

Any one of these is sufficient as long as it is clearly and conspicuously placed close to your affiliate link and not buried in graphics or text.

Similarly, if you were paid to write a post (i.e. a sponsored post) about a product, then you must disclose that in your blog post as well.

Here’s an example of my sponsored post I wrote for Dollar Tree where you can see what the disclosure language looks like:

You also need to use a disclosure on your social media posts for the same reasons above. You can typically do this by adding hashtags like #ad, #paid, #sponsored, #afflink, or #affiliate link.

Blog Disclaimers

Blog disclaimers are different than blog disclosures. A blog disclaimer is where you “disclaim” or “deny” legal liability for the content you publish on your blog to protect yourself from lawsuits.

Every blog needs a disclaimer because you don’t want to be legally held responsible for anything you publish on your blog.

See my legal disclaimer above as an example. It serves to limit my legal liability by putting you on notice that this content is for informational and educational purposes only.

What if the content on your blog is not up to date or is inaccurate? You don’t want anyone to rely on it and sue you later for their bad outcome.

You’d want to tailor your disclaimer to your specific blogging niche whether it’s medical, finance, legal, or anything else.

What Could Happen Without a Disclaimer

For example, let’s say you are a health coach giving medical information on your website. I’m sure you don’t want that information to be construed as medical or health advice that someone follows, gets sick as a result, and now wants to sue you for their damages.

As another example, let’s say you’re publishing income reports on your blog but have no earnings disclaimer to protect you. Without the earnings disclaimer, you are essentially guaranteeing the same results to your visitors if they followed everything you did.

Think about how costly that could be for you if you were sued.

Needless to say, depending on what you are publishing, you need appropriate disclaimers on your blog that also include limitation of legal liability language to protect you from such lawsuits.

So even if you were sued, at least with a disclaimer, your lawyer could use it to argue and shift legal liability to the other side.

That’s why you see disclaimers on websites all the time. It’s a precautionary measure that every blogger should take before they start publishing blog posts.

Typically, both your disclosures and disclaimers are included as one legal page on your blog.

3. Blog Terms and Conditions

Blog terms and conditions are your website rules. They’re essentially a legal contract between you and your website visitors.

Terms and conditions are also referred to as terms of use or terms of service. They’re super important on your blog to cover things like:

•      What is the lawful use of your blog?
•      When would you terminate someone’s use of your blog?
•      What are your refund or exchange policies for the products and services you offer?
•      How and where you will resolve lawsuits?
•      What are your intellectual property rights to prevent blog copyright infringement?
•      What is the intended age of your users?
•      And much more.

It may seem optional to have a terms and conditions policy on your blog. But in reality, you shouldn’t procrastinate on these. Having terms and conditions on your blog will not only prevent legal disputes in the first place, but it will also help resolve lawsuits quickly should one arise.

Without the proper terms and conditions on your blog, you don’t have much to protect you if you’re sued tomorrow.

When Terms and Conditions Come in Handy

Let’s say you live in Florida, but you end up in a legal dispute with someone in California. Where would you like to resolve this lawsuit, hire a lawyer, and attend court hearings or trial?

Obviously, you wouldn’t want to worry about all that in California, right? Nobody likes lawsuits, but if you are faced with one, you’d want to handle all the legalities in Florida because that’s where you live.

And before we get to court in front of a judge and spend all that time and money, I’m sure you’d want to try to resolve the legal battle through an easier, less expensive, and less time-consuming process.

One of the ways you can do that is through a mediation or arbitration process. Both are alternative dispute resolution procedures. You can settle a legal dispute through the help of an impartial person instead of going to court right away and paying huge legal fees and costs.

However, you can only do this if you first have it all outlined correctly in your blog terms and conditions.

This is just one example to demonstrate why it’s so crucial to have lawyer-written terms and conditions on your blog before you launch to prevent lawsuits down the road.

Your terms and conditions legitimize your blogging business and include your Privacy Policy, Disclosures, and Disclaimers by reference.

By accepting your terms and conditions, your visitors accept all other legal pages on your blog as well.

How to Easily Create All 3 Blog Policies with My Legal Bundle

Just to recap, you need a privacy policy, disclosures/disclaimers, and terms and conditions on your blog before you launch.

It’s no surprise to me that most bloggers, beginner or advanced, get stuck on how to write these blog legal policies properly.

Unless you are a lawyer, how would you know what language you must have on your blog to fully protect yourself legally?

You could spend countless hours or days trying to research and figure out how to write these blog policies yourself. On the other hand, you could hire a lawyer to write these for you or purchase legal templates written by a lawyer.

I’ve been working as a lawyer for more than 8 years now. In my years of representing business owners like you and conducting tons of legal audits, I’ve found the free legal templates online to be missing quite a few key legal provisions that expose you to all kinds of fines and legal liabilities.

Don’t go for any free legal templates if you’re not certain they comply with all the blogging rules and regulations specific to your business and location.

Even if I wasn’t a lawyer, I still wouldn’t trust the free legal templates to protect me and my online business. The way I see it, it’s just not worth the risk of getting sued.

Paid legal templates written by a lawyer are a great way to ensure you get professionally-written blog policies at a fraction of the cost than having to hire a lawyer.

A Legal Bundle for Your Blog

My Legal Bundle includes all 3 blog policy templates we discussed above – the Privacy Policy, Disclaimer (plus your Disclosures), and Terms and Conditions + 9 additional bonuses valued at $1,175.

It is trusted by thousands of bloggers and entrepreneurs, plus thousands of my clients during the course of my legal career. But the best news is that it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

It’s an affordable, quick, and easy solution for completing all your blog legal policies within minutes.

The Importance of Business Contracts

We just talked about how your blog terms and conditions are a legally enforceable contract between you and the visitors of your blog. But in order to enforce your legal rights in court, you need to make sure your contracts are in writing.

In addition to making your blog legally compliant, always remember to also use a written contract any time you work with someone in your business. As a business owner, you must get in the habit of putting your agreements in writing.

It could be with your business partner, a freelancer you hire to design your logo, a web designer to design your website, a virtual assistant to help you manage your business, or anyone else you collaborate with within your business.

Contracts are vital in your blogging business in order to:

• Prevent misunderstandings between the parties
• Avoid expensive lawsuits
• Provide you security and peace of mind
• Prevent your confidential information from being stolen
• Ensure you get paid on time for your services
• And much more.

If you are in my Facebook group then you may have seen my recent Facebook live where I shared my personal story of how my dad, as a business owner, got sued for $90,000 by failing to have this written contract with his freelancer. (Unfortunately, this was way before I became a lawyer. Otherwise, I’d have talked some sense into him!).

Why You Need Contracts in Your Business

To make the long story short, my dad hired a freelancer to do some work for his business. It was a “handshake deal”. There was no formal written contract because this freelancer was my dad’s so-called friend.

A few months later, my dad got served with this huge lawsuit that wiped out his entire income for the year.

The freelancer alleged that he was an employee, not an independent contractor, and was entitled to overtime pay and additional employee benefits. Without a written contract in place clarifying his independent contractor status, it was hard to argue that he was not an employee.

The lawsuit continued for almost a year. When we finally settled the case, we were short $50,000, including attorney fees and court costs.

I share this story to illustrate the point that it’s extremely important to have a contract in place. And not just any contract, but one that protects your financial and legal interests adequately.

Our family could have easily avoided this immense pain, financial loss, and months of mental anguish if my dad had used a written contract at the time.

Make Sure Your Contract Covers the Necessities

There are tons of important legal provisions that a well-written contract should cover, such as:

• Clearly defining the relationship between both parties to the contract
• Independent contractor status provision, if applicable
• Clearly defining the scope of work and services to be provided
• Effective date and term of the contract
• Clearly defining how and when the other party will be paid
• Protecting client confidentiality and intellectual property rights
• How and where the lawsuits will be resolved
• Who retains ownership of the intellectual property created by the contractor
• Indemnification clause – who covers the cost of lawsuits brought by third parties
• How to terminate the contract without penalties
• And more.

So the next time you work with someone, whether as a freelancer yourself or a client looking to hire the freelancer, always make a small investment to have a lawyer review your contract or get my contract template here to protect yourself legally.

If you’re looking for something specific such as an LLC operating agreement, partnership agreement, media release agreement, or anything else, then just email me, and I’ll provide you that template.

Blogging Copyright Guidelines

The U.S. copyright law gives you legal rights to control how others can use your work. You get automatic blog copyright protection of your content from the moment you create it.

Therefore, it’s not necessary to register your work with the U.S. Copyright Office. However, it’s a good idea to do so if you want to be able to bring copyright infringement lawsuits in the future.

Copyright law protects the original work that you create in a tangible form. Some examples include:

•      Blog posts
•      Photos
•      Manuscripts
•      Books
•      Song lyrics
•      Paintings
•      Sketches
•      Poems
•      Films

Copyright Infringement Lawsuits

You should never use or copy anyone’s blog legal policies, photos, designs, blog posts, or any other content without permission unless you want to be sued for copyright infringement and pay thousands of dollars.

A blogger friend of mine was recently served with a cease and desist letter because she took a photo from Google and used it on her blog. She wasn’t aware of the copyright guidelines and that innocent mistake cost her $7,000 in damages.

As a beginner blogger, don’t make that costly legal mistake. Don’t take any image from Google. There are plenty of free stock photography websites you can use instead such as Shutterstock, Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, and others.

If you find that someone has copied or stolen your content, you can take legal action against the infringer.

Feel free to grab my free cease and desist letter template here to send to the infringer. This will help in getting your work removed from the infringer’s website before pursuing further legal action.

Trademarking Your Blog Name

Trademark law protects your name, logo, symbol, and other commercial signifiers used to distinguish your goods or services from others. The most important goal of trademark law is to prevent consumers from being confused in the marketplace.

Trademark law provides consumers the ability to distinguish your products or services from a competitor. In other words, I can’t have the same business name as you if we both are offering the same products and services to the same geographical market.

However, we can coexist with the same name without infringing upon another as long as our businesses are totally different. For example, the name Delta is used for both an airline and a faucet company. Similarly, Ace is both a hardware store and a brand of bandages.

In both examples, the two businesses are providing different products and services and serving different markets. Therefore, it’s less likely to confuse consumers.

A trademark can be for more than just your brand name or logo. For example, it can include:

•      Words (Microsoft, Kodak, and Omega)
•      Symbols (the big red K for Kellogg)
•      Names (McDonald’s and Chevrolet)
•      Letters (AA for American Airlines)
•      Labeling (the red and white design on the Coca Cola can)

To avoid a trademark infringement lawsuit, you shouldn’t choose a name for your blog, product, or design that’s identical or closely similar to another trademark that is already in use for a similar product or service.

Avoid Names That are Too Similar

Names don’t have to be identical for there to be an infringement. If they sound alike when spoken, are visually similar, have the same meaning, or create the same general commercial impression in the consumer’s mind, they may be considered confusingly similar.

For example, don’t come up with a name KINXS for your new band if there’s already a famous band called INXS. Although both names are pronounced differently and have different meanings, they are still similar in appearance and are likely to cause confusion. People may confuse and mistake your KINXS band with the famous INXS. This will likely get you sued by INXS for trademark infringement.

Make sure to pick a name for your blog that doesn’t violate anyone else’s rights.

How to Perform a Trademark Search

When you start your blog and pick a name, make sure to conduct a trademark search to avoid infringing upon someone else’s name and brand.

You can perform an initial trademark search on your own, but a full search should be performed by a lawyer.

When you feel you have created value in your brand, seek a lawyer to start your federal trademark application and registration process.

The post How to Blog Legally: 3 Critical Policies Every Blogger Should Have appeared first on DollarSprout.