Are you interested in writing blog posts for it?

The topics are web development, web technologies, WordPress, SEO, blogging, content creation, web hosting, web servers, social media, website marketing, graphic design, web tools, and other ancillary topics.

Ideally, you will write at least 3 articles. But there is no limit. The articles must be 100% unique and original.

What's in it for you? You'll get an author byline on every article that gets published, at least one do-follow link on each article you write as well as a spot on the resources page.

I'll be launching when I have 50 or more articles ready. I wrote 12 so far, and have 10 in progress at about 60 to 80%. I hope to have 30 by month's end and launch towards the end of February.

Let me know if you're interested and we can go into more details.

The post Guest Posting Opportunity appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

In this video, I give you the basics of using OIO Publisher to create ad zones and ads for your blog. This plugin is a staple on almost every blogger that monetizes their blog.

OIO Publisher allows you to create ads of any size, custom ad opportunities, text links, and sponsored posts. And you can sell the ad spaces and sponsored posts automatically.

As I mention in the video, you can create any type of banner ad, of any size for any section of your blog and it's really easy to do. I show it step by step in the tutorial.

The video may seem long but I address a few important topics related to your monetization strategy as well as some questions and feedback. From the previous video and I broke down the timecodes in case you want to skip around.

During both parts of the video, the driving part and the tutorial I cover two methods you can use monetize your blog, including a hands-on WordPress tutorial on how to do it.

One thing I didn't mention in the video is that you can use the code area to insert your Adsense ads or Media.net ads or another type of ad codes as well.

Links and references:

• OIO Publisher - Get it here.
• Adsanity - Not shown but mentioned, get it here. Will cover in a future blog post.

Monetizing your blog with content and OIO Publisher

There is a timecode table below the video if you want to skip to certain areas.

Timecodes:

0:00 to 2:00 - Recap and follow up to video about how much to start your affiliate business. (https://notagrouch.com/how-much-do-i-need-to-start-an-affiliate-marketing-business/ )

2:00 - Two methods to make money with your blog.

3:15 - First method.

4:20 - Sourcing new content.

6:15 - Doing reviews with a low budget.

8:15 - Getting products for free

8:24 - Disclosure with the FTC - I'm watching ya guys.

9:25 - The review policy for free stuff.

11:03 - Method 2

12:03 - OIO Publisher - Get it here.

14:15 - Tutorial start, install and basic OIO Publisher configuration.

17:35 - Adzones and banners.

20:11 - Adding media for an ad.

20:39 - Add a banner section to the sidebar (widget area)

23:00 - Getting an affiliate link and banner from Shareasale ( http://oglink.it/shareasale-youtube )

25:13 - Adding an ad using HTML (or Javascript, or PHP) code.

26:50 - Adding an ad using image and link.

29:55 - Creating your own advertisement ad.

31:00 - Inline ads for every post.

32:00 - Define your own ads.

The post Introduction to OIO Publisher and Two Methods to Monetize Your Blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Clearly, I'm being sarcastic. But I do want to make a case for why you don't want to use Jetpack to manage your blog's subscriptions.

You don't want to kill all chances of your blog making money, right?

So WordPress.com is great. It offers a terrific free service and a premium service for a fee. WordPress.com also offers a number of add-on services you can use on your self-hosted or WordPress.org based website.

Through a plugin called Jetpack, you can get access to a lot of services usually only available to wordpress.com users. But because we want to monetize our blog any way we want, we are using WordPress.org, the self-hosted version of WordPress.

But at the same time we want the functionality that WordPress.com users have! What a conundrum!

The solution is that you can install some services through the Jetpack addon. One of the add-ons available through Jetpack takes care of blog subscriptions.

I cry a little every time I see a blog using the built-in WordPress.com subscriptions. So much potential wasted.

Sad.

Please, don't use it.

While I think that WordPress.com is great and the services they offer are solid, for reasons I already covered in a previous post, I'm trying to detangle all my websites from all the WordPress.com services.

Just like I discouraged you from using Akismet on that last post, today I'm discouraging you from using the built-in subscription feature that comes with Jetpack.

This blog post is all about making a case for you to STOP using that addon or module.

Stop it, now.

As in right now, when you finish reading this article, you need to go and take the steps I list at the end.

I mean, you only need to do what I say if you want to do the right thing, and only if you want to make money with your blog.

Even if you're not ready to make money today, you need to do this so that you can actually make money any time you are ready to start.

First, let's look at where the problem exists.

In your self-hosted WordPress blog, go to your dashboard, then to your Jetpack control panel and get to the settings for Jetpack.

From there, head over to the Discussion link at the top. (see screenshot below).

You can scroll down from there and you'll see the Subscriptions section. I highlighted that in the screenshot below.

When you use this feature, WordPress.com users can easily subscribe to your blog. Also if they leave a comment and want to, they can subscribe to future comments in that article.

Once this is activated, you can use a widget to add the subscription widget to your sidebar, so visitors coming to your blog will be inclined to put their name and email and subscribe.

Sounds fantastic doesn't?

It isn't.

Here's the problem with this service for you as a blogger trying to make money.

You don't have control of what or when stuff goes to those people that subscribe to your blog using this service.

For example, WordPress.com will automatically send an email to everyone that subscribed immediately after you publish your blog post.

The email is very generic and the text will be just an excerpt from your blog post and it will have a link back to your article.

This is a problem because you don't have control over when the email goes out to announce your blog post. You also don't get to define what text goes out in that email.

If you publish your blog post at 9:00 pm but you want to email your subscribers at 9:00 am the next day, forget about it. You can't do it.

This is a problem because if you press publish to your article, walk away for a few minutes to get a good cup of coffee, but when you return you re-read that article just to realize you were not supposed to publish it yet.

Maybe it was the wrong article, or maybe it needed a little more work. You immediately unpublish it and get to back to work.

You think all is going to be okay. Right? I mean, it's only been two or three minutes.

WRONG!

That article already was sent to your subscribers and the few subscribers that decide to open that boring email, then by the grace of God, decide to click on the link will find that your blog post doesn't even exist because you had to unpublish it. Or it's incomplete.

How embarrassing!

But besides getting our egos bruised a little bit, the bigger problem with that last scenario is that the people that clicked through may just end up unsubscribing because you sent a broken link.

But you didn't even send the link! Right? You just walked away to get some coffee after all that work you did.

It was WordPress.com that sent it. And this is when you realize you wish you could control the timing and send it only when you're ready.

But you can't.

There are more problems with this subscription system though.

For the subscriber, it is very tedious and the user experience isn't great. They have to click and confirm too many times.

If the subscriber isn't logged in to their WordPress.com account but they decide to subscribe to your blog with the same email that they use for WordPress.com then they will be asked to log in.

That can turn people off that don't want to take that step right now or are unable to for whatever reason.

But that double-confirmation is killer, it's killing your relationship with your readers. I recently logged into my WordPress.com to look at my own subscriptions and see if I even remember seeing these recently.

I didn't recognize any of my subscriptions, which means that I'm not getting notified correctly. But that wasn't the most surprising thing.

This was the most surprising part, I had subscriptions pending confirmation from years ago. I had a total of 42 pending confirmations.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this same issue so that means that people that wanted to subscribe to you will never receive your updates because they never confirmed their subscription.

But It's All About the Control

There's one more problem with this service besides not being able to control the timing.

You don't have the people's email addresses, so if you wanted to send them a special announcement, or a message that you aren't going to post publicly, you really can't do it easily.

You could export the subscribers and use that list to email them manually or try to import them into Aweber, or whatever email list service you have or want to use.

If you are already stuck in this situation, that may be the only way to get out of it, but now you can rectify this problem and get a proper email list sign-up box so your readers can really subscribe to you.

So how do you fix this problem?

Step 1. Sign up for a free trial account with Aweber here.

Step 2. Create a list in Aweber for your blog subscribers, create a form for this list.

Step 3. Install the form on your blog with a text widget or the new HTML widget.

Step 4. Remove the old WordPress.com/Jetpack subscription widget.

Step 5. Turn off the subscription service in the Jetpack dashboard.

You will have a little more responsibility this way, and it is a little bit more work, but you will also gain so much more in terms of control, messaging and the ability to nurture the relationship with your readers as best as you see fit.

In Conclusion

As you set up your blog for business or start a blog for business, this is one of the little details that you don't really know until you find out the problems that come with it.

Using the built-in subscription system seems easy, it takes 10 seconds to set it up and you think all is well. But it isn't.

For reasons I talked about in a previous blog post, (see: Gripes with Jetpack and removing Akismet) I recommend you avoid using Jetpack altogether, establish a proper email list and use that to build the relationship with your readers.

The post Want to Monetize Your Blog? Don’t Use Jetpack Subscriptions appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Rather than giving you a step-by-step guide or a how-to video, this one covers one of the ways many people will tell you to use for monetization, yet I disagree with.

Before you get started, you should at least know how you can start a blog for profit. That's what I talk about in this video, or rather what NOT to do to monetize your blog.

The most popular ways to make money with a blog are related to advertising.

But there are other ways as well, this is a short video, under 5 minutes that covers some gotchas and advice that will help you before you start a blog and should help you define your goals and do some planning in advance.

As a side note, obviously one of the things you need for a blog is web hosting.

Too Long; Didn't Watch?

If you didn't want to watch the short video, or you wanted more depth, then I'll give you a short summary and some tips next.

Advertising is the easiest way to monetize your blog. You can easily place contextual ads from Google, or Bing, or even other networks, but it may not be the most profitable.

Instead, I suggest you monetize your blog with other methods and with specific steps.

Here Are the Basic Steps to Start a Blog for Profit

Step 1

Obviously, first thing is to get web hosting and start your blog. This should take less than two hours. Use the link I gave you above then follow the instructions to use the one-click installation service for WordPress and you'll be up and running in no time.

If you need help, make sure you use my link and I will setup your blog for you. It just takes about a day. Purchase your web hosting here, send me an email and give me your information. In return, I'll install the blog for you with everything you need to get started.

Step 2

Once you have your blog installed, get an email list so you can begin a relationship with your readers. You will ask for their email address on your blog in exchange for exclusive information or an insider's view of your blog or content. You can use Aweber to accomplish this, they have a free month trial that will be enough to get started.

Once your Aweber list is set up and ready to go, connect it to your blog. You can use the Aweber code and the HTML widget in WordPress, or use a more sophisticated plugin like Optinmonster.

Step 3

Start producing good content. Whatever topic you decided to write about, get to work. Start writing blog posts. Write the best content you can at this time, write fast, publish fast.

You will get better with time, and you can always go back to fix any mistakes you make, but put your best effort forward now.

The key here is to hit the publish button. Write five to 15 blog posts before you tell anyone about your blog. Try to write daily. Then you can start monetizing it.

Step 4

Once you decide how to monetize it (I'll give you a few options next), start promoting your blog everywhere you can. The goal is to get people to read your blog and sign up for your email list.

You will monetize your blog posts directly, but having the ability to email your readers each time you post a new blog post is what's going to make you great money.

As the not so old adage goes, the money is in the list!

Here are the basic ways to monetize your blog

Advertising

Obviously, advertising is the easiest, but as I mentioned above and in the video, it may not be the most profitable. In fact, you may not make any money for a long time. You could get lucky but ads most likely will take a while to yield results.

You could advertise affiliate products or your own products which I will cover next. To do that, use a WordPress plugin like Adsanity or OIO Publisher.

Affiliate Marketing

This is my favorite way to monetize my blog and social media. Affiliate marketing works very simply.

You find a product or service that offers an affiliate program. There are thousands and thousands. Some of the best-known brands offer an affiliate program.

You sign up for the affiliate program, obtain your personalized links and use them in your content. In case it wasn't obvious, the program should be a good match for your content and ideally, it should be a product or service you love or use.

It doesn't have to be, but it will inspire more trust with your readers if you are not only promoting the product, but also using it.

A tip here is this: find the product you use, or love, or the best match for your type of content. Then go to google and type in the product name then add this to your search +"affiliate program."

You can also search directly on the brand's website to see if they have an affiliate program, but often they won't advertise it there which is why I recommend you do a search specifically for affiliate program.

You can also search for "partner program" or "referral program" or "rewards program" because some companies refer to their affiliate program with their own name.

Create your Own Product

This can be extremely profitable, but it can also be the toughest. I don't recommend it for beginners because product development takes a lot of energy, forethought, and planning.

Don't let me discourage you from starting your own product, but be aware that it's a bit tougher than it looks and certainly a lot harder than many marketers will tell you. With that disclaimer in place, be aware that you can make all kinds of products.

You could make an information product, like a course on a topic you are an expert. Think about how many courses are available in Udemy, Lynda, and other platforms.

Physical products could also be great for your blog. You could find a manufacturer and distributor and start making a product that you sell on your blog.

Or you could white-label a product, meaning you find a product that you can label as your own and market any way you want. Rumor has it that Kylie Jenner started her billion dollar empire this way.

The blog will serve as its own advertising and PR machine, and a plugin like Woocommerce can do the e-commerce part effortlessly.

Write a Book

This is just a slight variation of the previous method of "creating your own product" but a little more specific. As I mentioned, an information product is a viable option. It's relatively easy to write a short book and sell it, you can sell it in all kinds of marketplaces.

Amazon has a great program for people that want to self-publish. You could self-publish your book and sell it on Amazon anywhere from $0.99 up to $30.00 or more. Obviously, you will have to test out the pricing and build up a marketing strategy, but a big part of that can be done on the blog.

Once you write your first book, you can write another one and keep going. Amazon and your blog will continue to promote the book so you can focus on new products or other books. This could make a nice recurring income stream.

Here are some books that can help you with that:

• Publish Your Book on Amazon for Free: How to Self-Publish Without Paying a Dime (link)
• How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should (Third Edition) (link)
• Self Publish to a World of Readers: with Amazon, Apple, Google and Other Major Retailers (link)

Native content

This one can be a little tricky but it can also be highly profitable. First, a really quick overview of what native content is.

Native content refers to content that fits the topic, writing style but also promotes a product. Think about those advertorials you see in magazines. They're usually 2 or 4 pages long and they look like articles, but if you look closely, you'll see the word "advertisement" somewhere in the article.

The way you make money with this method is by generating traffic to your blog using your email list and social media, and then by making deals with brands. The deals will usually include what's called a "sponsored post" or an "influencer post."

Brands pay anywhere from $50 up to tens of thousands for a well-written article or blog promotion campaign. It will take time to raise your prices and to have the ability to make deals with brands, but you can do it if you focus on quality content that is niche.

Other Methods

There are tons of other methods you can use, so this blog post isn't comprehensive but you can start with any of these methods and grow more sophisticated over time.  I wanted to tell you of four more ways you can make money with your blog, but I'll cover those in separate blog posts because they require some complex modifications to the standard blog. These include:

•  directory blogs where you gather information about a niche group of websites, businesses or people.
•  user-generated content blogs where your audience creates content for you.
• e-commerce where you sell a number of products with a proper shopping cart.
• membership-based blogs where you offer content to paying members.

In Conclusion

Starting a blog for profit is a great way to make money online. To start a blog is simple, but to make money with it requires a little more effort. The main obstacle is being consistent and dedicated to it.

If you can overcome that, then you'll do fine.

You'll need to decide your main strategy for monetizing your blog, but all blogs need an email list. Then you can use advertising, affiliate marketing or even your own products to start making money.

The post How to Start a Blog for Profit. Avoid This Method. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

If you don't know what the difference is between the two, WordPress.com is the commercial version of the free and open source software provided in WordPress.org. The goal of WordPress.com is to get you to sign up for a free account which provides a free basic blogging experience.

Eventually you'll realize you can't do much with it and you'll need to upgrade, or better yet move to WordPress.org which is a self-hosted solution.

Self-hosted means you need to get a web hosting account and setup WordPress yourself, have someone like me help you or have the web host do it for you. The benefits is that you can do whatever you want with it and aren't restricted too much.

A few years ago, Automattic, which is the parent company of WordPress.com and the biggest contributor to WordPress.org started merging little plugins into Jetpack. But Jetpack sucks. I've always thought that and even years after it came out, I still dislike it a lot.

I wish they'd leave the plugins as standalone modules. There's quite a few plugins and functionality that have fallen "victims" to the Jetpack beast.

Getting Rid of Jetpack and Reliance on WordPress.com

I've decided to get rid of Jetpack in my sites after I went through a catastrophic website crash where I had to deactivate all plugins and carefully fix the problem before reactivating plugins.

My entire site was only partially functional for two or three days. This wasn't the fault of Jetpack, but Jetpack added to the headaches when restoring it.

I'm still fixing things now, but the process of reactivating Jetpack was painful and frustrating so I decided that it was enough and I started to find replacements for any of the modules that I use which Jetpack provides.

I also want to replace any plugin that requires a WordPress.com account.

There are two main plugins that I care about. Jetpack stats, formerly known as WP Stats. And Akismet a plugin designed to prevent comment spam. Akismet is actually standalone plugin but still requires a WordPress.com account.

I might also address the caching module and the "better search module soon.

But First, Akismet.

The first plugin I want to replace is Akismet. Akismet is great at preventing spam, and it's by far the biggest anti-spam comment plugin for WordPress, but it isn't the only player in town.

Furthermore, the terms of service clearly state that Akismet is NOT free if you're monetizing your site or if your site is a business site.

I've never heard of Automattic going after someone for using the free plan of Akismet in a commercial site, but the terms are pretty clear:

Akismet Is Not Free

If you want to do the right thing, you will not use Akismet for your money-making blogs. That's just what the terms say. But you can find other plugins that are free and you can use without paying.

I'm going to try the plugin that is the most popular and seems to cover what I need. Even though I don't get a lot of comments on this blog, when I had Akismet deactivated for two days or so, I received over 150 spam comments so it's necessary to have something in place to prevent comment spam.

Free Alternatives to Akismet

There is a trend where the best plugins are getting converted into a hybrid model of free and paid features. Many of the alternatives to Akismet aren't free either, but there are still some. That was one of the requirements I have for this type of service.

Other things I considered were wether the plugin is actively updated and how many active users it has.

I consider it active if it has been updated within the past few months or up to a year, and it should have about 10,000 active installations or more (Akismet has over 5 million).

Here's are the alternatives I found:

Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk

No CAPTCHA, no questions, no animal counting, no puzzles, no math and no spam bots. Universal AntiSpam plugin.

Free trial, then yearly subscription (link)

Shield Security for WordPress

Shield is easy to setup – you simply activate it. Then a step-by-step wizard will walk you through the basic configuration. Shield Security does it what it needs to do, and alerts you if and when you need to informed.

Free version and Pro version with extra features (link)

Stop Spammers

Stop Spammers is an aggressive WordPress defense plugin against comment spam and login attempts. It is capable of performing more than 20 different checks for spam and malicious events and can block spam from over 100 different countries. Stop Spammers uses multiple methods for detecting spam and may be too aggressive for some websites.

Free  (link)

Anti-Spam

Anti-spam plugin blocks automatic spam in comments section. No captcha required. The plugin is easy to use: just install it and it should just work.

Free and Pro version available (link)

Antispam Bee

Say Goodbye to comment spam on your WordPress blog or website. Antispam Bee blocks spam comments and trackbacks without captchas and without sending personal information to third party services.

Free (link)

I Decided to Go with Antispam Bee.

Antispam Bee has a good number of downloads and active installations at a little over 300,000. It also gets regular updates.

The plugin was easy to install through the regular dashboard, and after activating it the settings page is really simple and straight forward.

So far it seems to be good and working as expected. I haven't received any spam comments in a few days but it caught about 65 of them so it seems promising. In a few months I might come back and do an update to this or a proper review.

Let me know in the comments if you think there's anything I should add or if you have any questions!

In Conclusion

Despite what some people will tell you, Akismet isn't technically free. I also don't like the reliance on WordPress.com so I decided to do away with it.

I evaluated a bunch of plugins first, and decided to go with Antispam Bee. It seems reliable, it's free, and it has a good amount of usage. It also gets regular updates.

I'll run with this for a while and post back if I find any problems with it, but if you're looking for an alternative to Akismet, then this should be a good place to start.

The post Gripes with Jetpack and Alternatives to Akismet Plugin appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But we often fool ourselves into thinking that we can multi-task. Really, mostly, we can't multi-task.

If you want to really multitask, one of the two tasks you're doing must be so ingrained in you, that it's almost second nature. Like walking, or maybe driving.

But if you need to concentrate in a task, like writing a blog post, there are few other things you can do at the same time.

One of these things you can do is listen to music, but even that can be problematic at times.

What's wrong with regular music?

Music, or the ritual of finding the right song can be distracting and time-consuming.

Then, once you find the right song, you end up singing along to it, or you get distracted by it, and lose track of your actual task.

Focus @ Will is here to change that. I recently signed up and I took the product tour so I thought I'd show it to you since I recorded the whole thing. I really like how it's made and how it works.

I hope my video doesn't scare you away from this app, you really should try it I highly recommend you check it out. It will make you wonder how you ever lived without it and it facilitates a great productivity life-hack.

I actually talked about Focus at Will before when I told you why I quit Spotify and you should too, on this blog post over here.

What's focus@will for?

The whole purpose of the Focus@will service is to provide you with the right music to put you in focus of whatever task you need to complete.

I am listening to the uptempo channel on the high-energy mode as I write this blog post.

Focus@will is supposed to help increase your productivity.

So far, it is working for me. I like having sounds in the background while I work, but I can easily get distracted if it's a podcast, a video or even a music playlist I made.

But this is working great so far. This is one new tool in my arsenal of productivity, along with TimeDoctor.

Focus@will Product Tour

But anyway, I took the product tour and I thought I'd share it with you. I made a short video about it so you can see it.

In Conclusion:

I really liked the product tour of this app and I'm really like the app itself. I thought I would show you and recommend it for you.

The purpose of the app is to provide music that you can play to help you focus, it's good for reading, or getting more work done. I use it to write blog posts, or when I'm doing something that needs my attention 100%.

It's worth checking it out and trying out the channel recommender quiz they have to see which music would be best for you. Try it free for 14 days here.

The post Focus at Will, Music to Improve your Productivity appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Who's Stephan Spencer?

Stephan is an SEO authority expert, author, speaker and consultant helping some of the most prominent companies in the world.

Stephan is the author of The Art of SEO and he's one of the foremost experts in the field of search engine optimization. Stephan is also the host of two popular podcasts. The Optimized Geek and Marketing Speak. I'll tell you a little bit more about each podcast next, and you can find out everything else you need to know about Stephan at his website, stephanspencer.com

The Optimized Geek

I listened to a few episodes of The Optimized Geek when he first told me about the podcast, but it wasn't until recently that I started listening to every episode.

The Optimized geek talks about "life-hacks" for lack of a better term. Stephan interviews interesting people that have achieved high-level accomplishments and amazing personal transformations.

The podcast is about biohacking, personal transformations, I would say they're about self-optimization (is that even a real term?). Its official tagline is: Reboot and Improve your Life.

Stephan went through his own amazing transformation. If you knew him 6 years ago, you wouldn't recognize him today. I was flabbergasted when he first showed me and told me about his transformation.

I'd recommend it to anybody looking to learn how to master your body, your life, and relationships.

Marketing Speak

The other podcast, Marketing Speak is also a high-value podcast covering monologues and interviews with field and industry experts. I don't recommend it to everyone because it isn't for everybody.

If you're an entrepreneur, marketing geek like me, blogger, vlogger or business owner, then this is a must podcast to add to your subscriptions.

Both podcasts are available everywhere it matters: iTunes, Google Play, Sticher and probably other podcasting apps

So what did I ask Stephan Spencer During the Interview?

Our interview was about voice search and how it's changing the landscape of SEO.
⠀
Imagine that in the future, actually... right now, Google will not be showing you 10 blue links to pick one you like. Instead, it will be reading the summary of the top one result.

I say reading it because we have a boom in virtual assistants being deployed in our homes. Google Home, Alexa, Cortana and others are listening to your commands and queries triggered by your voice commands.

Most of these devices take the top-most result on a search query and read it out loud. This is the featured snippet of search engines. You might have noticed these the last time you did a search online.
⠀
Those little summaries in the search engines are called featured snippets and Stephan tells us the steps we can take to take advantage of those results so that our websites provide those results.

via GIPHY

If you can answer a question on your website, and your answer shows up on that spot, then Google Assistant in Google Home, Alexa, Siri, Cortana and other "smart" assistants will use your answer to give people searching with their voice.

The tricky part is making your blog or website the one that provides that answer. The interview is short, but packed with useful and actionable information to help you rank for featured snippets and start integrating voice search results as part of your overall SEO strategy.

The post How To Rank For Featured Snippets appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Quickly I can put whatever song I want. The playlists are great, the social component is good and allows me to hear what some of my friends are listening to.

Their own discovery feature is good too and the curated playlists are some of the best I've come across.

So why did I quit Spotify?

I quit paying for Spotify because I'm on a mission to increase my productivity. I want to make 2018 be the year I kill it like no other year.

I'm making a lot of shifts in my life. Starting with my time management using Time Doctor. I will also be implementing the stuff taught on: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. -- Currently, my house & office is a disaster, almost worthy of a show of hoarders, almost.

But I have been paying attention to my habits when I'm on my computer. One of the bad habits is constantly checking FB or Twitter, just to see what's up. I'm already changing that, I cut back a lot of time I spend on there.

Another bad habit I have is trying to find something to play on the background while I work. Sometimes I feel it may even be an excuse to not get to the stuff I really need to work on.

Needless to say, this is a huge timesink because I end up spending a lot of time on Spotify looking for "just the right song."

Sometimes I'll do the same on Youtube, looking through my "watch later" playlist hoping to find something I can play in the background while I blog or try to complete another work-related task.

So while I was at Affiliate Summit I was talking to Stephan Spencer and he recommended Focus @ Will. Focus @ will is a music service specifically designed to help you focus.

I'm trying it now and it's awesome, the trial is free for two weeks, then it's the same price as Spotify. Actually is five cents cheaper.

Cheaper and Better

I' don't feel like spending money on two services which are intended to do the same thing for me. So I'm opting for Focus @ Will only for now since it has the benefit of helping me focus and get more stuff done.

I've already been testing it and it works. My trial will expire soon and I intend to keep the service.

The free ad-supported version of Spotify will have to suffice for the other times where I just need the music for the kids or for entertainment.

If you're looking to step up your game and want to have something play in the background, something that actually helps you instead of distracting you then give Focus @ Will a try. It's free to try.

The post I Quit Spotify. You Should Too If You Want to Get More Done appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But I see a resurge on Twitter and I see some good things that are going on. But I'm also deeply concerned about its apparent censorship and favoritism displayed over the past year and more so in the past few weeks.

If you haven't kept up with these developments, apparently, Twitter has been revoking the verified status from many accounts. It appears that Twitter is reviewing its verification program and will probably be removing the verification status from many more accounts.

It seems that some accounts claim that they've been unfairly targeted and singled out for suspensions and even permanent bans as a result of this "review", because of opposing viewpoints or what they call "wrong-think" like in  George Orwell's 1984 novel.

Twitter never comments on specific cases, but usually points questions and requests for comments to their Terms of Service document which like most T.O.S. documents is vague and even ambiguous; this allows for conspiracy theories, and alternate possibilities to be considered plausible by some.

Many argue, in contrast, that other accounts that are more in line with Twitter's political bias are allowed to remain active and verified despite exhibiting similar behavior as that displayed by the accounts that have been reprimanded arguably because of holding the wrong set of ideas or opinion.

You can't really change any of that... but this is what you can do.

And at the end of the day, you can't do much about Twitter's decisions anyway. But you know what you can do, is be a good person, be a decent individual and stop doing these three things on Twitter.

Trust me, they make you look like an amateur and it's time somebody tells it to you straight. I'm going to make this blog post mandatory reading for all my would-be customers and existing customers.

So without further ado, stop doing these things that make you a jerk on Twitter:

#1 Sending Automatic DMs

This is one of the worse things to have ever been turned into a thing on Twitter. If you follow me on Twitter, you surely have seen my top-most pinned tweet.

I've had it on for most of the year and it gets a good reaction.

https://twitter.com/notagrouch/status/828005553519472640

Nobody cares about your life's story in your auto dm. Nobody clicks on the links you send in there. Essentially, if you use Auto DMs when someone follows you, you're a jerk. You're forcing us to look at some crappy message and usually, you haven't even taken the time to  look at our account let alone follow us for a while so we can actually get to know each other.

I'll take that back. I'm sorry, I give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you didn't know prior to reading this blog post. Ok, but now you know so if you're still using Auto DMs, now, you're a jerk. Ok, I'll grant you a grace period, you can take a few minutes and then go turn off those automatic DMs.

Sending auto dms on Twitter is like throwing garbage out the window as you drive down the street, or like that crappy junk mail you still get delivered to your home address. Do the senders don't know that those pieces of mail survive only the walk to the nearest trash bin?

In Twitter, it's digital littering, you're doing nothing but creating digital garbage.

Please, don't. Just don't.

If you don't know how you're sending automatic direct messages because you set them up a long time ago and don't remember how, just click here to go to your Twitter apps permission page and click on "revoke access" next to all the apps listed there that you don't recognize.

This will reset your Twitter account's permissions and prevent 3rd party apps from sending those automatic junk messages.

#2 Sending Thank you for nothing messages.

Yes, it is absolutely true that you should acknowledge your new followers and engage with them. You should also engage with your existing followers and build connections with them. This is the reason we call Twitter a social network.

But don't confuse digital garbage for gratitude.

When it comes to Twitter, stop the automatic @ mentions messages with generic, repetitive and boring messages. Just like auto DMs, they're digital garbage.

If auto DMs are like mailbox flyers that are sent to you via postal service, then thanks-for-nothing tweets are the maybe-more-annoying door and car flyers you find after you come home or back to your car in the parking lot. More garbage and you're forced to look at it. And if you're sending these automatically, yep, you're a jerk.

These noise maker tweets sound a bit like this:

Thanks to my top #twitterfam followers (or some hashtag that sounds like a community exists): @mention1 @mention2 @mention3 @mention4 #famlov https://somefreejunk.net.

You don't need to thank everyone that follows you as if they just did you a favor. That's what people do on Twitter they follow each other. Instead, take it a step further and learn something about the person and comment on that. "Thank you for following me" messages are so 2008, and digital junk.

Generally, Twitter users fall prey to become these apps' advertising parrot-heads and use them with the promise of gaining a following or getting more "social mentions" which can be valued by some social influence measuring tools --also useless, but I digress.

At the end of the day, these tools primary purpose seems to be to generate digital garbage.

Instead, spend 15 - 20 minutes each day doing what I do to remain personal, and engaged with people on Twitter. It makes Twitter relevant again, believe it or not, there is a growing active user base on Twitter.

I explain how I engage with new users next.

What should you do instead?

From personal experience, thanks to Rewst.com and a dedicated 15 to 30-minute planned daily activity on Twitter, I've been averaging about 40 new followers each day. Thank you and welcome, all of you!

But to show gratitude, I take the time to check out each new follower and either like a few of their latest interesting tweets or maybe I'll follow them back. By the way, you don't have to use Rewst.com, it just makes things easier.

Another thing I do to show appreciation and acknowledgment to new followers is to retweet one or two of their most recent interesting tweets. I use Buffer to spread the tweets over a few hours or a few days.

Even doing an @ mention responding to a specific tweet they posted recently, or a compliment or positive feedback about their profile may go a long way.

These actions show you are there, and you're active and not just a twitter-bot pushing a message out. Taking the time to acknowledge your new followers shows gratitude.

Seriously, the other automatic, canned junk is bad. Forget it. Be real, be genuine and be there, even if it's just a couple times each day. Automatic "thank you @mentions" Just like I advise you for Twitter auto DMs... Just don't.

#3 Tweet Only your products

I'm a big proponent of automation. But you should work on intelligent automation. Once you get a work-flow going where you can read and share interesting articles on Twitter easily and timely, you can start sharing content that your followers may be interested in without any additional effort.

This video shows you how you can schedule all your tweets easily.

You can use something like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule tons of tweets in advance. But just be careful with this convenience.

Don't fall for the temptation to tween only for your products or services. You should have a mix of content.

How much is too much self-promotion?

Advice tends to suggest that we should be following a rough 80/20 split where you share industry news, relevant events information, quotes by captains of industry, interesting reports, case studies and news for about 80 percent of the time, and you share your own content the remaining 20 percent of the time.

If you are on Twitter and spend 15 to 30 minutes each day tweeting and engaging, then you'll find that you can be tweeting around 20 times organically.

Add to that count, 10 or so tweets you can pre-schedule as you read the type of content I suggest you share above. You could easily be tweeting anywhere from 30 - 40 tweets each day effortlessly. And that still doesn't count your own content.

Some people claim that if you were to just tweet your own content, you would lose followers and they'd feel like enough is enough.

But, I think if you're tweeting 40 or more times each day like I describe above, it's a fair ratio if you want to insert your own tweets 10 times a day. Mix them around in Buffer and continue to engage.

If you're trying to keep track of growth, you can also use Rewst.com to keep track of your growth. You could also tabulate the data yourself using Google Sheets, and I think Twittercounter.com will also help you track following and followers.

The big asterisk disclaimer on there is that my opinion is you should be engaging and sharing other content too to balance out your own content and to understand what others are sharing around your own topics of interest.

This means you could schedule around 8 to 10 tweets every day to your top 100 blog posts and go through them every 10 days or so. This will help you get a good amount of exposure and keep your followers looking at your content.

Neil Patel suggests you share at least 10 of your articles each day and look at the results based on the data --see video below: How to Get More Twitter Traffic (fast).

I tend to follow his advice and I usually share about 8 or 10 tweets of my own content and the rest are curated tweets.

I follow a ratio of roughly 50/50, and I think as long as the content is interesting, useful and valuable, even following Neil Patel's advice and only sharing 10 articles for your own blog may be fine.

After all if your own blog post isn't worth sharing, why did you write it at all right? And if it's worth sharing, why not share it?

Conclusion

These three things you need to stop doing on Twitter may seem a bit like rants, but based on my personal experience and in that experience of most of my clients, these are some of the biggest things that annoy other Twitter users and generally just contributes to a bad overall experience.

I'm not a big fan of telling you how to use any of the social networks. You should do what works for you. But if you insist on doing these things I listed, you have to wonder if annoying a large part of potential new followers is something that works for you.

Full automated Twitter accounts exist, and some of them have tons of followers, but they tend to be single-purpose announcement type of accounts. You can assume that all the unsolicited advice I provided here is meant for accounts that represent a person or a brand and want to actively grow and generate more engagement and traffic to their blogs.

The post 3 Things You’re Doing on Twitter That Make You a Jerk appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Maybe this sounds like you: A blogger has been blogging for months, maybe even over a year and hasn't made any money.

Perhaps they've made a few dollars here and there. But the reality is that most bloggers, and chances are that includes you, don't make enough to even cover basic costs.

It's not for lack of trying or for lack of skill, generally.

Keep in mind most successful bloggers didn't make money until months after starting their blog.

What do affiliates need to start making money online?

There are many things that comprise the recipe for profits online, but I'm going to cover two important factors that would help you make money if you haven't made enough money from your blog yet.

I know it can be frustrating.

Making money online is more than just posting content and sharing it. You can have a huge following and still fail to make a decent income. In this video, I dive into one of the main reasons why you're not making money despite all your efforts.

Check out the video and take action. If you're not profiting from your blog, maybe it's time you try something new, or time to upgrade your methods or products.

And if you don't think that these are the missing ingredients for your blog to start making money, let me know more about your situation in the comments and we can figure it out together.

https://youtu.be/t9ZgNvtSB2s

If you didn't want to wait for the entire video. The key of one of the messages is to start working with higher-end products which in turn pay out a higher level commission.

If you're interested in learning how to do that and start earning more money than ever before, check out the 21 step training I talk about in the video right here.

The post Affiliates: This Is Why You’re Not Making Money Online (Video) appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But once the blog is started and you have a couple articles posted you will certainly face the dreaded writer's block. Maybe it will happen on your fourth blog post, or maybe on your 12th blog post. But every blogger faces writer's block sometimes.

Maybe because we're lacking creativity at that moment, maybe because we are distracted, or maybe we're just not in the mood to write. But maybe you're out of ideas.

This is where I have some help for you today. Having ideas to write about is important, so how do you get new ideas flowing? I have a few tips and five sources for new ideas that should help you get unstuck from that annoying writer's block.

Conclusion

Getting new ideas for blog posts isn't too difficult, you just have to think of the stuff you already know and try to use some of the sources I suggest. Try not to overcomplicate your posts and keep them focused on one topic at a time.

Once you come up with an idea for a blog post using the tips I gave you in the video, you may get a few more ideas right away so make sure you write those down for future blog posts.

The post 5 Tips to Help you Kill Writer’s Block appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you have just jumped into blogging with a WordPress blog, this is something I tell everyone I help start a blog, maybe it will be useful for you as well. So, I advise you, get a Gravatar account.

What is Gravatar and why use it?

This post will cover a quick overview of what Gravatar is and why you should use it, and basic direction on how to create a gravatar account. You should register a profile at

You should register a profile at gravatar.com -- This is one of the services online that associates your email with a picture whenever you leave comments on any gravatar-powered websites.

Most blogs have gravatar-enabled comments and this helps you keep a consistent brand image even as you leave comments on other blogs.

Sometimes the Gravatar image will be used on your own blog too. For example, when you respond to a comment on your own blog, most themes use the gravatar image associated with that email address. You'll see the photo next to the comment.

When you first setup a WordPress blog and you have an email address that isn't registered with Gravatar yet, then you will see just a silhouette as your profile photo if you respond to comments.

After you create a profile in Gravatar, that picture will change to whatever picture you associate in your profile. That way, when you leave a comment anywhere, your picture will also be updated everywhere you've left comments or whenever your gravatar profile picture is used.

You can add multiple email addresses to your Gravatar account so you can maintain a personal photo for your author profile, but you could have a different one for your business if you want to have different branding.

Each email address can have one picture associated with it, and each photo has a self-managed rating level. This is useful if you're posting in communities that distinguish different types of participants based on this rating.

This is not an extensive tutorial, instead, it's just a basic guide on a few things you need to know about Gravatar and WordPress.com. Setting up each of the accounts is very self-explanatory so I didn't think it would be necessary to have a step by step tutorial.

Jumping Through WordPress.com Hoops

In the process of getting a gravatar account you'll need to create a WordPress.com account, when you create a WordPress.com account you'll be asked to "name your blog or website."

If you already have a self-hosted WordPress.org website, or I set up your blog for free, you can create a matching wordpress.com blog. You just need to pick a matching name. Most likely you will not be using this blog for anything other than to provide you access to some of the services available for WordPress.com websites.

The name you select here will result in a blog named like this: yourname.wordpress.com.

After you get your WordPress.com account, In your regular WordPress' blog dashboard, you will be able to install the Jetpack plugin and connect that to WordPress.com to take advantage of some of the free modules like "WordPress.com stats" and "Contact forms" in addition to Gravatar.

Back to Gravatar

Once you have your WordPress.com account, you can go into Gravatar and log in with your WordPress.com credentials and complete your profile. So long as you use the email address that is registered with your blog account or whenever you leave comments, your picture will show up next to that. I wrote a quick guide about Gravatar a while ago as well. That tutorial probably needs freshening up a bit, but I still recommend and consider Gravatar a must-have service.

You can also enter some basic information about yourself so people can see a quick bio when the Gravatar image supports hovercards. We'll cover hovercards and some of the other services available with your WordPress.com account later on.

Conclusion

This post suggests and encourages you to get a Gravatar profile configured and then associate your email address with a picture so this picture shows up whenever it is supported, like some sections on your self-hosted WordPress blog and comments throughout the web. Gravatar requires a WordPress.com account so you'll need that, but you get access to other additional services as well so I recommend you get it all configured shortly after you get your first WordPress blog.

Bonus tip: In addition to Gravatar, I suggest you get a profile set up and completed in other major networks like Disqus.com, Blogspot, Tumblr, Medium, and probably your favorite niche related blogging communities

The post How Add Your Profile Picture to Comments with Gravatar appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The rest may be afraid of success, maybe they're afraid of facing a challenge that seems too difficult to overcome. They retreat to their comfort zone. But there's a reason the cliche of stepping out of your comfort zone exists; because it works. People that push boundaries, challenges, and limitations persevere.

It is through this perseverance that successful people find success and if you aren't working towards that success with a solid vision, chances are you're going to give up soon.

You may be busy but broke, you may be focusing on the wrong things, spending time in the wrong places. Unproductive, you see the time passing you by, or you think any other number of excuses, like:

It's too hard!

It's too difficult!

I can't do it!

I have a job!

I am busy with the kids!

I have school, then I'm so tired!

I want to learn how to code first!

I don't think it is for me.

All of these are excuses I've heard in the past 6 months from people that won't push through and work through challenges and obstacles. Instead, they go after another shiny object.

After all, it's easy starting out, the brainstorming part is addictive, the busy work is distracting, the process of setting everything up is rewarding, it makes you feel accomplished. But then the newness wears out and you're back to square one.

Are you going to make an excuse for your lack of perseverance, again? As I talked about in a recent video. The most important thing to change one's life is to start in the path towards that change, with a goal in mind and moving towards that goal.

But the next most important thing is to follow through. Otherwise, you'll find yourself quitting and starting over, again, and again. Make a commitment to yourself and follow through. I have helped many of you start with the 21 step training, or with a blog. Some of you have done well and are now running successful blogs or making great money.

But many people aren't using their blogs or making money. These are the same people that will email me and say "it doesn't work!" To which I respond that I want to help. I ask, show me what you've done that didn't work. I get no response after that. I want to help you, but you have to put in the work.

Did you finish the 21 steps? I get no response after that.

Did you write 10 blog posts? No response...

Sometimes I'll get one more response saying "it just doesn't work!" "It's too hard" or "I didn't understand." And the cycle begins again. If you already started the training, finish it, start your business. Persevere.

If you already started a business somewhere else, and you know it should work, and you have proof that it works for others, then carry on. It doesn't matter if you sell widgets on eBay, hand-crafted artwork on Etsy, t-shirts on Teespring, or digital products on Clickbank.

Put the uncomfortable feelings aside and push through. In a video Shia Labeouf did a couple years ago and has since become an Internet meme, he said something that fits my blog post today.

The post Tired of Starting Over? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I'm going to come out and say it directly; you should not start a blog with WordPress.com, Blogger.com, Medium.com, or other free blogging platforms. Specifically today I want to mention why you shouldn't go with WordPress.com if you want to start a blog for profit.

What's wrong with WordPress.com? Nothing is technically wrong with the service. It's reliable, it's fast and it's easy to use. However, if you want to start a blog for profit or a blog that will help your business generate income, then you should use the free, self-hosted counterpart to WordPress.com known as WordPress.org. I know it seems confusing, but if you read the points I make below and watch the video, hopefully, I will be able to clear things up for you.

WordPress.com will show ads to your visitors without your control. Also you don't get paid for those ads! The free version of WordPress.com doesn't let you use your own domain. When you set up your free blog with them, you'll need to use a non-branded address. For

For example, is not branded for you, but it's branded for WordPress.com. What you want is something like this: http://yourname.com

If you want to have your domain on WordPress.com, then you have to pay and it's no longer free. If you want to remove ads, then you have to pay more. If you want to monetize your blog you have to pay more! On top of that, you can't install custom 3rd party plugins, even if you pay at their highest plan. I explain more in the video below.

But basically, WordPress.com is free to start and what you get for free isn't what you need, even if you pay for the top level service they offer, you still won't get what you need.

WordPress.com is great if you're just tinkering with the idea of blogging. But if you want to be a little more serious about your business, or you want to make a blog that will make you money, you should go with WordPress.org.

Can't you transfer from WordPress.com to WordPress.org later on? Yes, you can but it's not easy, and you may lose followers, traffic and in some cases, you could lose content. Why risk that?

I invite you to get your blog started professionally by using my service. I explain it all in the video, so please watch it before you make a decision. If you decide you want to take advantage of my free blog setup, then make sure you use one of these web hosts:

• Inmotion Hosting - 47% off, business-centric. Great support.
• GreenGeeks Hosting - Low priced, environmentally friendly. Great support.

More details are in the video so you should watch it:

In this video, I mentioned two ways to get started with making money online. One is to apply for the 21 step online training course, click here to start. If you are accepted into the training, you'll get access to the same program that I use to make thousands of dollars, and you'll get a one-on-one coach to help you navigate through everything you need so you can also start making money.

The second one is to start a blog. I've just made the best offer I have ever made for my email subscribers that want to start a blog. If you're interested in taking advantage of that, make sure you're subscribed to my email list and I'll send you all the details. Go ahead and get a hosting account with either GreenGeeks, or Inmotion hosting, send me your information, and I'll take care of the rest.

The post The Truth about Free WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

There are so many issues with blogging, and you really don't need to add yet another problem to your blogging process. comparing yourself to others is going to do one of two things for you.

First, it will give you a false sense of achievement and security; it will boost your ego. If you compare yourself to someone that hasn't achieved what you have achieved, you will feel good. You'll feel good temporarily. But this satisfaction is empty, it will last very little and then you'll be on your way to find someone else you consider "less than you." Needless to say, this isn't good for you.

The second thing that comparing yourself to others will do is get you down. If you compare yourself to someone else that seems to be ahead of you the opposite will happen. You will feel like you're not good enough, you will feel that you can't do this and you are a failure. You may even feel like you need to quit and go back to something else you are good at.

The thing that both of these scenarios have in common is that both are temporary and under your control. You don't need to compare yourself to others and go into this dark hole of self-deprecation or false edification.

Instead, spend the time working on your craft. Revisit your "Why?", revisit your purpose and focus on your goals. This is the most important part of the video. Your why is important and I also talk about how to deal with haters.

photo cover credit: ericaxel. 

The post Why You Shouldn’t Compare Yourself to Others appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I'm talking about online advertising. Over the past few years, marketers have been developing a new way of advertising to you. 2017 may be the year when it grows up and becomes mainstream.

This new model is euphemistically called "native advertising" and it's the central topic of my video below. It's a very close cousin to "influencer" marketing.

It's not that I don't like the new model. I love it! For us, advertisers and marketers, it's a boon. But for you as a consumer it sucks.

Over the past 15+ years, you've been complaining about ads on websites. So much so that enough of you have adopted ad-blocker programs.

The other day my friend came over and told me about a little raspberry pi machine that can block advertisements at your network level. You don't even need a browser plugin. Amazing.

But the problem is that marketers, advertisers and every one of us that works in this space still needs to advertise products and services to you. And most of the time, they are good products and services you actually want; advertising has gotten smarter over time.

Maybe too smart.

Blocking ads and the expectation that all content should be free has pushed the industry to native content and influencer marketing. What's the problem with native content? I think it hurts you as a consumer and adds unnecessary red tape for us publishers.

More of my thoughts in the video, I'd love to hear yours too so let me know in the comments here or in the video.

The post Is Native Content Bad for You? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

"Know Thyself" would say Plato.

So... do you know what you're good at? What about what you're not so good at?

For me, it's time management and time commitments. I say yes to a lot of projects, then I end up having way too many things on my plate. This leads me to have a lot of stuff that clutters my mind and keeps me bouncing from one thing to another until I burn out.

Then I fire off a quick Youtube video to take a break, next thing you know, several hours have passed. It's easy to go down the rabbit hole of distractions online, then you look, and it's bed time! And a lot of stuff is still pending.

Where did all the time go? Can't you relate?

You still haven't started your online business, or you didn't start that campaign you wanted, or you didn't call your mother, and you still have laundry to do, and the oil change is overdue.

The list goes on.

Time is our most precious commodity. Not only is it gone once it passes, but we as humans don't know how much we have left.

No judgment here!

I'm not going to judge you if you like to binge-watch the latest in Netflix. I watched Stranger Things in one night. A dirty little secret is that I watched the entire remake of Battlestar Galactica in about 2 weeks a couple of years back.

So believe me I'm nobody to judge you on how you procrastinate!

But I do have something that will change everything for you. Something that can fix your productivity and time management woes.

As long as you use this tool, you will see an improvement in how you allocate your time. This is the app of the week and part of the spotlight feature series.

The app is called Time Doctor. I first started using it several years ago when my buddy Syed Balkhi recommended it as a way to manage productivity better.

Time Doctor tracks, it measures and holds you accountable

It's an app, you install it, and it tracks what you're working on. It keeps track of time, and it helps you stay focused on what you're supposed to be working. Its strength is on the desktop but it also works on your mobile device.

It holds you accountable, and it helps you measure your time. It's a godsend for freelancers, bloggers, social media geeks and anybody that needs to keep track of time spent on projects.

It is especially useful for companies that want to or need to give their employees a strong time-tracking tool. I'd venture to say that it is the strongest tool I've tried in its category. Better than Harvest, better than Freshbooks, and I looove Freshbooks.

But Time Doctor is also great if you just want to improve your time allocation and prioritization, or learn more about yourself. Here's a quick overview of the strongest features:

It gives you beautiful reports and graphs and points out where you've mismanaged your time. If you say you're working on a report, but click over to Facebook or Youtube, it will pop up a gentle question:

"Are you still working on that report?"

Just to remind you that you said you'd be working on it...

Time Doctor is awesome. It works for you, and it works for teams if you have one, check it out here and start using it, plans start at $5.00 and they have a limited version for free too. You can thank me later (or now by leaving a comment below).

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention that Time Doctor integrates with your favorite project management and accounting tools.

It integrates with the tools you already use, like Basecamp, Slack, Quickbooks, Zendesk, Asana and many more.

Visit Time Doctor to learn more or try it out for yourself.

The post Are You in Control of Your Time and Productivity? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The short version of this requirement is that if I'm getting compensated for a post, or a review, or a post in social media, then I should disclose that payment or compensation. This used to apply only to the mainstream media and big celebrities but with the rise of influencer blogging and social media influencers, it now applies to us as well. It is worth noting that many celebrities endorse products and services AND they don't disclose that they are compensated for it.

You might have noticed that in some of my recent posts, there are some boxes highlighting a specific block of text. They look like the box below:

This blog makes me money. It makes me money 24/7 and I'm very proud of that, and it is because of that income that I can bring you new updates on a regular basis. You see, I don't have a job, I spend most of my time with my kids and family and friends. And I like it that way.

Every time you read my blog, and whenever you click on a link and purchase a product or service, you're helping me live the dream. And for this, I appreciate you tremendously, not every link makes me money but some do.

Also, solely clicking on a link will not make me money; only if you purchase something will I get compensated. So please, if you find the products or services I talk about useful, give them a try and I'd love it if you let me know when you have purchased something because of my recommendation.

I hope we can continue this relationship for years to come. But in the spirit of transparency, disclosure, mutual trust and understanding, I've just updated my affiliates and sponsored content disclosure. You can find it here, but I also included it in its entirety below:

Sponsor & Affiliate Disclosure

[insert page='sponsor-affiliate-disclosure' display='content']

The post About Making Money on My Blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Unique domains are becoming increasingly scarce commodities as hundreds of thousands of new sites come online each year. With millions of websites already competing for real estate on the Internet and each with a distinct domain name, finding the perfect thing to call your site is now more important than ever.

Basic Concepts

Understanding what to consider when choosing a domain requires that you know what a domain really is. In simplest terms, the domain name is made up of two parts: the part you create from scratch (like “notagrouch”) and the part after the dot, known as the “Top Level Domain” or “TLD” (such as “.com,” “.biz,” “.org,” etc.).

You officially buy or lease your domain and register it on the web through a registrar. The registrar ensures that you are the only one who can use that domain while you own it and notifies computers all over the world that when a visitor types in your domain name into its browser it is your site they should reach.

Get a free domain from Inmotion when purchasing any web hosting plan here

5 Considerations for Choosing the Perfect Domain Name

Now that you understand what a domain is, what the parts of the domain name are called, and how to purchase one, it is time to make your choice.

You need to do more than just pick the first name that comes to mind and happens to be available. After all, this domain will have a huge impact on website moving forward. Let's answer the question: What should you think about when choosing your domain name?

1. Target Audience

Who will you be trying to convince to visit your website? Will you sell a product or service? Are the potential visitors young? Old? Male? Female? Do they live in a certain area?

When people use a search engine to find you, what sort of search terms will they use? Is your business online only or does it have a physical presence in the real world, too? All of these considerations should factor into your final decision.

You also need to think about the terms people will use when they search for your type of product or service. If you can incorporate one or more of those terms directly into your domain name, you may get a direct boost to your search ratings. For example, if someone searches for “teddy bears,” a company with a domain like “FluffyTeddyBears.com” will probably rank higher than something with a generic name like “JimsToys.com.”

Similarly, if your business has a physical location, and you want people in your area to find you, consider including your city or state name in your domain. If someone in your vicinity is searching for a place near them offering your type of product or service, they will likely start their search with the name of your city. So, “DetroitCarCareExperts” or “BestPizzaOrlando” will be more likely to show up in their results than just “A1Mechanics” or “MariosItalian.”

2. Don’t Use Your Own Personal Name

You may be very proud of your company or organization’s web presence, but you should probably avoid labeling it with your own name. While it might be a good idea to own and control the domain of your name for personal purposes, for business purposes, there is really no benefit. It is highly unlikely that you share a name with whatever it is your company does, so anybody who is not searching specifically for you may miss you in search results or not understand what they are seeing.

Of course, there are two notable exceptions to this suggestion. The first is if your name is your brand, such as a celebrity or famous athlete. In that case, it makes total sense to use your name for your domain name, because that is what people will be trying to find.

The other exception is for a business that already shares your name. Many industries like to use the proprietor’s name, like fashion designers, hairstylists, realtors, and others. In those cases, it might make sense to have a domain with your name in it.

But, for an added boost, if your business has your name in it, but you want to appeal to a broader audience, you could have a domain that describes your business, like “RockportHairDesigns,” but then incorporates the actual owner/business name in the content throughout the site.

3. Spelling Counts

Some may find it fun to include obscure words or intentional misspellings in their domain name as a way to set themselves apart. But, be careful doing so. This could exclude or reduce your site in the search results for common words, and it could confuse visitors.

For example, a company selling low-rider truck customization may rank lower in search results if they call their site something like “LowRyderz.” It may also make it difficult for users to find your site if they only hear the name and try to type it directly into the browser, not knowing how to spell it.

Go with something easy to spell for your domain name, and save the tricky and artistic misspelling or obscure naming ideas for individual products or accent points on your site.

4. Brevity is the Soul of Wit

It was true in Shakespeare’s day, and it is still true in our modern, digital age. What seems more likely for someone to remember: “DetroitCornerBakery” or “DanAndGlendasBestLittleDetroitCornerBakery?” The more words you add to your domain name, the harder it is to read and remember. Keep it as short as possible.

The perfect length domain name is a careful balancing act between brand identity and search engine optimization.  Great online brands like Google, Ebay, Yelp, and others have learned how to mix a strong brand presence in the marketplace with a very short domain name that people can easily remember. They have also spent millions in search engine marketing and optimization to make sure they rank highly in search results.

On the other hand, smaller businesses may need the boost of adding things like a product name and location in order to boost search results but have to avoid getting too wordy. A possible compromise may be using widely accepted abbreviations, like “auto” instead of “automobile,” “SoCal” instead of “Southern California,” or “NY” in place of “New York.”

Also, avoid using articles, like “a,” “an,” and “the,” such as “TheDenverRealtyCo.” People are likely to forget about these words when typing in your domain and may end up on a competitor’s website that has a similar but shorter name.

5. Avoid Mimicking Another (More Popular) Brand

Speaking of similarly named sites, many find it a pretty tempting pitfall to try to use a domain name that closely resembles someone else’s site name. Many have thought if they could use a major brand name in part of their domain, it might trick customers into visiting their site, driving up traffic.

This was actually a favorite trick of unscrupulous web developers in the early days of the Internet. But, with a deluge of trademark and copyright infringement lawsuits, and the purchase of many variations of popular brand names as domains, the practice has almost entirely fallen out of favor.

It is much more likely that using a variation of a more well-known brand in your domain will not generate any more business for you, but could anger site visitors looking for the other company, attract lawsuits, and create a number of other headaches you would probably prefer to avoid.

Use the Goldilocks Approach

Finding the right domain name may be tricky. But, keeping these ideas in mind should put you on the right path. Take your time, think it through, and find a domain that is just right for your business or organization. Want to try out more than one variation? Buy them all and see which generates the best results. In the end, choosing the right domain name will be a mix of careful strategy, intuition, and a dash of your own personality.

And remember, purchase a web hosting plan from InMotion Hosting and your domain is FREE for the first year. Click here for more info.

If you want to run your domain idea by me, feel free to get in touch with me. I'd be happy to hear your idea and give you feedback.

The post How to Pick a Good Domain Name. 5 Quick Tips to Consider. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The InstaWealth Growth System is part of the Wolfmillionaire offering, and as a matter of disclosure, I did not get paid or compensated to do this review in any way. As with all my reviews, these are my thoughts and opinions on this product. You can find the course at Wolfmillionaire.com

The first chapter didn't do a whole lot for me. I've been using Instagram for a while, and I know the ins and outs of the app, settings and all that stuff.

There were a few tips I picked up along the way but nothing earth-shattering yet. You may find that this is the case for you if you're also experienced with Instagram already. However, this is a comprehensive course so it makes sense that Chapter 1 would be a complete overview of all the basics of setting up your Instagram account.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BS37gSSheLJ/

Based on this approach, if you're new to Instagram or are ready to dive in seriously, I highly recommend you go through this and take notes.

If you're completely new to Instagram, I would suggest you complete all 12 modules before you do anything on Instagram because some of the modules later in the chapter connect back to some of the first modules.

If you have had an account for a while and have been active, then you should go through Chapter 1 and fill in the gaps as you go to make sure your profile is all tidy and ready for the next sections.

Below are my comments from each module for Chapter 1

Chapter 1 has 12 modules.

Chapter 1 Intro video

Basics, intro, setting up the expectations for the course and quick overview. The introduction covers all the basic stuff from the get-go; this is ideal for anybody that is totally brand new to Instagram or someone that might want to give their profile a "once over" to make sure everything is tidy and ready for growth.

Chapter 1 - module 1

This section covers the differences between the two mobile operating systems: iOS and Android. Good tips that will help power users decide between the two platforms.

Chapter 1 - module 2

Suggests creating a brand new email address to prevent hacking and phishing attacks. Explains why and when you'll need it.

Chapter 1 - module 3 (iOS / Android)

This module covers creating an Instagram account using either iOS or Android. Covers name, username, password and best security practices. Expect a full walkthrough of the account setup process for each platform.

Chapter 1 - module 4

This module covers all the Instagram settings for each version of the app, iOS/Android.

Account verification and configuring all the settings. It's a complete walkthrough of all the fields and options available. It explains why you should use different things for each field. You think you should just use your real name? Think again.
Anthony covers all the icons, menus, notifications, linked accounts, and privacy settings sections.

Simple yet powerful tips for bio design, using the right email address, link and more in your bio. Overall a good chapter to help you get a good foundation for your Instagram account. A good review for existing Instagram users.

Chapter 1 - module 5

I noticed the first "mistake" with a blatant spelling error in the title of this module. Most people would criticize this as being careless or low-quality, but being a content creator myself I can overlook this. So far the content and training videos have been really good, so this doesn’t bother me.

Great chapter to help you protect your account against hackers and thieves. Best practices and tips to help Instagram recover your account for you should you ever have a problem with it. Also, covers how to get in if you lose or forget your password.

Chapter 1 - module 6

This module dives further into the configuration for bio, including picture and details for a better bio. A couple of neat little tricks to make your bio stand out and be more efficient. Some of the differences between using a photo vs. a logo.

Chapter 1 - module 7

This is an interesting module, it’s about 18 minutes of analyzing profiles of over 15 accounts. Covers the good and the bad, and how each profile might be improved upon with small tips and tweaks.

Chapter 1 - module 8

This section covers how to set your link in your bio to maximize its effectiveness. One of the things I disagree with is using a bit.ly link.

I think Bit.ly should be the last option to make a short link. Instead, I would recommend using your blog to create a redirect or use a custom URL shortener with your own short domain using something like Linktrackr.

If you want to link to a social media profile, you can use your own website to create a redirect to make the link look clean like Anthony recommends. I covered that in this blog post before.

Chapter 1 - module 9 & 10 (Android and iOS version)

A module covering some of the apps that Anthony recommends as essential helper apps. The only issue I have with this module is that some of these apps may become popular or die depending on user interaction so they can change with time. I think you can focus on the functionality and maybe find alternatives that you prefer.

The apps are meant to enhance your Instagram experience and to make you more efficient. These apps cover a few things that Instagram lacks and help you with some efficiency and productivity hacks to save you time.

Chapter 1 - module 11

Covers direct messaging, the ins and outs. - This might be the least useful module from chapter 1. At least it was for me, but if you’ve never used Instagram before, you should go through it to understand how the internal Instagram messaging system works.

Chapter 1 - module 12

An overview of the various places where you can find new content, explore, search, places and hashtags. A good overview of these Instagram features. This may be useful if you’ve been using Instagram but never actually ventured into these areas, but a must for anybody new to Instagram.

Covers how to find accounts, content, how to determine which accounts are verified and legitimate, also ties back to picking your name and understanding how your choices affect your discoverability.

Also, covers some of the ideas behind what niches work and how people are making money on Instagram; seems like a good segue to the next sections.

In conclusion to chapter 1, these are my thoughts.

This is a great introductory chapter to the Instagram world. It's good whether you're looking to extend your reach or make money from Instagram. I haven't gotten to the "make money" so when I get to it, I'll let you know what I think.  And you should go through it whether you've been on Instagram for a while or are just about to get started. It is especially important if you're going to really put effort into growing your Instagram following because if you don't have the basics right, not even

You should go through this chapter whether you've been on Instagram for a while or are just about to get started. It is especially important if you're going to really put effort into growing your Instagram following because if you don't have the basics right, not even Social Runner can help you.

For those of you that have gone through this, let me know what you thought about it in the comments, do you agree with my assessment? Chapter 2 is next and I'll probably give you the rundown of that section in a few days. Stay tuned!

The post Instagram Course Review. Wolfmillionaire’s InstaWealth Growth System Chapter 1 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Not so fast. Doing this can land you in some trouble with the person or entity that owns the photos or graphics. You may be able to get away with using a photo without permission for a while, but you could also get some nasty letters and legal action brought against you.

I know a friend that had to settle out of court for a little over $700 after she used a photo owned by Getty without permission. There are tons of similar stories out there, so why risk getting in trouble and why risk all the hassle?

In today's video, I discuss the issues surrounding using images without permission, and how you can find copyright-free images to use in your blog posts, legally.

If you're too busy to watch the video, too bad. Let's just suffice it to say that there's a little-known trick to use Google to find images that are licensed for use on your blog post.

But because you're a good blogger and are using WordPress to run your blog (right?), you can also skip the video and check out another blog post I wrote about a WordPress plugin that solves this whole issue of acquiring images.

The plugin is called Imageinject; with it, you can search for images and insert them directly into and from your blog post; you can find my write-up about it here. But the video above has the method you can use to get images from Google to use in your blog posts legally.

The post How to Find Images to Use on Your Blog Posts Legally appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The blog has a monthly theme, and March's theme is "Green." You can read my first article there; it's titled You Need a Platform to Make the Green. So far it's well received, and I think it has the most shares out of any articles. It talks about the need to have a proper platform if you're an author.

The plan is to publish between four and eight blog posts each month over there to help authors and aspiring authors understand online marketing better and help them establish their online presence. I have always said it and will continue to say it; you need your own website!

Even my kids have their own domains and websites. They were established well before they were born; that's how important I think websites are.

Social media is great and a critical resource to help build an audience, and extend our reach, but ultimately a website is our own platform where we make the rules, we publish what we want, and we brand ourselves in the best possible way. In contrast, social media can be restrictive and rigid.

I hope to convey the idea that every author, aspiring or published should have their own blog or at least a website so they can start branding themselves and establishing age in their domain. Wish me luck!

The post New Partnership with the O.C. Writers Community appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

That's why I do it to save you time and effort. I like to give you options, but I also like to show you the best of the best and save you the headache of using junk. Some people like to give you round-ups of 97 tools that all do the same thing.

That's not me; I'll give you a couple of options and tell you which one works the best. In this case, this is the best tool in its class.

Today I want to show you a tool every single blogger needs. It's called Grammarly. I know it has made me a better blogger and will probably help you as well.

I included it on my Must Have Tools for Bloggers in 2017. And it has become even more ingrained in my daily work-flow.

Grammarly is like a spell checker and grammar checker but on steroids. It is excellent, and it will help you fix your common spelling mistakes, but it will also help you write with more style.

The best part about it? It's free, check it out here. Yes, I upgraded to their premium service because it is that good and it was on sale recently. As you know I don't pay for most of the services for this blog, I usually get them for free, so I can try them out and tell you about them.

Grammarly is one of the few that I paid without a second thought.

Then I was pleasantly surprised to receive my first set of statistics via email. That email is in fact what prompted me to tell you more about it in this blog post. Let's go over those stats for fun:

First, I used it to check a lot of text recently...

You may not need to check that many words, but apparently, I did. And I'm glad I had them checked with Grammarly.

Grammarly tells me about my accuracy.

Ah, but of course Grammarly also likes to stroke my ego. And why not?

But before I get too hung up on that, it takes me back to reality to remind me of the things that I need to work on.

Why do you need Grammarly?

Grammarly because context is everything!

You may think you don't need it. But that's the thing with writing. It's mostly dependent on our bias. Unless you have a professional editor going over all your blog posts and making sure you are using proper grammar and not mistakenly typing "too" for "to" or "their" for "there," you need Grammarly.

Grammarly knows your writing context and will remind you that maybe using "too" is the wrong word this time and it really should be "to" or "two." It also tells you when you use certain words too much and brings in the thesaurus to give you a broader set of options you hadn't thought about.

Because it will save you embarrassment

Grammarly is great for multi-author bloggers. Another reason you need this as a blogger is when you manage other authors, or you accept guest posts. Grammarly has a built-in anti-plagiarism checker, so it saves you the embarrassment of publishing someone else's work disguised as a guest post.

Because it gives you confidence

Many bloggers are hesitant to blog a lot because they feel like they can't write well. Some have English as their second, or even third language and they're not very confident with it yet. Grammarly takes that anxiety out of the question because it will help you with everything I mentioned above.

So far it has been incredibly accurate and useful for me and I've been writing in English for over 20 years.

Go ahead, give it a try, it's free. You'll thank me later.

The post Grammarly Makes Me a Better Blogger, Let Me Tell You Why appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The panel, from left to right on the photo:

• John Chow - Dot Com Mogul and blogger, Johnchow.com // Twitter
• John Rampton - Entrepreneur, blogger and connector. Founder of Due.com // Twitter
• Syed Balkhi - Award-winning entrepreneur with several 7-figure online businesses, blogs at SyedBalkhi.com // Twitter
• Zac Johnson - World renown blogger and entrepreneur, founder of Blogging.org // Twitter

The experts in the panel have remained the same for some time because these guys are the top bloggers in the industry and their blog's income range from 7 to 8 figures yearly.

As a side note, before I get on with the rest of the article, Affiliate Summit East tickets are now on sale and you should take advantage of the early bird pricing. Tickets usually sell out well before the event so if you're interested, make sure you get yours check here for more info.

How to Become a Millionaire Blogger.

This panel is also one of the highest rated sessions at Affiliate Summit, this year it was ranked as the number one session.

The recurring theme of this panel revolves around a discussion of the strategies and techniques these super bloggers use to achieve the massive success they enjoy now.

Specifically, I felt the tips were very practical and I want to focus on a few.

Everybody talked about quality over quantity

Blogging has evolved significantly in the past 10 to 15 years. You have to produce great content. It used to be that you could just post as much as possible and you would get people to your blog because the competition was low.

Now you need to produce content regularly and it needs to be high-quality content.

Zac Johnson doubled down on quality over quantity.

Zac doubled down on the point about quality over quantity. Forget about producing a lot of content, instead, write the best you can he said.

Zac also suggests that a way to increase quality when you're building your reputation growing is to gather information from other experts and create round-up blog posts.

Syed suggested analyzing your most successful posts.

One of the things that you can do to improve quality and maximize your efforts is to write a lot of content and then analyze it by looking at your statistics and see what is the most sought after content. Then, write more of that.

A great tip that Syed reminded us about was to use the advanced search feature in Twitter to find new ideas for content. Use the "questions" filter to narrow down to topics people are talking about in your niche, Syed suggested.

John Rampton talked about promoting.

All bloggers should know that just because you wrote it, doesn't mean people will find it. You have to spend time promoting and making sure your posts reach the intended audience.

My personal rule of thumb is to spend at least 10 - 12 hours of promotion for every 1 hour of creation. John made it a little more simple by suggesting you split your efforts to about 40/60 on creating and promoting. So spend 40% of your time creating content and 60% promoting it.

John Chow talked about leveraging your efforts across various platforms.

There's a trick that all bloggers should leverage and that is to reuse your content in different formats and mediums.

John suggested that a video can become a blog post, and a series of blog posts can become an eBook and you can turn that into an e-course and even a live workshop, thus maximizing the monetization potential for what amounts to virtually the same information.

How do you actually become a millionaire blogger?

First, start a blog about something you are knowledgable about. Follow the other advice I've given you about that, then I highly recommend you attend an upcoming Affiliate Summit and make it a point to attend the millionaire blogger session if you want to learn how to make money from blogging.

The post How to Become a Millionaire Blogger Session at Affiliate Summit appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

One of the struggles I went through was thinking less of myself and forgetting that I knew more than other people about certain topics.

Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I take for granted what I know and think that everybody else must already know it so I wonder why would anybody care to hear what I have to say about it.

I take it back, I think many people struggle with this, not just me. Don't let self-doubt take over and prevent you from sharing what you know with people that want to learn more!

On a previous blog post where I explained what is a sales funnel, I suggested that a way to build part of the sales funnel is to offer exclusive information or content to your prospects or leads, if the words "prospects" or "leads" concern you, just think about your readers instead.

When you offer information on your blog, this information will attract new prospects, and help you develop your leads. This information will attract more readers and make casual readers into loyal fans.

If you're looking to get started with your blog, or you're looking for a way to start a home business, you may be wondering how you can offer anything valuable to your readers on your blog. Especially when you are just getting started and when it seems like everything is already in Google.

Why wouldn't they just search for it on Google? I answer that question with a question... Who is going to provide that information for Google to

I have two examples you can use to offer insightful valuable information that your audience will be happy to receive from you.

Curate information from your sources

As you become proficient in online marketing, and running your own business, you will certainly be learning from various sources. These sources will be books, blogs, videos and people.

Share the things you've learned with your audience and practice teaching them. Give credit to the source and feel free to quote an idea, or a passage, then explain it in your own words.

I did this exact thing in a recent post that was really popular where I shared a technique to sell more girl scout cookies, check it out to see a practical example.

Translate how the lesson applies to your own entrepreneurial journey and how it may help others achieve their goals.

As a bonus to get even more readers, share tidbits from the articles in social media and invite them back to your website to read the rest.

Share your process, failures, and progress

One of the most popular ways that big bloggers and online marketers become successful is by sharing what they did, how they did it and the lessons they picked up from trying things out.

Harsh Agrawal from Shoutmeloud considers himself a "blog scientist" and when he was just learning and getting started, he would blog about the different things that worked and the things that didn't work. He still shares the stuff he learns as he continues to improve.

Matthew Woodward is known for sharing intricate details about his experiments and tests, and he shares how he worked in a campaign, why he picked that campaign, what the results were and ultimately how much money he earned or invested into that.

Don't be afraid!

Don't be afraid of sharing what you have learned and sharing your success as well as your failures. Even if you are sharing information you feel is available elsewhere, you can explain it in your own words and perspective to provide unique value.

Not only will you attract new readers, but you will build trust and authority by sharing your experiences with your readers.

Over time, you can turn a series of these blog posts into a lead magnet or even a paid product to help you build a stronger sales funnel. But we'll leave the details of that for another blog post in the future.

Thank you so much for reading this! I hope it was valuable to you and if you think it would be useful to your friends, family or colleagues please share it with one of the social media buttons available below.

The post How Can I Offer Exclusive Information to my Readers appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

We met up during Affiliate Summit at the EIG party to have some drinks, food and to hit some golf balls at Topgolf. But the rest of the event was all about sharing tips, tricks, and learning how to take our blogs, videos, and businesses to the next level.

Hitting golf balls with my buddy Harsh, @denharsh from @shoutmeloudcom during #ASW17 At the EIG party. #lasvegas #topgolf #enduranceinternationalgroup #hosting

A photo posted by Oscar Gonzalez (@notagrouch) on Jan 21, 2017 at 10:02am PST

This time during Affiliate Summit West 2017, we met again to catch up. I also interviewed him and asked him some questions about blogging, his new project and I asked him for some tips to share with you. You'll see those in the video.

Want to help me share this post? Tweet it out with the link below, or share it on your favorite social network. I'd really appreciate it.

[bctt tweet="Interview with one of the world's most influential bloggers, Harsh from Shoutmeloud." username="notagrouch"]

Last year, Harsh attended Affiliate Summit as a regular affiliate. But this time around he was also a speaker. His session was dedicated to sharing his growth hacking tips which helped him double his affiliate revenue in about 1.5 years.

Naturally, I asked him about his growth hacking techniques during the interview. Even though I hate the term growth hacking because most people misuse it, I really got value out of Harsh's presentation. If you are a blogger, you should have been there. He was one of many speakers why it is always worth going to Affiliate Summit.

I asked him about his newest project which might surprise a lot of people. It's related to bitcoin and other alternative currencies; an emerging market to say the least. The name of that project is Coinsutra. And at the end, I asked him to share three tips for bloggers going into 2017.

On a side note, you can get the early-bird pricing for Affiliate Summit East 2017 already here. If you attended but missed Harsh's session then you should get access to a recording of the session soon.

You can watch my interview with Harsh in the video below:

The post Growth Hacking Tips From Harsh Agrawal – Affiliate Summit Interview appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

During my visit to Affiliate Summit West 2017 last week, I had a chance to interview the biggest blogger in India. One of the biggest bloggers in the world.

I asked him about his talk and presentation at #ASW17 where he gave some great tips to growth hack your blog. He also talked about alternative currencies and his new project Coin Sutra and to close out the interview, he gave some of the top tips for bloggers to succeed in 2017.

#blogger #blogging #makemoney #topblogger #interview #ASW17 #bitcoin #monetization #coinsutra #shoutmeloud #notagrouch #2017 #videooftheday #ig #affiliates #onlinemarketing #blogs #bloggerslife

Photo taken at: Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino

View on Instagram

The post Affiliate Summit West 2017 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Keep in mind most of these tools are free or have a free version, but some are paid only or only have a free trial. I personally use every single tool listed here and in most cases, I have the paid version. I consider them essential to my business and as a professional blogger, I think of them as part of the cost of doing business.

If you want to become a professional blogger or want to take your blogging to the next level, then check out the list of tools, sign up for them and start using them, learn them, improve your workflow but I would also love your feedback and any tips about your favorite tools to use when blogging.

So without further ado, here's the list.

1. Self-Hosted WordPress

You can start a blog with various different tools, Medium, Blogger, Tumblr, but hands down, the best blogging platform when it comes to a balance of features, reliability, and customizability is a self-hosted WordPress blog. A blogger that is using one of the free services like blogger is usually considered a casual blogger or hobbyist. There's nothing wrong with these services, but they are limited and hard to customize when you need to grow and expand.

Some of the services I mentioned allow you to upgrade from the free version to a paid service which will give you more options, but ultimately they still restrict your ability to fully customize your readers' experience. If you want to be a serious blogger in 2017 and for the foreseeable future, start your blog on WordPress.org or move to a WordPress.org blog.

There are many companies that offer web hosting and will help you setup a self-hosted WordPress blog. You can find some of my recommended web hosts on this blog post about web hosting, and you can read more about self-hosted WordPress here.

2. Grammarly

Spell check is so 2005. As a blogger, you need Grammarly before you hit publish on your next blog post. Grammarly is the world's best proofreader according to them. It extends beyond the basic grammar and spell check and intelligently corrects your text so you can put your best work in front of your readers. It's easy to use and works with all major browsers, and did I mention that it's free?

Your readers will appreciate that you can write well. Just by using Grammarly and following the suggestions provided on-screen, you will start writing better posts which will make your writing more professional. Get started with Grammarly for free here.

3. Capitalize my title

This little online service helps you correctly capitalize your titles. It works no matter what style you want to follow, AP, APA, Chicago or MLA. Just visit the website, paste in your title and click the style you want to use and it will automatically take care of capitalizing the words properly. Completely free to use here: capitalizemytitle.com.

4. Canva

Graphics play an important role in every blog post. But you don't have to possess great Photoshop skills to create great graphics for your blog posts. Canva is a free online service that helps you make title graphics, infographics, and other graphical elements to make your blog posts stand out. Get a canva account for free right here.

5. Imageinject / WP-Inject*

This is a plugin made for WordPress (self-hosted) bloggers. It helps to find images that are licensed under the Creative Commons license and are free to use in a blog post. It also takes care of inserting the relevant attribution information.The plugin is available for

I recommend it to almost all new and established bloggers. Using images in your blog posts helps improve reader engagement, shareability, SEO and ultimately makes your blog posts more complete.

The plugin is available for free in the official WordPress repository.

6. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the gold standard for measuring the number of visitors your blog receives and learning more about the audience of your blog. It should be one of the first things that you install on your blog and you should spend time learning how to use it and how to use its information to help you improve your blog.

You can install Google Analytics on your WordPress blog easily by using a plugin like Monster Insights. You'll need a Google or Gmail account, and you can sign up for free for a Google Analytics account here.

7. Social Media Accounts

Every blogger should have at least a basic presence on all the major social networks. Having an account on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest, and Youtube helps reach a wider audience and facilitates the engagement with the audience for the blog where they like to hang out. Sign up for each network and develop a profile. Learn to search each platform and understand how your audience is using each of the networks so that you can participate in relevant conversations when necessary without having to start from scratch.

8. Buffer

Buffer is a social media share service that helps bloggers distribute their content across many of the major social networks. The basic plans are free, and the paid version provides access to some really powerful features like the power editor and access to share in more than five networks in one action. I find it

Buffer works the best in a browser, but it's also available for iOS and Android, just go to their main website here to get started.

9. Plagium

This is particularly useful when you have multiple authors contributing stories and blog posts to your blog. The main purpose is to check if the blog post as been published somewhere else before and helps you avoid plagiarism. Nobody likes a content thief so this will save you hours of headaches and prevent many problems and even legal hassles. Of course, the best thing is to find writers and contributors that don't steal other people's content but just in case, you can use

Of course, the best thing is to find writers and contributors that don't steal other people's content but just in case, you can use Plagium for free by visiting the website here.

10. Evernote

Evernote is the swiss army knife of research and note keeping. It's a very powerful tool that helps you gather your thoughts when you're researching a topic. The browser plugin helps you make connections to stuff you might have researched before.

If you use it in conjunction with Skitch, then you can also save screenshots and photos and recall them with OCR (optical character recognition) which means that you just have to type in a word that appears in the screenshot or picture to bring up the note, even if you saved it months or weeks ago. The free version is very powerful, but the paid version is very inexpensive, you can start using Evernote by visiting their site here.

11. Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud storage service that lets you easily save files and documents so that they're available from any of your devices almost instantly. You can also use it to share access to a file or document with other bloggers or contributors.

Dropbox, like Evernote, is free for a limited edition of their service, but you can sign up and invite others to use it to get more free space. If you want to sign up and receive an additional 500mb of free space, then sign up for Dropbox here using my link.

12. Aweber

Aweber is an autoresponder email system that helps you send your blog posts out to your subscribers on a regular basis. It is a powerful tool that should really be at the very top of this list. The only reason I didn't put it up there is because it only has a free month trial and after that, you'll need to pay for the service.

I use it and I highly recommend it, you can use it to build your email list and send your blog posts manually or set it to automatically send the blog post automatically after you publish it. You can also create a newsletter or digest to stay in touch with your readers. Get started with a free 30 day trial with Aweber here.

13. Optinmonster

I have blogged about Optinmonster in the past, so maybe you already use it because of my suggestion. It's one of my favorite tools and I make it a requirement for any of my students or clients. That's how much I like it and believe in its capabilities. If you're trying to grow your audience and exposure on your blog, you must use Optinmonster.

It's not free and it's not cheap, but it can really take your email subscriptions to the next level. Another good thing about Optinmonster is that even if you refuse to use a WordPress self-hosted blog, you can still use Optinmonster. It is also under heavy development and constantly adds new features that benefits all bloggers, like custom code, analytics, content lockers, conditional triggering and much more. If you're ready to elevate your blog, then

It is under heavy development and the team constantly adds new features that benefits all bloggers, like custom code, analytics, content lockers, conditional triggering and much more. If you're ready to elevate your blog, then check out Optinmonster here.

Wrapping Up

As I reviewed this post, I realized I am missing a number of apps and services that I use on a daily basis, but I also understand that your time is valuable and if you're new to blogging this list should keep you busy for a while so I'm going to stop at 13. I would love to hear your thoughts on this list, and I want to know if you interested in learning about the other tools. Let me know in the comments or on social media.

The post Must Have Tools for Bloggers appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This series of blog posts and videos cover all steps and necessary information for you to make the right decisions and start your blog in the right direction.

Let's Talk About Web Hosting Video

Notes and Additional Info About the Web Hosting Video

In this video, I talk about web hosts. Selecting a web hosting company is one of the most important decisions you'll make when starting a blog. If you buy the cheapest option, you may be fine for a long time. The quality of the hosting will come into question if somerthing goes wrong.

You could get lucky and never have a problem. Or you could be like one of the dozens of people I help each month after their host fails to support them properly.

If you go with the first host that shows you an advertisement, you'll probably go wrong as well. In the video I cover some of the most important factors to consider when choosing a web host for your blog. Take a few minutes to watch it.

At the end of this blog post, I also have a list of my recommended web hosting companies.

Age of the web host

This may be unusual, and many other bloggers won't even talk about this. It may or may not be essential to talk about it, but I think it is.

I mention considering the age of the web host (how long have they been in business) because when you're starting out, you want to go with a company that has been around for some time.

It is true that sometimes a brand new (6 months - 1 year) company may offer fantastic web hosting services with lots of features and benefits. But you just don't know if they're going to last and be able to work for you and with you when things get difficult. When starting out, stick to the veterans in the industry. 6 - 10 years or more.

Reviews and Public Comments

Reviews are important but don't make a rash decision because you see a few bad reviews or a few amazing reviews.

Dig deeper into it and make sure you understand why people are praising the company or complaining about it. Generally, the list of web hosts I recommend below are all excellent in all the critical aspects of web hosting --If you want to save yourself some time.

Support for WordPress

Do they provide WordPress-specific support and services? -- Webhosting is a bit of a utility nowadays, almost anybody can do it, so in a general sense, it almost doesn't matter which one you pick.

But some real differences will make deciding a little bit more easily. Since you're looking for a host now, the real benefit of picking a good host is picking a host that supports the application you will be using.

In the case of a blog, you will likely be using WordPress. WordPress is also what I recommend 98% of the time. All of the hosts I recommend have WordPress specific services and expertise and support WordPress.

Customer Support

Not only does WordPress specific support matter, but general customer support is important as well. Do they provide phone, email, or chat support?

Or maybe all of them? Most of the hosts I recommend provide at least two of these methods. My favorite kind of host provides phone support, chat support and email support. I expect them to respond to email requests within 12 - 24 hours, simple requests should take less than 4 hours.

Phone calls may take 3 - 10 minutes to be answered and generally, the issues are resolved within 15 - 90 minutes. Chat support is usually the best because it's real-time but you aren't waiting on hold or wondering if anybody's working on your email support ticket.

Cost of Web Hosting

Whatever you do, don't go cheap for sake of being cheap!  There are a few different types of web hosting. I broke them down in practical terms and highlighted the price range at the end.

Regular shared hosting.

Also known as shared hosting, it works for 95% of the blogs out there. It's simple to use, you control everything via web interface. The main downside to shared hosting is that you are using a pool of resources distributed amongst any number of customers.

So for example, when you sign up for shared hosting, you will be put into a server with a number of other customers, maybe 150, maybe 2000. It all depends on the company and the type of resources.

The problem comes in when you are put into a server that already has for example, 300 users but it's really designed to host 200. They tend to do this because they know that statistically, most users won't use any resources so it's okay to have a lot of people there.

They handle this as they go, and if a customer complains a lot, they may get moved over to a server that is "less crowded" to put it in simple terms.

That's the problem with shared hosting, the other customers may affect the performance of your website. If one of the other customers gets featured on a viral post in Facebook, or makes the front page somewhere, the traffic coming to that site may affect all the other customers in that server.

There are VPS (virtual private servers) services, there are also managed hosting services and there is also dedicated server hosting.

When you are starting out, you will most likely use a shared web hosting account. This ranges from $2.95 per month up to 15 - 17 per month.

The next best thing is a Virtual Private Server.

VPS and Managed hosting.

VPS means Virtual Private Server which guarantees a certain amount of resources, and you have a little more control and options than you do with regular shared web hosting. Prices for VPS services range from 15 to 30 dollars per month and up.

Managed hosting is somewhat of a newer service in the web hosting space, especially when it comes to WordPress. It generally means the quality of service somewhere in between shared hosting and VPS or Dedicated hosting.

Many companies offer shared hosting and VPS and dedicated hosting and you can seamlessly upgrade as you need through their various offerings. so if you start with shared hosting, you can probably upgrade to any plan you need if your blog grows, they will help you and I know everybody that I list here and I recommend is able to do that, it's one of the requirements I have before I can recommend a company.

Generally, VPS hosting plans and managed hosting include high-end guaranteed resources but they also manage and control the application; often these services don't allow you to install other applications and access to files or database may be limited.

Managed hosting plans range between $16-$35 per month and more. These are highly recommended if you're willing to pay for it and really value the purpose of your blog or website. Most times these services come with dedicated support staff, faster response time, automatic backups and other nice perks. Your web developer, or web guy, or web designer will love you if you have this kind of service or better because fixing issues is much easier.

To decide, work out your budget

Decide what your budget is per year and then break that down on a per month basis and that way you can see which type of hosting you can afford.

Having a budget is a good thing, but you also need to know that you will need to spend some money on your blog. Your budget should be around $120-$500 per year to start.

With the hosts I recommend below, if you use the shared plans you'll probably end up between $80 and $100 for the year.

Additional Notes, Questions, and Answers

• How do you actually get the low rates that are advertised? And how do you save the most money? Answered at timestamp 2:48.
• How I pick web hosting for my clients and why. Growth and expansion are important too. Answered at 3:45.
• If you need to upgrade, will the web-hosting company help you? I talk about this at the 4:20 mark. All the services I listed below will help you move up to a larger plan when you need with minimal or no hassle at all.
• What are the value-added services and items you get with web hosting companies? I cover this around the 4:55 mark

I also mentioned that I would put a link to my recommended web hosts, so here is that list, in order of preference:

My Preferred web hosts

These are my preferred go-to hosts for myself and my clients when they are starting out and or are budget conscious. Perfect for personal blogs and business starter blogs. These companies and all their plans will upgrade nicely as you grow, you just need to contact support when you start hitting your limits. That's a nice problem to have, right?

• ** Inmotion Hosting - They have it all. This link goes to their current best deal. ** RECOMMENDED **
• GreenGeeks * - They're great, they also have a better-than-zero carbon footprint.

Managed WordPress Web Hosts

There is only one web host in this list, and it is the top WordPress-centric web host. It is super fast and very efficient. Though, there are a couple of downsides to using this. Primarily the price and the restrictive nature of a "WordPress only" host, but if you can afford 29/month and you don't need a lot of custom software outside of WordPress then you can go with these guys. They also take care of hourly backups which can make a huge difference if something goes wrong.

• WP Engine

Other Recommended Web Hosts for WordPress

These are web hosts that I am comfortable recommending because I have used them personally in the past, or currently manage websites running on these services; they generally run well.

• Dreamhost * Please note, Dreamhost uses a custom management panel and it can be frustrating to use at first but once you get used to it, it's great. Its performance is generally fine, but management can be difficult for people without prior experience. If this is your first time hosting a website, you'll be fine since you don't know any different.
• Hostgator * This also has fans and haters. Some big bloggers use it, some bloggers hate it. I have a plan with them and run a lot of projects with them, Never had a problem, and support has been great every time. I also manage a few customers there with no issues at all.

As I continue with this launch your blog series, I will add more information and videos. Be sure to subscribe to the email list to receive the updates and don't miss a thing.

Please help me help others by sharing this post on your favorite social media sites too!

The post Let’s Talk About Web Hosting – How to Pick a Good Web Host for Your WordPress Blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

A few tips of advice to get practice in writing.

1) Start writing.

2) Don't complicate yourself. Just write.

3) Start a blog and write a lot online.

4) Promote and pitch your work around.

Starting a blog is probably the easiest way to get writing practice. The reason I suggest you start a blog instead of just writing on your computer is that you can put the writing out there and get some people to read it.

When people read your work even as a beginner, you learn a lot more than if you just write for yourself. You'll notice if people are interested, you'll find out if you have a voice that people want or if you need to adjust it.

Also by writing in a public blog, you'll learn ancillary tasks like promoting and getting exposure. Many writers think that they just have to write well and that's it. But today, you have to know how to put your writing in front of people so you need to get at least a basic understanding of that.

Once you get some practice blogging, you should do some guest blogposts in notable places to get exposure. This has been and still is an extremely valuable method of getting recognized as an expert or leader in your niche. But there's a key element to make this successful.

One key aspect that Neville mentions regarding guest blogging in this video is to do the work in advance! Many times people pitch the idea of writing a blogpost for someone but they don't have the blogpost yet. They want to be accepted before they write the article. This is counter productive.

If you are not known, the publishing place will not care to negotiate with you or go back and forth discussing ideas and possible topics to write about. Instead, Neville suggests you do the work up front, write the article specifically for the outlet you will pitch and then approach them. The worst thing that can happen is that they'll turn you down. You can then tweak the article a bit and pitch it to another outlet.

The secret behind this successful technique of course is that if you have the article written already, and  you crafted it with that specific media outlet in mind then they are more likely to say yes because the article is ready to go. It's less work for the editor or publisher.

That's it for this blogpost, I'm keeping it short. I wanted to share this video and a few tips that have been extremely useful for me. I started following Neville's videos earlier this summer and his advice is solid. Probably one of the best sources and most underrated YouTube channels for online marketers.

I don't know if Neville will continue to make videos, but you should check out the ones that are already published on his channel, you can find it here. And he also has a copywriting course that seems pretty cool, but I haven't tried it myself. You can find the course at Kopywritingkourse.com.

The post Tips From Neville Medhora How To Get Practice Writing appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Many will start but only a few will finish. Will you make it to the 90 day mark?

If you're an affiliate, a blogger, a social media professional or regular business person I recommend you join the challenge. If you want to learn Youtube and Facebook video then you should definitely join.

If you have a limited marketing budget, you should also join in the challenge as this could be the best way to market anything on the cheap.

You are invited to join the 90 Day Video Challenge.

The 90 Day Video Challenge is a challenge you can complete to improve your marketing skills, increase subscribers, fine tune your video production skills and ultimately make more money.

How does it work?

After you join the challenge, you are committed to publish one new video each day for 90 days straight. If you miss one day, you're out!

Who can join the video challenge?

Anybody that is willing to take up the challenge and improve themselves, learn something new and meet other like-minded people.

How do I join the challenge?

Make a commitment that you're going to do it, and join our Facebook group: 90 Day Video Challenge. In the group you'll find instructions and tips as well as support from other members to help you get through the challenge.

What kind of videos?

You get to decide what kind of videos. Most people do vlogs, or short informational videos about their business.

Do I have to be on camera for my videos?

No, you can make videos by creating slideshows and adding a voice over, you can make tutorial videos where your face isn't shown. There are many ways to complete this challenge without being on camera.

Is there a bounty or prize?

Not at this moment, but we're working on something. The biggest reward is the benefits that you get from completing the challenge; subscribers, experience, and more money!

Is there a penalty if you fail the challenge?

No, just your own feeling of defeat.

If I complete the challenge, will I become a YouTube star?

Probably not, but you can try.

The post 90 Day Video Challenge appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

How do I find images that I can use on my blogposts?

Synopsis: Sometimes you have a great blogpost but you don't have an image that you created yourself either by using photoshop or by taking a photo yourself. It's easy to just go on Google and look for an image then use it for your blog, but I do not recommend this as a matter of practice because you can run into legal issues.

Just because you find it on Google, doesn't mean you can use it for your blog. You need permission to use photos and images that aren't yours. Or you need to find images and photos that have been licensed for public use under a Creative Commons license or similar.

Short Answer: Use a plugin that facilitates the image search and inserts the photo for you while taking care of the licensing. The plugin is: ImageInject, and you can find it in the WordPress.org repository.

Long answer: You can search the web for images that are free to use, by using the Image search in Google, then using the more tools section to find images that may be licensed under creative commons or other license that allows you to use them for blogpost and business if necessary. This can be tedious and time consuming.

I recommend you use the ImageInject plugin that is free in the WordPress plugin repository.

After you install it and activate it, you will find a new search box at the bottom of your edit window in your blogposts in WordPress. Use this to search for keywords related to the photo you need or want to use.

After you search (1), you'll find a list of images from a couple different sources (2), you can then insert the image directly into your blogpost by using the correct size or set them as a featured image (3).

The plugin also imports the image to your own media library so you can use it as the featured image for that blogpost. The plugin takes care of adding the necessary attribution to the post as well so you should be compliant. The images are free to use as is, or they use the Creative Commons licensing model. You can learn more about that here.

Once you have added an image to the blogpost, you can also set the image as the featured image to that blogpost. Just use the Featured Image section on your edit screen like you would for any other image from your media library.

Of course, the best way to add images to your blogpost is to take your own photos or create your own graphics and use those, but this method I've shown here is the next best thing. Let me know if you have a question I can help you answer, or better yet, join us at the next Blogs & Coffee meetup!

The post How do I Find Images to Use on my Blogposts? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I thought about posting this on my blog, but this is really for you guys. For my friends here, for business owners and entrepreneurs, for freelancers and solo agents and for any of you that aspire to change the world.

If you've never blogged, or hardly ever do, it might seem strange when someone invites you to blog for them.

Let me explain why someone might invite you.

When someone invites you to be a guest blogger in their blog. If they know what they're doing, they just want you to be a guest expert.

They'll take care of posting and formatting the blogpost. They probably will make sure it reads well.

"But I don't know ANYTHING about blogging," you say.

Trust me, they know how much *you* know about blogging... yet they invited you.

But why?

Because they want to help you and help themselves at the same time. If you write on someone else's blog you instantly become a respected figure to the the readers of that blog. #fact

And you save the blogger the time it takes him or her to fill the space and time your blogpost is going to fill on their website. Not to mention that the audience gets a fresh look and perspective and maybe even a brand new topic for a change.

This can be refreshing for you and stimulating for your audience.

Everybody wins

So consider next time a blogger invites you to guest post, if you just write and you let them take care of it you are basically opening up your doors for more business and exposure.

Whatever your business might be.

You are dropping seeds in fertile ground and these could grow to be beautiful and *FRUITFUL* trees in the weeks or months down the road.

The person asking you to write for them, that nutcase... He or she thinks your expertise needs to be heard. It doesn't matter if you think you're not an expert.

Trust me. #runwithit

Don't worry about the inconsequential, like how do I use a blog? Write it on an email and send it to them, they'll know what to do.

Or how do I post the blogpost to twitter once I'm done? - Don't worry about it, they'll know what to do. Instead, you just say yes and write.

If a blogger asks another blogger to guest post, they both know what's up. They know what each other has to do. This is not your case.

When a blogger asks you to write a blogpost for them, but you are not a blogger, don't worry about becoming a blogger. Just write about what you know. They'll take care of all the other things.

Too busy you say. No time you say, and other objections.

Consciously close Facebook for 30 minutes for three days in a row, and use that hour and half to write your article. You'll feel great when you are finished.

You are not too busy to promote yourself and you can and could find the time to do so. Don't tell me otherwise, and more importantly don't lie to yourself and deprive yourself from the opportunity.

Writing in a public forum like a blog can be life-changing for you, it can be life-changing for them, and for the people reading your article.

Oh and the last objection... "I can't write" my spelling and/or grammar is terrible. Guess what? Some of the biggest bloggers I know have the worst grammar in the world. Why?

Because it is inconsequential and easy to fix. But it is not easy to find a mind or heart like yours.

So next time someone asks you to write a little blogpost, I suggest you #doit.

#justsayin

The post When Someone Invites You To Guest Blog, But You’re Not a Blogger appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you just need a refresher, then the topics we covered were all about the basics. We did a short intro about SEO, evergreen content and other things to consider as you begin your planning for a traffic strategy.

We'll revisit a second list of things to check for as you progress through generating traffic to your blog later in the series. Also, as we get more and more into this, the topics will get a bit more advanced. But now let's talk about part two of the series, the email list.

How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog - Part 2 - The Email List

So first things first and get your own email list.

Get an email list. You may think that the one with WordPress.com where people can subscribe to your blog and they get an email when you publish a new post is your email list.

Unfortunately it isn't. What isn't an email list?

Using the built-in service, you can only send them blog updates and you must allow wordpress.com to decide when to email them.

You can't send them an update that is not public on the blog, you can't send them a personal email. This option is not recommended for optimal results.

You need the freedom to email your subscribers whatever you would like when you would like.

Always remember to Own The List. Remember this always. As you start a blog, you will be tempted to use the built-in subscription service for people to join your email updates.

This is not recommended. Because you won't "own the list." if the subscription is all managed by the hosting provider.

Other "email updates" you may want to avoid are "feedburner" or "feedburner-style" WordPress.com provides updates, and Blogger/Blogspot also provides their own email subscription modules. Avoid these, even the Jetpack plugin for WordPress.org (self-hosted) blogs should be avoided. Other ones that you may encounter along the way are Feedblitz, FeedCat, Rapidfeed, and similar ones avoid the as well.

In my opinion, they give your visitors the false sense that they are getting everything they signed up for from you but in reality, they are only getting the blog updates. What if you want to send them an email that doesn't have a blog update?

Set up a real email list

You need to own your email list. I recommend and use Aweber, they are transparent and their support is really good. Another favorite one out there is Mailchimp. One that seems to be cleaning up their act quite a bit is GetResponse and some people are very happy with them lately.

One thing to consider is that if you are lured to Mailchimp or Getresponse because they offer a free account, come back to reality and understand that you'll likely need their paid services sooner than later. Free is nice, but you need some of the paid services to make it work the way you want to.

And maybe you didn't know that you can get started with Aweber for free as well.

No matter which one you use, they all allow you to send manual and automatic updates to your subscribers (the paid ones). If you already started with a service like Feedburner, or WordPress.com, try to export a list of the subscribers and you can try to import that into your new email service provider.

All of the accounts allow for you to import your email list from another service provider as well, or if you have a list from a service like salesforce, or ACT!. You just need a CSV with First Name, Last Name, and Email.

Once you setup your email account with one of them, you'll need to create a list to hold your blog readers. You should name this list something related to your blog. Like mine, for this blog might be named something like "Notagrouch Updates."

Oh one more thing. If you sign up with Aweber or Getresponse through my link, I'll give you a 25 min email strategy session over Skype or Google Hangout for free. Just email me your receipt when you've signed up.

The description in the list should tell your readers why they are part of this list. It can say something like, "You joined this list when you visited and opted into my website notagrouch.com, if you unsubscribe you'll miss out on amazing updates and incredible opportunities" or something to that effect.

This description is usually visible to your subscribers so make it meaningful, memorable and make it clear that they want to stay in the list.

The next thing you need to do is integrate the email list into your blog.

Integrating the list to the blog

You'll notice you can sign up for updates on my blog on the sidebar. There are also other pages that may pop up  a different opportunity to join or to opt into a different list. Sometimes you'll see a bar show up at the top or you'll see another method for you to join one of my email lists.

No matter which email list service provider you use, you'll need to create a sign up form before you can get people in the list. The sign-up form will have the fields you intend to collect from the reader when they sign up. Standard stuff like name and email.

I recommend keeping the opt-in information you require from your visitors to only name and email.

That's all you need and all you really want to ask for. When you ask for more information, it decreases the chances that people will join.

Don't show or ask for any other information, like Zip Code, or phone number. Stick to two fields: Name (1 field) and Email (1 field).

Once you create the sign up form, you will have a chance to install that form into your WordPress blog. Each service does it differently, but Aweber lets you copy the Javascript code. During the last step of your form creating process, you'll have the option to copy it.

Copy that code and then in your WordPress blog, use the Widgets section in the Appearance, menu to add a new Text/HTML widget.

Add the widget to the most prominent sidebar on your blog, or wherever it makes sense. Then, paste the javascript from your Aweber form in this new widget and save it.

Once you refresh your blog, you should see the sign up form in your sidebar in the position where you inserted it in the previous step. You can customize it all you want via Aweber and repeat this process to update it to the latest code.

Leverage plugins to help you get more out of your list.

If you're using WordPress, or even if you aren't, you can use this service called Optinmonster. It lets you create intelligent pop-ups, floating bars, and sidebar widgets to invite your readers to sign up to your list or lists just at the right time. Using this in addition to their current efforts, some people see a sign up increase of up to 600%!

You may think. That's great, but now what? How are people going to sign up and, more importantly why are people going to sign up?

You have to give them a reason to sign up into the list. Let's talk about that next.

Grow the email list

You need to grow the list now that you built it and set it up on your blog. It is known everywhere in marketing and even sometimes outside of marketing and sales, that the money is in the list. So your job isn't necessarily to sell one more thing, rather, your job is to get one more subscriber.

Then let the list do the selling! Let's cover the basics for the list to be able to grow.

First, make sure you get the person to complete the opt-in process. Especially if you're using a double opt-in method.

Here's one way of making sure a subscriber verifies their email address. Offer them an incentive to join the email list and make sure the incentive doesn't get delivered until they verify their email address.

Sometimes people don't confirm their email addresses and they never get new emails from you. You can help increase the opt-in rate and confirmation rate.

A way is to help with opt-in rates, and verification is to use a middle page to explain to them what comes next. Immediately after they put in their name and email, send them to a page to THANK them BUT explain to them that there's one more quick step they need to do to finish the sign-up process.

Let them know that they need to go into their email address inbox they used to sign up and look for your email so they can get the updates in the future. This step alone will increase double opt-in rates significantly. Don't assume the visitor knows how to join your list.

Once they click on the email message to confirm their request to join the list, then you can send them to a final thank you page and have something in the thank you page to direct them to new sections of your blog, the most popular articles, or just a new series of articles they may want to check out now that they're a little more committed to you.

That last step of the process is important, it solidifies the relationship and tells them that there is other content they might be interested in.

What do you do after you add new people to your list?

Send updates to the email list on a regular basis. I recommend and have experienced the best results when sending a regular set of emails after they join your list, and then send them updates on a daily basis. Maybe 5 to 7 times per week.

Some people don't recommend sending emails daily, but the most successful marketers I know send you one daily email for at least a couple of weeks after you join their list, or show interest in their program or business. This is to establish what they're about, tell you about their most important blogposts, showcase their expertise and so on.

Some may call this a "secret" but i don't think it is such a secret.

If you want to send a daily email then to do so in a way that is entertaining but also gives instant value. The readers know that each time they receive an email from you, they will receive a great deal of value in the message itself, immediately, even if you're going to ask them to click through to something. Hopefully, if you received an email from me to come read this post, you've found it valuable thus far.

Oh but,  everybody's sending emails nowadays, you think. So how can you make it different for them?

What more can you give to your readers so they decide unequivocally that they joined your list and they were smart when they joined? How can you make them happy to have found you and happy that they joined your list?

Give them a bribe of course!

So how do you invite new people to join, and have them love you for the opportunity to be part of your list? Well, an ethical bribe of course. Have you ever heard of this?I mentioned it briefly earlier, the incentive. Some people call it a lead magnet, or a free download offer. It's a bribe, a bit of an exchange.

You ask your visitor for his or her name and email, and because they are interested in your free incentive they sign up and agree to give you their name and email. This is basic and has been around for 100+ years. Except for the "email" part, people have been doing free trials, free samples, etc, just to get you in the door for a long time.

At this point, you can make a general assumption on three things about this person that subscribed to you.

You know their name, their email address and that they have an interest in a topic you write about. Or at the very least they're interested in the topic of your ethical bribe.

But EXACTLY what is the ethical bribe?

It can be whatever you would like it to be, like a download. A PDF document, maybe it's a 3 part series on how to get started in whatever topic your blog is about.

You could write the three parts into a nice PDF document. You could read the three parts into audio files and make the incentive be a 3 series quick-start audio guide for your industry.

Here I came up with 3 sample titles for three ethical bribes you could use for your business blog. These are completely hypothetical and the industry experts may laugh at them, but these are simple examples to give you an idea of things you could come up with that could be entertaining and of value.

• 3 Top Ways To Generate Your First Sale
• 3 Life-Saving Techniques To Practice With Your Kid at Pool Anytime
• 3 Horrifying Facts You Didn't Know About Your Carpet
• Top 21 tips to pass the bar exam in Arizona

Write 800 - 1500 words about each one of the ways or techniques or whatever it is, in a nicely designed document, convert it to PDF and you should have like a 4 - 7 page PDF to give for free as soon as they join your list. Use a nice wide space format with a wide gutter and a thick margin. Maybe a large font.

Make it super nice and presentable, make sure you have a footer where your website is displayed there and it's clickable.

That is an ethical bribe, that's a lead magnet.

If you feel that the one you came up with isn't a very strong incentive for someone to sign up, that is okay. It's a start. Done is better than perfect.

Many people think they don't have much to offer when they first create their first lead magnet, but you'll be surprised how much you have to offer to people that started a similar journey as yours, but instead of starting 3 months ago or 6 months ago, or even longer, they started today.

To them, you are an expert!

Your free download could be life-changing for them. Think about that and let it sink in for a moment. You're an expert in their eyes.

Your ethical bribe could also be a service. If you feel like you can close sales on the phone better, then try this on for size. Offer a free consultation for whatever service you offer, then convert the free consultation into a sale. You can make it work.

The lead magnet model always works.

There's always something you can offer for free to somebody that is a potential investor or buyer in your business. Make sure the offer is clear and make sure you are ready to deliver on the promise and make sure you have outlined a path for that person to have the opportunity to purchase something else from you.

For example, I made you an ethical bribe earlier in this blog post. Did you catch that? I told you that I will give you a free email strategy consultation for free if you sign up for Aweber or GetResponse. This would be beneficial for both of us because I can give you some tips about your email marketing efforts and in exchange, you purchase the service with my link which gives me a small commission. 

If your company is a physical company, or a business to business type of company, then a small service may be the ethical bribe. If you're an accounting firm, maybe you offer a 15 to 30-minute account evaluation when they join for free to your newsletter.

Of course, the free gift, or ethical bribe, or evaluation should lead them through an education process that ends with them signing up for your service, making a purchase, or a measurable step towards a purchase.

Other examples are everywhere

You see attorneys give you a 30-minute call to evaluate your case and answer a few questions. Their goal is to spend 30 minutes right now and see if you would be a profitable client. But you also get to evaluate whether this person knows what they're talking and whether you want to hire them.

Your reader also needs to know how valuable your content is, so give them the best in your lead magnet. Make sure it is valuable and of high quality. This is your time to shine.

There are some industries that are regulated so make sure you're not violating andy legal boundaries with any of the things you decide to give away. I don't and can't give you legal or financial advice.

An ethical bribe is a marketing tool that needs to be refined constantly. Whatever you decide to use as a way to invite people to join your email list on your blog, you need to fine tune it on a regular basis.

Over time, maybe you change the title, or maybe expand it and instead of 3 items, you double it or triple it and make it a 9 part series. Continue to improve it.

Make sure you blog about it as well so you can integrate it into the daily feed of your blog updates too.

I covered now some of the technical aspects on how to build your list and add it to your blog. I also covered a few things that will help you grow your list, now there's the maintenance part.

Your list needs to be nurtured and groomed

As you add people to your list, take some time to get to know them a little bit and use tags, or groups in your email service to group your subscribers into various different groups.

All of the email providers let you customize information about your subscriber. It has been proven that you get better results if you send slightly different emails to different groups of people in your list.

Your email about your upcoming sale may be worded differently for people that are already customers vs people that aren't customers yet.

If an email you are sending is only relevant to people in a certain geographic area, then you should target only that area when you send that email. Aweber lets you do that as well.

Geography matters too, for example, some readers may be annoyed if you send them an invitation to an event that is local to you and it wouldn't make sense for them to travel half way across the world for it. They don't need to know about that.

The trickiest group to define and to use in your list, but will also give you amazing results is to identify what product each customer has bought or is interested in. Having this information and using it intelligently can skyrocket your conversions. It doesn't make sense for you to email someone that already bought the product you're emailing them about right? Instead, sell them something that is related but they don't have yet, or remind them how great the product they bought could be as a gift for someone else.

Aweber and most other services charge you by the number of subscribers, something else you should do to maintain your list in a regular basis is to remove people that have unsubscribed. Just delete them from the list and over time you may save a good amount of money.

Keep an eye on the list, but do not obsess over it

Checking your list every day is good. You should login to your Aweber account daily to make sure things are working fine and to see if you need to make any adjustments. But more importantly, you may want to log in just to schedule your next email.

Do not be too concerned with unsubscribe reports. You may see that in one week you get 10 subscribers and then the next week, a few of those people unsubscribe. Do not worry about it. Focus on those people that you have on your list now.

People unsubscribe all the time. Let it go.

Maybe they didn't like something you said, maybe they were offended or maybe they just aren't interested in your information anymore. Don't take it personally. Focus on maintaining a positive flow of subscribers.

Every month or so, go through the people that have unsubscribed in your account and remove them from the system altogether because they count towards your total subscribers (even if they chose to opt-out).

In closing, I have a few tips

Before I wrap it up

Having a list is one of the best things you can do for your blog and your business. But using the list is even more important. Also, the size of your list doesn't matter as much as what you're doing with the list. For example, I have a list that currently has about 30 people and I get 2 or 3 new members each week, but the list continues to make me over $1000/week! How?

Well, the people on the list are very active and the products I am working with are essential to their business so the conversion is going to be high.

ALWAYS offer value in every email, or don't send that email. Many people say that they don't send email frequently because they don't have anything important to say. While I am grateful for that because they're not cluttering up our inboxes, the question I would have in return is: Why don't you have something important to say, every day?

Key Takeaways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog with email

• Use an email service that lets you control everything, content, timing, addresses
• I use and recommend Aweber, get it here. The other two highly esteemed are: Mailchimp and Getresponse
• Integrate the email list service to your blog using the theme and Optinmonster.
• Offer a lead magnet or incentive like a PDF, mp3, movie, service, consultation or other.
• Email your list frequently but purposefully.

The post How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog – Part 2 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

1. Interview with Harsh Agrawal from shoutmeloud.com.
2. Interview with John Chow and Syed Balkhi

During the last Affiliate Summit my friend Michelle Simmons from momsvilleusa.com decided to interview two of the most influential bloggers that attend the event, John Chow and Syed Balkhi.

I met John Chow several years ago during a local social media meetup in Costa Mesa, California. Then John introduced me to Affiliate Summit when I won his contest for a free ticket and I've been going to Affiliate Summit ever since.

He is famous for taking the revenue for his personal blog, johnchow.com from $0 to $40,000 per month in two short years and then teaching countless people how to do the same.

Part of the reason I keep coming back to Affiliate Summit is because of the amazing opportunities to meet new people like-minded individuals, bloggers, entrepreneurs and  influencers. The word influencer is getting thrown a lot around in social media lately. But I don't use the term lightly, these two individuals are some of the most influential bloggers in the planet.

I met Syed Balkhi during my first time at Affiliate Summit, and he was friendly and approachable. I had heard about him from WPbeginner, but I had no idea I would meet him. John introduced us and we hit it off talking about tech stuff, like WordPress and servers and MySQL, just geeking out. At the time, he was working on an early beta version of a plugin that has become the gold standard for lead generation online.

Whether by teaching or by inspiring others to start blogging and to try entrepreneurship, both John and Syed have influenced hundreds of thousands of people over the years.

Syed broke into mainstream with his WPbeginner blog which is the number one WordPress resource in the world, second only to WordPress.org.

Hanging out with technically awesome @syedbalkhi #asw16 Harsh, Syed, Oscar & John john-chow-oscar-gonzalez

They both contribute incredible amounts of time and effort into the communities that they belong to. And this willingness to participate and help others is part of why they are so successful.

They are both bloggers, but they have now branched outside of just blogging into additional ventures. But let's not forget that blogging helped them achieve incredible levels of success. They are both part of that exclusive internet millionaires club.

In this interview that took place shortly after their panel on Six figure blogging, they talk about things like how to get started, how to meet other like-minded individuals, goal setting, how to measure your progress and more.

Hope you enjoy, and your feedback is welcome!

Thank you Michelle for doing the interview, thank you John and Syed for participating and always giving back so much, and Thank you Missy Ward and Shawn Collins for putting Affiliate Summit together for all of this to happen.

If you found this interview useful or interesting then get yourself a ticket for the next Affiliate Summit event. You can still get the tickets on sale without a coupon or anything, just hurry up because the sale doesn't last long, and the event will sell out.

The post Interview with John Chow and Syed Balkhi – Affiliate Summit Profiles appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Update: The second post in the series is available now.

1. Interview with Harsh Agrawal from shoutmeloud.com
2. Interview with John Chow and Syed Balkhi

During the last Affiliate Summit, I had a chance to hang out and interview one of the most influential bloggers you've never heard of. How can that possibly be?

Well, Harsh Agrawal (@denharsh) runs the largest blog in India. His site has an Alexa rank of 1,888 in the U.S. Ranked 198 in India, his blog Shoutmeloud.com ranks higher and probably gets more traffic than Oracle, Mailchimp, The guardian, Searchengineland, Entrepreneur, and even Techcrunch (source).

His following is just under three-quarters of a million people. And he's a young dude, but his blog is serious business.

He works as a full-time professional blogger and he probably makes more money than you, just by blogging. Harsh considers himself a blog scientist and a digital nomad. He employs one person and outsources some of his work to different virtual assistants.

Living the Dot Com Lifestyle

He truly lives the dot com lifestyle by leveraging all the technology to make sure his business runs no matter where he is. When I met him, we were in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West 2016, then he was going to San Francisco, then to Atlanta before making a stop in Los Angeles, then back home to India.

But how serious can a blog be? You may be wondering, how much money can you really make with a blog. I've told you in the past that you can make a full-time income by blogging if you do it right. And Harsh is one of the best examples of this.

Shoutmeloud's income report from September 2015 shows Harsh made almost $17,000, yes, that is USD. That is amazing considering most people in the US only dream about 200,000 per year! When you consider the cost of living in India, Harsh is living like a king.

But Harsh isn't someone to boast or brag about what he does or how well he does. When I met him, I expected someone full of himself, a young kid with a head overblown by the ego that often comes with such success. Instead, I met this humble man, an old soul if you would. Soft spoken and friendly.

We got along great and made the rounds about the meet market and the exhibit halls. He is thorough in his work and even though I've been doing this thing longer than he has, I felt like an apprentice. As we walked the aisles filled with vendors and exhibitors, he tried to talk to every single vendor along the way.

Speaks softly but carries a big stick

Never bragging, but always asking How can we work together? Most vendors dismissed him at first. Probably thinking "here's another affiliate that's just going to suck up my time, move along." Probably because Harsh doesn't stand out from the crowd. But the demeanor of most vendors would change when they would hear about his blog.

Other vendors knew him already and were glad to finally meet him in person. From walking up and down the aisles with Harsh, I picked up a few tips from him.

• Ask questions, many more than you may feel comfortable with.
• Listen, many people want to get their words in, instead Harsh listens.
• Oh yeah, and when it is necessary, drop in the fact that you generate 1 to 2 million unique per month.

Harsh is a perfect example why I attend Affiliate Summit. I have met and continue to meet amazing people there. Of course, you can meet online and chat, and Skype and do the Google hangout thing, but nothing beats a face to face conversation. Nothing beats having lunch with someone and talking shop and talking life.

I had only learned about Harsh and his blog about a month before when for some strange reason I started getting many people from India following me on Facebook and asking me questions about blogging. During my conversations with these aspiring bloggers, the topic would come up every single time.

They would say to me: I am very inspired by Harsh from SML. SML has great tutorials and the guy makes a lot of money, I wish to make only a small portion of that.

So I had to find out what "SML" was and who this Harsh character was.

Once I learned more about him and his blog I felt a little embarrassed that I didn't know about him before. But in the end, I'm glad I had an opportunity to meet him and get to know him. If you're a blogger, you should get to know him too.

Video Interview with Harsh Agrawal

Before we parted ways I had a chance to interview him. Here's the video, enjoy.

Don't forget to check out Harsh's blog, Shoutmeloud.com, or if you prefer, get the app (Android, iOS).

And don't forget to get your tickets for Affiliate Summit East 2016 coming up in the summer. Early bird prices are going on right now. Don't complain later and tell me you couldn't get tickets or they were too expensive.

Update: I met up with Harsh again during Affiliate Summit and interviewed him again. You can see that here.

The post Interview With Harsh Agrawal from Shoutmeloud – Affiliate Summit Profiles appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Minds is an open source encrypted social network with the ability for you to monetize your content. It's not like anything that is already out there.

For example Tsu tries to pay you a share of the money made with advertisements shown on your content; but nobody is really making money with it and it has become a spam and junk center. I dont think it will survive much longer.

So this is not Tsu, and it's not Facebook, but it has some gamification incentives and a way for you to make money with your content on a P2P basis.

In Minds, I can pay for boosted posts and you can also make deals with individuals to help promote content. You set your price, you call the shots.

Let me give you a quick getting started guide with Minds.com

Please keep in mind, that the site is still in beta so a few things may seem clunky, but it's very promising.

Sign up for an account

You sign up by visiting Minds.com, you don't need to provide any personal information beyond a username of your choice, and your email address. You can also do all this through their mobile app (Android, IOS)

My username is Oscar Gonzalez, feel free to follow me, or as it is called here, subscribe to me.

Customize your profile

The first screen you'll see is your profile and you can edit it by clicking on the pencil icon. You can always get back to this spot by using your profile icon on the top right corner.

You can customize your header banner, your avatar and bio from this page. It's a really elegant interface. The date picker to select your birthday is a little odd, but it's simple enough.

This is what I came up with on the first try, it feels a little similar to Facebook but the whole thing is a lot simpler and cleaner. I really like it.

Getting acquainted with the user interface

The top right corner has a small navigation menu with some neat features. Because the network is fully open sourced, you can actually submit a bug here and it will get looked at. If you are feeling adventurous you can also submit a feature request.

There is also an area where you can review your stats on your boosted content. Unlike Facebook, you can promote your regular posts on your profile so they get more visibility.

The small bell represents any alerts that are new since you checked lasta.

The last icon before your profile, gives you access to your wallet screen. In order for you to boost your content, you need to have credits and this is where your credits show up.

Your avatar button takes you to your profile where you can edit your profile picture, banner picture and bio.

Lastly, the three dots next to your profile open up a few more options. You can logout, adjust your global settings for the site or switch to the old interface.

This is a refreshing experience

The user experience is clean and even though the network is still in Beta, it feels solid. The user interface is clean and elegant and everything is simplified compared to Facebook or Twitter.

When you visit your alerts, you can see everything that has happened recently and you can take action from there.

The first few alerts help you get started with finding new content to explore. And as people find you, you'll be notified here when someone subscribes to you.

There is a gamification element too

This has been the downfall for many networks that have tried it but I think Minds.com has the right idea and execution. Certain actions give you credits which you can then spend to promote your content.

As you join, you'll get about 110 points or so to start. 100 for joining, then you'll get 10 points everyday for a "daily login" and you get one point for voting on someone else's post.

One thing I noticed is that they seem to be breaking the secret rules of social networks. That action which takes the most effort or commitment is, or should be the most valuable. For example, a comment is more valuable than a like, and a share should be more valuable than both comments and likes.

Case in point, if you like someone else's post, you'll get a point. But you will not get a point if you leave a comment, you should get more than one point because this is arguably a more valuable action. It represents more engagement.

After your profile is done, you can start using the site. Here's a quick rundown of what's available.

The action menu

The site features an icon-only action menu on the left hand side and if you're new to the site, the icons may not be intuitive enough for you to just figure it out. Here's a breakdown of what you can find there.

Some of the sections highlighted above have a few sub-menu actions. For example, the blog section lets you view featured blogposts, search for blogposts and create your own.

The blogging section is pretty standard and it has a WYSIWYG interface that works fine. Here is the first blogpost I created with it.

The most compelling features of the site

Social networks come and go, but the need for privacy is increasing and this may just be the best attempt at helping us with that. Minds.com is addressing this in two ways, the chats and the network are encrypted so people can't sniff what you're doing on the site.

The other way to help with privacy is to make the software open source. Developers can read through the code and figure out how things work, there is no hidden algorithm and "secret sauce."

The guys from Diaspora tried this before, but unfortunately a few years later the project is almost dead because it was too disjointed, Minds.com addresses this issue by offering a central location to interact with your connections.

Monetization is important for me and for other people that use social media sites for networking and business, and I really like the model offered by Minds. I acquired about 3000 credits and I will be putting the promoted and boost features to the test over the next week or so. I'll let you know how that goes.

For now, why don't you give it a try. Come join me, explore this new network.

The post Minds The New Social Network appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This is a post that shows the basic concept of making money online. Offer value and deliver the value. There are many ways of delivering your information, but this method is the best one out there.

Start. The Pressure Will Deliver

Sometimes, all  you need is a kick in the ass to get going. Sometimes you can deliver such kick by just adding a little bit of pressure to your work. Set yourself to deliver something and put yourself on the line. Sometimes the pressure will help you stop procrastinating.

The internet marketing basic sales flowchart

I created this flowchart to help me manage my tasks and my work. As you produce emails, funnels, landing pages and websites, sometimes you get caught up on all the work. Sometimes you forget why you might have created something. This helps me stay on track and keep tabs on the steps I need to complete in order to finish an offer, campaign or product.

It’s official, my new theme is Customizr

I switched themes in August. It's not the best, but it's much better than what I had before. I was using Woothemes' Canvas. But Canvas is a developer's theme, it requires a lot of design and customization that I didn't really want to have to deal with for my own blog. I found Customizr and it's been good so far.

Setting Goals

Setting goals sounds like cliche sometimes, but if you don't do it, then it's really difficult to know when you have accomplished what you set out to do. And it also helps you know when you need to adjust and fix your approach. This blogpost is all about setting goals. I also share with you some of my specific goals.

How to disable or customize the new Gmail tabs

Gmail made some drastic changes to their user interface. They added tabs to try to help you sort email for you. Some people like it, some people hate it. Regardless of how you feel about it, this post shows you how to customize it.

Super Excited, my Free Website Service just launched!

I moved the free website offer from my personal blog to its own space. I launched Real Free Website and this post is to tell you more about it. It also announced the grand opening sale which included three great bonus items when someone got the free website service done.

Excuses people make to not have a website

People tell me all kinds of reasons why they don't need a website. Really, they're just afraid or insecure. But I keep hearing the same excuses over and over so I decided to compile them into a list.

The Real Free Website Grand Opening. A success!

Follow up to the launch of the Real Free Website, I shared some of the success that I achieved. I am still very excited and things are going great with the new venture.

Introducing you to our garden

While I was traveling, I had some downtime so I decided to write about one of my hobbies. Gardening. This time I've been growing some edibles and this shows you a few pictures and explains more. I think I'll do more of these posts to show you the progress and the stuff I'm doing.

20 Reasons to have a website

Follow up to the excuses people make to not have a website, I compiled a list of 20 reasons why you must have a website. These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to good reasons so I should have another list soon. If you want to contribute your own and get credit on the next post, be sure to leave it as a comment on that post.

iPhone trade-in program is an attempt at gaining shares back from Android.

Apple has a program that allows you to trade in your phone for some cash or credit towards a new iPhone. I remove the veil to really show what the trade-in program is all about.

How to Change and Activate a Theme for your Free Website

WordPress is great, one of the biggest strengths of this Open Source gem is the theme system. You can install themes, change them, and customize them. This short tutorial shows you how activate and change themes.

How to setup permalinks

The permalinks on WordPress are easy to setup, but just in case you need assistance, this shows you how to do it. Permalinks is the name of the url system you can use on your wordpress website to avoid using the post id as part of your URL. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you may want to check it out

How to invite people back to your website

A blogpost that covers some of the ways to invite people back into your website. These are all good, but one of them is better than the rest.

Floating Social Bar Plugin for WordPress

This is a review of a new plugin that finally gets the social media sharing right. It works, it's fast and easy to customize. I wrote a review about it and recommend you take a look and try it if you need this sort of thing. It is probably the best one out there.

Are you in an abusive relationship with your web designer?

This was one of my most popular articles so far on Real Free Website. Many people are stuck with their web designer or their web company. The problem is that the web design company, or webmaster takes advantage of your lack of knowledge. This is what you can do about it.

Keep your website lean and agile with smaller images

One of the easiest ways to make your website slow down to a crawl is to load it with big images. Most of the time your images and photos can be optimized so your website stays fast and loads quickly for all your visitors. I cover this on this quick article.

How to update your WordPress website

Updating your WordPress site is quite easy, but just in case you don't know how or you are not used to doing it yourself I made this quick tutorial. Remember you should always keep your WordPress website updated to prevent hackers and bots from taking advantage of any security holes left by out of date software.

Our Back to School special offer is in full effect

To promote September, and back-to-school, I launched a special for Real Free Website. This is a limited time special and if you or anyone you know could use a new web host then you should check this post out.

Skroll – Responsive HTML5 One page WordPress template

This was a really cool find. A free responsive HTML5 one page template theme for WordPress. I believe it is a limited time offer and if you check it out, you may still be able to download it for free. So far, the theme looks really cool.

Evergreen Post Tweeter – Twitter WordPress Plugin

I took a look at this newer plugin for WordPress. It's a replacement for Tweet old post, but I like it much better. It has a nice scheduling system and seems a little less buggy. Check it out if you want to promote your past blogposts on twitter.

Widget Visibility now available in Jetpack

This is the last review for the month of August. The WordPress folks released the Widget Visibility plugin which integrates really nicely into Jetpack. Widget Visibility replaces about a half dozen plugins and methods of customizing the widgets on your sidebars.

The post August Blogging Recap appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Facebook.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. I answer all kinds of questions for people in chat, I'm usually answering something about websites, WordPress, tech or something I know. I'm also part of many groups so I asked some people and groups to share my post if they found it interesting or useful. Who wouldn't? But I was careful to only ask those people I've helped before or those that have shown an interest in what I do and also have mentioned to let them know when something like this is going on so they can tell their friends. I've built rapport with these people.

If you want to use Facebook to bring attention to a blogpost or charity or event or something, you must have built some friendships first. These happen naturally, and at the end of the day it is really your friends that will be supporting your efforts so if you don't have rapport with your friends then Facebook isn't really the place for you to share your stuff organically. As this is a give and take system, when you have an opportunity to help others, do it, so that when they need your help they know they can count on you. It just all goes round and round.

I will also share that blogpost on my own Facebook business page and maybe pay to promote it.

Twitter.

Twitter is my favorite social network. I spend a good amount of time on it and I share a lot of stuff in there. In case you haven't noticed, I have a constant stream of fresh blogpostst you've never seen before. These come from my blogging group members and also from news and articles I've read recently. The previous post will be promoted on twitter in several ways. Automatically when I hit publish on my article on my blog, it goes to twitter. Then I also bookmark and curate my article on my OGLink.it website. This also shares the post on twitter across several accounts. Then after it has been posted in there, it goes into a random rotation for the next 30 days and it will be tweeted out anywhere from 5 - 12 times in 30 days.

I also may point out the article to people individually via mentions or dms if we've talked about it before or if I know they could find the post interesting.

Empire Avenue.

Empire Avenue is the "Social Stock Exchange." You can purchase stock in other individuals and their stock price goes up and down based on various factors. Social network activity, perceived influence and other stuff I guess. Empire Avenue is more or less a popularity contest and social network and scoring system all rolled into one fun game. But it has a cool element called "missions." - With Missions, you can ask a group of people or the entire network to do something in exchange for money. So I made a couple missions to help me spread the word about the special for May. And I paid the participants millions! Oh the calamity! I paid for social media distribution! (you can hear the purists cry right now!).

Now, it's all monopoly money, but it's tough to earn lots of money. It pays to be an early adopter I guess. But the money is phony money. It's not real and it's just for fun, but it still is effective marketing tool. It's a way to reach into other people's networks of influence and it's a lot of fun. Check it out if it interests you, I love it and been in it for 3+ years, this is my profile. So I used and will use it to run missions and promote the blogpost.

Google Plus.

On Google Plus, probably on Monday I'll share the post and make some comments about it. This way people that are only on Google + will see the message but more importantly, I will give Google a signal, that this article is mine, it is about this particular topic and this will help get it indexed and found in new ways. Also, when I post to Google+ my "circles" get a chance to see my post and they may share it or add a +1 to it. The beauty of social networks is that when you have something valuable to offer, the ripple effect becomes really powerful. Sharing and promoting in social media can mean the difference between a handful of views and thousands of views. We know it's all about eyeballs, then the content must be valuable enough for people to stick around. Promotion brings it, but value proposition keeps them.

Comments.

As you may imagine, as a blogger, I read a lot of other blogs. I often comment on them too. This is an indirect way of promoting your blogpost. By leaving comments on other people's blogs, you may entice someone to see what else you have to say or what you're all about and readers or the blog's author may check out your site. In this way, when I leave a comment, they may come back to my site to check it out and depending on the date in which they do this, they may see my blogpost at the top and then get a chance to read it.

Youtube.

I don't usually make a video just to promote a blogpost, but because of the #31DBBB challenge, I will give this a try and later today or tomorrow I will create a video dedicated just to that blogpost. The idea is to promote the blogpost and get people to go from my video over to this website to check out the blogpost. We'll se how that works.

There are many other ways I'll use to promote this but I'll leave those for another blogposts. Mainly I use other networks to make my content crawlable and indexable and make it so other people will re-share it.

The only problem with all this is that it is hard to track. There are tools out there that try to track how many shares something has and how many people looked at this or that, and tweeted that but sometimes they're not very accurate. In the next couple of posts I'll take sometime to show you the numbers that we are able to measure for each of these channels and methods. Some are more effective than others, but you'll never know until you try it.

So that's it for the blogpost for day 4 of the #31DBBB even though I'm posting on the 5th! So go out and have a beer for me. It's Cinco de Mayo!

The post Promoting a Blogpost #31DBBBday4 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

You can do anything.

Not like zombo com, but really. Once you have a website, you can share anything you want regardless of what the social network says you can or cannot do. It is the ultimate freedom of speech tool. Often times, Facebook or Twitter and other networks censor your content or downplay it in favor of something else. On your website, you are the master of your domain, literally. If you want to talk about puppies, rainbows and unicorns you can. Normally nice little topics like this aren't in danger of getting scruitinized or deleted by the networks, but if you want to write controversial essays, or even promote  product or sell something, chances are you can't do it on a hosted network or website.

You have control and ownership.

If you are a creative type or simply would like to maintain control over what you write, the photos you create, videos you produce or any creative endeavor, but you still want to share these with the world, a website you own is the best channel. Nobody else can claim ownership to your content or pictures like FB and Instagram have done in the past.

It isn't that difficult.

Lucy recently went off on an ad she saw about 9 year olds doing wordpress websites, and while maintaining your website or blog isn't as easy as chewing bubble gum, it isn't difficult either. It is very similar to using a text editor like microsoft word. But your friends and family will be impressed when you show them the latest viral video, or showcase your photography or videos.

You owe it to Gutenberg.

A long time ago, Johannes Gutenberg came up with the printing press and changed the world. With the printing press, we could preserve our history, tell stories, teach and generally disseminate information better, faster and more effectively than ever before. A blog and a website are the new printing press, but better. You can just type away what you want to say and hit publish, then your content and ideas are available for millions of people to read. Instantly. No editors, no gate-keepers, no expensive prints and re-prints. Just hit publish.

Find a community, or build a community.

It is the best way to meet other like-minded individuals. When you start a blog, you tend to write about a central topic, or a group of topics, as you write and share more information about the topic, you'll meet other people that have similar interests. This is a phenomenon that doesn't happen in the physical world. If you are into carpentry for example, you could go out to your garage, open the door and start building stuff... You could do this for a year or two and never ever meet another carpenter that shares the passion for woodworking like you do, because you are limited by your geography. But put your work on your website, share your build plans and showcase your finished products and you'll attract carpenters and woodworking aficionados from all over the world.

You have something to share.

Your ideas matter. Many people say that ideas are a dime a dozen, and as our population grows, people throw around the notion that there are no new ideas. That may be true, but your perspective on a concept could inspire a breakthrough. I often get this response: "Who would want to read what I have to say?" and after I'm done rolling my eyes I explain...

You may be looking at things from  your own angle and by sharing this perspective, you are adding to a global conversation that wouldn't happen anywhere else but online and can't catch fire without that perspective being on your website first. Plus there's that thing about finding and building the community I just covered.

Earn a living.

With a website or a blog, you have the opportunity to make money. Yes, you can start a real business just with a website. You can turn your expertise into a valuable service or product that people can buy directly from you, no middle man. You could write educational or how-to books, you could develop a product that saves people time or solves a problem and then sell this online. Having a business from your website, is the best way to work from home while giving you a chance to spend more time with kids and away from the tedious 9

But it doesn't stop there, if you can't come up with a product or service that you would like to build from scratch, you can always re-sell other people's products and services. This works much like a retail store that sells many different brands, or a franchise that borrows an already established brand and sells a product that people like and recognize.

Find a new job.

You can use a website as your living, interactive resume. A traditional resume is boring and one-dimensional. When you put your skills abilities and desires into a well structured website, you give a potential employer a great insight into you. Show a video of your work, write an essay of how you acomplished all that great stuff at your last position. Include testimonials and references from people.

Let people find you!

When you need something, you often have to go out and find it. Like if you need money you need to go out and work for it. If you need a job, you need to find it and apply for it. But with a website you can attract money and people that you need in your life. When you have a website, particularly a wordpress website, your chances of being found via the search engines increases tremendously. Let the internet, your website and search engines bring what you need to your doorstep instead of you having to go chase it.

Learn a skill for the future.

I know that sounds cliche and more like it belongs in a mid-day tv commercial for a technical vocational school, but really, let me explain. Running a blog helps you develop valuable skills. Marketing, writing, and media distribution, search engine optimization, photo editing, video publishing, and the list goes on. Not to mention that you'll learn one more piece of software to add to your resume or personal abilities list. If you want to make money, or get a better job, sometimes knowing how to work WordPress can make the difference between you and the next person. People charge $35 - $750 USD to write blogposts, and anywhere from $50 to $500 per month or more to maintain a blog.

The post Get a Website, 10 Reasons Nobody Told You Before #31DBBB appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

And As the days go by and time passes, your daily blogging drops to once a week, then once a month and next thing you know the last time you blogged was almost a year ago. Yikes! that's happened to many of us but it doesn't have to be that way. In a future blogpost, I'll tell you how to manage your time so you can blog consistently. I will show you what has worked for me and what hasn't. But this post is about the other side of blogging woes. Ideas on what to write about.

If I were a blogging snob, I'd probably ask you: Why'd you start a blog and then don't have anything to say? I thought you had a lot to say! But I'm not a blog snob, and in fact I want to help you get your blog up and running. But having been a blogger for almost a decade now, I know how it feels to be stuck. Many people will give you very practical advice, like write down a list of stuff, or set a schedule, or make it a habit, yadda yadda yadda, but many time that advice isn't what you need. Writer's block is based on the fear that what you will write won't be any good. First, don't worry about that. Write from your heart and use at least basic spelling and grammar rules and your writing will get better each time. But if you don't write... it will never improve. -- With that said, don't force it. Sometimes you just aren't meant to write at that particular time --  So here are some unusual tips to help you get through those dry spells.

Read lots of stuff. All the time, everywhere.

Read. You know that the best writers are readers first right? Maybe you didn't know but in order to be good at something, you have to practice the end result. So if you want to be good at writing, you must read other people's writings. This will help you hone in your style and language. It will show you how it's supposed to look and sound. In addition to finding your voice through the reading of other people, you'll also be inspired to write. It's one of those things where it builds upon itself.

If you read something good, you want to then go and write something good. Don't limit yourself, read anything and everything you can get your hands on. Magazines, classic books, new books, fiction, non-fiction, even brochures have sparked ideas on how to craft a title or develop my story. Most important of all, read other blogs. Remember? No man is an island! Reading will hone your writing skills, don't take it from me. Take it from one of the master writers of our time if you must...

Break the monotony and habits.

Do something completely different today. We often get into the monotony of our habits and it's very easy to fall into the comfort of them without realizing that this could be killing your creativity. Take a different road home, eat a new food, call an old friend. Skip your usual coffee shop and try the new one a couple blocks away. Make your lunch instead of eating out, or eat out if you always make your food. I know it doesn't sound like blogging advice, but I can't tell you how many times I've been inspired to write something because I did something different that day that sparked a new idea. To add to the previous tip, read something completely new or out of the norm for you.

Give your opinion or expert advice.

Respond to a question. You'll hear at least a dozen questions today. You'll hear it on the radio, on TV, at work, at the market. You may read them on a magazine. You can even click over to Quora and see what people are asking about. Digest those questions and answer them, on your blog. As a bonus to getting more readers to your blog, when you answer a question on your blog, try to let the source of the question know that you answered their question on your blog.

Encourage the various aspects of creativity.

Develop other creative outlets. Writing is one of many ways of expressing your thoughts, emotions, and outlook. Try going outside and taking some photographs, even with your phone. Or pull out a piece of paper and pen or pencil and doodle for a little while. If you're into art and actually can do some cool paintings or sketches like my buddy Sam Carter, then take a break from your blog for a day and work on that. Breaking the stress of writing by doing another creative activity will sort of refuel your writing juices, or you may just get inspired by something completely new.

After you've done some or all of the above, get to writing. If you're still stuck, try a few of these:

Brainstorm.

Take a piece of paper, or your notebook or your journal and just write down ideas for new posts. Look for topics within your previous writings, current events happening, or important dates coming up. Holidays and historic days are great ways to re-ignite your blogging because when you write about something that is known or expected, writing tends to flow more easily. Keep a running notebook for ideas when you have a brainstorming session. I use evernote, getpocket, and a couple other tools to remind me of ideas I've thought about and other inspiration I've found during brainstorming sessions.

Revive and old topic.

Browse through your old blogposts and see if there is one that could use an updated version or some expansion. If you don't have a lot of blogposts or you are just starting out, find some of your favorite blogposts by other people and use them as your topic. Write your own perspective on the topic. Respond, agree, or add more information to what they've said. I'm currently doing a mix of all this on Notagrouch and on Oscarstech.

If you're just not inspired to write, even though you have ideas, maybe begin a writing plan or editorial calendar. Actually, that is what I'm doing now, and it leads me to my next and final tip.

Set a writing plan in motion.

Create an editorial calendar and stick to it. An editorial calendar is a fancy way of saying to plan out the next few weeks, or months of writing. You can use Google Calendar, or any other calendar application you're comfortable with. You could even use excel. Write down the date of when you want to publish your next blogpost, write down the title for the blogpost and next to it or in the description (if using a calendar app) write down 3 to 5 key points or ideas you want to touch on when you write your blogpost. You could also use something like Evernote so you always have your ideas on the go and can update them, change them, or heck! even write a blogpost while you're waiting in line or dozing off in that boring accounting meeting. A WordPress Blog comes in really handy for this too. You can create these ideas as posts in advance and save them as drafts, then come back to develop them on your own schedule.

Practice time management.

Another way to help you with writer's block is to manage your time wisely. A blogpost should not take you more than 20 - 45 minutes to write and about 10 - 20 minutes to polish it up. Not counting research and resource gathering, the actual writing part should be fairly quick. I often know that I'm not ready to write a particular post if I've been stuck on the first paragraph or two for more than 30 minutes. That means that I still need to let it stew in my head some more, or I need to read more about the topic or find more resources to help me support or deny my viewpoints. I will elaborate more on this soon when I tell you how I actually write a blogpost from start to finish.

If these ideas aren't helping you, tell me, what is keeping you from writing? How can I help you blog better and more consistently?

The post Writer’s Block be Gone! 8 Unusual Tips for bloggers appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Some people are natural bloggers and other people have to work at it. But regardless of which group you fall into, you have to practice. I've been blogging on and off since 2001 and even though I know the mechanics and technical aspects of blogging. I'm still learning other aspects of it. I'm always picking up new tips, new skills and improving what I already know.

I'm going to help you with everything that you need to know and do to become a better blogger. I'm doing this primarily to encourage you to blog and share your story and expertise with us.

Today's tip is the easiest one to work on and you should start on it today. That skill is not marketing, it isn't story telling either. It doesn't even have to do with WordPress. In fact this skill is not directly related to blogging, but once you master it, blogging will be much easier. In fact your entire life will be better once you master this.

Can you guess what that skill is?

Typing. Yup. Typing. I was lucky enough to learn to type at an early age. In Mexico, it was mandatory that students learn how to type and when I was going to school we learned in an old school typewriter. I had to haul that thing back and forth from school everyday and once a day for about an hour we had drill exercises. I hated them!

But over time I became good at it, and as a kid I thought that it was useless, I don't need to know this stuff I thought. But I had no choice. Obviously I was wrong. Typing is at the core of my career and has helped me tremendously.

Fast forward to today and I can honestly say that typing is one of the best skills I have and I'm glad I practiced. It has allowed me to make hundreds of thousands of dollars through jobs, gigs and blogging. I've landed jobs, and gotten contracts because I can type quickly. Without bragging, I can say that I am able to type over 90 words per minute when I need to, but well over 75 in average.

You see, typing isn't directly related to making money or getting a good job or even blogging. But think about this analogy. Can you become an NBA basketball player just because you can make 3 point shots all day long? Not likely. You need to be able to run and be agile. Running and agility aren't directly related to basketball, but they're basic skills you need to become a great basketball player. That's the same with typing.

Typing is all about basics. There's a great article by one of my favorite tech bloggers, titled: We are Typists first, Programmers second. In this case, I can tell you that we should be Typists first, Bloggers second. Despite innovations with voice recognition and motion gesturing, typing is still the fastest, most accurate and ubiquitous way of transferring ideas from your head or voice to your blog.

Strong statements indeed. I concur. We are typists first, and programmers second. It's very difficult for me to take another programmer seriously when I see them using the hunt and peck typing techniques. Like Steve, I've seen this far too often.

That's a quote from that article, and I feel the same way when I see a blogger hunt and peck while typing, I understand we're all learning, but if you want to be taken seriously, you must improve this skill. Typing faster will allow you to get your thoughts down quicker and remove frustrations with the mechanics of blogging. Every serious blogger I've ever met types fast, if not faster than me. Typing shouldn't be an obstacle to your daily blogging. It should be an asset to make you a better blogging. So what's my advice?

Practice, practice, practice. The only way you'll become a good typist is to practice. Practice everyday, even if it is just for 15 minutes. If you've never learned touch-typing before, then take some lessons and stick with it. In just a week or two of practicing you should be able to type 25 or more words per minute and you should aim to reach 45 word per minute in 30 - 90 days.

If you don't know where to start, maybe the free Typingclub website will help you. Or you can go with the tried and true methods like the Typingmaster Pro guide and skills tracker. There is always the classic Mavis Beacon teaches typing series which are great too.

So, are you a good typist? If you aren't, don't you think it's time you work on it a bit? Let me know in the comments.

The post The Basic Skill Every Blogger Must Have appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This is one of the websites I use the most. I use it to find inspiration, assets that I use in other bigger projects, buttons, or even U.I. elements. When I use images from this website my production time is cut significantly I don't have to worry about copyright or infringing on anybody's rights. The membership to this website allows me to use the pictures on various projects I work in.

If you don't feel like you can afford the website membership, you can always buy just the images that you need on a case-by-case basis. You can find almost anything you're looking for in this website if you want to check it out this it right here. You can find more information at Shutterstock.com

If you look around my website you'll notice a lot of the times images have a small caption that says image by Shutterstock. Those are images I got through the membership and I'm able to use them free and clear without worrying about getting sued or infringing on anyone's rights so plan check it out at the very least you can always take advantage of their daily or rather weekly free downloads.

The post How to get graphics and images for your blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Comment, Share & Like

When you read blogposts, take a few seconds to leave a comment and maybe even share that blogpost in Twitter or Facebook or Google+. Leaving comments shows interest for the topic and helps you develop a relationship with that blogger. Sharing the article on your favorite social networks exposes that blog and the article to your audience. Both of these things, sharing and commenting, help you understand the topic better, and develop newer ideas and continue the global discussion of your niche. Not to mention that leaving comments with your URL will attract new readers to your own blog.

Remember Your Purpose

You'll run into obstacles when blogging, everyone does. Writer's block, burn-out, technical difficulties, discouraging feedback and other negative elements will creep up from time to time. You must remember why you're blogging. Revisit your purpose and remind yourself what you set out to do with your blog. If this issue you're having right now isn't directly related to you living up to your purpose then it doesn't matter. Put it aside and get back to blogging. Have you held off on publishing your blogpost because the font of your titles isn't perfect? Are you worried that you aren't using grammar correctly? These are just minor issues that you can address later or one little bit at a time. Your main focus is to write valuable content.

The Pursuit of Perfection is a Blog Killer

Waiting until you've had more time to review your draft just one more time will only delay you and frustrate you. Trying to get that one picture perfectly lined up the way you want could set you back several hours if you don't know what you're doing. Making sure all your widgets on your sidebar are just perfect with matching titles and colors is neat, but does it help you blog? Leave the perfectionism at the door when you start blogging. Don't confuse this with being sloppy! You still have to produce good quality, valuable content, but you don't need the perfection that something like a college thesis requires. This is blogging, it's loose, relaxed, get it done and out of the way. After your post is published, you can always go back and make edits.

Register With All Major Commenting Systems

Gravatar, WordPress.com, Blogger, Typepad, Disqus, Livefyre, and a few other systems out there allow you identify yourself easily when leaving comments. The mechanics of joining one of these networks at the time you're making a comment might detract you from leaving an insightful comment so get accounts setup and ready to go as soon as possible before you need them. Don't wait until you want to leave a comment somewhere, it is much easier if these accounts are ready to go. Another reason you'll want these accounts is because some blogs only accept comments from users within their own network. If you have ready access to all these accounts (you can use something like Lastpass to manage them), then leaving comments will be a breeze.

Have Fun!

(all images by shutterstock)

In case you missed it, here's part 1. Blogging Tips Part 1

The post Blogging Tips Part Two – Day 15 #30DBC appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

One of the topics we cover in Smart and Social is blogging. And yesterday we kicked-off the second Blogging Accountability group at Paradise Perks in Irvine. The response was amazing, more people than I expected showed up and everybody was willing to learn and participate. I feel really honored to have had all these people attend and show their eagerness to learn. I'm still processing this success.

First off, what is an accountability group? An accountability group as I see it, is a group of people that holds each other accountable towards the completion of a common goal. Churches are notorious for having accountability groups, so are sports teams. Cities have chambers of commerce where you may find accountability groups to help you grow and develop your business. In our case, the accountability is all about blogging. My job is to guide you through the next six weeks, to remove barriers that prevent you from blogging and to get you to write. Your job is to hold me accountable to provide you with the tools and processes that you need. But you also have the job of holding each other accountable for your posts.

There is one requirement to participate in the group. You must attend the first meeting, and you must write at least 2 blogposts per week for the next 6 weeks. Each student that came to the class last night, has homework and they must bring back --amongst other things-- two blogposts ready to go. If you don't complete this assignment then they will not be able to attend. This may sound harsh, but it's all about that accountability. You'll be surprised how well you can perform under some presure.

We covered various topics last night, basics about blogs, rss and we discussed some of the topics that we'll be learning over the next few weeks. This blogpost is just to let people know that we're doing this. That the class went well great, by all accounts. And if you want to join the next group be sure to visit http://meetup.com/smart-and-social to sign up and also join the mailing list at bc. Also want to thank everybody that came to the class and let you know I really appreciate your participation.

If you missed the class for some reason or another, make sure you get on the mailing list. I will be starting off one more group soon so you can join that if you'd like. There will also be a virtual meetup coming up soon so people that aren't in Orange County can join as well. Also, I'll let you in on a little secret. Everyone that attends and completes the six-week course will become a charter member for my online blogging course, and trust me you don't want to miss that opportunity. Something else to keep in mind, this group is totally free. The next group and the next online group will also be free. But after that, the courses will cost some money and so will the online blogging course so don't let this opportunity go by.

The post Blogging Accountability Group (series II) Off to a Great Start. – Day 14 #30DBC appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.