HAVE you ever set blogging goals that have the staying power of a New Year’s dieting resolution? You’re not alone. Many of us fall into the trap of setting lofty objectives at the height of inspiration, only to be derailed later by unforeseen pitfalls.

This is why so many promising blogs fail: the goals are not realistic enough. Most of this stems from lack of preparation and flimsy understanding of one’s capabilities and limitations. However, with careful planning and a more grounded view of what one can achieve, these drawbacks can be avoided.

Remember that seemingly impossible goals can always be revamped and reached with a change of perspective and a solid action plan.

After listing down what you want to attain for your blog, consider asking yourself the following questions:

What do I specifically want to achieve?

Having a clear and straightforward vision of what you want to attain makes it easier to formulate and execute your strategy. Instead of saying ‘I want more subscribers,’ you can try going for ‘I will get at least 5 new subscribers every month.’ This way, you can take concrete steps towards gaining and monitoring that desired number of subscribers.

Are my goals realistic?

Setting high standards for your blog is ideal, but if you do not have the means or the ability to reach them, then you will only be disappointed. Likewise, if your objectives are far too easy to achieve, then you will only sell yourself short and your blog could stagnate in the long run.

Keep your goals achievable within your level of difficulty, then strive to surpass that level.

Can I expect measurable results?

Whether it’s increasing your subscribers by a certain percentage or gaining a higher PR ranking, tracking your progress is much easier and better with quantifiable results. Simply pushing yourself to be more creative with your content doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have a solid yardstick to measure it by.

Make sure that at least one of the listed goals yields results that you can monitor and analyze over time.

What is my action plan?

This is where preparation and strategic thinking comes in. If you want to increase your blog traffic, you need to know how to attract it. If you wish to increase your output, you need to set up a consistent working schedule. Whatever your goal is, it requires a plan with a detailed and workable strategy backed up with sufficient research.

Reaching difficult goals becomes more satisfying if you’re well-prepared for it. Aim high with your feet on the ground.

Are my goals attainable within a reasonable time frame?

As mentioned earlier, aspiring to achieve too much too soon may result in wasted effort. Not setting clear deadlines, on the other hand, stems from and results in lack of commitment.

Try to set a clear time period for meeting each objective. Breaking your schedule down into a series of smaller tasks may help you manage your time better, and will make the overall project easier for you to complete.

Should you run into unexpected difficulties, make room to rework your schedule so you can still meet your original deadlines — or at least adjust them accordingly.

How will my goals affect my entire routine?

There are other matters outside of blogging that need to be taken into consideration. Will the whole blogging process take up most of your daily routine? If so, what areas of your life will be affected and how?

If meeting your blogging objectives will cost you more than you initially hoped, then you may need to reevaluate your plans. Blogging should enrich your life, not consume it.

Can I expect rewards from meeting my objectives?

Meeting your goals in the form of more readers or revenue may be rewarding in itself, but sometimes you need to provide yourself with a little extra incentive to keep plugging away. One good way to keep yourself motivated is to evaluate and analyze your daily and weekly progress, focusing on the highlights. Another way to inspire yourself is to read on other bloggers’ success stories.

Meeting and maintaining your blogging goals require plenty of self-motivation, so keeping track of your achievements, failures, and areas of improvement is highly critical to your blog’s growth. When things get difficult, sometimes seeing your flubs from a humorous point of view can put matters into perspective – and could serve as great material for your upcoming posts as well.

Photo credits: eecs.harvard.edu, www.careerbuilder.com

Related posts:

1. Your Blogging Goals: What Are They? (Part 1)

2. Marketing the “You Know What” Out of Your Blog, Part 1

3. Renewing Blogussion – New Commitments, Goals & More + A Farewell to Seth

I was first enthralled with the idea of earning passive income online when I discovered Clickbank products about five years ago. So I created my first information product and started buying pay-per-click traffic which was directed to an awful landing page that I had created.

I lost money.

However, I had glimpsed the power of the internet, and knew that I could create a system to produce income. I want to show you how I created a profitable website, and how you can do the same thing.

Get-rich-quick schemes hardly work, if at all. It takes time and effort to build a successful income online.

Can you really make money with this stuff?

At first I had doubts about my online business’s lucrativity. Then some income trickled in from a website that I was working on. I was running advertising on the website and I got a click that paid me over a dollar.

It was then that I had my “Aha moment” and realized two things: that if I built a website of sufficient volume, I actually could make a living out of it, and if I could get a single click for a dollar, then I can get one hundred clicks and make one hundred dollars.

The only thing holding me back was volume. I needed to expand my website so that it would earn more income in shorter periods of time. Eventually my flagship site grew and thrived, perhaps due to the following factors:

* Varied article length – I mixed long with short articles.

* Varied content type – Aside from text, I also posted videos, pictures, free eBooks, etc.

* Community – My site had an active user forum with lots of returning visitors generating thousands of words of new content.

* Premium quality – I made sure that my articles were genuinely helpful to the site visitors. No fluff.

* Link diversity – Not a ton of links, but quite a diverse backlink profile. A couple from “real” websites in the same niche.

* Age – My site has been growing for over 5 years, building more trust with the search engines.

If you want to build a similarly lucrative site, review this list carefully. The idea is to build a “real” website that actually helps people, rather than just a bunch of text that is spam for the search engines.

There is plenty of time and room online for a one-website approach

Some topics online are probably out of reach for most people due to their competitive nature, such as “insurance” or “credit cards”. Those topics are off-limits, and other hyper-competitive topics should also be avoided. As for “real world” topics, it’s all about search volume and casting a net wide enough to bring in plenty of searchers.

One of my most important suggestions is to concentrate on one website then work on it every day for at least a year or two. If you try to run five or ten websites in the hopes of “diversifying” then guess what? None of them will go anywhere. Instead you will be stuck with ten worthless websites.

Profitable topic, sufficient volume, expert knowledge

You need an intersection of three things in order to chose a topic for a website:

1) Profit potential – The topic has to be able to generate decent income (avoid “free sewing patterns”, etc).

2) Sufficient volume – How many people are conducting searches about your topic in Google each month? Can that amount support a business?

3) Expert knowledge - Can you talk for two hours about your topic with some authority, without running out of key points?

You have to find a topic that fulfills all three requirements. Just having one of those things is not enough.

Don’t go after a topic that has profit potential, but of which you know very little. On the other hand, if write about what you just love, there may be no money in it. Instead, brainstorm a list of topics of which you have some working knowledge, then investigate to see if any are potential money makers. Qualify each topic, and see which ones have the potential to be lucrative.

One quick way to check for profitability is to search for you topic in Google, and see how many ads are displayed on the first and second result pages. Generally speaking, the more ads shown, the better. If the ads are “thinner” on those first result pages then you might consider a different topic.

Premium content sets you up for success

The web is full of spam. New articles are churned out by the hundreds of thousands each week in order to try to game the search engines and make a few cents off random clicks.

Building a real business online relies on standing out from the sea of web spam. In order to do that, you have to create amazingly useful and high-quality articles and not just a bunch of 400-word articles that are all perfectly optimized for different keywords.

However, volume is still important, being a key factor in netting plenty of long-tail traffic that will result in passive income. So one of your goals should be to have at least one thousand interesting, outstanding, and useful articles published on your website.

That is the real challenge in producing content: you want quantity and quality.

How to do it?

Start slowly, publishing one quality article each day. Push yourself to create better articles, while testing for responses to measure what your most useful and helpful articles are. Useful metrics for this include comment counts and bounce rate.

As you progress, your publishing speed will increase. Your goal is to publish three quality articles each day. Any more than that and you risk burnout.

Publishing three articles per day will result in more than one thousand each year. If you can maintain a high quality then this is more than enough volume to build an amazing business.

Two more tips about quality content:

1) Check out competing websites and see what content is behind their pay wall. That is the level of quality that you want to give away for free on your website. Don’t copy them, but use their paid content as a benchmark for your own free content.

2) Marketing and promotion are so tough that the shortcut these days is to create such amazingly good content that it sells itself. Take the energy that you would have spent on promotion and refocus it on creating high-quality on-site content instead.

Focus on building income and passive traffic rather than readers or social followers

It is so easy to get a quick burst of traffic from social media sources — such as Facebook or Twitter — that many people end up focusing all of their efforts on chasing more and more of that type of traffic. This is a notorious trap and if you fall victim to it you will likely never make much money at all.

In contrast, growing your daily search engine traffic creates a powerful foundation for your website. Social media promotion pretty much takes care of itself when you have amazing content and several hundred search engine visitors per day.

Let your audience handle your tweeting and Facebook sharing. It’s better to focus on building precious search engine visitors.

Why is search engine traffic so important? Because it shows up every single day. Once you build it, once your site has established authority with quality content, the search engines tend to send you a steady stream of traffic with no further effort on your part. Your work ends after you build an amazing website and gain authority through incoming links.

Live on monthly earnings or cash out for a huge windfall

When my flagship website went over $1,000/month in earnings, I seriously entertained the idea of quitting my day job. A few months later the earnings had risen to $2,000/month, and so I turned in my two-weeks’ notice.

Then something completely unexpected happened: Someone offered me $200,000 dollars for the website. Since I can always build another website, I decided that this was a good deal for me, and I sold the site.

Now I am busy building my next business online so that the monthly earnings can cover my living expenses.

I’m not saying that every website created will generate huge amounts of wealth. But if you are serious about building an online income, the opportunity is certainly there for anyone gutsy enough to pursue it.

To recap, the most important points of this article are:

1) One website approach - Concentrate your effort into a single website. Avoid diversification.

2) Topic selection – Brainstorm workable topics and then screen them for profit potential.

3) Quality + volume – Build a highly useful website. Make it big by publishing multiple articles daily.

This is a plan for building a large authority website. Anyone can do it, but very few will have the drive and discipline to actually make it happen. So if you want an amazing six-figure payout then you have to build something amazing!

Photo credits: www.techfilipino.com, www.fivequidexpert.com, http://3.bp.blogspot.com

PATRICK MENINGA of Make Money With No Work has recently built and sold a flagship website for $200,000 dollars, and is eager to share his insights with you.

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3. Our New Site Proves Creating a Unique Blog Isn’t As Hard As You Think

AS fellow blogger Amanda DiSilvestro mentioned in a previous post, anyone can start a blog. But without clear-cut goals, your blog will reach a point where it will stagnate.

Whether you’re running a personal or a professional blog, setting action-oriented goals for it will help it grow and reach its maximum potential. If you aren’t sure as to what kind of blogging objectives you need, you can explore the following list of easy guidelines in determining what you want for your blog.

The first step in goal-setting is knowing exactly what you want to happen. From there you can figure out how to make it happen.

These are just a few goals and objectives that you can set for your blogging process. You don’t need to aspire to achieve all of them in one fell swoop; just choose the target that will meet your needs for now, then focus on attaining it before moving on to the next one.

Photo credits: www.ksuccess.com, kasadawai.blogspot.com

CARMELA MARAAN has written on various topics ranging from marketing, advertising, blogging, and creative writing to adult material. She is enthusiastic about expanding her repertoire as she views the world as one huge library. During her free time she is also a voracious reader, an irrepressible singer, and a mom who hardly sleeps.

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2. Let’s face it, blogging with age makes us better at blogging

3. I Don’t Feel Like Blogging Today

During the course of your blogging, have you ever noticed a gradual change in the way you write your articles? Have you become more comfortable with expressing your ideas the way you want to? If not, then maybe you haven’t begun to find your blogging voice yet.

You, only on paper.

In essence, your blogging voice is the real you in print form. You can dispense valuable chunks of information and advice to your readers, but your authenticity is what makes all that information unique and unforgettable.

Perhaps it’s in the way you compose your sentences, the figures of speech that you use, or even in the way you punctuate your statements. The more comfy you become with your writing, the more you show your personality and the closer you are to revealing your real voice.

Understanding what you are and what you aren’t as a writer, and who you’re writing for can give you valuable insight. Jot these down, and get cracking!

So what should you do?

There are plenty of exercises that can help develop your writing skills, but the one thing that you must do to discover your voice is this: write everyday. That’s it. If you do this preferably on a schedule, writing will become easier and your words will eventually come alive. Your blog posts will sound as if you are talking personally to your readers. And trust me, they’ll love it.

There are a few keys to doing this successfully, though. You need to:

1. Commit yourself to the task.
2. Figure out when to switch off your mental filter.
3. Allow yourself to accept all sorts of feedback.
4. Learn to ask for help from trusted sources.
5. Figure out what kind of reader relationship you want to attract.

It’s just like polishing your conversational skills on a face-to-face basis – sometimes you meet people who disagree with you, and handled constructively, this helps refine your social skills. You quickly realize what kind of people you want to talk to, and because of this, you begin to develop creative ways of expressing your ideas to attract those people. With continued practice, you become better and more at ease with communicating exactly what’s on your mind. In the end, you get to build the kind of audience that you want.

One caveat, however: You cannot find your voice when you keep looking for it. You need to relax and focus on your blogging. Only then will it eventually surface.

There is only one key ingredient that gives your blog that special flavor, that unique kick that separates it from the other blogs: YOU.

This exercise is a continuous and lifetime process. It’s an expression of you discovering yourself, only through your blog. It takes plenty of time, practice, and patience, but when you notice your readers increasing and becoming more engaged with you, then that means they’re seeing the real person behind the blog posts – and they like what they see. That’s your voice.

Photo credits: thinktraffic.net, scientificamerican.com

Carmela Maraan has written on various topics ranging from marketing, advertising, blogging, and creative writing to adult material. She is enthusiastic about expanding her repertoire as she views the world as one huge library. During her free time she is also a voracious reader, an irrepressible singer, and a mom who hardly sleeps.

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2. How to Build an Audience Around Your Blog

3. What has our Perception of “Quality Content” been turned into?

By Nathan Belynah

Congratulations you’ve got your blog up and running and you’re writing good content that isn’t sloppy. Now, you have a connection with your readers through Twitter and other forms of social media, yet you just aren’t getting enough traffic or want more?

Commenting is a sure fire method to attract readers and to prove that your quality content is worth reading. This is essentially a marketing technique that I’ve personally found helpful in promoting myself without spamming and harassing people.

Finding your Readers: What’s your niche?

Google some blogs that are in your niche because your potential readers are those that read blogs in your same field. For example, there’s no reason going to a blog about ‘sports’ when you’re looking for readers that are interested in ‘how to blog’. You will find very little success this way (though not saying it’s impossible). Google ‘how to blog’ (our example) and you will find a plethora of blogs dedicated or associated with blogging.

Writing quality comments

From there, make worthwhile comments that attracts the readers and bloggers attention when skimming through. What I mean is that, the majority of your readers will be people skimming the comments section because of a lack of time or especially when there’s a lot of comments Remember to be polite and courteous; comment and praise the writers work and try to engage in conversations (threads) that are already happening (if any). Saying, “Nice article”, “good work”, “thanks, good read” or the like won’t get you anywhere. Those things are said to-much, and are far too common and will be passed over for more interesting  and worthwhile comments What I’m saying is to be unique, fresh and different. Try to make the fellow viewers and the blogger think.

Don’t be sly

I know that after reading through this, some will try to be sly and write comments that ‘secretly’ attempt to attract readers to your blog, but seriously please don’t. People aren’t dumb and will notice that you are being cheesy by putting links in your comments. You want them to click on your name, not whatever link that’s in the comment.

Don’t put your site’s name as your name

I see this a number of times, and quite frankly, that puts me off. When you use your website name instead of your own name, it seems very impersonal, and it becomes difficult to make a connection, much less earn yourself respect or credibility. So use your own name, keep it personal or you may even use a nickname as, that would be perfectly acceptable too.

The round-up

Following these four key areas ensures greater success in the marketing of your blog People will notice and respect you for it.

How have these tips helped you? Let me know in the comments and contact me here: www.yourthirdspace.com
 

Nathan Belynah

Hi. I’m Nathan – Co-Founder and blogger of Yourthirdspace. I blog about Quotes, Life, Photoshop Tutorials, Health, Web, and Tech. This is my passion. I love to share what I know and benefit others whilst at it – As that’s the purpose of this article. I’m a designer with coding knowledge and enjoy the fine arts (music to theatrical). Would be glad to hear from you.

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Customers are the life blood of any business. Yes, that’s right. It’s not the product, it’s not the innovations and it’s not even the technology or marketing.

Marketing and technology only comes after your customers. You see products of inferior quality sell well and products of outstanding quality sell less. It’s a bit of marketing along with your customers experience with you.

Do you know why many businesses launched by popular companies gain traction quickly as compared to start ups by people who are relatively unknown? It’s the brand value of the parent company.

Most successful companies utilize the power of their already successful product to draw in new customers to their new business. So how do you market your new business effectively to your old customers?

1. Remember the MOST Important Detail…

This is one of the most difficult things any hardcore businessmen can achieve.

The new generation of entrepreneurs is a bit different. However, most of the older generations who own a business are the same. They find it difficult to manage customer relationships once a sale has been made.

I’m not saying that you should forget your business and spend time on customer relationship alone. You must learn to go forward giving equal importance to both.

Finding the right balance is the key to happy customers and ultimately, a healthy bank balance.

2. Make Irresistible Offers

This one is a killer. Nothing beats an irresistible offer. Give them an offer which will invite them back to your store. Once they start frequently visiting your store, you won’t need offers to draw them in.

When you have an online business, offers could be exclusive discounts for your existing customers. You might consider giving away a free podcast or webinar as a thank you for being your customer.

3. Leverage Your Existing Business

This one should go without saying.

You must make use of the credibility of your old business to draw in customers to your new business. It will be easier for you to target your old customers as you probably have a wealth of information about their buying habits already.

4. Get Old Customers Involved

I am not suggesting that you give them a job. Rather, get them involved in your business in a more creative way.

How about letting your most loyal customer cut the ribbons on the opening day of your new business?

It not only helps build loyalty and branding, but can also save on hiring celebrities to inaugurate your new business. The hype is forgotten when a celebrity is involved, but when you get a customer to do it for you, the good will remains as it shows you care for your customers.

If you have an online business, use your past client testimonials. Promote your customers by providing their success story. Give them a bit of the limelight.

5. Keep Your Old Business Involved Too!

Most people forget to inform their previous customers about their new business. How difficult will it be to send in a postcard to them or an invitation letter? If online, an email is even easier.

Personal invitations works best as people feel more compelled to respond to a personal invitation. I am not suggesting that you personally go and invite each and every one of them, but it will certainly feel more personal if they see that the newsletter/email has their name on it.

So, are you ready to invite old customers to your new business?

About the author: Adarsh Thampy is a 22 year SEO consultant. He started his online journey 6 years back and now helps people start their own online business. Download the free guide today and live your entrepreneurship dream.

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As a blogger, having authority is one of the most important things to have, and I consider it one of the most important investments a blogger will ever make.

If you learned anything from yesterday’s issue of From Planning to Earning, you will have found out that authority is a key factor to making money blogging.

It also has a lot to do with building your blogging community, which is even more important than making money. So how can you build authority and achieve these two great feats?

1. The Obvious: Write Great Content

The truth is, you alone can’t build your authority. You need  support from others. As a matter of fact, they are the driving force towards you becoming an authority blogger. Writing great content is one of the best ways to draw people’s attention to your blog.

It is always important to give your best when trying to write for your blog (and other blogs) because your content is a reflection of who you are.

Another great reason why it is important for you to write great content is because high quality articles are going to go viral. The more the word spreads about your post and your blog, the more people will know about you and the more people can help contribute to your blog.

Another important reason you should always write great content is that it increases your perceived value. If you are always writing great content on your blog then people will always see you as someone who knows what you are talking about and you will be able to get great results.

2. Don’t Just Talk, Talk Value

One thing many bloggers do is they just talk out their time. What matters most is not whether you update your blog or not, but the impact your blog has on others.

Research is a key element to building your authority as a blogger. If you take a look at most of the top blogger’s in your niche, you will discover that people take them for what they say and a lot of people will readily believe anything these bloggers publish.

It is very important to research effectively before writing anything on your blog because a lot of your readers will take your word for it and if they discover what you said was not correct, you may pay dearly for it.

People don’t like to be deceived, they love to have the best and the most accurate information given right to them. As an authority blogger, they look up to you to give them this. Don’t let their belief in you sway to anything less than well-trusted.

3. Be a Professional

Another important thing that every blogger trying to build his/her authority must do is to be professional.

It is very important not to neglect some important aspects of your blog like your blog design, logo, eBook cover designs, etc. People love you being professional and the more professional you are the more respect you will earn.

Another reason why you should be professional is that people will tend to stick with your blog and they will also love to promote your work.

Most people who are new to the web can hardly differentiate between someone with a big audience and someone with a small audience. They believe having a great design and a great professional attitude means you are doing something right.

Another way you can look professional is in your content,. Many people fail to proofread their work and leave their posts filled with a lot of typos and grammatical errors. This will not attract the right type of people to your blog and it will also cause a lot of people to see you as someone who is not serious.

4. Influence Others

Another great characteristic of successful bloggers is that they are people of influence. If you see a lot of new bloggers they will tell you they were influenced by “so and so” blogger.

It is very important to try your best to influence everybody who comes across your work in the blogosphere. A guest post can score you some backlinks and do some wonders on your traffic.

But a reader you influence will keep talking about you as long as he/she is blogging. Do your best to influence as many people as you can!

5. Speak With Power & Authority

Another great way to build your authority as a blogger is by speaking with power and authority on your blog. You don’t need to be speaking subjectively on your blog, but speak like you know exactly what you’re talking about.

One thing many blogger’s do is go on speaking subjectively on their blogs, which will not help you. It will only reduce your perceived value.

Try to speak with authority and boldness on your blog. In any post you write, that persona will make your readers take you for someone who knows what he/she is saying and they will be able to cite and quote you outside your blog thereby helping you build your authority.

6. Build On Your Strengths

Another great way to build your authority as a blogger is by building on your strengths. There are various types of authority and respected bloggers and one thing I can notice from them is that they have built on their strengths.

If you take a look at Darren Rowse and Seth Godin, you will notice they update their blogs everyday mostly with short posts. And they remain highly respected.

If you take a look at Glen Allsopp you will notice he only updates when he likes with super long and high quality posts, and he is also respected.

What matters most is not taking the methods of others, but finding out what works best for you.

7. Network With Influencers

Who are the top bloggers in your niche? Why not network with them and use their influence to take your blog to the next level?

One thing I have noticed among many new bloggers who quickly became successful is that they networked with the influencers in their niche.

If you begin to network with the big bloggers like Darren Rowse, John Chow and other major names, you will begin to notice that a lot of their readers and people who see your work with them will begin to respect you and give more value to you.

There are several ways to network with the top bloggers in your niche and one of the best ways to do this is by writing guest posts for their blogs. This will increase your perceived value and authority and will also help skyrocket your blog to the next level.

Over To You!
Have you ever thought about what your authority and influence might be in your niche? Is it something that is really as important as I made it out to be, or are there more pertinent issues to address first?

Photo by Pulpolux !!!

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How does your community resemble you and your ability? This is all about us effectivily creating a community that knows who we are and what we are about. It’s not just about creating a general community or supporters. It’s about creating your community.

Why create new communities when you change?

We can create communities centered around us, our voice, our vision, our purpose, and not necessarily just our blog. When doing something different we should not have to worry about building a completely brand new community.

If you created a community that’s centered around your presence the whole table turns.

Remember a community is when we have one person behind us. I’m going to go through the types of communities we create and why creating your personal community is beneficial.

Looking Over the Types of Communities

A Community Behind You All the Way

This is your personal community. Some may be your friends and family that always have your support in what you do, but many will be people you have personally connected with on and/or offline. These people could be apart of an alliance you have created overtime. All that matters is that these people know your core values, what you want, and your big picture of things. So, here it does not really matter what you want or build, it matters who you are.

What are ways you have created your community? For me and many others networking and helping people along the way has built me a small but very special community.

The Customer Community

Making money online is talked about all the time. One of the reasons you make money online is because you have customers. Without a customer community we would not be able to support ourselves and the other communities.

A Community from Another Community

Here is a community that supports you because you support someone else and they in return support you. If that does not make sense to you, think about it this way. Say you’ve connected with other people that already have their established community and they see that. More than likely they are going to be willing to tell you to their community. Their community then also comes to you. This is a community from another community.

We ultimately have the control over all of these communities and how they form to create our one community.

Having All These Communities

We need all of these communities to really function and can’t just have a community behind you all the way. But, what if your personal community were your customers too? Its very possible and doable. One great way is to instill some urge in your community. That urge along with you striving to stand out and be unique will be the driving force for all three communities to be one.

You define yourself. You define your community.

No urge, then you have 3 distinct communities. No uniqueness, then you have 3 distinct communities. No you, well the pattern continues. It might seem harder to form these 3 types of communities into one, but really its up to you and your community your creating.

Making Sure You Have Your Community

Now, what if you don’t have your own community.

Your own community being ones that just don’t visit your blog from other sites, more than one time customers, and people that will be with you because they believe in your vision and purpose.

If you don’t have your own community you will experience short-term rewards in all areas I’ve just mentioned. And what if you decide to do another thing or slowly go away from what you’ve been doing? Well, you’ll want a community that supports and follows YOU for if you decide to change things up or make a smart expansion most of them will join you there too.

WARNING: Don’t misuse this ability to do anything at anytime and think they will go along with you. A community only follows you because they know you.

Benefits of Having Your Personal Community

• They will back you up if anyone not currently apart of your community says something wrong about you
• They’ll provide you excellent and beneficial advice
• You come out with something, more than likely they will support it
• They’ll tell people about you in good name

No need to create new communities anymore if you be yourself

You should feel proud to have your very own community. You can even give them a very special name to show your appreciation for them.

Sure there are many types of communities that we can create, but if we create one solid community that believes in us and our purpose that’s just one step to greatness. The other steps are up to you, your passion, and you over-delivering all the time.

Do you feel you have your own community or are you in the process still? Be truthful.

Related posts:

1. Instill the Urge for Community Response

2. Creating Interest Within Your Community With E-Book

3. Creating a Trend to Effectively Stand Out

What makes your established community, committed readers, or frequent visitors leave some sort of response to your blog? It’s because of our quality content, our inviting community, or that we interact with our readers. It’s not because we simply ask for their comments or thoughts. Why not? This gets our community to respond, but it’s not really an urge. Here’s how we can change this.

Please know and understand that I’m trying to allow for you (as a blogger) not to always worry about getting responses on your blog.

What “Urge” I’m Talking About

Surely we bloggers or site owners can tell people to leave a comment, their input, or participate in some discussion. We can still do this by all means, but what if we could do more by asking less?

A community response does not just have to be a comment left on the blog. Remember that

This is what I’m calling the “urge” .

If we can create some sort or type of urge within our frequent, new, or dedicated visitors/readers we’ll get this response naturally. So, I’ve thought about how I could instill some urge in my future community for my blog, instead of just always asking, “what do you think?”

Content Transparency

On our blogs we all talk about a certain topic or niche. Many if not all posts we write and publish for our readers/visitors are to help them to do what will benefit them. Well, many of these posts originate from what we have personally found out or personally believe.

Stand by your content at all times

What if we aren’t doing what we tell others? Questions arise.

Whatever we are telling or talking about in our blogs to our community we all need to be transparent within our own blog (in and out). Now, I know many things we say on our blogs are to help others and since the blogosphere is so huge and diverse they might not actually be for us as the blogger. What we do need to do as the blogger is stand by what we have said, offer reason, and insure the content we produce is of great quality to you and the community.

Remember content is king, but its not pristine with any transparency by us.

Gaining Knowledge or Thought

While having a conversation with a few different people who rarely visit blogs, I gained some useful information on why they would even leave a response on a blog.

The reasons centered around them wanting to leave a response were:

• Adding their own twist because they are passionate about that certain subject
• Providing a case study or story
• Pointing out why they could be missing something again because they are passionate about the subject

These reasons are people that rarely visit a blog and might rarely know who the blogger actually is. Think about it. They probably did a Google Search and found your blog/article.

Building that Influence

Influence is defined as “the action or process of producing effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of another or others”.

We know that many bloggers are talking about the importance to have this influence for you and your community. They are right. Specifically, this importance comes down to your community having the urge to leave their response.

Think about the blogs we visit and seem to always offer our response. We might personally know them. Chances are though that we know of them. And we leave our response because we look up to them, take their content to heart, and want to show our continued support or gratitude.

If we all strive to build this influence that urges us to leave our response, this could just all have a trickle down effect. You being influential, other seeing that, your community urges to respond. The cycle goes on.

What’s Your Attraction / Drive?

I’ve highlighted how we can all instill this “urge” for community response by being:

• Being transparent with our own content
• Offering the purpose to gain knowledge or thought
• Building your own personal influence

With all of this taken into consideration we must all know what our attraction and drive is for each of our communities.

If we don’t know this then we can’t effectively instill this urge I’ve been talking about. Yes, this will be you trying to really figure out your passion. It will also be you striving to really stand out in your niche, area of interest, and the blogosphere.

I still want you to know that none and I mean none of this can be done if your content or even design for your blog is not of great quality in your own eyes.

Related posts:

1. Creating a Trend to Effectively Stand Out

2. How to Build a Community Around Your Blog

3. How to Connect Better With Your Community and See Results

A few weeks ago, I launched a newsletter here that really has had a big impact on the blog today. It is another community of readers that is growing pretty strongly here, and the effect this has all had on the blog is really quite big. I want to try to encourage you to start a newsletter on your own blog as well.

First of all, your newsletter has to do with emails, meaning you send content out to anyone who subscribes with their email address. You can send out as much or as little content as you want, and doing this over time will grow your email list to a larger and larger audience.

A newsletter is for everyone. Anyone can do it, regardless of the niche you’re in. That’s what’s so great about them, as long as you can offer great content on a consistent basis, you can have a great newsletter. Maybe you’ll make money too, but that’s for another post.

The great thing about your newsletter is that it gets better every time you send out new content. So, one week you decide to send out an email to a list of 550 people, and from that time to the next week, your list will have a chance to grow into a bigger audience.

So that list of 550 may be a list of 580 the next week, 600 the next week and so on. This growing number of subscribers is how we see results on our blog.

After growing my own email list on this blog and sending out a few newsletter (plus a 10 day course written on my blog), I have noticed a few things different about the blog.

1. More Content, More (Deep) Traffic

I see my newsletter as an opportunity to give this new community of email readers some great content, as well as send some traffic back to the blog. Keep in mind, with a newsletter anyone who reads it will not be sent to your blog unless you send them there by linking to it.

If you caught a glimpse of what a newsletter here looks like, you will see that I link back to Blogussion quite a few times in the content area and other elements. This sends traffic back to the actual blog, and can convert those email subscribers into commentators, RSS subscribers, and maybe some will buy my product.

I have found that when you write content in a newsletter, any interlinking you do back to old posts will get clicked quite a bit, so long as you create some convincing anchor text.

2. A New Audience

An email list is basically a list full of people who have visited your blog and just happen to sign-up to get emails. Some are first-time visitors, and some can be your loyal fans. Either way, since you are speaking to them over a different medium of communication, I find that you are speaking to a whole new audience.

So, I figure if I have a new audience I want to try to speak to them in a whole other way. Yes, I will still be posting the most insightful content as possible in my newsletter, but I also want to try some new things too. Maybe some actual monetization strategies, since I don’t do it here.

A newsletter opens up a lot of opportunities, but none as important as what’s next.

3. Branding Opportunities

With this “new audience,” you have that chance to do new things; to do something different and build up this new audience in a different way than you do your blog. Not everyone who views your newsletter views your blog, so what should you do?

I personally think you should try to convert as many of your email subscribers into regular readers of your blog as you can. One great way to do that is by branding your newsletter. You can get a custom design for it, or just do something as simple as putting a logo at the top.

Get your site’s name up there, get a link to it and if you write a great enough newsletter, expect to see some of those newsletter subscribers at your blog in no time (maybe you’ll recognize their email address in a comment, I don’t know).

My Opinion on Newsletters

I think creating a mailing list for your blog is something you need to do today. With a service like Aweber, doing it is easy and managing it couldn’t be simpler.

As great as newsletters are, they also require a lot of work. Maybe you want to send out an “x day ecourse” like I did, or maybe you just want to send out content once a week. it doesn’t matter what you decide to do, but how you do it.

You can’t really expect to see positive results (increase in blog traffic, making money, etc.) if you just half-ass your newsletter. Instead, you will just be creating more work for yourself, and as always: getting nothing in return.

So while I believe newsletters are for every blog, I don’t think they’re for every blogger. Getting actual content up onto your blog is more important than getting it to your newsletter, so if you don’t think you can manage the two then I suggest you just don’t get into newsletters at all.

What’s Your Take?
Newsletters can be big for you, but they can also be a bust. So far, it has worked out for me and I hope to make it an even larger part of my blog in the near future. If you run a newsletter, what are some of the things you have noticed change in your blog as a result?

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing: The Killer Monetization Method You Haven’t Tried Yet

2. The Best User is the Biggest Winner

3. How to Achieve the Same Benefits of a Guest Post by Leaving a Blog Comment