Trust me I don’t want to bore you. I know the best part about being a blogger is the practice being very casual whether you are blogging for the intent of making money or not. I do know though that blogging can get carried away and make the practice of blogging look corrupted, tarnished, or the thought of blogging being dead.

Dear current bloggers or bloggers that have already aspired to be one, use your ability, power, and voice to relate to these words and thoughts.

I asked the people liking us on Facebook earlier this week about this post being published to get any input added before so many others would add input.

David Risley has wrote a code of ethics for bloggers, but I’m going to take a different approach.

The approach here will center around the true definition of a blogger and having that definition not be corrupted by “bloggers”. We want anyone aspiring to be a blogger to know a few core values that make blogging fun, sometimes a profession, and respected.

These are going to be to the point as I could elaborate on some all day. The point is to get the point and the message.

• Stay true to your voice and passion. Many can strain away from this, especially when they see other the opportunity to make money. The money might come in the short term, but you’ll be “broke” for the long term.
• Offer transparency / authenticity. Think of blogging as a journal that others will want to read because they know your talents or skills related to whatever you’re blogging about.
• Experiment and have fun. Blogging is not meant to be tiresome even though you might get writer’s block. Just be careful not to get too carried away with your experimentation. No one likes a messy lab.
• Give your community a feel for your voice and style. Are you the one that says it how it is? Are you that calm writer? Or do you write deep, thorough posts?
• Be responsible for your creations. Tim O’Reilly called for a blogger code of conduct where we must be responsible “for your own words and the comments you allow on your blog”. You have the power to accept or decline.
• Connect with the community. If people know you don’t respond to any or some of the comments make them aware of that. But, make an effort to connect with people similar to your content along with people supporting you.
• Always improving and learning. The blogosphere is immense but only the good who improve and learn over time will stand out.
• Get the basics. This will include how to have a good designed blog, quality vs quantity, commenting that’s not spam, and getting a gravatar.
• Know what lies ahead. Many existing bloggers are bloggers no more because they were unaware of what they were getting themselves into. Especially if you plan on being a professional blogger.
• Visit ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, and Blogussion. These are essential places that offer a different focus and perspective for bloggers and content creators. I had to include us!

What Would You Add?

A blog is in many ways a continuing conversation.

I surely did not cover everything. The above “code” is developed overtime by and for bloggers so join the efforts to make blogging awesome in the times to come for any aspiring bloggers.

Photo by Jo Naylor

Related posts:

1. Go Big Like a Successful Entrepreneur by Rocking Out with An Initial Community

2. A Quick 4 Step Plan for Beating “Bloggers Crash”

3. How Making Money Blogging Has Been Looked at the Wrong Way by Thousands of Bloggers

When it comes time to expand our blogs we need to take many things into consideration and use caution along the way. We can do this while in the process of expanding our blogs through mind mapping in the beginning stages. This practice surely does not eliminate any mistakes for building our blog, but instead smart mistakes will be made. I’ve learned to mind map the expansion of my blogs instead of just “going with the flow”. Here’s how to get started and expand your blog better.

There are many ways we can build our blog. Yes, we can just “go with the flow”. Yes, we can just expand however way or into area we want. We have so many options, opportunities, and methods of expanding our blogs, but we can just hope right into what comes to our minds initially, or what we even see for an idea initially.

We can forget our purpose when thinking about the future

I know when I want to expand a blog I get so much energy in this process that I tend to lose focus or regret how or what I’ve done in a very short time. I’ve personally been through many blogs since I first began in 2008 and all of them went under due to it not being my true passion and because I did not make smart mistakes while expanding. They were just mistakes.

Smart mistakes are ones that lead you down a path that turned out bad, but after the fact they helped you out while looking at the bigger picture.

Here’s how I’ve transformed my blog expansion and building strategy.

Beginning Steps

Having That Passion

First you must have that passion everyone talks about. Without this you will find yourself not wanting to really expand because you don’t have the drive to know how.

Establishing Your Tagline

One of the most overlooked items on a blog is the tagline

A simple tagline can say a lot about your blog. For example Blogussion’s tagline is “Next Generation Blogging”. What does that tell you as a visitor or reader here? This reaction or thought should be figured out and acts as a good foundation for your blog.

Purpose and Mission

What are you and your blog about? How will your passion and tagline go out and be that blog out to kill the competition? With no defined purpose and mission there is really no business model so you really can’t continue on.

Define Your Community

Who are you striving to attract, please, or change? You need to figure out and define your community so when things come up or ideas come to mind you are able to quickly analyze each and see which ones fit with your community and which ones don’t.

Your established community might change overtime, but you can’t change the established community overtime. If you are, then you need to go back through these beginning steps.

With the beginning but crucial steps out of the way, let’s begin mind mapping our blogs.

1. Brainstorming + Organizing Thoughts

Brainstorming is where we dig deep into our passion, purpose, and start thinking about the intial workings of our expansion. This is where you grab a piece of paper, a whiteboard, or use some software such as MindNode for Mac users.

I personally use MindNode and the iPod Touch version to do my mind mapping that can also be used when writing each of your posts to keep you on guard with your purpose and tagline.

Where to Begin in the Brainstorming Process

• Where do you want your blog to expand?
• Think about the most ultimate state of your blog
• Figure out all the ways you are going to make money
• Come up with strategic yet creative marketing strategies
• Ways to go beyond the competition
• How to further define you and your passion

All of these are just some thoughts and questions to think about while beginning your brainstorming process. Be sure you are recording all of these thoughts. Please don’t limit yourself to what I have quickly came up with.

The above video is of Darren Rowse talking about a brainstorming activity.

Organizing All Those Thoughts (Reality)

The time has come now to organize all of these thoughts or ideas you’ve brainstormed. Organize them in terms of reality and the true you.

Here is where you refer back to those beginning steps I previously talked about and these same steps are going to help you throughout the whole mind mapping process. Remember we are out to make smart mistakes while expanding your blog.

We’re not done. We’re are really just getting prepared for the real action. This is part one of two and part two we will start breaking everything apart, looking at analyzing our immediate action, and implementation of the thoughts.

With this only being part one, what are you looking forward to in part two and what have you learned thus far?

Photo by Lisa Bettany

Related posts:

1. Quick Tip: Discovering article ideas with mind mapping

2. Mapping out a new blog: Choosing a great theme and some killer plugins

3. When Blog Expansions Backfire on You: The Why

The way you make money from your blog can be broken down into a cycle. Because it is unsafe to keep one income stream, you should always be willing to branch out and create more income streams. That is what this cycle is all about, proper repetition and diverse income streams.

Read Part One!

If you read part one of this mini-series, you will find that I, and 6-figure blogger David Risley agree that the way to make money blogging is by selling products to your audience. Not affiliate products, but your own products.

I do recommend you go back and read the first part, as I’m jumping right into the main point here. It’s really an interesting read.

The Cycle of Making Money Blogging

I’m going to finish explaining this cycle by talking about the last 3 parts of it: developing, selling and reviewing what you have done. This stage of the cycle is the more exciting part where you actually create your product. I recommend you don’t go too far into this stage without having fully completed the first half.

4. Developing Your Product

You have been developing your product since the first step, but you didn’t always know you were. That is, you were getting your blog ready for a product you may have one day. Now that your blog is ready for a product and you have an idea in mind, it’s time to begin working on it.

A product can range from a variety of things, and match accordingly to your niche. So, it’s hard for me to really go into too much detail of the things you should do. However, every product has the same, basic needs for success (meaning: plans you should be developing while creating your product):

• A marketing plan

  Sometimes, the best marketing plans come out when you actually have a product created. It’s easier to come up with a sales pitch, and decide what sort of audience could use it the best. But when you come up with your marketing plan isn’t important. As long as you have a decent plan to spread the word about your product, you should get some sales (if your product is useful enough).

• A sales page

  Your sales page cannot be your Twitter account! Making a sales page is easy! All a sales page is, is a page with any information about your product. It can be as simple as Marko Saric’s sales page for his Twitter marketing eBook, or as information jam-packed as our Blogussion Theme sales page is. As long as your potential customers have a place to go and get information about your product, you should see a few sales.

• A support center

  A support center for any product you have is an absolute must! Problems arise for people who buy your product, and the extent of their problems depend on what you are selling. They need somewhere to go if they do experience issues, so always have a great support center on your site for their issues (no, the comments section in your blog is NOT suitable for this).

• Pre-launch hype

  Do whatever you can to create some interest in your product beforehand. Hint at some of the cool things that will be included in your product, and do whatever you can to get as many people as you can excited. Even if it’s just two or three people, that number can change very quickly with just one satisfied customer. Remember: pre-launch hype can be just as important as post-launch.

What would you add to this list? Besides the actual product, what are some other things that are important to develop at this point in the cycle?

5. Sell it

This is undoubtedly the most exciting and nerve-wracking part of the cycle. At this point, you are ready to sell your product. Everything is ready to go, and all it takes are a few clicks to launch.

But it’s not as easy as just making a few clicks. If you want to see sales coming in, you have to use every resource you can and carry out your marketing schemes efficiently and effectively. This is where your blogging buddies come into play and your networking skills need to shine.

Once your product is up for sale, it should be up for as long as your blog is around. So, keep that sales page visible and bring up to your readers that you have a product for sale. The beauty of having a blog product is that it will sell many times over a period of time.

4 months later after launching my first product, I am still having days where it sells multiple copies and earning hundreds of dollars a day. Then there are days where I don’t sell a single copy. That’s just how it works, but the fact of the matter is that you are making money even months after your initial release!

That is what passive income is all about. If you can get a few products selling on your blog, then you have the opportunity to bring in some serious money.

6. Review the Journey

The last stage of the cycle, the reviewing part. If you make it this far, then I want to wish you congratulations in advance. Creating a product is not easy, and getting to the end of the cycle is a true accomplishment. Even if you didn’t earn as much as you’d like.

Whether or not you make serious income from your product doesn’t have to matter (that is, if you’re truly optimistic). There are more a product brings to your blog than just money:

1. The traffic a product can bring in is immense. If you have enough hype built around your product, you can keep an everlasting chain of traffic coming to your blog. That’s why the Blogussion Theme sales page is the top visited page on Blogussion everyday, I have created enough hype to keep traffic and sales flowing to it.
2. The potential for expanding your blog into something more will become a possibility when you launch your product. Blogussion now has a discussion forum which is being prepped for a public launch this summer (currently being used for support), and the release of just this one product has given me hopes for more later. Imagine what it will do for your blog.
3. The readership of this blog has increased without a doubt. More and more customers stick around the support forum and even the community on the blog, waiting to hear something about the future of my product. Can’t the same happen for you?
4. The confidence I have in myself has increased dramatically. I believe more and more that I can create larger sums of money from Blogussion from just this one product, and every sale I make makes me prouder and prouder.

So even if my product flopped, it still would have improved the community in some ways, and even restart the cycle by preparing it for another product launch.

Restarting the Cycle

Once all 6 steps have been completed, you will be back to where you started for your next product launch. You should find that as you develop more and more products, it will become easier and take less time. It can even be more rewarding if you make your product better than the last.

Do you think this cycle is accurate? When I looked back on how I developed my blogging product, I can say that I went through all 6 steps and am working my way through it again. If you have a product of your own, look back and compare your process to mine. How are they alike? How are they different?

Related posts:

1. The Cycle of Making Money Blogging Part I

2. How Making Money Blogging Has Been Looked at the Wrong Way by Thousands of Bloggers

3. The Key Factors to any Successful Product Launch

Recently, I read an article over at ProBlogger that talked about making money blogging. David Risley, a successful 6-figure blogger talked about how bloggers need to find a product. As a blogger who has a product, I can vouch for the points David brought up in his article and can say that making money blogging is done through having a product, not through blogging articles.

Read Part II!

I highly recommend you read David’s article at ProBlogger, as a lot of the points I’m going to be making in this mini-series will be based on some of the points he made in that article.

In January, I launched a product of my own. This was the first product I have ever sold, and my first real attempt at making money from a blog. When I put the product up for sale, it occurred to me that this was the way I was going to make money through my blog.

If you read David’s article, he said that if you want to make money blogging – have a product. If you read this article, (and a past article on the subject), I will say the same thing. His exact words were:

Most bloggers today operate in a dream world of made-up business rules. They try to make money with their blogs when they have nothing to sell. They’ll try to monetize the eyeballs only by littering the blog up with banner ads to sell other people’s stuff. It doesn’t take long for most bloggers to realize what a freaking difficult way to monetize a blog that is!

So if developing a product “isn’t your thing” and making money through your blog isn’t your intention, then stop reading. Nothing I have to say will hold much value to you.

Oh yeah, and if you are impatient and don’t understand that success is achieved over time, click the “x” button at the top of your browser. Because what I have to say needs time to develop.

Now, I’m not a 6-figure blogger like David Risley is, or really earn enough online to support myself (I’m only 16, so whatever I make goes a long way). But, I have earned enough money from selling just one product in the past 4^1/2 months to tell you that there is hope for your very own product as well.

The Cycle of Making Money Blogging

I have created what I believe the process of making money through selling a product is. The good news is that because it’s a cycle, it repeats itself. So, once you go through the cycle once, you have the capability to go through it again and again and earn more and more each time you sell a new product.

This cycle will be explained over the course of two articles. The first 3 of the 6 steps will be explained in this article, and the other 3 will be explained in tomorrow’s post.

I’m going to go over with you the first three steps of the process, prepare, research, and choosing your product. These are the three planning parts of the cycle, where you generally do more of the thinking and analyzing than actually doing anything else.

1. Preparation

You can’t approach something like this without a plan. It took me one year exactly to get my product ready for sale. I know that sounds like a lot of time, but there’s more to planning something like a product than the actual product itself.

What’s the one thing you need to sell something? People. You need readership; an audience who trusts and respects you. Think of the last time you bought something. You either bought it because:

1. Someone you trust told you about it, and because you trust them so much and see value in the product, you bought it.
2. You have read that persons blog or website for a while now, and you trust them enough to be willing to give them your money in exchange for whatever they have to sell.

So, in short: you need to have built some authority and have created a reputation for yourself.

Blog posts are not your product. They won’t get you paid.

As David said (and I agree with heavily), the articles you publish on your blog aren’t the things that get you paid. So many bloggers find different ways to monetize their blog articles, and if they are lucky – they will earn a few bucks doing it. The articles you publish onto your blog are NOT what makes you money.

They build your reputation, your readership, and really reflect the kind of blogger you are. The community you have on your blog is a result of the articles you publish, and how much you are going to earn from your product reflects the kind of community you have built.

So it took me about a year of consistent blogging to be able to build an audience that would look at my product, and buy it. For some, it takes longer. Some, not as long. But the most important thing, even more important than planning the actual product, is to have an audience to sell to.

2. Market Research

This isn’t the most enjoyable task, but it’s important nonetheless.

You are in complete control of what product you want to develop and sell. You have as much freedom to choose what you want to sell as you did when it came time to choose what you wanted to blog about. But unlike choosing your niche, you have to look at more than just your passion.

Once you have a pretty decent community built up (I had about 1,300 subscribers when I launched my product), you will be able to figure out what kind of people they are.

I can’t stress enough the importance of blog content for this step. Not only does the content you write bring your potential customers to your blog, but it reveals the kind of buyers they are. When I established my product, I knew these three things about my customer base:

• I know that many readers in this community are new bloggers without much to spend. I had to take that into account with the product I developed, and I have to remember that for the future. I found this out by actually talking to them in the blog comments, and seeing what their reactions were when I mentioned a paid blogging tool.
• I also know that a lot of users in this community use the Thesis Framework, which is what my product was built on. My reputation in the Thesis community helped sell the theme, and that reputation was established through all the work I have done on this blog.
• The theme that Blogussion uses has always been well-received by nearly anyone who has ever talked about it. I have been asked multiple times in the past to sell it, and have had offers thrown at me already.

It’s often the tiniest bit of information you can find out about your community that will help you decide what to sell, how much to sell it for, and when to sell it.

3. Find your product

Once you have your community and know what kind of buyers you have in it, it’s time to figure out what you want to sell.

The product you choose has to be something you are totally committed to. Finding a product to sell and choosing your blog topic are so closely related because they tie into your ability and willingness to actually do it.

So, with your market research in hand and the same process(es) you used to pick your original blogging topic, you can come up with the best product for your community.

Tomorrow: Part II
Tomorrow I will explain the other half of the cycle. How do you think it will tie into the first half? What are your thoughts about the first half of the cycle? See you tomorrow.

Related posts:

1. How Making Money Blogging Has Been Looked at the Wrong Way by Thousands of Bloggers

2. Little Known Ways Darren Rowse Makes Money Blogging

3. RetireAt21: Young Entrepreneurs Making Money Online – Review

Blogging is not something that “stands still,” it is always changing. Trends, strategies and beliefs are always shifting and how you stay up to date with it is your decision.

But some people are never really “alerted” to these developments in the blogosphere. Because there are already quite a large number of things to worry about on your blog, it’s probably best that you try to cut that number down as much as possible. If you’re worrying about trends and strategies that aren’t really important to your blog anymore, you will be wasting a lot of much-needed time for nothing.

I took a moment and tried to remember back to the days where this blog started, and even at past blogging ventures. I tried to remember things I worried about back in 2007 and 2008 when I really first started blogging, and how irrelevant they are now in 2010.

You don’t worry about any of the following now, right?

1. Google PageRank

I think this is the biggest thing that most bloggers and webmasters in general have stopped worrying about. I remember the days where everyone would be trying to build as many back links as possible for the sake of having a higher PageRank. At one point in time, you could use PageRank as a selling point for a domain name. Now? Not so much.

The only thing you can gain nowadays from a high PageRank is bragging rights. My buddy Rob and I were talking about the PageRank of our blogs a few weeks ago, and we both rank 4. I would like to see Blogussion hit 5 as a ranking (just to rub it in his face), but I won’t be spending even a minute trying to do it, or a second worrying about it.

Why do you think PageRank has lost its value? What was once a defining factor of a “successful website” has now been deemed virtually useless. What happened?

2. Negativity

I remember back when I created my first blog that receiving negative comments, or hearing people disagree with what I wrote about was the end of the world. Controversy was the last thing I wanted to write about, and negativity was one of my biggest fears. I think I feared it because I didn’t know how much it could help me.

I used to think that negativity and disagreement were problems, but it’s actually pure positivity and agreement that were the actual problems. When you write an article that everyone agrees with, one of the two things probably happened:

1. You wrote about a dead-obvious subject that has been overly talked about in your niche.
2. You didn’t add a unique point of view to the subject you talked about.

When I see disagreement within the comment section here, I also see success. It shows that people actually read my article, and actually took time to analyze what I said and write out an opposing opinion. That’s a lot better than seeing those comments where all anyone says is “I agree, nice post!”

3. Aggressive Competition

Is it just me, or are bloggers in the same niche actually nice to each other? Maybe I just don’t know any mean bloggers, but it seems to me that we would much rather help our “competition” than slam them nowadays.

I remember reading SEO articles that warned you not to stuff your meta tags with keywords as a blogger in your niche would report you to Google and get your site penalized. I just can’t imagine any of my friends (and most of them are in the same niche as me) doing that to me. But I don’t see myself keyword stuffing either.

Yes, competition still serves a purpose: to inspire you to keep doing good. But, your “competitors” also help you a lot too. They link back to your articles, they include you in their Blogroll, retweet you on Twitter and even want to connect with you on a more personal level. That isn’t what I remember first starting out.

4. Content Thieves

Alright, so they still bring up some worry to many of us. But nothing nearly as bad it was even a few years ago.

Content thieves (aka scrapers) are people who take your content, oftentimes word for word, and publish it to their own blog. Most do it out of ignorance and think it’s okay, and some just think they are sneaky and that it’s actually helping their site.

When content gets stolen, it becomes duplicate content, and duplicate content causes a bunch of negative effects to your SEO. So why do I think content thieves aren’t anything to worry about?

Luckily, things have changed a little. Most of the time when you contact the owner of the blog (the person who stole your content), and ask them to remove what they have stolen, they will listen. Some just need to hear you ask them to remove it, some need a warning, but there are also the few who won’t take it down. In my experience, I have never been declined when asking someone to take down what they have stolen, so some of these people do actually have a conscience.

I can’t back this up entirely, but I believe search engines have also gotten smarter when it comes to duplicate content and can often determine a scraper from a legitimate source. So, if the site that has stolen your site seems spammy, I wouldn’t worry even the slightest bit about penalization in the search engines.

5. Simple Marketing

It’s become extremely easy to carry out even the simplest marketing techniques. So there is no excuse for you to not bring in even a few readers to your blog.

Marketing has literally become as easy as signing up for a Twitter account, following a few people and tweeting. It has become as easy as leaving a comment on a blog. Those are just simple techniques, yes, but many forms marketing has become such an easy task with the web becoming a better place for bloggers.

What’s there to worry about?

I think my blogging life has become a little easier since I stopped worrying about the things I talked about above. They all were pretty important things to me when I first started, but are now trivial and meaningless to me.

So, what are some things you have stopped worrying about? I find that the more experiences you get with your blog, the fewer things you worry about believe it or not. What are your current fears and woes? I’m sure we can talk about them all day.

Related posts:

1. 8 discouragements that should be looked at as encouragements

2. Build Your Community, Stop Begging for One

3. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Short and Long Term Projects: Some Notes on Blog Flipping

I can’t stress enough the important of a truly remarkable headline. Yesterday I talked about the second most important thing in a post, and now I want to help you with the most important thing. The headline.

I personally find that one of the best ways to attract someone to your headline is to create some form of excitement, or hype. When you see a headline like “50 mind-blowing ways to become an instant success,” you might actually stop for a second and contemplate what that article might be about.

Chances are, with a headline that has as many exciting words in it as that example – you would click it. And read it.

The only problem is creating excitement through written words is a lot tricker than doing it through spoken words. So, a lot of us who write our headlines miss out on this great opportunity to excite someone. I like to talk about exciting stuff, and I like people to read what I write. So I came up with this list of 45 words you can use to really bring some excitement into your headlines.

If you just read them and figure out ways to incorporate them into your own headlines, I think you will understand the effectiveness of excitement in a post headline.

Of course, excitement isn’t the only way to grab people’s attention. I have talked about other headline techniques in the past, and each is just as effective as the next. But what do you think? What do you think is one of the best ways to grab the attention of someone on your blog?

45 Words to Build Excitement

1. Killer
2. Serious
3. Stellar
4. Tremendous
5. Rockstar
6. Capture
7. Amazing
8. Unreal
9. Easier
10. Ultimate
11. Perfection
12. Major
13. Striking
14. Secrets
15. High-qualiy
16. Quick
17. Powerful
18. Dangerous
19. Clever
20. Exciting
21. Stunning
22. Phenomenal
23. Significant
24. Next-level
25. Immense
26. Guarantee
27. Incredible
28. Conquer
29. Perfect
30. Boost
31. Free
32. Fresh
33. Strange
34. Fantastic
35. Brilliant
36. Best
37. Latest
38. Mind-blowing
39. Creative
40. Mega
41. Excellent
42. Ridiculous
43. Exceptional
44. Intelligent
45. Absolutely

What do you think? Do you think that these words could create any kind of excitement in a reader? I think if used right, they very well can make some headlines really stand out. But are there any words up there you don’t think are that great?

What would you add?

I would love to expand this list to more than 45 with your help. What words do you think could make a headline sound exciting? Suggest anything, and I will gladly add them to this list. I want to make this post a great reference for all of you who need help writing standout headlines to come back to and find new inspiration each time.

Words From the Community

1. Explosive
2. Dynamite
3. Awesome
4. Extremely
5. Unbelievable
6. Sexy
7. Spicy
8. Dangerous
9. Wicked
10. Worst
11. Top
12. Now
13. Recent
14. Current
15. Weird
16. Why
17. Hilarious
18. Ever
19. Eye-jerking
20. Effective

Related posts:

1. 18 Resources to Help you Write Better Blog Titles

2. How to Write A Badass Opening to Your Blog Post

3. Headline Writing Techniques That Just Work

Would you believe me if I told you that the first few lines of an article are the most important? It’s not very hard to believe, as a good opening to any sort of writing is completely necessary if you want to gain a reader’s interest.

Keep in mind that the most important thing to grab somebody’s attention is not the opening paragraph(s), but the headline of your article. Your introductory paragraphs need to be compelling and interesting by all means, but they are only important if you can create a headline that gets people clicking.

Since I have talked plenty about creating amazing headlines before, I won’t talk about it here. What I want to go over now are the best ways to open a blog post; the second most important thing in writing. Just like a headline, the way you open your post can be the factor that determines whether or not someone will read your post or leave it. And if you were lucky enough to get a person to click your headline, you better know how to keep them reading.

Creating the “Hook”

Creating the “hook” (or “creative lead“) is a bulletproof way to grab anyone’s interest. The hook you come up with needs to be short, but very interesting. Just read around any blog with a persuasive writer behind it, and you will find a very enticing opening to just about any article on their blog.

Grabbing an interest in one sentence (that’s generally how long a hook should be) can be either very easy or very difficult. Sometimes, the sentence will just come naturally and will be no problem to write. But other times, it will be very difficult to write. It’s important that your hook is the best it can be, so don’t think of it as a waste of time spending 15 to 20 minutes on it.

The best hooks are short and simple, and can immediately capture anyone’s interest. There are some great methods of making your hooks very effective, and can make coming up with one very simple:

• Start with a surprising fact or statistic: It’s amazing how powerful this is. The more interesting the information you have, the more interested people will become, right? What works better than amazing a reader with a shocking statistic? Example: Every 10-13 seconds, someone gets divorced.
• Open with a quotation: If you can open an article with the words of an authority figure, or just a very powerful and meaningful quote, you will find that more and more people will develop an interest in your article. Example: “Happiness depends on ourselves” — Aristotle
• Ask a question: This works in headlines, so why couldn’t it work for an introductory paragraph? Try to ask a question that may not be able to be answered unless your article is read, or just ask something that relates very closely to the headline of your article. Example: Do you know what the most important thing in a blog post is?
• Speak metaphorically: Metaphors are very powerful literary devices, and are very thought-provoking. If you can pick a good enough metaphor that relates to your headline, you are bound to get people thinking and reading. Example: Life is a dream
• Be humorous: What’s a better way to connect with someone who’s being funny? If you can make someone laugh, or even smirk once – they will most likely keep reading your article so you can make them do it again. Example: Statistics have shown that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25.

Formatting

Have you ever thought about the formatting of your first paragraph? There are actually a few ways you can really spice the look up of your introduction to make it look more aesthetically pleasing. The better you can make something look, the better the chance of you grabbing someone’s attention will be.

1. Drop cap

There is a drop cap used in every post here, and it looks really nice. It’s a simple little technique, and is very popular with newspapers and magazines, but works with blogging no problem. Want to create a drop cap for yourself? You just need a little code:

1. Firstly, wrap this tag around the first letter in your content: <span class="drop_cap">H</span>
2. Add this to your CSS (values may need adjusting):

   
.drop_cap { float: left; font-size: 3em; margin: 0 0.5em 0.5em 0; }


And just like that, you can have a cool looking drop cap at the beginning of all your blog posts with little effort to style.

The difference between the opening text & body text

2. Special font style

Have you ever thought how changing the font attributes would have an impact on the look of your opening paragraph? By that I mean, changing the font family, changing the color, or even changing the style. Take UXBooth for example. Their body text has the following font attributes:

• Font: Verdana
• Size: 12px
• Color: #3D3F40
• Style: Normal

But if you take a look at their opening paragraph alone, they have the following font attributes:

• Font: Georgia
• Size: 15px
• Color: #656565
• Style: Italic

Do you think these changes have any impact on the effectiveness of the opening paragraph?

3. Images

You hear it time and time again, but it’s very important nonetheless. An image can really make a headline “pop” and stand out, just as it can help your opening paragraph. The more you can relate an image to your opening paragraph, the more a reader will understand the main idea of your article. Even look for an image that uses one of the “hook” techniques I mentioned above – humorous, metaphors, shocking, etc.

How serious do you take your introduction?

The opening paragraph is one of the most important things to a post, and you need to be able to write one that truly kicks ass. The more you can tie it into the headline, the more effective it will be in keeping a user interested in your article.

What tips could you share that will make the introduction to an article much better? I look forward to hearing from you in the comments!

Related posts:

1. How to Calmly and Efficiently Write a Post at the Last Minute

2. 18 Resources to Help you Write Better Blog Titles

3. How to Read a Blog Post Effectively

I‘m not kidding either. For the first time in weeks, it is warm out (about 57 degrees today), and there is actually a field of green grass showing under the bright sun instead of a blinding white. Why would I, or anyone else want to sit inside on the computer on a day like today?

It’s not that I don’t like blogging, or getting to know you guys. It’s all actually very fun to write and interact with everyone who reads my stuff (thanks, by the way).

But today, I don’t know. Today, I just don’t feel like it. But I’m doing it anyways. Talk about commitment, right?

No. I’m not rewarding myself for doing what I am supposed to do; what I promised myself I’d do every day of the week. I’m proud of everything I have accomplished in a year and 2 months here (has it been that long already?), but I’ve learned not to celebrate too much and not become too over zealous about getting my articles ready for the week. I’ll just have to do it all again next week.

As pessimistic sounding as that is, it’s true. I believe that if you get overly cocky about something, that it will eventually turn into something that brings you down the second even the tiniest thing goes wrong. Hence the “I don’t feel like blogging today” crap that is going around.

The above paragraph isn’t a call out for help from me. I’m fine actually, everything is going pretty well for me. And I did lie. I do feel like blogging today.

After a year of blogging on a regular basis (at least 5 times a week), I have learned that it’s not about what I feel like doing anymore; it’s what my community feels like doing.

And when I’m not pushing out content 5 days a week, replying to comments, and coming out with new things to make you happy – you will probably start feeling like you should stop visiting my blog. And I totally understand. I don’t deserve your time if I can’t deliver what I promised I would.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the courage, or even the content to back up a statement like that. Lucky for me, I do, and I do actually care enough to keep pushing out content and new features to improve my blog. Even on those days where I don’t feel like it. And I do have days like that, we all do. No matter how much we tell ourselves we love blogging, it still happens.

Maybe it’s healthy for us as we get the rest we need to keep blogging later; to do nothing and get better. Maybe it’s not, because we will get too accustomed to not working. That’s for you to decide.

But the day where you choose to not update your blog, or miss an important deadline for something is the day you will start losing interest in your blog. A blog is not something you can just let sit and hope for the best, it’s something that needs attention every day.

What do you think starts happening?

I chose to keep this post short compared to the regular behemoth-sized posts you see here so I can get my message across to those of you with a shorter attention span (oh come on, you know I’m only joking! Most people probably stopped reading after I said “I don’t feel like blogging today”).

When you decide you don’t feel like doing something that could have any kind of positive impact on your blog, I want you to come back to this post and read it again. Seriously, bookmark it. Keep it where you can get to it thoughtlessly.

Or, just read this list. I call it the “get you ass in gear or bad things will happen to your blog…list.” Here we go.

The official “get you ass in gear or bad things will happen…list”

1. Either get it done now, like you planned – or get it done later when you’re stressed out, have other things to do, and feel like crap for not getting it done when it should have been done.
2. Thoughts like “I’ll just get it done later” turn into “F*** that, I don’t want to do it” turn into “I wish I had done that.” Always think “I’ll just do it now” and actually do it so you don’t regret anything later.
3. Once you stop doing the things you should and actually have importance to do the things you shouldn’t do with little importance – it will turn into a bad habit. And you will almost never want to do what are most important to you. This goes for blogging, and your life in general.
4. If you work on a blog for any period of time and then suddenly stop, then you have just successfully wasted your life. Why do you think people say bloggers waste their life by sitting on the computer for hours? Because they QUIT! Simply stay committed, finish what you started, and never feel like you are wasting your time, and you won’t be wasting your life.
5. Remember the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of your blog. What were they? Did you accomplish them? Well, what the hell are you doing doubting yourself? Go get them done!

Okay, that last one wasn’t really a bad thing, but I hope it will serve its purpose: to motivate you. How would you add to my list? If you give me something good, I’ll really add onto it in this article. If we can get a great list going…well, you’ll see.

There is a reason why I represented this post with an image filled with hearts…can you guess the metaphor behind it? Look closely at the image, and all of the details. I’ll be impressed.

Related posts:

1. Conquering those days where you don’t “feel” like writing by facing these 5 realizations

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

3. How Being Happy can Make you a Better Blogger

When it comes to writing content, you have a lot of things you need to take into consideration before publishing that final draft onto your blog. The one thing you need to consider before publishing anything is whether or not your article is ready to be seen by many people.

There are a lot of ways an article can bring in traffic. It can be from social media websites, a mention on another blog, link directories, newsletters, etc. However, there is one method of driving traffic to a blog that is pretty difficult to wrap your head around.

Search engine traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a tricky subject to say the least, but it’s a method that can bring thousands of visitors to your blog easily. Do you know what the only thing you need to do to achieve SEO greatness is? Keep writing blog content.

When it comes down to it, all that truly matters for good SEO is good content. It’s not about writing content that humans will enjoy for SEO, it’s about writing content that search engines will enjoy (but don’t get me wrong, always put the humans first).

Because of the confusion that this topic causes, there are many bloggers out there who simply do not understand how SEO works. With that lack of understanding, many ignore it, and many approach it the wrong way. Lucky for us (yes, I consider myself a pretty dumb SEO’er), there are people who understand how search engines work and are nice enough to help us dumb-dumbs rank better within the search engines.

For you today, I have a list with three of the absolute best tools there are out there for making SEO seem almost easy and effortless. I use all three of them here on Blogussion, and so far I have been pretty pleased with the results of each.

1. The Thesis Theme for WordPress

You guys are probably tired of hearing about it, but Thesis has had such a huge impact on the SEO of my blog that I can’t help but mention it anytime I bring up search engines!

I won’t go over the millions of things Thesis does to help your SEO, but I will tell you the one feature that is particularly useful to your content.

One of the coolest things that Thesis has to offer are the extra options it adds into the post screen section of your blog. You can add a custom title tag, meta descriptions and post tags to match the content of your article. Those three things have an impact on how well your content can rank in the search engines, and Thesis makes dealing with those important things easy.

Buy the Thesis theme →

A simpler alternative

If you don’t own Thesis (what are you, crazy?), you’re still in luck. There are plugins out there that have the same features Thesis does to your post screen to help you better your SEO for articles. There is a plugin for WordPress called All in One SEO which is a must have plugin for any WordPress user not on Thesis (as Thesis eliminates the need for All in One SEO).

2. Scribe SEO

I have just recently started using Scribe SEO to optimize my articles, but I have to tell you – it is one of the most useful services I have signed up for in a long time.

Scribe basically acts as your very own SEO instructor. It analyzes your content, and grades you on the optimization of your article. It then works with you, generating a list of things you can do to improve your article for the search engines until you have a “perfect SEO score.”

What a post with a perfect grade will appear as after review by Scribe

Did you know, for instance, that a good SEO practice is to add at least 1-2 hyperlinks towards the beginning of your article? I didn’t, but Scribe has taught me little tricks like that, and so much more.

The only thing is, Scribe is a paid service. There are monthly subscriptions, but it is well worth the money to have a tool that will help you with the SEO of your articles as much as Scribe does. I will write a more detailed review of Scribe later, because I just flat-out love this service.

Like any good service, there is a free trial for Scribe available if you would rather try it out before you buy it.

Useful Scribe Links:

• Pricing Plans
• Video demo
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Introduction on Copyblogger

3. Insights Interlinking Plugin

Insights is a totally free plugin that helps you do one thing: interlink. Interlinking blog posts is a technique that helps older articles on your blog with a few main things:

• Drive traffic back to your older articles.
• Helps search engines get to your older content and increase PageRank, index them (if for some odd reason they were never indexed), etc.
• If you choose a specific set of keywords to link back to that article, those links will help you rank for those chosen keywords in search engines.

Interlinking without any tools to guide you can be tricky if you have a lot of posts on your blog. We can’t remember every single article we write on our blog to interlink, so that’s where Insights comes in.

The plugin adds a new menu to your post screen that has a search bar in it. With this search bar, you can type in keywords of posts you want to find so you can interlink to in your current article. Not only that, you can search Google and many other sources right from your admin panel.

This plugin makes interlinking a breeze, and I recommend it to every single one of you reading this article.

That’s what I use

Those are the three amazing tools I use here to prepare my articles for a run in the search engines. Even though two of them are paid for, they will pay off for you immensely with proper use. If a 16-year-old kid can afford them, I’m sure you can too.

Are there any SEO tools you use in particular? There are more that I have found, but I chose to limit this article to just these three major ones. But I would love to hear what you guys use to optimize your content.

Related posts:

1. Blog Optimization Series: Social Media Optimization (3/3)

2. Blog Optimization Series: Search Engine Optimzation (1/3)

3. Blog Optimization Series: Search Engine Marketing (2/3)

A good blog headline is often the only factor that determines whether or not an article on your blog will be read. The idea that content is king is true, but some people miss out on reading that great content because there is nothing interesting in the headline that represents it.

Unfortunately, writing a good headline is one of the most challenging aspects of writing blog content. It can literally make or break a post, yet it is something many bloggers fail to pay special attention to.

I have given you plenty of resources to work with in the past to help you write better blog titles, but now I want to give you something more direct to work with. I have taken a particular interest in the finer details of this blog ever since our editor, Seth left. The headlines that represent my content have been things that I have been noticing more, and wanting to improve more than anything else.

In that quest for improvement, I found a few methods that work great just about every time I use them in my blog headlines. Before I came out with any sort of title for my article, I would always consult this list of methods to see which would work out the best for the type of article I am going to write.

Use this guide as a reference for your own headlines, as the ideas listed here are a great way to get you started on producing great blog headlines.

1. Headlines that leave you wanting to know more

I’ll start this list off with a rather risky headline technique; the one that leaves readers “hanging.” What’s better to peak someone’s interest than delivering a short headline that doesn’t reveal too much, but just enough to make someone wonder the actual meaning of?

Now, I say this is risky because of the fact that you aren’t very clear in the headline, and that also may throw off some potential readers. Use this at your own risk, but take a look at some of the examples of this headline technique in use and decide if it’s something you want to try.

• The Field of Dreams Myth
• You are the P.I.C. of Your Blog
• The 3 B’s of Networking
• The easiest post you’ve ever read
• The 2 1/2 Golden rules of blogging

These articles all have short headlines that introduce an idea, but will often leave a viewer confused on the meaning until their curiosity gets the best of them and clicks the headline.

2. Ask an important question

Nothing is more engaging than asking a simple question. People like to participate in discussions that ask for their insight as it gives them an opportunity to share their “dominant” view of the topic amongst others.

If by chance you ask a question that other people would like to know the answer to, then you will have people clicking your headline in search of that answer. Whether or not you can follow through and give them the answer they’re looking for is up to you. But at least you have an interesting enough headline to work with.

• Does your current posting frequency bring in the best results?
• Can you make money from membership sites?
• What has our perception of quality content been turned into?
• What has acting now really done for you?

All of these headlines have a question in them, and all force you to try to answer them prior to clicking on them to see what the “right” answer may be.

3. Promise to teach or solve a problem

Everyone has their share of problems, or lack of knowledge in a certain field. We want to keep learning and solving problems that we will jump into any article that can promise these things in the headline.

While every post you write on your blog teaches, the headline you write doesn’t always come out and say that. With this technique, you are saying in every headline “If you want to _____, I will teach you how in this article.” It’s up to you how you decide to dress that message up to make it sound more appealing.

• How to bring old posts back to life by creating a “Favorite Articles” page
• Using your strengths and weaknesses to become a better blogger
• How you are unknowingly harming your blog posts
• 5 Easy Blog Improvements in Under 5 Minutes Each
• A quick 4 step plan for beating bloggers crash

All of these headlines introduce a problem that may exist for you, and has some sort of hook that will grab your interest into reading the article.

4. Goes straight to the point

A headline that is short, simple and straight to the point can never fail. It directly tells the reader exactly what the article will be about, with no fluff around it. This method can’t cause confusion, and anyone who clicks the headline knows exactly what they want from your article.

• Twitter Apps to make blogging easier
• The Power and Importance of “Free”
• The problems of diversifying blog posts
• Firefox makes blogging easier
• How to start a killer blog contest

These headlines are all short in length, but more than clear in purpose. This tells the reader EXACTLY what they will be reading about.

5. Exposes some sort of secret

Everybody loves secrets. The word alone is enough to interest people in reading your material. Secrets are idea that have not been told to many people, if any at all. The mere idea of someone getting to learn information only a few others know may be just enough to peak their interest into reading what you have to say.

I can even say that sharing some sort of revelation, or breakthrough idea, you had would make for an interesting blog title. Everyone is looking to be a revolutionary and have a more unique blog, that the more breakthrough ideas you can share, the more interesting your posts (and headlines) will become.

• How making money blogging has been looked at the wrong way by thousands of bloggers
• The secrets to writing a review that makes you money
• 5 Dangerous Myths about making it big
• How I realized banner ads were harmful to my community
• Why the new Google Favicon gets more buzz than your blog

All of these headlines imply that there is information within the article they represent that you do not know about yet. These secretive headlines should be as user engaging as possible, by using pronouns such as “me” “I” “they” “we” “us” to make it more personal.

Yay or Nay?

I have shared with you five of the most common formulas I use for creating my blog headlines. Do you think you can use these as well as I can, or do you use other approaches?

I would love to hear if you guys have any common themes you use to come up with your blog headlines. After all, they can never be too good.

Related posts:

1. Having A Good Writing “Personality”

2. 18 Resources to Help you Write Better Blog Titles

3. 5 Ways you are Unknowingly Harming Your Posts