When I started blogging, writing didn’t come naturally to me.

Not at all.

It took me forever to craft a single post and sometimes I’d be halfway through an article when I would decide to scrap the entire thing because I didn’t like where it was headed.

It was rough – but over time I’ve had a lot of practice and picked up a ton of tips that I’m happy to share with you today.

I’m no CopyBlogger, but these are the things that help me write more efficiently.

Before Writing

Before the fingers hit the keyboard, there are some things you can do to increase the chances that you’ll have a great writing experience.

Start With the End

“If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to get there?”

No – I’m not telling you to start off by writing your last paragraph. Instead, I’m asking you to think about what your concluding paragraph might say.

Beyond that, what do you want your readers to experience after reading your post? What do you want them to do? How do you want them to feel?

These are all important questions you should ask yourself first because the answers can help you craft your post and exactly what elements might be included in it.

What Part of the Content Pyramid Are You Shooting For?

Have you ever considered The Content Pyramid?

The content pyramid is my made-up guide for understanding the different types of content that you can publish on your blog, which appeal to different kinds of people and how much of each type one should write.

Here’s a refresher image:

Before you begin writing a new post, it’s good to know where on the Content Pyramid that post might lie.

Sometimes, the Content Pyramid itself can help you determine what kind of post to write too.

Mind and Body Prep

I don’t know about you, but I have to be in the mood to write.

If I’m not – it’s going to be a struggle and the last thing I want to do is try to force an article out of myself. I want my writing to flow naturally, and I’m sure you do too.

In order be in the mood, it’s all about properly preparing your mind and your body. You can do so by thinking about these two elements:

• Energy: One of the hardest things to do is write when you don’t have the energy to do it. So many things play a role in how much energy you have – from sleep to diet, fitness and even stress. You should at least be conscious about your energy levels and what you know you can do to keep your energy levels high.

Quick Tip from Pat: One thing I always think about is what time(s) of the day I have higher energy levels, and make sure that is when I write. For me, I always write late at night.

• Environment: Another vital factor to your mood can be the environment that you are writing in. Everyone has different preferences for what is the best environment to write in, but again it’s just something to be conscious about. For example, I need a well-lit area and I need the area to be absolutely clean and quiet, so I’m usually in my office (and I need to wear socks too, but I won’t get into that now). I absolutely cannot concentrate in a cafe or coffee shop, while I know a number of other bloggers who have written their best posts while sitting in a coffee shop somewhere.

While Writing

Once you actually start writing, it’s a whole new ballgame. Let’s get into some tips that you can use while you’re constructing your post.

The Headline

The headline or title is one of the most important elements of your post.

You can have the best content in the world, but if your headline is terrible chances are people are not going to read it because they’ll skip over an uninteresting headline. This is especially true when you consider social sharing.

As a result, one of the first things people do is try to come up with the perfect title. This is good – except that sometimes the perfect title doesn’t come right away, which can lead to frustration and a lack of – well, content in your post.

My tip for you is this: if you can’t think of a good title or headline within 3 minutes, just start writing your post. Don’t let the headline stop you from pouring out the excellent content that you know you can write, and sometimes as you write the headline will naturally come later.

When You Get Stuck

Sometimes you’ll be in the middle of a post and for whatever reason all of a sudden you draw a blank.

This happens to me all of the time!

The first part of the post is awesome, but for some reason something doesn’t click and every new line I write just doesn’t seem right.

When this happened in the past, I used to delete the entire thing and start over.

Now –  I do a number of different things when I arrive at this point:

1. Take a Break: 15 minutes away from your writing can do wonders for the rest of your post.
2. Save as a Draft and Start a New Post: If it’s not working out, save it as a draft and start a new post. You can come back to it later (like when you’re stuck in another post in the future) and maybe you have another idea that’s better for you to write now. Personally, I currently have 12 half-written posts saved for later.
3. Get Inspiration from Your Community: Ask a relevant question to your fans on Facebook or Twitter and you might get something interesting or inspiring that can guide the next part of your post.

Imagine Who You’re Writing To

This is, by far, one of the best tips I can give you when it comes to writing your posts:

Imagine who you’re writing to. 

Remember – we aren’t writing for ourselves, and we aren’t writing for the search engines (although search engines can guide how we present our information).

We write for our audience, and if you can imagine a single person in your audience who you’re writing to, your ideas and writing are going to flow much better.

When I write, even though I know a lot of people will read my posts, I imagine a specific person who I feel will benefit from it, and I do my best to make sure that he or she will totally get what I’m trying to convey.

When I can do that, the post reads better for everyone.

After Writing

A blog post doesn’t end after you finish your last word. In fact, that’s only the beginning of many other things that should be done.

Preview the Post and Read Your Post Aloud 

Instead of just skimming what you just wrote in your WordPress editor, actually preview the post so you can see what it looks like when it’s published on your blog.

In addition to that, read your post out loud. Not out loud in your head, but actually outloud-outloud so that you can hear yourself saying the words.

Reading your post aloud in a new environment, one that’s different than the one you’re editing on, will help you locate some possible spelling, grammatical and formatting errors that you wouldn’t have caught otherwise.

Also, you’ll be able to hear the flow of your post. Maybe it makes sense in your head, but when you read it out loud it might not sound right or things might need to be rearranged at little.

Publish the Darn Thing

At some point, you’re going to have to push that publish button, so when you feel your post is ready, just do it.

When I first started blogging, I’d finish a post, proofread it and then hover over the publish button for what seemed like days, scared like something immediate and drastic would happen if I didn’t get the post absolutely right.

Yes – when you hit the publish button your post goes live, your RSS subscribers get notified and your site pings the search engines, but really it’s not that big of a deal. If you made a mistake – it’s all good.

Just fix your mistake, republish the post and know that you did what you could. It’s not the end of the world.

At this point, however, you’re still not done with your post. In fact, some of the most important things that can happen to your post happen after it’s published.

Here are two additional “oldie-but-still-goodie” posts here on SPI that will help you understand what you should be doing after your post goes live:

• The End of a Blog Post is Just the Beginning
• The Blog Post Checklist: After You Publish Your Post

There are obviously several other tips for writing blog posts that I haven’t touched on today, but these are definitely some of my favorites – mainly because they are different.

Do you have one or two writing tips that you’d like to share with the community? If so, please post a comment and share the knowledge!

I hope you enjoyed this post! And if you did, please feel free to share it!

Cheers, and all the best!

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5. Blogging Tips You Should Know

A couple of weeks ago I was at the mall with my good friend Chris Ducker from Virtual Business Lifestyle. We had just finished an awesome weekend in LA at Blog World Expo and we were headed down to my hometown of San Diego when we decided to stop at a mall in Irvine to grab a bite to eat and explore.

Chris lives in the Philippines and I wanted to give him a taste of the Orange County lifestyle here in southern California, something I became very familiar with when I worked in Irvine at my old architecture firm.

While strolling through the mall we randomly walked up to a mall-cart (those product displays that stand in the middle of the mall) that had some interesting looking merchandise.

I pointed at one of the electronic devices and asked the guy who was there, “So what does this thing do?”

Then, he did a little demonstration for us, which I’ll show you in the video below (and look out for the surprise at the end!):

(Click here to watch the video on YouTube)

And for those of you who can’t watch or listen to the audio, the transcript will be available right here very soon, although I recommend you watch and listen sometime because the demonstration has to do with an audio device. 

As I mention in the video, giving people instant results is incredibly powerful.

This is something I always knew, but when I heard Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers.com talk about it in his presentation at Blog World Expo, it really struck a chord with me.

Instant results can yield instant fans, and sometimes instant customers too.

What’s even more impressive, especially if you’re teaching something, is to have the person (or audience) you’re speaking to experience instant results on their own as a result of their own work.

This isn’t always possible, but a lot of times it is and we just don’t take advantage of it.

Here are a couple of specific ways you can think about giving instant results to your audience:

1. Share Specific Methods That Can Yield Instant Results

The easiest thing to do is just simply share specific strategies that work fast. Again, we’re not talking about principles and theories and mindset type stuff here – it’s actual actionable stuff that your audience can see results from right away.

For example, last week I wrote a post entitled 10 Creative Ways to “Level Up” Your Presence on Facebook, which shares tips that I use on my own Facebook Page to increase engagement and garner more comments.

Most of the tips that I included were tips that can be implemented immediately, and consequently a lot of people got excited when they experienced the instant results themselves.

For example, I got this email a couple of days ago from someone who manages a Facebook Fan Page about True Blood (a TV series on HBO):

Hi Pat,

Last week I read your post 10 Creative Ways to “Level Up” Your Facebook Presence and immediately put several of the techniques into practice. I posted then within 10 minutes we had more activity than we’d had in the past week. Well, FB just emailed our weekly stats, and the proof is in the numbers:

4,995 monthly active users +231 since last week
11,435 people like this +26 since last week
385 wall posts or comments this week +371 since last week
248 visits this week +83 since last week

Thanks so much for sharing those tips with us!

It worked, and it worked fast, and for that reason I know this person will continue to be a fan of SPI and consume my content in the future.

2. Demonstrate How Easy it is to Complete a Particular Task

Some people know what to do, they just don’t know how to do it.

Another instant result type of thing that you can share is something that demonstrates how easy it is to accomplish a particular task.

Again, not everything falls under this category, but a lot of things do.

Here are some of my own examples:

• How to Build a Blog and Write Your First Blog Post in Less than 4 Minutes
• The Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Newsletter
• How to Create a Facebook Landing Page
• How to Brand Your Facebook Page 
• Add to Cart Button MADE EASY – The Magic Button

All of these tutorials help people accomplish something that would normally take much longer to figure out on their own, and at the end of the instruction they have something to show for it – something instant.

Also, when people subscribe to my email list, some of the very first emails new subscribers receive are emails with actionable items they can implement immediately and see actual results from! (By the way, if you aren’t subscribed yet, you can subscribe using the box below)

Submit

The shorter the task takes, the better – because again, people want instant gratification, especially nowadays when everything seems to be moving at lightning speed.

So as much as principles, theories and mindset type advice is good (as they are an important component of the content pyramid), actionable items that lead to immediate results create instant fans, and possibly instant customers too.

And this doesn’t stop the moment a customer makes a purchase either.

If you have a course or an eBook or anything that people pay for, you can knock it out of the park and quickly validate their purchase if you give your new customers something quick that they can implement and see results from right away.

If you can do that, they’re more likely to go through your entire product, and if you deliver, you’ll have a life long fan – someone who trusts your brand and would be willing to share it with their contacts and possibly purchase from you again the next time you have something to offer.

Give them instant results.

If you liked this post, please do me a favor and click the retweet or like buttons below! Thank you!

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And don’t forget – the Only72 event sale will be over in less than 24 hours! Click here to check out the deal!

Cheers, and all the best to you!

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Relationship management is the idea of organizing the interactions that you have with other people.

It’s a simple idea, but it’s not simply implemented – especially as your blog, business and brand begin to flourish.

When I first started blogging it was very easy for me to remember who contacted me, when, and for what reason – mostly because contact with other people was few and far between and getting an email from a reader was a huge deal.

Now, emails from readers are still important to me but they come in much larger quantities (sometimes 100s a day) and there is no way I can easily remember the history of interaction with every single person.

This is why I get help from a very slick Gmail Application called Rapportive. It is, by far, the best thing I’ve discovered this year. A big thanks to my buddy Cliff from Podcast Answer Man for showing me this amazing tool.

What Rapportive Can Do

Rapportive creates a dynamic CRM (customer relationship management) tool in the sidebar of your gmail account.

*NOTE – you don’t have to have a @gmail.com account in order to use Rapportive – you just need to use Gmail to view your emails. I setup Google Apps for Free to manage emails for SPI through gmail.

Even if the people who email me are not exactly customers, I’d like to treat them as such because you never know – they could become one in the future (or at least refer some) – and using a tool to help build and nourish that relationship makes this much more possible. Plus, it just looks much more professional (and saves a lot of time) when you can easily recall information about a person in just a few seconds.

Here’s what I see when I view an email from Cliff Ravenscraft, for example:

This is shown right next to my email in the exact same window, which makes it extremely easy to see all kinds of things related to Cliff.

Who They Are

Rapportive pulls information from existing social network profiles to give a quick snapshot of who that person is. Even if you’re getting an email from a person for the first time, if they are connected to these networks you’ll see important information about that person.

You can use this information to help guide how you respond to that particular person, and just imagine if you include something you learned about them from Rapportive in your reply. You’ll look like you’re very on top of your game.

Quick story - one person emailed me asking for advice the other day and Rapportive showed me that he was an Ohio State Buckeyes fan. At the end of my reply, all I did was say “Go Buckeyes!” and within a couple of hours I received an email back from this person saying he was very impressed, and asking how I knew. Of course, I told him it was because of Rapportive.

If someone said “Go Bears!” to me a reply, it would definitely be a great first impression and something I would absolutely remember.

Social Network Activity

I know a lot of you are going to dig this.

Not only can I see this person’s latest activity on a ton of different social networks (there’s about 200 you can choose from), which could enhance my emails even further, but I can see if I’m connected to them or not – and if not I can immediately follow or friend them directly from Rapportive and expand my network.

This is exactly how I’ve been able to grow my LinkedIn account, which I’ve had for years but never did anything with. With the simple click of a button and nothing else, I’ve been able to create a ton of new connections.

Below, I’ve expanded the Facebook portion of Cliff’s rapportive dashboard to see what his latest post was, and I can even click on any links and comment on his post too.

Previous Emails and Shared Docs

Showing previous emails is something that most email clients do already, but having the titles show up here in the Rapportive Dashboard, again, is just super convenient so I don’t even have to do any work to find that information. I can click any of those emails to open them too in case I needed to refer back to them for a response.

Cliff and I also share a couple of Google Documents together, and having the ability to see what those documents are is great too. If you’re working with a number of people on various projects, and using Google Documents to manage things, I can see this being extremely helpful and an absolute time saver.

Email List Subscriber Data

If you’re building an email list, you can integrate your email service provider (such as Aweber or MailChimp – others will follow soon) to see if this person is subscribed to any of your lists.

If you click on the list name you can see exactly when it was they subscribed and the last email in your follow-up sequence they received too.

This. Is. Amazing.

Here’s what it looks like:

Imagine – if you notice a person isn’t subscribed to your list, you can simply ask them in your reply to sign up if you feel it will benefit them.

If you wanted to get super slick, you could use a tool like Text Expander to easily type in a few letters which would then automatically insert pre-written copy asking a person to subscribe to your newsletter, with all of the appropriate links.

If a person is already subscribed, you can see where they’re at in your autoresponder sequence and talk about that briefly in your reply too.

For example, for the person above I could say, “I hope you liked my newsletter about Suprise ‘em Marketing. Please let me know if you have any more questions about it. If not – I hope you like the next one which is all about how to use LinkedIn” – or something like that.

Adding Notes

My absolute favorite part about Rapportive, in addition to all of these awesome things I already covered, is the ability to add notes about a person.

At the bottom of the Rapportive dashboard, there’s a text field that I can use to write down anything I want.

Often times, when I get an email, I’ll jot down 4 or 5 words in this text field so that if this person emails me again in the future, I can refer back to it.

Scenario:

Someone emails me asking for advice about his new blog. I quickly just write down “Asked for advice about NameofWebsite.com”.

In the future, I get an email again from this person in regards to something else. I am reminded that this person asked for advice about NameofWebsite.com and I just ask in my reply how NameofWebsite.com has been progressing.

It’s the little things like this that can totally change how a person perceives your brand and interacts with you in the future.

If you sell products, a simple note that describes what the customer purchased can help you see what else they may be interested in down the line too.

What Rapportive Cannot Do

Rapportive is just a tool – it doesn’t replace the fact that you still have to engage and reply to emails in order for this to be effective.

You still have to be a real person.

As I mentioned in SPI Podcast Session #26, the relationships that you build with your audience and those in the same space as you are vital to your growth and success. Rapportive, I’ve found, has made building these relationships with people much, much easier.

Do you use Rapportive, and if so, how do you like it? If not, what are you doing to help manage the relationships you build?

Enjoy your week, and I wish you all the best!

Cheers!

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In today’s post, I’ll be comparing the number of people who subscribed to my email list on various locations on The Smart Passive Income Blog before and after I implemented a simple strategy recommended to me in Derek Halpern’s SPI conversion strategy video.

To summarize what Derek suggested, I was definitely not giving myself the best chance to obtain the most subscribers. I only had opt-in forms located in the sidebar and beneath each post, and that’s it.

He suggested that I add opt-in forms on some the pages of my site which are accessible from the navigation menu at the top. These are pages that people are most likely visiting, so it would be smart to put opt-in forms in front of the people who visit them.

Google In-Page Analytics (the numbers show the % of visitors who click through to that specific page)

• About: 3.7%
• Archives: 3.1%
• Podcast 2.5%
• Videos: 2.6%
• Income Reports: 6.6%
• Resource 4.6%
• Contact: 1.2%

After the critique, I added opt-in forms to the About Page, the Video Page and the Income Report Page.

I felt that the other pages already served another purpose that might conflict with an email opt-in form. For example, the Resource Page, which includes a number of affiliate links, should only focus on the products, services and tools that I recommend, and the Podcast Page already has subscription links to subscribe to the podcast.

I added the new opt-in forms on August 1st. Before then, I was averaging about 47 new subscribers a day, for a total of 1475 new subscribers for the month of July.

In August, subscribership increased 30.24% to 1921 total subscribers, or about 62 subscribers a day – a increase that will make a huge difference over the longrun.

For example, at the old rate of 47 subscribers a day, in a year I would gain 17,155 new subscribers.

At the new rate of 62 subscribers a day, I would gain 22,630 new subscribers in a year. That’s 5,475 additional subscribers!

Specific Locations – Before and After

Below is a list of the specific locations on SPI where people can subscribe, plus the total number of subscribers for July, August, and the % difference. I can find out this information by using Aweber’s search subscriber tool:

Note: The traffic to each of these pages was relatively the same between July and August.

Homepage (http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/):

• July: 342
• August: 404 (increased 18%)

About Page (http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/about/):

• July: 60 (through sidebar on About page)
• August: 404 (increased 446%)

How to Videos (http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/how-to-videos/):

• July: 0
• August: 30

Income Reports (http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/my-income-reports/):

• July: 26
• August: 84 (increased 233%)

eBook Landing Page (http://www.ebooksthesmartway.com/):

• July: 259
• August: 174 (decreased 33%)

Below the Posts (all blog posts across SPI)

• July: 287
• August: 324 (increased 13%)

Getting Started Page (http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/passive-income-101/):

• July: 227
• August: 317 (increased 40% – mostly because the traffic of this particular

Comment Checkbox (the checkbox in the comment field in all blog posts. See Subscriber’s Magnet (affiliate link) to learn more about this plugin)

• July: 60
• August: 67 (increased  12%)

Other (various posts, using the sidebar on SPI)

• July: 240
• August: 188 (decreased 22%)

Totals:

• July: 1475
• August: 1921 (increased  30%)

Summary

From the changes I made, adding an opt-in form to the About Page has increased the number of subscribers the most (by far!) and this makes perfect sense.

The About Page serves to describe who I am and what my site is about. It’s one of the most visited pages in my navigation menu and it doesn’t include links, resources or any other calls to action, so having an option to learn more about what I do through a newsletter after reading (and hopefully being interested in) what my site is about, is perfect.

The forms I added to the Video Page and Income Reports Page did help, but not as much as the About Page – probably because those pages include other things to click on and are there for. Again, the About Page does not.

It’s smart to put opt-in forms in several different places, but if you’re only going to add one more, it should be on your About Page. Most people are not doing this at all. Some people include links to a page that includes an opt-in form, but it’s best to cut out that extra step and just put another form directly on the About Page.

Derek even mentions adding multiple opt-in forms on each page, which I did not do. That was a personal decision based on how I felt about crowding a particular page, although I’m sure that would increase the number of subscribers even more – so feel free to experiment with that as well.

For me, it’s not all about the numbers. If it was I would also include a pop-up when people visit the site to capture even more subscribers (they absolutely DO work!) but that’s not the experience I want people to have when they arrive at my blog.

Your website is your own and you’re free to do what you want with it, however I suggest not missing out on the potential number of subscribers that you could gain by adding just a few more opt-in forms to pages and posts where you know visitors are going.

Thanks again to Derek for the helpful tips. If you have yet to watch the original conversion strategy video, I highly recommend it.

Lastly, if you have yet to begin email marketing on your site, you should start by reading The Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Newsletter.

Cheers, and all the best to you! Have a fantastic week!

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Conversion Strategy Results and the One Page You MUST Include an Opt-In Form On
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One of the “issues” with blogging is that when you pump out new content, old content gets pushed aside. Some of our best posts, posts that we’ve devoted hours to with information that is still relevant and useful, simply get lost in our archives.

Whether you’re just starting out now or you’re a seasoned veteran blogger, here are 10 ways to bring new life to some of your older posts.

1. Keep Search Engines in Mind As You Publish New Posts

As much as you should always be writing for your audience, it can be beneficial to also think about search engine optimization when publishing new posts.

By doing so, over time, your posts will have a better chance of picking up natural search engine traffic as it begins to rank higher in the search engines. You could even take this a step further and introduce a backlinking campaign for a specific keyword for any of your posts to see even better results.

So how do we optimize posts for search engine rankings without compromising the quality of the title and content within the post?

• Pick a target keyword or keyphrase and include it somewhere in the title of your blog post. You’ll have to do some basic keyword research first, but always remember to keep the title interesting and enticing for your readers at the same time.
• Make the URL of your posts search engine friendly. If you’re targeting a specific keyword or keyphrase in a post, changing the URL to just the keyword gives your post the highest keyword density possible, which helps. For example, if you wrote a post entitled 25 of the Best Golden Retriever Training Tips in the World, and your target keyword was “best golden retriever training tips”, I would structure the url as domainname.com/best-golden-retriever-training-tips.
• Pictures should include the keyword in the title, alt tag, and filename. If you embed any pictures into your blog post, you can change the filename of the image to match the keyword before uploading, and make sure to make the title and alt tag of your image match the keyword as well.
• Videos should include the keyword in the title, description and tags. Including a YouTube video in your post with a title, description and tags that match the keyword will help as well.

Want to see an example?

Check out my conversion strategies post that utilizes all of these tactics. This post now ranks #2 in Google for conversion strategies and new natural search engine traffic finds its way to the post every day.

2. Link To Older Posts That Are Relevant to What You’re Writing Now

Simply linking to older posts in new ones is the easiest thing you can do, however it’s definitely one of the more underutilized strategies in the blogosphere.

You’ve already seen me do this 3 times in the previous tip, and it’s a win-win for all because my older posts get read, and viewers get more relevant content that helps them further understand the topics or processes that are being discussed.

3. Do a Followup Post to an Older One

This is similar to #2, however since the new post is a direct followup of an older one, the older post is even more relevant and any newcomers to the series of posts will more than likely click to the old one to get caught up.

If next month I write a post entitled 10 MORE Ways to Bring New Life to Old Blog Posts, and start off with a link to this post, a lot of readers, old and new, will revisit it.

4. An Oldies But Goodies Roundup Post

Every once and a while it’s helpful to remind your readers, especially your new ones, of some of the older posts that you’ve written that they should read if they haven’t already.

Here is an example of a hidden gems post that I wrote when SPI was only 6 months old.

Ahh, memories.

5. Link to Older Posts in Your Sidebar

Linking to older posts in the sidebar of a blog is smart because no matter what page a visitor may land on they will have access to some of your older posts.

The most common strategy is to include a “most popular posts” widget, however other bloggers like Corbett Barr from ThinkTraffic.net take it a step further and include other older pieces of content to help specific types of visitors, which is great.

6. Link to Some of Your Old Posts in an Email Newsletter

Your blog isn’t the only place to reanimate old content to your readers. If you have a newsletter or email list, that’s another great place to give new life to some of your older posts.

If you don’t have a newsletter or email list for your site, then you should start here.

I recommend creating a few emails in your autoresponder that link to your older posts to continually drive new traffic to some of your (best) archived content.

7. Add Resource Pages to Your Blog for Specific Topics and Categories

This is something that I’ve recently implemented on SPI thanks to a recommendation (in that conversion strategies video) by Derek Halpern of Social Triggers, and it’s working out great! A lot of my older posts are getting a lot of new exposure as a result.

Each resource page, which is linked to in my sidebar, highlights a specific topic that I talk about on SPI and it includes a number of links to older posts related to that topic.

You can see an example of how I link to older blogging tip posts on my blogging tips resource page.

8. Utilize a Good Archive Page

I don’t have the best archive page in the world, but it’s better than most of the default archive pages I’ve seen.

Unfortunately, mine was custom designed by my web designer, so it’s not a plugin that you can just install (maybe it should be), although there may be better ways to customize an archive page that I don’t know about. Please share if you have any tips.

A lot of people actually do visit my archive page and go there to specifically look for some of my older content, however the way people like to search through that older content varies, so I feel that an archive page that has different options is best. I could probably do even more to the one I have, like include a prominent search bar, a longer list of some of my most popular posts, and links to all of my resource pages.

9. Create Videos That Relate to the Older Posts That You’ve Written

If you’ve written a successful blog post that was once thriving with traffic that just seemed to become lost over time, why not create a video that compliments the blog post?

You can reintroduce the topic in a new blog post with the video on your site, link to the old post, and the video will help bring more value to the topic that is being reintroduced and expanded upon to your readers.

Additionally, the video can generate traffic from YouTube, and since it was a hot topic on your blog chances are it’ll be a hot topic on YouTube as well.

10. Syndicate Your Older Content on Social Media

Last, but definitely not least, you can always link to some of your older posts via Twitter, Facebook and any other social media platforms you might be on.

Again, not all of your fans and followers may have read each and every one of your posts, and linking to some of your best hidden content on social media is a great way to rekindle those old fires and potentially start new viral-type campaigns.

As long as you use some of these strategies, your old posts and the time you invested to write them will not be forgotten.

What are some other ways to bring life back to older posts?

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10 Ways to Bring New Life to Old Blog Posts
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2. 5 Little Known Ways to Grow Your Blog
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4. The Content Pyramid: Healthy Portions of Posts for Your Blog
5. Different Posts for Different Folks – Beyond Just Being Consistent

I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking me about my switch to the Thesis theme for the SPI blog.

I’ll start from the beginning.

Even before I wrote my very first post for The Smart Passive Income Blog, it was really important to me that I sported a high-quality WordPress theme. The design of a blog, both on the front end (what people see), and the backend (what the search engines see), play a huge role in the success of a blog.

Since I bought the domain name, SPI has undergone 9 total design changes.

Yes – 9.

I blame my roots in the architecture industry, where hundreds of design changes on a single project is completely normal.

In chronological order:

• 2 free themes, which I immediately scrapped because they looked too plain.
• 2 premium themes, which were good – but I noticed a lot of other bloggers using the exact same themes and I wanted something more of my own.
• 2 completely different custom-designed themes. The 1st theme was from a brand new designer on Elance who had no feedback or reviews. Lesson learned. The 2nd design (also from Elance) was great and became the first version of the black/red/chartreuse SPI blog that you see today.
• 1 not-so-good re-design that transformed SPI into a 3-column theme. It was not well received and I reverted back to the previous 2-column design not so long after.
• 1 upgraded tweak which is what you see today.

And a couple of weeks ago, I completed my 9th design change – which didn’t change anything on the front end, but everything on the backend.

I switched to the Thesis Theme Framework.

Disclaimer: Please note that the links for the Thesis Theme in this post are affiliate links and I do earn a commission through any purchases that you make. If you do make a purchase, I appreciate it greatly! If you wish, shoot me an email or let me know on the Facebook Page so I can thank you personally.

Why I Switched to Thesis

I switched to Thesis because the SPI blog was having a number of issues I knew Thesis could solve:

Page Load Time

Most of you don’t know this, but the SPI blog was featured on RazorFast.com, a website by Dan DeFelippi dedicated to website performance and optimization – as a “this site is extremely slow and this is what the owner should do” case study.

The article written in August of 2010, Speeding Up Smart Passive Income, illustrated that SPI had an inferior load time of 13.419 seconds.

I can tie both of my shoes in less than 13.419 seconds.

Website speed is important not only because a faster site can improve user experience, but Google has made public that they take into account website speed when determining search engine rankings.

That’s huge.

Even with a CDN (content-delivery network), which is supposed to drastically speed up a website’s load time – SPI was still slow, and I had to do something.

Search Engine Optimization and Coding

The current SPI WordPress theme had undergone several changes from 3 different programmers, and a result the coding on the backend of the site became a complete mess.

In What Else is Wrong With the SPI Blog – SEO Mistakes, I mention that in a paid SEO audit from Joost De Valk of Yoast.com, he reported that the SEO of my site was terrible. There were problems with the heading structures, incompatibilities with some of the plugins, slow page load time (again), among other issues.

Not good.

Lead By Example

I talk a lot about site improvements and SEO and it would be hypocritical of me not to have a well optimized, fast loading website myself.

I wasn’t leading by example, which is what I always try to do here at SPI.

Although the site has done really well for itself without a fast load time and perfect SEO, it was honestly a little embarrassing to see how slow my site loading was and hear from the experts how badly it was coded.

That’s part of the reason why I shared the results of Joost’s report with you a couple of months ago – to get myself into gear and really figure out how to make the right changes.

That’s when Thesis appeared on my radar.

The Thesis Theme and What Happened When I Switched

I had actually used the Thesis theme for SPI in the past back in late 2008 on a recommendation from someone in my mastermind group. It was one of the premium themes that I had purchased and mentioned earlier, and it seemed to worked great.

I loved how it was SEO-ready it was right out of the box and a lot of the plugins I had previously used were already built-in, but I didn’t like how it looked just like all of the other blogs who also used Thesis.

I wanted something that looked more unique.

It was only after mentioning my Joost report and slow page load time to Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com, who did an awesome critique of SPI a month ago and is the marketing guy for Thesis, that I learned that I could actually run Thesis on SPI and have it look exactly the same as it did before.

I found someone to make the switch for me and I’m very happy with the results.

Actually, I’m blown away.

I ran some tests before switching to Thesis, and then after, to make sure I was actually seeing improvements.

Here are the results:

Pingdom Test

Pingdom.com is a site where you can constantly monitor and generate various reports about your website’s response time and uptime.

In my particular tests, the same caching plugin (W3 Super Cache) was enabled and images were attached for both:

• Before: 7.36 seconds
• Thesis: 3.15 seconds

The load time was cut in half, and it was probably even more because the before test was performed in the middle of the night, while the after test was performed during peak hours.

Yslow

Yslow is another web performance analyzation tool by Yahoo, which a lot of web developers are quite familiar with. It’s actually used as an industry standard benchmark.

Below shows the average speed of 50 on-peak reloads in YSlow (version 2) using Firefox on the homepage.

• Before: 5.31 seconds
• Thesis: 2.40 seconds

The day after I made the switch, a number of people actually messaged me saying they noticed how the site was noticeably faster, and asking if I had made any changes.

Coding Improvement

In addition to the speed tests, I also ran some W3C Validation tests, which checks the html and xhtml markup of your website and tells you what’s not coded “correctly” .

Here are the results of the W3C Validation markup tests:

• Before: 137 errors, 7 warnings
• Thesis: 49 errors, 3 warnings

The remaining errors and warnings come from certain plugins and widgets where the coding cannot be changed or controlled on my end, such as the Facebook iFrame code in my sidebar, some of the javascript for sharing capabilities, etc.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is a little harder to test as far as the before and after of a theme switch or redesign.

The most obvious barometer is the actual ranking in the search engines, but this is something that takes time for Google to figure out, and I was already sitting at number 2 in Google for the keyword “passive income”, which is where I’ve been for over a year, right behind Wikipedia.

Even some of the experts have keywords that have been sitting right behind Wikipedia for ages without any movement. Look up “copywriting” and you’ll see Brian Clark’s copyblogger.com sitting in the #2 position.

My header structure is structured properly now, and the site is SEO-optimized, but I wasn’t expecting to see any movement in the search engines because of it. If anything, I was expecting the site to go down in rankings, which is what happens sometimes when there’s a major change to a website’s coding.

3 Days after the switch to Thesis, I see this in my inbox (I get email notifications for any rank changes for these keywords):

The box with the “1” in it is Green because it moved up in ranking – from #2 to #1 – surpassing Wikipedia for the first time ever!

Coincidence? If it is, it’s a huge one.

I immediately shared this on my Facebook page and other people confirmed that I really did overtake Wikipedia for the #1 position in Google.

I took this screenshot from Scroogle.org immediately:

Then, within a few hours, I was getting more messages from people on Facebook saying I was no longer ranking at #1.

I checked, and I had moved back down to #2.

Then, for some weird reason, it kept bouncing back and forth until the next day when it seemed to settle back at #2.

It was fun while it lasted, but it was still great because I had never flirted with #1 before. Now I know I’m close and it should only be a matter of time before I can establish a more permanent #1 ranking for “passive income”.

Do You NEED Thesis?

You don’t need it.

Remember, I didn’t make the switch to Thesis until just a couple of weeks ago, and up until then the blog has still grown massively and I’ve still been able to accomplish a lot.

But, Thesis has obviously helped me a lot, and if I had to do it all over again I’d start with this framework (and there are other frameworks you can choose from too, in case you’re not a Thesis fan) and go from there.

I’ll also soon be testing some new niche sites with Thesis as well to see how they perform. It could be the answer for a quick and easy SEO optimized site that I could easily setup right out of the box.

And Lastly…

My switch to The Thesis Theme for SPI is me taking this blog to the next level, and I must say, it feels really good to know that I have a site that loads super fast and one that is doing it’s best to rank as high as it possibly can, while keeping the front end design exactly how I want it to be, which is what I was worried about the most.

If you have any questions, please let me know and I’ sure I or many of the other Thesis users in the SPI community will chime in with our experience.

To finish off – just remember that although the theme, the design, and all that stuff is important, nothing is more important than your content, so don’t get too bogged down with the design of your site and make sure you just start producing. You can always do things later to improve and perfect – as I hope you can see.

Thanks, and Happy Monday!

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Why I Switched to the Thesis Theme and What Happened When I Did
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4. How to Run Free Split Tests Using Google Optimizer for Better Results
5. The Order of Operations for Online Business and Blogging

Are you giving your audience anything specific and regular to look forward to?

In other words, is there some type of post that you publish consistently over and over again that becomes a true unique element to your brand?

As many of you know, I religiously publish income reports each and every month here on SPI. Although I know a lot of people look forward to these because I share my income, the lessons I’ve learned, and the decisions I’m making with my online businesses, there’s so much more than that when it comes to the strategy of a recurring piece of content.

Whatever that recurring content may be, it gives your audience something concrete to look forward to, something that they already know about, they just don’t know what the outcome or result will be ‘this time’.

Recurring posts of high-value keep your audience interested, and it keeps them coming back.

If I had a cooking blog that shared recipes, I would post a recipe every Friday that was an at-home version of something great I had at a restaurant earlier in the week.

If I had a personal development website, I would post a video each month that showed how I got overcame some fear that I or someone else had.

You get the idea.

The key is to provide something interesting and valuable, and of course – stay consistent. Also, you shouldn’t have too many of these recurring types of posts because the more you add to your schedule, the more they dilute the impact of each other.

After a year, just imagine the collection of unique content you’d have to share with people.

With this content:

• You could put them all onto a specific resource page on your site and rank it for a related keyword.
• You could turn it into a product or package that you can sell or give away for free.
• You will become more of an authority in your niche.

To reiterate, because it’s important, the recurring post should be something interesting and completely unique and relevant in order to be effective.

What is a type of post that you want to become known for?

Schedule that in.

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Are You Taking Advantage of Recurring Posts?
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5. 8 Hot Posts From Around the Web

In this session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, I’m honored to have back Corbett Barr from ThinkTraffic.net, who was our special guest in Session #8 – the most popular podcast I’ve had to date.

In Session #8, we discussed How to Get More Traffic, and today we expand on that topic, going deeper into the process and touching on several key points that are absolutely necessary for any blogger or online business owner to understand in order to build a long-term, sustainable brand online.

It’s not just about traffic generation either – it’s about how to keep those visitors on your site and how to get them to take action.

We cover all of this.

Just scan through the bullet points below to see exactly what Corbett and I talk about:

• The fundamentals of traffic building that most people overlook.
• The one question that you must be able to answer if you want to become successful online.
• What the thriving audience framework is and how it can drive massive amounts of traffic to your site.
• How one should really approach being different.
• The must-follow rules for a content-based traffic strategy.
• How I was able to sell a profitable 6-figure eBook when most of the content could already be found on my blog for free.
• The technical aspects of epic content that you must include.
• How to get inspired by other bloggers to write content that crushes!
• What to do if you want to write epic content to drive traffic to your site, but you don’t already have an existing audience.
• How to jumpstart your traffic building when you’re a newbie.
• Why engagement is important and how to measure it.
• What to do when it feels like you’re writing for nobody.
• Why comments on blog posts are more important than you think.
• What to do with the very first email you get from a reader.
• The best practices to take when it comes to eventually wanting to sell a product on your site.
• The key to building a long-term, sustainable online business.
• Plus a lot more…

I’m positive that listening to this session will be time well-invested for your online business or blog.

Also, I’m very happy to recommend Corbett’s course that he’s reopening later this week – Traffic School, which had some amazing results during the first go-around for his students. He explains more about what his course is all about at the end of the podcast.

Right click here to download the MP3

Items Mentioned in this Session:

• ThinkTraffic.net
• CorbettBarr.com
• Affiliate Marketing for Beginner’s Course
• GreenExamAcademy.com
• The Niche Site Duel
• 21 Quick Actions You Can Do Today to Set Your Blog Up for Massive Success
• Adam Baker from Man vs. Debt
• The Backlinking Strategy That Works
• The “Should I Leave Comments On” Debate
• Chris Guillebeau
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Keyword Research Webinar
• Corbett’s Traffic School Course with Bonus Webinar with Pat & Corbett for SPI Readers Only

Please subscribe below to the podcast to get automatic updates:

• Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes
• Click Here to Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed)

Thank you so much for your support, and if you have yet to leave a rating or review, please leave me an honest one on iTunes by clicking here. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes immensely! I appreciate it!

Enjoy the show!

Cheers!

Transcript:

Click Here to Download the Transcript (PDF)

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SPI 023 : More Traffic, More Engagement and More Action with Corbett Barr from ThinkTraffic.net
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4. One of the Best Action Taking Posts I’ve Read in a Long Time
5. Read This Post to Find Out Exactly What You Need to Know About Calls to Action

139 weeks ago, I bought the domain smartpassiveincome.com.

At that moment, I was unknown in the world of online business and blogging.

3 million pageviews, 25,000 subscribers, 50,000 Twitter followers, and almost 10,000 Facebook fans later, I’ve reached numbers I never even thought were possible, and here I am and it hasn’t even been 3 years.

I’m not trying to boast here, but I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved so far and am extremely thankful for all of you who have helped me get here.

I really do feel like I’m living the dream – my dream. Being able to work from home, be here with my beautiful wife and son, flexible schedule, saving more than I spend – I couldn’t ask for anything more, and I don’t want anything more.

But, as wonderful as all this sounds, becoming a successful blogger does come with its dark side.

The “Light”

Successful public figures are seen in a certain light, however, everything that happens behind the scenes isn’t always revealed.

For example, many people consider actors to be the luckiest people on earth – awesome career, lavish lifestyles, red carpet events and more money than they know what to do with. What most people don’t realize (and I mean really realize) is how much work is actually involved, the crazy and ridiculous day to day schedules, the months (or even years) away from family while on location, and of course, the paparazzi and lack of privacy.

The same goes with athletes, politicians, performing artists, and anyone else with an huge following – including some bloggers.

Now, I’m not even going to begin to compare the talents and skills of bloggers with the aforementioned groups of people (although I’m sure some of our fellow bloggers could give some of them a run for their money!). The money, talent, and issues that arise with fame are generally on completely different levels, but – there are certain things that come with the territory of a large following for any person, no matter what their career may be, that one should realize before they really devote themselves to that particular lifestyle.

The Dark Side of Successful Blogging

All of the following come from my own experience as a blogger with a relatively large following. These examples may or may not be true for all big-time (or future big-time) bloggers, but I know I’m not alone.

This post was not written to scare you, nor was it written to make you feel bad or sorry for me. It was written to be transparent, truthful and informative about the things that come along with owning a blog with a large following – something I know many of you are striving for.

A Ton of Email

As a blog starts to grow, so do the number of people who contact you.

Just to give you an idea of where I’m coming from, on Monday, June 20th, I received a total of 158 emails:

• 67 were notifications from WordPress that I received a comment.
• 38 were from people who used the contact form here on the blog.
• 26 were from people responding to previous emails that I replied to or sent.
• 12 were notifications of affiliate commissions.
• 5 were from my VA.
• 5 were from newsletters that I am subscribed to.
• 10 were for miscellaneous items.

Yeah, it’s getting a bit crazy, but I know I’m not the only one dealing with this issue.

Erica from Erica.biz recently announced a 30-day experiment to see if she could get rid of email all-together because, as she puts it, “…it’s slowly but surely sucking my life away.”

Tim Ferriss even addresses the problem in his book, The 4-Hour Work Week.

And all-star blogger, Glen Allsop from Viperchill.com, recently switched to a Forum model for communication because of his problems with email too.

I always do my best to respond to each and every email, but because of the sheer quantity some are falling through the cracks, which I don’t like.

JV Offers

Within the mass of emails I receive, I typically come across several joint venture (JV) offers.

A JV offer is a person’s request to either work with me on a new project or product, or help promote one that the person has already created, for a share of the profits.

This may sound tempting because it’s more money in the bank, but it’s not in the best interest of my readers to say yes to most of these. I’m not going to blast you guys with product after product, which is something I’ve seen done on other blogs I respect(ed) that sort of made me think twice about why I was a subscriber.

Guest Post Submissions

Along with the JV offers, I receive a number of guest post request and submissions on a daily basis. Out of the 36 emails that were sent on June 20th using the contact form on my blog, 4 of them were about guest posting on SPI.

Many people even submit a draft of a post (a common guest posting strategy), which makes me feel even worse if I have to turn them down, which is usually the case. I did a rough calculation and over the past year, less than 1% of guest post requests have been published on SPI.

I hold high standards for what gets published on this blog, but unfortunately that means having to play the bad guy sometimes, which is tough because I want to help people as much as possible.

Pressure

With over 2 years of consistent publishing of high quality content on SPI, I am feeling more and more pressure to deliver awesome and unique content every time I write or record something.

In addition to that, with the popularity of my Income Reports, I’m feeling pressure to keep those numbers up since it’s all out there for people to see.

Everyone expects SPI to perform at a certain level, and as the author it can be stressful at times.

Fortunately, I thrive under pressure.

Responsibility

Successful bloggers take on huge responsibilities.

As leaders they are uber influential, and all it takes is a well-written post, an email, or even just a link in a post or a tweet to really influence a ton of people one way or another.

I can’t just recommend any product. I can’t just link to some random website. I can’t just say something without knowing how it will effect people.

I’m happy to take on this responsibility and put extra care into what I publish and recommend, but for some it may be too much.

The Microscope Effect

The microscope effect is simply this: the more influential and popular you become, the more people will analyze you.

When you start to see success, people are quick to watch every move that you make and analyze everything that you say.

This can be a good thing, especially if you provide value and influence for the better. But, of course, this can be very very bad.

Anthony Weiner, Tracy Morgan, Arnold Swarchenegger.

Need I say more?

As bloggers, we don’t necessarily have paparazzi following us around everywhere or media that is quick to make our latest going-ons the top story over other news that is really more important – but with social media and how quickly word can spread in the blogosphere – it can sometimes get close to feeling that way.

Spam Comments

“One you eat, one you delete.”

The more popular your blog becomes and the higher your website ranks in the search engines, the more spam comments you’re going to receive – that’s just how it works.

This year, it’s been ridiculous:

Yes, in the last 60 days, I had over 117,946 spam comments on my blog.

Thankfully, there are tools out there to help us combat spam comments, but not all of them are perfect.

I had been using a WordPress plugin called Akismet to fight spam, and it was working quite well until recently.

Over the past few months, a lot of regular commenters on the blog were getting put into the spam folder automatically.

This was very annoying – not only for my readers, but for me too since I had to fish all the false-positives out of the spam folder, which isn’t easy because spammy comments were coming in every single minute of the day.

It didn’t happen too often, but what really tipped me over the edge with Akismet happened last week, when all comments on SPI were going into the spam folder, including my own!

I had to manually go in and approve over 60 comments on Friday – which did not make me a happy camper.

I emailed Akismet support – no response.

I was advised to approve the good comments until Akismet “learns” what it’s supposed to do, but a day later the same thing was happening, and it was a bit odd that I had to fish out my own comments, so I was done with them.

Thanks to some recommendations on Twitter, I landed on another WordPress plugin called the GrowMap Anti Spam Plugin, or G.A.S.P. for short.

Since installing the plugin, I’ve had zero spam comments on my blog. It’s amazing.

The way it works is that it includes a simple checkbox in my comment form that auto-commenting and spamming software cannot read.

I’m just glad I can breath again.

Copycats and Content Stealers

I don’t mind when people use my work and my designs to influence their own, however I do have an issue when people straight up rip off my content or designs without asking or without giving me credit.

Lately, more and more random websites are taking content that I’ve written and posted on SPI, and posting it on their own. Some offer a link back to my site, while others do not. Either way, it just boggles my mind because I can’t understand exactly what they’re trying to do.

How in the world are they going to get anywhere using these methods? I have no idea.

I once found my eBook, eBooks the Smart Way, on another person’s website with a different cover. That eBook has since been taken down.

I accidentally found 2 YouTube videos, uploaded by two separate users, that were 100% copies of my own. No credit was given to me in the descriptions, and they were promoting some bogus make money online product that I had nothing to do with. The videos, however, were all of me speaking and even mentioning my Facebook page and Smart Passive Income. One even had ads on it.

Long story short:

It’s okay, YouTube. You shouldn’t have to apologize.

Other people have copied my custom theme, which is more of a gray area when it comes to “stealing” and doesn’t bother me as much, but still – how is anyone going to expect to get ahead by just simply copying others?

It’s easy to get extremely angry and frustrated at these sorts of things, but expect them because they happen.

Plus, when you think about it – I must be doing something right if people are copying what I do.

As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

Again, I know that I’m not the only one dealing with this issue. The Blog Tyrant wrote a post about someone copying his blog, and I can’t find the link but I remember somebody ripped off the Problogger logo, turned it upside down to create a “b” instead of a “p”, and thought that would fly.

Trolls

On the internet, trolls are people who leave inflammatory or off-topic comments just to provoke some sort of emotional response.

The community on this blog is relatively troll-free, thankfully, although there have been some occasions recently where a troll or two appear and begins to harass me or some of the other commenters, which I simply cannot tolerate.

They have been dealt with, and I’ll deal with any more that come along in the future.

It’s tough though, because it can be really easy to get extremely upset and heated by some of the comments about you or what you do on your blog. Similar to cyber-bullying, it’s a very real and dangerous thing that has caused some people to actually kill themselves because of the abuse.

It’s sickening really, and I have absolutely no respect for trolls and cyber-bullies.

Expect it and if you run into a troll, don’t take what they say personally, and ignore them.

Also, the community here at SPI is always quick to back me up, so I’m very fortunate and thankful for that.

You guys rock.

Non-Believers

A non-believer is simply a person that doesn’t agree with what you do.

It’s impossible to please everybody and there will always be people who disagree with how you approach things, however some are more vocal than others.

Non-believers are not necessarily trolls, and for the most part they have all been very respectful here on my blog.

Many people would advise to let these kinds of people believe what they want to believe, because everyone should be entitled to their opinion – and they are. But, if you’re blogging about something that you’re absolutely passionate about, it can be difficult to just let it go sometimes.

Recently, a non-believer emailed me with details I’m not going to share here on this post (out of respect), but we ended up exchanging several emails back and forth and I invited him to chat with me on Skype, which we did. Opinions were said, facts were laid out, and now I feel we have an understanding about each other and all areas of misunderstanding are non-existent.

I’ve done this in the past, reaching out to those who were really vocal about what I do and how I approach online business, and often times these people have become my biggest fans who are happy to share what I do with their friends and followers.

Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Crush It! is very active on Amazon.com, in particular in the review area of his book. He contacts each and every 1 or 2 star negative review about his book and even offers to talk to them on the phone. He was my inspiration to take this approach with nay-sayers, because watching him had a huge impact on me and showed me really how genuine and passionate he is about what he does, and I’m a follower of his for life.

To Finish Up…

Blogging isn’t all fun and games, and as I hope you can see there are some negatives that come with success in this realm, however like I’ve mentioned before, I’m very happy and fortunate to be where I’m at and I’d gladly deal with these issues as I build my brand and live the lifestyle I live now.

What are some “dark side” things that you’ve come across so far during your blogging adventures?

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