The Smart Passive Income Blog » guest post

Desire, Taking Action and Getting Results

Pat — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:34:50 +0000

This is a guest post by Jeff Rose from Good Financial Cents, a personal finance blog and hub for Jeff’s CFP business in Illinois. Jeff is a great friend of mine and a long time SPI reader and supporter (we became friends through the blog), and it’s been great to watch his progress online over the last few years. We met in person for the first time at the Financial Blogger Conference this past October and he’s just as genuine and nice offline as he is online.

This particular post is about his experience with taking action, diving right in and making things happen even when you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. He also shares his success with an “old school” strategy that still works in order to get more traffic and better SEO rankings, and ultimately in his clase, more clients.

My November monthly income report will go live this coming Monday, but in the meantime, please enjoy this post by Jeff.

“Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” -Napoleon Hill

When I launched my blog in 2008, I had a mission.

The mission of the blog was marketing myself online, gaining more exposure and reaching potential new clients.

When it came to the technical aspects of blogging: SEO, keywords, backlinks, I was clueless. (Pat’s blog had just launched about the same time so I didn’t have his epic backlinking post to lean on). In the beginning I wrote a few articles a week and waited for the new clients to come in.

Unfortunately, they didn’t.

It finally dawned on me what I needed to do.

I had to make it easy for people to find me – duh!

The strategy that I needed to implement was to be found when someone in need of financial planning services Googled “financial planner Illinois”.

While the statement sounds simple, as I mentioned there was one slight problem – I was clueless.

I had recently joined a forum and I started asking other personal finance bloggers how to do it. I was quickly educated on how to build a landing page, how to get back links and how Google works. While it sounded easy enough, I had a feeling there may be complications.

Shortly after posting my thread in the forum I received a direct message from a supposed SEO expert. His message read,

“Jeff, I noticed your thread in the forum and I just wanted to let you know that ranking for those terms is nearly impossible. With you being a one man shop and one website, you will never be able to compete with all the bigger investment firms located in the Chicago area. Sorry for the disappointing news.”

My translation: Give up. You don’t have a chance.

Tell Me I Can’t. I Double Dog Dare You.

Now the story could have ended there.

I could have given up and accepted from the expert that there was no hope, that I would be forced to buy Adwords and pay for clicks that could cost me hundreds per month with no conversions.

But see, there was one HUGE thing that the SEO expert didn’t know about me – I had a strong desire. I wanted to grow my business, I wanted to build my brand and I wanted to reach more people.

When I started blogging I knew that I would do everything that it took to make it happen. Not to mention, I feed off pessimism. I love it when somebody tells me I can’t do something.

”Really?”, I thought. ”We’ll see about that!”

Now I wish I could tell you how I did massive keyword research to truly see how competitive my keyword was, and that by using the Google AdWords Keyword tool orMarket Samurai I was able to truly understand what I was up against.At the time, however, Market Samurai wasn’t even in my vocabulary. And the Google Adwords tool? Well, I tried to understand what I was looking at, but I’m pretty sure I would have had a better chance memorizing the periodic table.

As frustrating as it all was, I knew that there had to be a way to figure it out. Thankfully, I had a good contact.

Battle Buddy

In SPI Podcast #26, Pat talks about the importance forming online relationships in building your business.

I was very fortunate to have a battle buddy at the beginning, Ryan, from Cash Money Life that showed me exactly what I needed to do.

He told me to build a separate landing page targeting my keywords in the URL. I chose:

http://www.goodfinancialcents.com/certified-financial-planner-il-illinois/

…also adding “Certified” and “IL” to help out with Google searches.

Building the landing page was fairly simple since I already purchased the premium WordPress theme Thesis (the same one that Pat uses for SPI), which makes it super easy to create a page with no sidebars.I made sure to optimize the page for my keywords inserting it in the text and headings, and also using the tags of the pictures on the page. The only thing I’m (still) missing is a video which would have sealed the deal.

While I know this is basic for many of you, and thankfully it is for me now, at the time this was gold.

A quick note on your landing page:

Think really hard about about what (and who) you are targeting. I did good about adding the two additional words, but had I done some more research, it would have been wise to add “Independent” and “Advisor” or “Adviser” in the URL, as well. A tool like Market Samurai could have helped eliminate some of these mistakes.

“Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.” -Napoleon Hill

Game On

Okay – now that the landing page was set, it was time to get some links.

At the time I had already made some good connections in the personal finance blogosphere so it was easy contacting them for potential guest posts.

The only hurdle was finding the time to write.

Remember that thing called desire I mentioned before? It was time to get to it.

Most of my writing was either done late at night or on the weekends. It was brutal finding the extra time, but I knew it would pay off.

Here’s most of the guest posts that I did over a few month time period.

4 Ways to Not Get Stuck in the Sandwich Generation (Cash Money Life)
Managing Money While Deployed (The Military Wallet)
5 Things You Don’t Want to Hear From Your Financial Planner (Moolanomy)
Easiest Shrimp Pasta Recipe You’ll Ever Make (Gen X Finance)
8 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Financial Planner (Get Rich Slowly)
Busy Man’s Health Shake (Get Fit Slowly)
How to Recover From a Stock Market Crash (Five Cent Nickel)
Greed or No Greed (Lazy Man and Money)
Want My Job? How and Why to Become a Financial Advisor (Art of Manliness)
Helping Your Parents With Their Finances (Consumerism Commentary)
When Should I Buy Life Insurance? (Bible Money Matters)
Why Naming Beneficiaries is So Important (Bargaineering)
Financial Advice For College Graduates (Studenomics)
5 Ways to Save for College (PT Money)
Applying for and Landing an Internship (Finance for a Freelance Life)
Life Insurance, Term or Permanent (Debt Free Adventure)
Interview With Good Financial Cents (Your Roth IRA)

In addition to guest posts, anytime somebody interviewed me for their site, I would always ask if they would link to my landing page. Most everyone was nice enough to oblige.

Here’s a sample byline that I used for most of my guest posts:

Show Me Some Results

I think back to what the SEO expert told me that I would never rank for that search. That I was basically wasting my time.

When I think about that I laugh when after less than two months, sure enough, there it was: Financial Planner Illinois, when Googled, returned my landing page.

Victory!

After the cracking the top 10 I also worked on getting links to my business site JeffRoseFinancial.com and also filmed a welcome video for my blog optimized for those keywords that I uploaded to YouTube.

According to a recent search in Scroogle, I have 3 of the top 10 results. That’s what we call a Trifecta!

First Conversion

While that was definitely a victory, landing in the top 10 is all for nothing unless the desired result is obtained. I needed to get some clients.

Sometime had passed since cracking the coveted top 10 and I received the following email (I’ve cut some out to protect the identity):

For my contact form on my site I have the Yoast Enhanced WordPress Contact Form Plugin installed so that I can see what the person actually typed to find my site. (and an added feature is that it shows what other pages they visited).

As you can see, the keyword that they typed was “Financial Planner Illinois”.

Success!

Wait, It Get’s Better

I exchanged emails with the person and we ended up scheduling an appointment for the following Friday not realizing it was Good Friday and our office was closed. It was okay because they needed help and I was happy to assist.

When they laid their financials in front of me, it was all I could do to not left my eyes pop out of my head. Being my first online prospect, I didn’t expect much. Heck, just having somebody in the office was an accomplishment.

This person ended up becoming my largest client to date (and still is) generating over $30,000 a year in fees to my firm. And added bonus is that we are now friends on Facebook. :)

That was the best Good Friday I’ve ever had!

Be Persistent

“Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.” -Napoleon Hill

My blog officially launched July in 2008 and other than some impressive media mentions and Adsense revenue, I didn’t get my first client until April 2009.

It seemed like an eternity, but I had desire and faith that it would eventually work out.

Sure enough it did.

Jeff Rose, is an Illinois Certified Financial Planner who authors the blogsGood Financial Cents and Soldier of Finance. He is a father of 3 awesome boys, husband to the coolest chick on the planet, In-N-Out Burger junkie and Crossfit addict.

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Desire, Taking Action and Getting Results
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Over-Empowerment, Entitlement, and Anonymity: The Dark Side of Social Media

Pat — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:52:17 +0000

This is a guest post by Danny Iny from Firepole Marketing, who caught my attention when I read a fantastic guest post of his on another blog. I’m currently taking a couple days off to enjoy time with my family for Thanksgiving, but I encourage you to read this important post about the other side of Social Media that’s not talked about very much. I’ve written about the Dark Side of Blogging and The Downsides of Working from Home before, but Danny beautifully captures the good, the bad and the ugly side of Social Media, and injects some interesting thoughts and questions that you’re welcome to chime in on at the end.

Happy holidays to everyone, and enjoy!

Don’t you love social media?

I certainly do.

On a personal level, it has connected me to dozens of new friends, hundreds of business contacts, and thousands of fans and followers.

On the community level, it has allowed people to mobilize, fight unjust governments, and rapidly spread the word to save lives from natural disasters.

And on the business level, it has turned the tables on giant corporations, and given consumers the power to unleash Dell Hell when treated unfairly.

What’s not to like?

Actually, quite a lot. Social media has a dark side. It can creep up on you and turn the nicest of people into angry, snarling monsters.

Do you think I’m exaggerating? Think again…

The Good: Empowerment

Just to be clear, I’m not knocking social media.

I’m a fan (no pun intended) – not just because it’s fun, and it’s been good for business, but because it is built on a foundation of real justice and democracy. It has leveled the playing field; everybody is created equal, with the same voice, and access to the same megaphone.

Is the system perfect? No, of course not.

But the proof is in the pudding, and while social media has certainly been good to celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Kanye West, the greatest impact has been the empowerment of revolutionaries in the Middle East, and the facilitation of disaster relief in Haiti, Japan, and elsewhere.

And social media hasn’t just been good for celebrities, revolutionaries, and the people that nature places in harm’s way – it’s also turned the tables on the power dynamics between giant corporations and the consumers that they are supposed to be serving.

Communication used to be a one-way street – corporations would create and broadcast, and consumers… well, they would consume. If the consumers weren’t happy, there wasn’t very much that they could do about it, save maybe writing a letter to the editor of one newspaper or another.

Now things are different. An irate consumer can blog, comment and tweet on a whim. Their dissatisfaction can pick up momentum of epic proportions, and bring those giant corporations to their knees.

And it can all start with a single comment or tweet. That’s what I call power!

More Good: The Economy of Free

It didn’t take long for businesses to recognize the newfound power of their customers and followers, and understand that – just as an irate customer could destroy a business – social media empowered happy and enthusiastic customers to propel businesses to new heights.

In other words, it was more advantageous than ever before for businesses to get people to like them. And what’s the easiest way to make somebody like you?

By giving them things. Lots of things. For free.

That’s how the “economy of free” was born – businesses falling over themselves to give away valuable content for free, in hopes that people will like them enough to tell their friends. Hell, we do it too, with our free “Get More Cash” video training.

This is great, and democratic. More and more valuable information is available to anyone, which means that more and more opportunities are available to everyone.

Chalk up another win for social media and democracy.

The Bad: Entitlement

Somewhere along the way, people began to realize just how much power they commanded. And as Orwell reminded us in his classic Animal Farm, power corrupts.

Whatever is routinely given comes to be expected, and this was no different.

Free gifts began as a way for businesses to curry favor with their audiences, but somewhere along the way the gifts morphed into a tithe that the audience demands from the business.

It used to be that businesses would give away free content and information, with the understanding that at some point down the road, there would be an opportunity for something to be bought. Not a requirement, but an opportunity.

But now, it’s reached the point that many consumers are offended by even the hint of a sales message. If you suggest that people tweet or share (rather than just giving, waiting, and hoping), it’s considered to be in bad form.

And as consumers have learned, social media has empowered them to make their displeasure known…

The Ugly: Over-Empowerment and Anonymity

Consumers who feel entitled to free content aren’t any better than businesses who feel entitled to their consumers’ patronage.

But social media hasn’t just given rise to this massive sense of entitlement, it’s also created a strong sense of anonymity; even though we know that there are real people behind the egg-shaped Twitter avatars, it’s very easy to forget that in the heat of an annoyed moment.

Expressing your dissatisfaction with someone while standing in front of them and seeing their face is one thing, but shooting off an angry email or tweet is entirely another. In the first instance, you get instant feedback about how your words and actions are making another human being feel, but in the second, you’re just venting your frustration at a faceless entity that you feel has wronged you. There’s no feedback, and no sense that you’re really dealing with a human being.

This is the same phenomenon that leads us to be incredibly rude to telemarketers and telephone support representatives, but on steroids.

Now we have a mass of consumers who believe businesses should cater to their every whim, whether they’re paying for it or not! Here are just a few examples of behavior that this combination of over-empowerment, entitlement and anonymity creates:

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, regularly creates valuable free content for his list of subscribers. When he was invited to speak on a (free) webinar, he invited his list to participate, and he got spam complaints and un-subscriptions from people who felt that the webinar might have some sort of offer at the end of it (it didn’t).
We recently ran a survey of the semi-local business community, to gather data about what is really happening in the industry. We actually had one person call and leave us a voicemail because she objected to being asked demographic questions, like how old she was, her marital status, and so forth. Never mind that all of the data was collected anonymously, nobody forced her to complete the survey, and she was free to click away at any time. She left us a voicemail telling us that she felt affronted that we even asked the question.
After people sign up for our free video course, they have the option of “paying with a tweet” to get a bonus infographic and set of worksheets. Presumably, they would only want the bonuses after having watched the videos, and liked them (otherwise why would they want the bonuses?) – but we’ve received several angry emails from people accusing us of dishonesty and false advertising (these accusations are false – we advertise free videos, and we deliver free videos).
Maybe most shocking Rebecca Black released her song “Friday” on YouTube, and received death threats from people who didn’t like it. Now, I admit that I tend to like the MTV top-40 tracks that most people with self-proclaimed musical taste love to hate, and even I think “Friday” is a dumb and annoying song. But death threats?!

It feels like we’ve gone way past just the empowerment of consumers over corporations who treat them unfairly, and all the way to consumers who hold businesses hostage to their expectations, however unreasonable those expectations may be.

I think we’ve gone too far…

Don’t get me wrong – I really appreciate the input that people send me every day about what they like and don’t like about the content that we produce. I value the encouragement, and I value the constructive feedback.

What I don’t appreciate is the feeling of entitlement that is clearly evident in some of that feedback; they aren’t interested in helping us improve, or creating a better experience for themselves – they’re just venting their frustration about not being courted in the way that they think they deserve.

I hope other businesses and entrepreneurs will join me in saying “enough”:

If you don’t like my content or opinions, then you don’t have to consume them.
If you don’t feel that my bonuses justify a tweet, then don’t tweet – but I don’t owe you free content.
If you don’t want to receive the occasional offer between all the free advice that I send to my list, then please unsubscribe.
You don’t have to buy anything from me, or read anything that I write, but you don’t have a right to feel indignant about the fact that I have things for sale.
And most importantly, no matter what you may feel entitled to, you don’t have the right to be rude or disrespectful.

And even more importantly, I hope that other consumers of social media will join me in my attempts to be mindful that the people we’re dealing with are people – not avatars, not robots, and not algorithms, but people. They’re entitled to earn a livelihood, and they’re human beings who will make mistakes. They have feelings, and they deserve to be treated with respect.

What do you think? Am I being unreasonable? Please leave a comment and (respectfully) share your take…

Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is an author, strategist, serial entrepreneur, expert marketer, and the Freddy Krueger of Blogging. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark, Mitch Joel, he wrote the book on how to build an engaged audience from scratch.

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If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

Over-Empowerment, Entitlement, and Anonymity: The Dark Side of Social Media
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How to Make Your First $100 Online

Pat — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:00:02 +0000

This is a guest post by Srinivas Rao of The Skool of Life and co-founder of BlogCastFM, one of my favorite podcasts that I fully support for your online education.

I am in Boston right now working with a client and with the beauty of technology and the wonders of WordPress I was able to schedule this post ahead of time – but that doesn’t mean this guest post is any less important. In fact, it could be one of the most important posts you read because when you think about – before you make a million dollars, before you make tens of thousands, or even just one-thousand dollars, you still have to make a hundred bucks first.

Once you can do that, the sky is the limit.

In this post, my good friend Srini illustrates some very actionable items to help those of you who have yet to earn your first 100 dollars online, earn it.

Please enjoy, and for the more experienced people out there, please share or add any tips you may have to help people earn their first $100 online.

Here is Srini…

Given that many of us are looking at our online efforts to supplement, increase or even replace our incomes, 100 dollars may not seem like a worthwhile goal. So Before I get into the “how-to” of making your first 100 dollars online I think it’s worth spending a bit of time talking about why you should focus on your first $100 before anything else. Most of us set goals of 1000 or 2000 dollars a month in income, and when it doesn’t happen at the pace we hope it will, we have a tendency to give up completely. As a result we never make a dime. The nice thing about $100 is that it’s a realistic achievable goal, and when you accomplish it, you’ll get the confidence boost you need to set some bigger goals. There a few other reasons it’s a worthwhile goal to start with:

It’s something you could accomplish within in the first 2-3 months of blogging, possibly even in your first month.
It doesn’t require tons of traffic. It doesn’t require tons of sales, and it won’t eat up a ton of your time.
In fact if you have an offer that is 10 dollars and 10 people buy it you’ve succeeded in making your first $100.00 online.

So let’s talk about how to create something that you can sell for $10.00

Making a Mini Product

Several months back I interviewed Dave Navarro who focuses on helping people to launch products. He turned me on to the idea of something known as a mini product. Here are some of the key characteristics of a mini product:

Value for your Audience: This is a no-brainer. The reason most people love the Smart Passive Income Blog is because the insane amount of value that Pat provides to his readers. There’s something that you can learn or gain from every single post that he writes on his blog. This is at the core of anything you want to sell online. Whatever you put together has to be of value for your audience or for a subset of your audience. Remember this is not about creating something every single person will buy. It’s about creating something that 10 people will buy.
It Doesn’t Take Tons of Time to Produce: The nice thing about a mini product is that it can be put together the in span of an hour. Often, when people do their very first product launch they tend to put countless hours into something like a 60 page e-book. If it doesn’t sell it’s demoralizing because so much time and effort was put into it. When you only spend a short amount of time on a product like this is, if it doesn’t sell it’s not a big deal since it only took an hour. You can keep experimenting with different mini products until you find something that works.
You Can Sell it Cheap: If you don’t spend countless hours putting it together than you can easily justify selling it for 10 dollars. For some reason people don’t seem to hesitate nearly as much when it comes to spending $10.00. If you’re concerned that no one will buy your product offer something of additional value. I offered 30 minutes of consulting time to the first 5 buyers who bought one of my mini products.

How to Come up with an Idea

Ask your Audience: If you have a small audience that is responsive this is actually easier than when your audience is huge because you can get really specific. You can ask your audience to what they want from you and have them respond in the comments. You can even go back through your comments and see what content that you’ve written that really resonated with them to come up with different ideas.
Identify Your Skills: One of the skills I knew I had developed over the last year was interviewing people. So after connecting with another blogger who decided to start a podcast where he interviewed people we decided to create a 1-hour teleclass called how to grow your blog with interviews. We added a worksheet to it and our first mini product was finished and ready for sale in about 2 hours. Chances are you have a skill that you are really good at that is of value to somebody. You can actually put together a short class, combine it with a workbook, and you have your first mini product.
Ask on Twitter: If you pay close attention to your twitter stream and the interactions that you have with people you’ll start to notice patterns or trends. I noticed that my time management content was something that was getting shared quite a bit. So, I jokingly put out a tweet saying that if I ever wrote an e-book it would be called “ Time Management for Bloggers with Short Attention Spans.” About 10 people responded saying they would definitely buy that. So, I sat down an hour later, packaged my best time management content together, added a few more elements to my mini e-book and put it up for sale the next day. Every one of those people who said they would buy it did.

Setting the Product Up for Sale

Once you have finished putting together your product you’ll need to get it set up for taking orders. This is a fairly simple process, but is somewhat confusing the first time you go through it. So I’ve outlined the steps below with screenshots for each step.

1. Sign up for an account with E-Junkie

For your first product, E-junkie is probably the easiest payment processor you can use. The major disadvantage I’ve found with using E-Junkie when compare to clickbank is that you have to manually pay your affiliates. But given that we’re talking about a 10 dollar product I recommend that you don’t have any affiliates. When you sign up for your E-Junkie account you’ll have an opportunity to link it to your paypal account where all your money will go.

2. Give your Product a name and Price

Once you’ve registered you’ll be taken to a screen where you’ll have an option to “add product.” Click on that and you’ll be taken to the second screen below where you can give your product a name and price:

3. Upload the Product, and Get the Code for your Add to Cart Button

4. Publish Your Sales Page

Setting up a sales page your mini product is as simple as writing a blog post on what the product is about. It doesn’t have to be incredibly complicated like sales pages for some of the bigger product launches you see. Have a paragraph or two that talk about the product and bullet points that highlight the benefits. You can see a sample sales page for our first mini product here.

Making a mini product can be a fun and easy way to start monetizing your blog even if you are in the earliest stages of growth. You can put one together in the amount of time that it takes to write a couple of blog posts and it will get you started with your very first passive income stream.

Srinivas Rao is writes about personal development at The Skool of Life, and is the host-co founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast for bloggers. Sign up for his FREE Webinar on the 7 Pillars of Blog Traffic

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Thanks for reading!
If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

How to Make Your First $100 Online
Join the community of over 10,000 fans of SPI on Facebook!

How to Protect your Blog’s Assets

Pat — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:18:12 +0000

This is a guest post by John Corcoran from California Law Report. John is a lawyer and blogger who understands that there are a lot of people who blog and do business online who don’t take the necessary precautions to legally protect themselves and the assets that they’ve created. Although laws differ depending on where you live or where your business resides, this is really important advice – and probably a reminder to a lot of you who have been meaning to take action, but have yet to do so.

Even though John is a lawyer, he is probably not your lawyer (if he is, then that’s cool!), so before you decide to take action based on the information presented in this post, it is recommended that you first consult with your own attorney.

I, of course, am not a lawyer.

Cheers, and here’s John:

Pat recently wrote a post on The Dark Side of Successful Blogging in which he explained the many negatives he has had to deal with as SPI has experienced explosive growth over the past less than three years.

Just like any successful business, successful bloggers experience growing pains as they begin to gain a following. Usually success means outgrowing an original hosting provider or email marketing provider, as well as countless themes, plugins, affiliates, and maybe even phone systems or office space.

What successful bloggers usually don’t realize as they are building a following and watching their income grow each day is that along the way, they’ve built some major assets which need guarding and protection. The domain, the blog itself, the brand, even a Twitter account with substantial followers can all quickly become extremely valuable assets. And on the list of “to do” items, I’m willing to bet that setting up legal protections to guard blog assets falls pretty far down on the list.

If you haven’t already, you should be thinking now about how you can legally protect yourself and the valuable assets you have created.

You could be sued by an affiliate who claims they are owed thousands in unpaid commissions, or by another blogger who claims you stole their “idea.” No matter the dispute, if you leave yourself exposed, your hard work could go down in flames.

You wouldn’t buy a $100,000 condo without really protecting yourself from losing it (such as by purchasing insurance), yet some bloggers build a $100,000 blog without building adequate protections. Personally, I think that’s nuts.

Of course, every blogger’s life situation is different, and the laws will be different depending on where you live. But there are certain similarities and principles which are universal when it comes to setting up a legal structure to protect your interests wherever you live.

You will also need to decide when your growth is significant enough to justify the significant contribution of time, energy and money to separate all of the business of your blog into a new separate legal entity.

How to Form a Legal Business for Your Blog

The first step is you should form a separate legal entity, owned by you, which “houses” all of your blog’s assets. Every state and country has different laws and names for this particular legal entity, but in California, where I practice law, the best entity is a Limited Liability Company (LLC). The LLC may go by another name depending on where you live.

Why should you choose to form a LLC instead of a corporation?

A LLC is a highly flexible and customizable legal entity that gives you the peace of mind of knowing you are protecting your assets without throwing up burdensome legal barriers and maintenance requirements. A LLC is generally easier to set up, cheaper, and more flexible with fewer formal requirements than a corporation. On the other hand, a corporation does have certain advantages, namely that it can take on investors (shareholders) who have limited liability for the corporation’s debts or actions. In most cases, the advantages of forming a corporation are outweighed by the increased burdens which corporate formalities bring — especially given that most bloggers don’t need to bring on investors.

Pat previously wrote a guide on how he set up the LLC for his blog which you can follow.

If you have business partners for your blog, then you will also need to prepare an Operating Agreement. The Operating Agreement spells out the nuts and bolts of the business; it is the “Constitution” which guides the business.

If one of you is going to handle 90% of the writing and the other is going to handle 100% of the affiliate programs but you’re going to split the profits 50/50, then you should put that in the Operating Agreement.

If you are a single blogger and don’t have any partners for your LLC, then you do not absolutely have to have an Operating Agreement. However, if you have one or more partner, you should definitely have an Operating Agreement, and I recommend you spend some time hammering out the details. Although companies like LegalZoom will provide you with a boilerplate Operating Agreement, you and your partners should consider customizing it or hiring an attorney to do so.

Use the Legal Entity For All Business Matters

The second step is you need to use the legal entity of your choice religiously for transacting all business related to your blog. Simply creating the LLC doesn’t waive a magic wand which will protect you and your assets from any harm.

The number one problem with LLCs isn’t that people don’t set up a LLC to begin with; it’s that people set up an LLC and then don’t use it. They commingle their business funds with their personal funds in one checking account. They don’t sign contracts in the name of the LLC. They don’t purchase goods in the name of the LLC.

They might as well have never formed the LLC, because the LLC can’t protect you from liability if you use your own personal name to conduct business.

It’s like buying a bulletproof vest and then leaving it hung up in your closet. It can’t do you any good unless you use it.

You need to transfer all blog business-related assets like domain names and hosting accounts into the name of the LLC. The new legal entity will become the actual owner of the blog, but don’t worry – you will own the LLC so it won’t change your income or ownership rights. Your affiliate and sales income is treated the same way as it was previously – it is passed through to you.

You can change your domain name’s ownership registration with whoever you used to register your domain.

Here are links for how to change your domains with GoDaddy.com and with Bluehost.com.

Open a LLC Bank Account

The next step is to set up a separate bank account in the name of the LLC. One of the most common problems with small business owners is that they commingle personal assets and business assets in one shared bank account. When you do that, you put yourself at risk that the LLC will be treated as if it was not a separate legal entity.

To avoid this problem, you should open a separate bank account in the name of the LLC and use it exclusively to pay bills such as for your hosting provider and to receive affiliate income and/or sales income. You can then transfer the funds from the LLC’s account to your own personal account.

This extra step is crucial if you want to keep the LLC treated as a separate legal entity. If the blog is later sued for whatever reason, and you did commingle funds, your other personal assets could be at risk because a court might treat the LLC as just an extension of you personally.

Get a Federal Tax Identification Number (EIN)

If you are a resident of the U.S., the next step is to get yourself a state and federal Employer Identification Number (EIN). You can get your EIN electronically directly on the IRS website.

Set Aside Enough Money for Taxes

Finally, don’t forget to set aside enough money for taxes. Because LLCs pass through all income to its owners, it is the owner’s responsibility to pay income tax.

I hope the above tips don’t take too much of the “fun” out of building a successful blog, but I believe it’s much better to take a few hours to get all legal matters in order than to pay the consequences in the long run.

John Corcoran is a lawyer and blogger with California Law Report (www.calawreport.com). He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can sign up for John Corcoran’s 10-part series on how to set up a business at his blog.

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5 Steps to Creating Your Ideal Lifestyle through Smart Passive Income Goals

Pat — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:49:15 +0000

This is a guest post by Christina Crowe.

It’s late at night and you’re still tapping away at your keyboard, writing up a post for your blog. The clock is ticking and you know that time is running out.

How am I going to pay the rent this month? You wonder, as you can feel the precious minutes tick away, slowly draining and never to return.

You pick up the pace.

You can feel minutes turn into hours as you continue to write long into the night, this time working on an eBook to sell to your readers.

You recently got laid off from work. Unable to find a job, you decided to try your luck as an entrepreneur. However, it hasn’t been going well. It has only been 3 months since you got laid off, and you’ve already gone through all of your savings. To top it all off, you’re barely making any money at all with your business.

Somehow, you have to make this work.

After a while, you finally decide to turn off your computer and call it a night. You pull the covers up over your body and try to sleep, only managing to toss and turn throughout the remaining hours of the night as countless worries flood your head. Before you know it, the alarm goes off and it’s back to work again.

Does this sound familiar?

Long sleepless nights of writing, only to seemingly not make any progress, and all the while wanting a better lifestyle for yourself is something many new entrepreneurs struggle with.

I sure did.

My Journey

A year ago, I came to realization that I wanted to make writing a part of my life, so I became an entrepreneur and got to work. However, the transition from working a 9 to 5 job to living the entrepreneur life isn’t an easy one, especially if you have bills to pay and mouths to feed. In reality, it can be a downright challenge.

Every day was a struggle, and I had the constant fear that, after all the work I put into creating a successful business, I just wasn’t going to make it.

But I loved to write, and I used this love to guide me and give me the confidence I needed to continue making progress so that I could one day live out the lifestyle of my dreams.

I’ve made mistakes along the way that I’m not too proud of. But I’ve also accomplished way more than I thought was possible and soon will be able to add an eBook to my list of accomplishments, something that fills me with excitement and pride.

Along the journey, there have been moments where I was literally jumping out of my seat in excitement and times when I could do nothing more than relinquish my fears into a box of tissues. But, by re-envisioning my future, setting a plan, working to achieve my goals, and celebrating my accomplishments, I was able to create a clearer road map to my future and make new milestones.

I still sometimes live those sleepless nights – the constant agony of not knowing where my blogging career would take me or if my business would flourish or fall flat. However, I’ve learned not to wallow in my fears and instead embrace my challenges, for it’s the only way I’ll be able to improve and shape my future.

So can you.

You’ve come a long way from working a 9 to 5 job to starting a business so that you can work at your own pace. Even if you aren’t living the above scenario exactly, you know the feeling. You want to get far in life and make progress, but something keeps pulling you down. Your struggle to progress has proved fruitless. It seems as though you aren’t getting anywhere. Months pass you by and you still feel as the day you first got started.

You can’t make progress doing what you’re doing, with nothing to look forward to and without a clear direction ahead. In order to enjoy your life, you need to have a plan.

Imagine Your New Lifestyle

Are you really satisfied with how you’re living now, or can you make it better?

Once you’ve decided that there’s still room for improvement, envision how your ideal lifestyle would look like. Better yet, put a time limit on it. What are you doing 5 years from now? Are you married with children? Are you traveling the world? Get as detailed and specific as you can. Do you have a house near the beach, with a large spacious office in which to work? Are you only working 4 hours a day and spending the rest of your time with family?

How would you truly enjoy your life if you could live it however you wanted? Write it down. Print the description if you want to, and put one copy in your bedroom and the other in your office. Look at it as soon as you rise each morning and the moment you walk into your office.

Set Passive Income Goals

Make a plan as to how you’re going to acquire your ideal lifestyle. What tasks will bring you closer to the life that you want? Start with yearly goals. What do you need to accomplish this year in order to achieve your ideal lifestyle?

Work your way down.

Once you have your yearly goals set, set goals that you’ll accomplish in 6 months. You should list no more than 3 to 5 major goals. Each goal that you set should bring you closer to the life that you want to live. If you want to travel the world, you’ll need to figure out where you’ll go and how you’ll finance the trip.

List your goals for the next 3 months. All of the goals that you list should interlink and compliment with your yearly goals. By breaking down your goals in this manner, you’ll have a clearer understanding of what needs to be done.

Finally, what are you going to achieve this month? Write it down, but this time be more specific. Start planning out your day to day routine. What are you going to do today? How about tomorrow?

Take advantage of planners. The planners over at Productive Flourishing have especially helped me organize my day, and I feel as though I’m also more productive as a result. Make use of planners and you’ll be surprised with how much you can accomplish.

Take Action

Don’t just plan everything out and hope for the best. Complete the tasks that you have planned for the day.

Every time you complete a task, cross it out or put a checkmark next to it. At the end of each week, look over the tasks you’ve completed and see how many you were able to get done. Some days you might not be able to get to them all, so don’t be discouraged if you didn’t complete as many tasks as you had hoped you would. Just get them done tomorrow.

If you find that completing so many tasks has made each day more stressful, try tweaking your plan. As you progress, you’ll have a greater grasp of what you can accomplish when.

Keep at it and don’t give up. Look at your lifestyle description if you get stuck. Above all, remember why you’re working and don’t lose sight of your dreams.

Analyze How Much You’ve Progressed

As you complete tasks, you get closer to achieving the lifestyle you envisioned. After every week or after your first month, take a look at your progress. Are you progressing? If you’re not, rethink your plan.

If you are making progress, try recording it into a graph that you can look at while you work. A good way to do this is to make a graph for each goal you intend to accomplish. So, if you plan to make $5,000 a month in passive income, fill in the graph as you make that income. Not only will this help you to analyze whether or not your tasks are effective, but it will motivate you to keep working as well.

Keep progressing and tweaking your plan as you go along.

Celebrate New Milestones

When you reach a specific milestone, like earning that $5,000 for the month, reward yourself. Don’t just keep working. Give yourself something special, like a day off from work, a new computer or a fancy dinner. Rewarding yourself will inspire you to work harder to achieve your ideal lifestyle, and you’ll get there much quicker.

You should also stop to think about how you can do better next month. Pat does this nicely in his monthly income reports. There’s always room for improvement, so think of ways in which you can improve and achieve even more.

If you’re worried about the slow journey ahead, you’ll be amazed with how time flies when you’re being productive and getting work done. Before you know it, you’ll be living the lifestyle of your dreams. Best of all, you’ll have so many accomplishments to be proud of.

Stick with it. Success comes when you least expect it.

Christina Crowe is a freelance writer who spends most of her time writing for the Web, reading fiction and striving for her ideal lifestyle. Check her out on her freelance writing blog Cash Campfire.

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Playing the Google Search Game – How to Rank High in Google

Pat — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 07:05:34 +0000

I’m honored today to publish a guest post by Joseph Archibald of JosephArchibald.com. There are a lot of people I respect online, but I must say that Joseph is right up there at the top for me.

You may recognize him from his presence within the comment section of my post entitled The Backlinking Strategy that Works, which currently has 511 comments.

65 of those comments are his.

Why?

Because the backlinking strategy that I shared with you in my most popular post to date was inspired and modeled after his own strategy that he generously shared free to the public in his 40 Day Challenge on the Warrior Forum. He was able to rank a fairly competitive niche in the top 5 in Google within 40 days.

(For everyone’s convenience, he has also since published The 40 Day Challenge eBook, which is a lot easier to read than the 1200 posts on the Warrior Forum. Check out his sample chapter here.)

He’s taken it upon himself to be totally active here on SPI and respond to everyone’s questions and concerns about the backlinking strategy, which just shows what kind of guy he is.

Amazing.

So, I’m happy to share his latest thoughts about ranking high in Google – especially after Google’s latest algorithm changes. Here’s what the expert has to say:

You may be wondering about the future of your Google organic search rankings for any one of the following reasons:

Maybe you have had some of your own sites ‘hit’ by the latest of Google algorithm updates
Maybe you know others who have had a serious dent made to their internet marketing income due to suffering a number of web page de-rankings in Google recently
Or maybe you are simply concerned that if you put in a lot of effort in ranking your sites, perhaps utilizing my own strategy which Pat very nicely laid out in his post The Backlinking Strategy that Works, is there any guarantee that you will STILL achieve high rankings in Google search?

All thoroughly valid points and credible concerns!

And so, what I would like to do in this post is to try to answer some of those concerns and furthermore, make some speculations as to what may occur in the future as far as ranking in Google’s organic search goes.

I must emphasize however that this is indeed speculation on my part. Unless I were a Google employee and working within their algorithm department up there on the 25th floor or some place, there is no way to know for sure what may occur in the coming months and years with regards to which type of website or webpages will rank well, and which variety of methods will help rankings in Google’s search results. And from this point of view, please remember these are merely educated theories and presumptions. You are for sure entitled to your opinion and do please share those opinions by leaving a comment.

Okay, so what has happened recently in Google search and where are things sitting right now just after their most recent algorithm updates, which have been termed “Big Panda” by Google (named after one of their staff who came up with the gist of the latest update, apparently) and termed as “The Farmer” by many search engine optimization folks because many of them decided that Google were targeting and penalizing content farms above all else.

One thing is for sure – a lot of non-unique content has been de-ranked. After all, Google did state that rankings for “low-quality” sites such as those utilizing copied content would be given a reduction of ranking penalty. And I can vouch for that occuring myself because I had a number of my own sites deranked in Google search for infringing on this issue. Naughty, naughty Joseph!

What to do?

Have a good grumble and get it out of your system, pick up the pieces and then move along and re-focus, is what I suggest. But its not just about that. It’s also a very good chance to stand back, take a well-deserved breath of fresh air (holiday if you can), think through your whole business philosophy, and come back stronger than ever before!

BE FED UP, BUT DON’T EVER GIVE UP!

Those highly successful people in our society will tell you exactly the same.

What else has taken place besides the ‘dumping’ of a lot of non-unique content in Google search?

Well, lets get down to the nitty gritty for a bit and then focus on the bigger picture.

It appears that Squidoo has been left reasonably unaffected. You may remember or be aware of the fact that just over 2 years ago Google had a go at Squidoo lenses and many were penalized and deranked in search. But that does not appear to have happened this time around. The Squidoo management “cleaned up their act” and brought in a more stringent criteria set for those of us who utilize Squidoo to abide by.

Ezinearticles has for a long while been a darling of Google search (Google search US anyhow – they do not rank nearly as well in the likes of Google.co.uk). Hence the great successes of the interestingly termed “bum marketing method” where internet marketers simply targeted lots of lower end keyword phrases by writing articles for ezinearticles publication, and ranked those phrases highly in Google US with little to no backlinking.

However, this time around ezinearticles have been hit bad and many ezinearticles publishers have found that their own submissions have lost rankings in Google’s search. (Ezinearticles has already introduced a new criteria for article submissions, which makes things a lot tougher than at any time previously).

Why is this so? Well, its open for tons of speculation, but there certainly could be a lot of truth in the fact that ezinearticles receives copious amounts of affiliate-type articles (articles that are targeted at selling affiliate products). There appears to be certain keyword terms that have been targeted by the recent algorithm updates as being spammy and not really the sort of content that Google would wish to have within their search index. Some of those terms are in the following niches:

acai berry
male “enhancement”
using PC for television
reverse cell phone lookup
how to get your ex back

You no doubt recognize most of those keyword terms/niches as being very highly targeted on the Clickbank marketplace.

Now, how about HubPages?

It very much appears that HubPages have been hit by Google also. But why so when there are not so many Hubbers intent on focusing upon such affiliate programs as those listed above for example?

Well, again – this is open to speculation and you could argue, just as Jennifer Ledbetter (the Pot Pie Girl) has very intelligently done so, that Google no longer appreciates the fact that HubPage management makes you jump through hoops before you achieve do-follow links from your Hubs. This is exactly the reason why I hit out at HubPages and discussed my reasoning for not using them in a backlinking campaign such as the Warrior Forum 40 Day Challenge. We want a relatively speedy work momentum and we don’t want to be having to jump through hoops in achieving our backlinks. Some would argue that a link from Hubs is more powerful, but this now is open to thorough deliberation.

And it appears that Google “may” have decided that the internet should not be about masses of no-follow tag insertion, but should be much more about do-follow attributes being used within our links. Again, this is open to interpretation and argument and there is no true concrete foundation in this argument.

So, with this all being said and witnessed (and grumbled about), how do we continue to progress with our own Google rankings – now and in future?

My own thoughts go along these lines.

We can continue to use article marketing (including ezinearticles.com), web 2.0 community sites, blog commenting and so forth, but we should be aware that Google are continuing to tighten up on what they define as “quality” and what they want to see within their attempts to formulate the internet with regards to organic search.

Try to put yourself in the eyes of Google here. If you “controlled” a big chunk of internet search and you were intent on out-doing your competitors by increasing the amount of searchers who use your interface (and thus vastly increase profits), how would you go about this?

If it were me, I would reduce the amount of content that is either the same or very similar from my search results. Thus if I were an affiliate marketer, I would be very wary of working with the most commonly targeted affiliate programs (Clickbank being the largest culprit here by far!).

I would be quite happy with spun content however. The spinning of quality content to make it highly unique adds value to the web on the whole. If I personally am gaining value from a certain article that I read in Go Articles for example, then I see no harm in the fact that the same topic has been introduced to lots of other article directories but that the content has been eloquently re-written. After all, I may have a preference for reading my articles in Go Articles, where someone else much prefers Article Dashboard or whatever.

I would also suggest, as previously mentioned and most of us agree to this already, that the use of non-unique content is not a good idea. Its not what Google wants to see and they have made that all the more clear in their recent routing of a whole mass of such content within their indexing system.

How about “thin” sites?

What are “thin” sites?

These are sites that do not have much content added. So for example, you would term a website with only a few pages of content as being “thin”.

My thoughts about these sites is that they can indeed add value to the internet, and thus to penalize such a site in Google search would be – well, stupid! If I read a super article on a site that has 5 pages of content, why should this site as a whole be penalized in terms of ranking? If I visited a site that had 100 pages and found nothing of any real value, then why should this site not potentially be penalized?

I rest my case.

But what about this whole thing of achieving high rankings in Google search?

My own thinking on this is that we should be more and more focusing in on the sort of stats that Google Analytics provides us with and focusing in more and more on achieving higher Alexa rankings.

Forget about the Google Page Rank thing. You will not necessarily achieve high rankings because your site’s home page is a Google PR6. You will still very possibly be outranked by a number of Google PR0′s and PR 1′s. Thus, its very wise to focus more on visitor retention, which in turn will tend to mean that your visitors read more than a single page of content upon any one visit.

Although I would say that this is not entirely necessary. After all, if you write a thoroughly engaging blog post on your site that takes the average reader 8 mintues to get through, then this its far more important for said blog visitor to read much if not all of that page, rather than fly from one page to another because they cannot find anything of value (this may be different on a large product site however).

And this then also relates to visitor returns. If your content is engaging enough or is offering good value in one way or another, then no doubt your visitors will return time and again. There are of course exceptions to the rules here – as mentioned, product related sites may not gain the same visitor retention, but they could see a very high rate of visitor returns.

And what about gaining masses of backlinks, which is supposed to prove that your site is popular and thus will gain rankings?

I would suggest to you that Google will slowly but surely be looking for more qualitative links. By that I mean that they will be assessing much more who links to your site – is the backlink coming from a site within the same broad niche to your own which also offers up quality content? I cannot imagine for the life of me that they (Google) will continue to value mass forum profile backlinks. I do not see how this proves any form of content value.

Article directory submissions and web 2.0 community type sites will continue to offer valuable backlinks also. It’s obvious to Google that we as internet marketers (over-) utilize article directory submissions and web 2.0 community pages, but I suspect that they will not penalize us for doing so, unless we enter the “mass affiliate market places” which seem to be now discriminated against by Google.

What about social “media” sites and how do they fit in with potential for ranking our own websites and blogs?

By social “media” I am indeed referring to the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, to name the big 3.

There is little doubt that these sites will be playing a larger and larger role within the internet as a whole, and from this point of view it’s thoroughly sensible to contemplate how we can gain higher ground by grasping onto their coat-tails in some way.

It’s obvious that using Twitter and Facebook etc. in itself can benefit your business. It’s big business building up a Facebook fan page or whatever its called these days, and if you can funnel the popularity of your fan page (or Twittering habits) to your website, then you will for sure be better off for doing so.

I think that Google (and of course Yahoo Search, Bing, Ask.com etc.) will be seeing this as a sign of true value, and thus this will help to rank your site accordingly. Google algorithms may not have the “intelligence” just yet to determine how to figure the social “media” funneled visitor flow but if they do not as yet, then they will do in future. After all, these huge social “media” sites are far too powerful a presence to simply ignore.

In summary, the key thing here is to ask yourself what YOU would do if you “owned” a large part of the internet search results, but your competition was intent on gaining ground on that ownership? What would you do to stave off your competition, and by doing so make the best return on your investments? By thinking along these lines and seeing and sensing things from Google’s perspective, you’ll be enhancing your own abilities to play the Google search game better and better by way of ranking your webpages and websites all the higher in search, and thus attracting a greater proportion of searchers to enjoy and benefit from your content.

I wish you every success!

Pat here.

I owe a lot to Joseph for showing me the ways when it comes to implementing a backlinking strategy that really does work. His 40 Day Challenge Case Study helped me achieve a #1 ranking for my very first niche site, which is currently earning an average of $30 per day, and I’ve achieved 1st page rankings for all of the niche sites I’ve attempted since then.

As a result of his generosity, and because I know first hand that the strategies in his case study work, I’m more than happy to recommend his eBook.

If you’ve benefited from Joseph’s backlinking strategy from him or myself, or if you’re just cracking into niche sites for the first time, I highly recommend picking up his 40 Day Challenge eBook. Yes – you can get that information for free on the Warrior Forum, but the thread is 1200 posts long on 24 pages (I’m not exaggerating – check it out for yourself here), and the eBook is much easier to read.

I’m sure Joseph will be around to answer any questions that you have about his guest post, his 40 Day Challenge and his eBook.

Thanks, and have a wonderful week. Cheers!

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How to Write Blog Posts That Go Viral

Pat — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:24:30 +0000

This is a guest post by Onibalusi, a 17 year old (yes, I said 17) blogger who you can find at YoungPrePro.com. What impresses me most about Oni is not his age, but really how smart and hard working this young man is. He’s one of the hardest working bloggers that I know (of all ages) and English isn’t even his primary language.

Enjoy, and be ready for the next session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast coming this Monday. Cheers!

It’s not natural for blog posts to go viral and there are a lot of factors that can determine how successful your blog posts will be. Even though the size of your blog and the type of your audience matter, there are other factors that are even more important that will determine how viral your blog posts will be.

How Do You Know If Your Blog Posts Will Go Viral?

First, I must tell you that there is no guarantee that your posts will go viral, but there are some things that you can do to increase your chances. After analyzing a lot of big blogs I was able to come up with a list of some of the most important factors:

1. Your Headline

Your headline is the number one element that can determine how viral your post will be, so it’s very important to spend more time crafting great headlines. Even though quality content is important, your quality content might not be read if you don’t have a great headline.

“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.” – Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

In other words, spend more time coming up with great headlines, and you’ll increase the chances of people reading your posts.

There are many factors that determine a great headline and lots of tutorials on that subject (Copyblogger’s magnetic headlines) but below are 4 important factors you must consider when writing a headline:

You must make sure your headlines are…

- Useful: Why should a reader read your post in the first place? Always make sure your headline communicates usefulness to your readers, and make sure your headline makes it clear that your post is worth their time.
- Urgent: Online, procrastination is very common. Many people tend to delay things until they forget about it completely. Make sure your headline communicates extreme urgency to get them to read it now.
- Unique: There are a lot of other blogs out there and your readers are subscribed to a number of them, and there’s no point reading the same content over and over again. Your headline should show that your post is different from all of other posts they’ve ever read.
- Ultra-Specific: It’s also important to be very specific when writing your headlines. Don’t confuse your readers and let them know exactly what they’ll get from reading your post.

2. Do Not Under-Deliver

Many viral campaigns fail not because of the headline, but because of the content. Misusing great headlines can bring you more harm than good.

Why?

Because compelling headlines with a low quality post lead to disappointed readers.

Great headlines alone are not responsible for viral posts, but great headlines backed up with solid content are.

Always make sure your posts deliver on the promise of your headline as this will not only bring more people in but it will also encourage them to share your post and create a viral effect.

How to Write Viral Posts

1. List Posts

A list post is a great post to write because they have a higher tendency of going viral. If you take a look at the most popular blogs you’ll notice that most of their popular posts are list posts.

When trying to write a list post it’s very important not to just write a list without any explanation. Back up your points with a detailed explanation.

Here are examples of list posts that went viral on some of the top blogs:

The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers (Copyblogger) – 1200 retweets, 200 comments and 200 facebook shares

Top 10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using LinkedIn (Problogger) – 1,100 retweets and 148 comments

43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid (Dailyblogtips) – Over 400 comments and 24k views via StumbleUpon

2. How-to Posts

How-to posts also have a higher tendency of going viral compared to other types of posts.

Another great advantage of writing how-to posts is the search engine advantage. Many search engine visitors start their searches with “how to“, which means you’re more likely to get search engine traffic from your post in the long run.

Below is a great example of a how-to post that went viral on a top blog:

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business (Copyblogger) – With over 700 retweets, 140 facebook shares and 350 comments.

3. Case Studies

Another type of post that can easily go viral is the case study post.

Case studies tend to go viral not only because of how informative they are, but because they are very practical. Readers don’t just love to read theories, but they also want to see you in action and they want to see if you’re truly getting results.

Below is a great example of a case study post that went viral on a top blog:

THE Backlinking Strategy That Works (SmartPassiveIncome) – With over 425 comments, this post is a great example of a viral case study post.

People love validation, and with a case study you get the process, and the results.

4. Controversial Posts

Controversial posts also tend to go viral, especially if it disagrees with a popular trend.

When trying to write a controversial post, it’s important to make sure you don’t write a post that can bring about negative traffic, but rather use your controversial post to try to get quality traffic.

A great example of a viral controversial post is the example shown below:

Twitter Lists – I’m Not Down (Chris Brogan) – With over 150 comments and 326 retweets this post shows that controversial posts can be a good source of viral traffic.

5. Top Posts

Writing top posts that rank the influencers in your niche can be a great source of viral traffic. People love to read about top influential people, and you can use this to your advantage to get more traffic to your blog.

Below is a great example of a viral top post:

50 Most Influential People in Blogging 2010 (IncomeDiary) – With 297 facebook shares, 77 comments and over 240 retweets this post ranking the top 50 bloggers is a great example of a viral top post.

Conclusion

When trying to write blog posts that go viral, you should also know that luck does play a role. But, if you implement the right strategies you will give your blog posts a much better chance of going viral and finding success.

Onibalusi Bamidele is a 17-year-old entrepreneur living the internet lifestyle. Learn more from him by subscribing to his blog and get his guide to guest blogging for more on guest blogging with success.

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3 Street Selling Tactics that Boosted My Email Subscribers Over 100%

Pat — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:00:20 +0000

When doing business online, it’s always smart to see how others are finding success. That’s why I follow people like Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse, and it may be the reason you’re following me.

The thing is, we’re so involved in doing everything online, we often fail to realize the successful strategies and tactics that are used offline in the real world that can help us with our online businesses.

I’ve touched on expanding our minds and looking for Shadows of Marketing in the real world before, but this guest post by The Blog Tyrant hits the nail on the head when it comes to using front line, real world examples to help our online marketing efforts, specifically when it comes to growing our email lists.

I really enjoyed this guest post, and I know you will too.

photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

Don’t worry. Not THAT kind of street selling! What I am talking about is the highly efficient (and sometimes annoying) charity salespeople who walk the streets trying to sign you up for regular direct deposit donations. They work fast and they get results. The methods they use are tested and very deliberate.

In this post I am going to show you three tactics that I borrowed from one street seller that helped me boost my email subscription rate by over 100% across multiple blogs.

1. Giving Makes Selling Easier

One of the most powerful thing that these guys do is give you something as soon as they meet you. The reason for this is not because they want to get their brand name out there or make you feel friendly, it is because they know that it is harder to say no if you have just taken something from someone. Car salesman are the absolute best at this because they give you free test drives in your dream car in order to get you away from the “no” mentality. They won’t even let you go near a piece of paper until you’ve driven the car.

The street salesman that I encountered gave me a neat little bag followed by the comment, “…these are actually pretty cool man. Don’t throw it out.” Immediately the value of the item increased and I noticed my mind shifting from “get out of here” to “I should at least hear him out”. The generosity had paid off.

So how do you give on your website in order to make people more likely to subscribe by email? Some of the options include:

Use value-increasing language in pitches
The interesting thing was that is wasn’t just the bag that made me stick around, it was the fact that he told me it was a good bag. It showed me that he valued the bag and as such I would feel like an absolute jerk if I admitted I wasn’t grateful by walking away. It seems ridiculous now but at the time it was very powerful. Don’t just offer a free ebook, tell people how valuable the ebook is and why it is important to you and so many others. This generates interest but also makes people feel like they are getting a lot.
Make it free but remind people
Pat recently talked about whether giving away free information is bad. My take on that is that free information is excellent and fine so long as you don’t feel bad about reminding people occasionally how valuable the information is. If your website is anything like Pat’s or mine you will be quite used to giving away trade secrets. Start reminding people occasionally with gentle in-post inferences about how much you have given them. Don’t directly say “you’re getting so much jerks” but instead imply it by saying things like “this method has worked so well for me over the years and was the basis for many future successes”. I do this a bit in my article on selling a blog.
Ask for something in return
One way to make the act of giving more visible is by directly asking for something in return. When you do that you are essentially highlighting the fact that you have given something of value. In the case of email subscribers you are asking for their email address so why not highlight that that is the trade off for your free ebook?

Go beyond the free ebook method as your form of giving something away and start helping people to understand how valuable your information really is. If you can go to this next deeper level you will find that people feel compelled to interact with your site in some way and the easiest way is by subscribing by email.

2. Use Social Proof At Problem Moments

So the street salesman had my attention. We’d been talking for a little while now and I could see he was getting ready to go in for the kill. As he broke out the brochure detailing how much money I was going to give he said, “We’ve had 290 people sign up this week for these $30 a month packages. All I need to do is sell 10 people the $5 a month package and we’ve hit our target“. Well played sir.

Well played.

What he had done in that sentence was show me that I wasn’t alone in doing this. He wasn’t just some clever scam artist who was going to steal my credit card details (although he might well still have been!). Other people had done this already. Other people had signed up for more than I was going to sign up for. Now my brain is telling me to do it so it will all be over. Its not that bad.

Social proof is good. Social proof at problem moments is even better. Don’t just put your testimonials all in one place. Put relevant ones at relevant problem points. For example, if you have a sidebar ad you might want to show how many other people are subscribed. If you have an email subscriber landing page you might want to have a testimonial about how easy the whole process is. Ideally you should place a relevant piece of social proof on:

the landing page;
the subscriber box area;
the verification email;
the confirmation email; and
the email people get when they unsubscribe.

If your social proof can also indicate how easy the process is or how much benefit they will get from a tiny bit of action then you will find that subscription rates skyrocket for the simple reason that you are removing people’s objections.

NOTE: If you can work these problem moments into your blog hot spots you will have a much higher rate of conversion for the simple reason that it gets high exposure.

3. Show Results And Make It Feel Achievable

Out of all of the sales techniques the one that had the deepest effect on me was seeing photos of kids drinking clean water, studying in their new school and eating with their family. At that point compassion welled up inside of me and all other thoughts about objections and money worries faded away.

When I was in the car later on I thought about that moment and realized that I felt quite different to when I see other charity adverts where the kids are all sick and starving. During those commercials I usually feel quite dis-empowered and depressed. But seeing photos of the results of the contributions and how literally a few bucks had changed people’s lives I felt motivated. It was an interesting moment for me.

Applied to your email subscriptions this is a very powerful thing. People are coming to your blog or website because they have a need and they want to solve that need. Your job is to make them feel like your content can solve their problems.

Shift from object to person
Instead of talking about how great your ebook is or how fantastic your content will be once they subscribe you need to talk about what it will mean to the person. How will it affect their life or their business and is it really going to be achievable for them?
Personalize the language
Use language like “my, me, you, your” instead of “this, it, etc.”. This is essentially helping to reinforce the first point because you are getting the person focused on your offering and how it applies to their situation. Don’t focus on the free thing or the actual product, focus on the benefits they get from it.
Use before and after
On my email subscription pages I usually use a before and after of some sort. It doesn’t have to be a picture or anything that complex, just a sentence or two about how your free ebook or free subscription can take your business or health or life from the old way to the new way. Better yet, show them how it has worked for other people.

This one tactic alone is massive. If you make the shift from just talking about features and helping people understand the benefits they will get from signing up you will tap into emotions that really are quite difficult to ignore.

Conclusion

Offline marketers have been around for a lot longer than us online guys and as such they often have some cool things to share. This charity street seller was a perfect example. Show people the results, use social proof at problem moments and give something before you ask for something. Once I applied these three tactics to my different blogs by changing the language or the layout that I used I experienced a huge increase in email subscribers literally overnight.

Do you use anything like this on your blog? Please leave a comment as I am really interested to see what is working/not working for other people out there when it comes to email subscribers and conversions.

The Blog Tyrant has sold several blogs for large sums of money and earns a living by relying solely on the internet. His blog is all about helping you dominate your blog and your blog’s niche and only includes strategies that he has tried on his own websites. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook or subscribe to his feed for all the juice.

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How To Pick The Right Business Partners

Pat — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 07:05:52 +0000

This excellent piece of writing is a guest post by Sathvik Tantry of TheresMoneyEverywhere.com.

It’s hard to run a business by yourself. After all, no one is good at everything, and it’s great to have people who can keep you motivated and give you new ideas. Business partners can also provide valuable skills and business contacts to help your venture succeed.

But picking the right business partner isn’t easy. I’ve been a businessman and entrepreneur for several years, and I’ve had my fair share of business partners. I’ve been lucky in finding some great ones, but there are also many people I wish I hadn’t worked with. Here are some things you should think about when selecting a business partner:

Core Values

Find someone who is on board with the core values of your business. These are the values that are going to define your business relationship and shape the company as it grows.

One way of doing this is to make a list of values that matter most to you, and ask your prospective partner to do the same. Then, see what the overlap is and whether you can reconcile any differences. Make sure that you are clear on communication and get to the important points sooner rather than later.

For example, one partner may prefer to maintain control and autonomy of a business, while another might prefer to sacrifice these things in order to scale. It’s important to hash this out beforehand so you can identify common goals and visions. Otherwise, your differences may lead to conflicts down the road.

Self-Motivated

Several years back, I tried partnering with a friend on a new business venture. While this friend was great at taking direction, he rarely pushed the boundaries to find new opportunities and come up with new ideas. To him, it was “good enough” if he did his assigned job. While these types of individuals make good employees, they rarely translate into strong business partners. Micromanagement is especially ineffective when building something from the ground up.

Instead, be on the lookout for highly motivated go-getters who will go above and beyond to complete their assigned tasks. Seek out partners who have a history of following through on their commitments. Never partner with anyone that you feel you have to “mold” into the person you want them to be.

Remember, the big rewards go to those who are wildly successful. There is always a huge drop-off in payouts between first and second place, so you want people on your team who are striving to be #1.

A good way to test if someone is self motivated is by asking them to discuss a time when they took initiative. Be specific and ask follow-up questions to see what they did in a certain situation. Ideally, if possible, you should ask if you can call some people for a reference to verify that the story is true.

Credibility And Skills

You want a partner that will complement you well. It’s probably a good idea to understand your strengths and find a partner will bring something different to the table.

You can verify credibility by looking at past accomplishments. Check out their educational background, work experience, and success on previous projects. Along the way, you’ll get a sense of the skills they may have developed.

The Willingness to Adapt

Businesses change constantly, and you want to be working with someone who understands this and takes it in stride. Rigidity kills great businesses, and the last thing you want is to fight with your partner about making progress.

A few years ago, I partnered with a friend to build a new product. Several months in, I realized that our product was actually going to be obsolete by the time we were ready for launch. We needed to reposition things if we wanted to make any money.

But my friend was adamant. He was convinced that the original idea was good and that the market would never change. Our disagreement on this issue caused a tremendous amount of tension. In the end, our project failed because we couldn’t agree on how to move forward.
The takeaway here is that you want to build businesses with people who are not only willing to adapt, but accept the fact that it will almost certainly be necessary as things change. Otherwise, you risk losing everything you’ve worked to build.

Acceptance of Constructive Criticism

Constructive criticism is a great learning tool, but it’s amazing how many people resist it. It makes sense – no one likes to hear about their flaws. But it’s the only way to make sure that you fix problems and keep improving as a team.

A good way of gauging this is by asking people some tough questions upfront. Ask people about a time they failed or struggled in their lives, and see what they learnt from it. This way, you’ll get a sense of whether they can take things in stride.

Clear Communication

One of my pet peeves is when people say they’ll do something and they don’t end up following through. I’m sure that I’m not alone in this. The best way to prevent this is to partner with people who are very clear about their capabilities and expectations. It’s better to work with someone who will bluntly tell you that they are unable to do something (due to time constraints, skill levels, etc), rather than deal with a “yes-man” who’s just going to yank your chain. You’ll save time, money, and reduce your stress levels, so don’t compromise on this.

Integrity

I recently met Michael, a very successful businessman who is also the father of a close friend. After working his way up at a large consulting firm, he left to start his own business with a fellow partner. Michael had known the partner for many years and they had worked closely together in the past, and for awhile everything was going well.

One day, Michael checked the company’s bank balance and was astounded to find a large sum of money missing. He tried calling his partner, but could not get in touch. Days passed, and still no reply. Eventually, Michael found out that his partner had gotten into financial difficulties and had been stealing from the company.

The point is that all of the other good qualities above don’t mean anything without trust. Only work with people who you believe hold the highest ethical standards when it comes to business. It’s rarely easy to tell whether someone is trustworthy just from personal interaction, and that’s why it’s important to conduct reference checks and other verification methods to complement your face-to-face evaluation.

Above all else, remember that picking a business partner is a big decision, so take it seriously.

Have you ever had a business partner? What were the things you looked for and what would you do differently?

Vik Tantry is an internet entrepreneur who writes about money and personal development at There’s Money Everywhere.

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The Secret of Cutting Through the Noise and Getting More People to Click on Your Links

Pat — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:05:44 +0000

This is a guest post by James Tayo of Entrepreneur Blog’r.

One day I was shopping for groceries and as I walked through the magazine section, I was stopped in my tracks. A title on one of the magazines had caught my eye and it read “One Wedding secret Prince Charles must take to his grave”. I just had to stop to pick it up to find out what they were on about. If you live in the UK, you always are interested in some crazy thing the royal family does. This moment reminded me of how powerful a great headline can be.

The Power of a Headline.

In a previous post, Pat explained why an incomplete headline will help you get more traffic to your blog and this post is a follow up to expand on that idea. In the age of social media and millions of other blogs competing for your audiences attention, it has become a noisy world out there. Today it is not who shouts the loudest that gets the most attention but who shouts the smartest. Especially if you are a new blogger, you could write all the great content you want, but to get that content read, you need to have a great headline that pulls people in from the RSS readers, Twitter or wherever you may be promoting it.

How to Learn to Write Great Headlines

Writing great headlines is not hard at all, you just need to know what works, the psychology behind why it works and put that into practice.

In this post, I am going to share a great resource with you. It’s from the marketing guru, Jay Abraham and it is called, The 100 Greatest Headlines ever written. I will choose 3 of those headlines to analyse and show why those headline work so that you can be able to craft your own super headlines. I will also give you alternative headlines I could have used for this post.

The Secret of Making People Like You

This is first one one the list. This headline clearly wants to convey how you can achieve a specific result, in this case, getting people to like you. Highlighting a benefit a reader will get from reading your content is an effective way of getting that person to click over. The other component that makes this headline even more powerful is “The Secret”. We all want to know what our competition doesn’t, so that we can have an edge over them. In this case people want to click over and find out what it is that isn’t common knowledge and will make people like them.

Let’s see how I could have swiped this concept to create an alternative headline for this post. A good title for this post could have been, The secret of cutting through the noise and getting more people to click on your links on Twitter.

A Little Mistake That Cost a Farmer $3,000 a year

As Jay Abraham noted under that title, “People will fight much harder to avoid losing something they already own than to gain something of greater value that they do not own”. This title will draw you in because you would like to know what mistake the farmer made so you don’t end up making the same. Also, the word “little” is trying to convey the message that the mistake was avoidable but it still cost the farmer $3,000. This title like all the other titles in this post plays on the curiosity angle. You only want to give away so much information in the title to arouse that curiosity so the person reading it will want to find out more.

Swiping from this title, I could have titled this post. A Little Mistake that cost a Blogger half of his Subscribers.

Why some People Almost Always Make Money in the Stock Market

This title is best used when you address a problem that most people have but only a small section of the community seem to be able to have a solution for. In this case, it is making money
on the stock market. It is widely known that only about 10% of investors gain from the stock market and the other 90% are the ones funding these gains. The element of credibility also comes into play with the words “some” and “almost”. It acknowledges that not everyone will be able to find the solution they are seeking but when they do find it, their chances of success are greatly increased because it “almost always” works.

A good title for this post could have been, Why some Probloggers always get tons of traffic from Twitter.

I’m sure you now recognize the power of a headline and how these headlines work behind the scenes to make you take action. Your headlines are the entry points to your content, most people coming over to your blog will see your headline first, the more people you can convert into coming over to your site, the more you will convert later into subscribers, clients, customers or whatever you want them to be later on.

I have a challenge for you, can you think of a headline for this post that is better than the 3 I have illustrated here? Please leave a comment and let me know.

James Tayo shares tips on how you can become a successful entrepreneur at Entrepreneur Blog’r. On his blog you can find out how you can kick start a profitable business online by building an email list of prospects and turn them into raving fans.

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The Secret of Cutting Through the Noise and Getting More People to Click on Your Links
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