31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 3. Search for and Join Forums on Your Blog’s Topic

Your task today in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project is to find and become a member of a web forum in your niche.

Why Forums?

I find forums to be a very worthwhile type of website to join and participate in for a number of reasons:

• Relationships - good forums can be incredible communities with a lot of good personal interaction between members. Some of the people that I have worked with more closely over the years are people I have met in forums.
• Profile/Branding - participate in a forum well and you can build your own profile and brand. I’ll never forget the power that ‘Google Guy’ (Matt Cutts) used to have on webmaster forums. He, as a Google employee, used to have incredible influence (and still does today under his own real identity).
• Learning/Post Ideas - one of the best parts about participating in a forum is that as you use them you’ll find yourself with a lot of new knowledge and potential post ideas. Forums are full of threads from beginners in topics asking questions. Grab these questions and answer them on your blog. You can also get scoops on stories from forums if you monitor them well.
• Readership - I’ve put this last because for me it’s not the reason I use forums the most - however I do know some bloggers who generate a lot of traffic from forums. A well read forum can have tens (and hundreds) of thousands of readers - a well placed link back to your blog can have serious impact.

There are plenty of forums out there on most topics. Go on a forum hunt today and when you find one that has a similar topic to your blog sign up and become an active member. To find them it’s usually as simple as searching Google for ‘your topic forum’ (try a few of your main keywords).

So what do you do when you find and have joined a forum?

I guess it depends partly upon the forum and how it operates - but here are a few starting points:

• be a good member and let your reputation grow - it’s the same as with blogging - as you add value to the forum over time with helpful posts, people will want to know more about you and will either PM you or check out your profile page (make sure your link is on it)
• spend time getting to know the forum’s culture - every forum is different - they will not only have different topics, they’ll have different rules, etiquette etc. Before rushing in and promoting your blog, get a feel for the forum. Watch how people post, see what topics are most popular, identify key members.
• make strategic friends - every forum will have members that are more connected and powerful than other members. While I’m not suggesting you make friends just to manipulate them I think it can be smart to be in contact with key players. I learned this a few years back when I joined a forum and found that linking to my own blog had little or no effect - however when one of the forum moderators linked to it, it sent significant traffic. People take notice of these members - they can be useful to know.
• where appropriate, suggest links to things you’ve written as an answer to questions - If they are on topic, helpful and relevant they will usually be allowed (this varies from forum to forum)
• link to your blog in your signature and profile page prominently (although don’t go over the top and make it too spammy)
• Private Message people where appropriate - eg when they are asking questions - the personal touch goes a long way
• break news and link - if news breaks in your niche and you post about it on your blog before anyone in the forum writes about it then this is often a good way of driving traffic. Similarly rumor posts can do quite well in some forums

The level that you can actively promote your blog will vary a lot from forum to forum so you’ve got to get to know the culture of the forum before doing too much. For me it’s more of a long term reputation building exercise than a quick term traffic builder.

I’m by no means the most prolific forum user - but I have found them to be a very useful place to participate in. If you’re using forums, feel free to share your tips as comments.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 2. Run a First Time Reader Audit on Your Blog

Today is Day 2 in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge and today your task is to Do a First Time Reader Audit on your blog.

Get a friend or family member who has never read your blog before and sit them down at a computer.

Load your blog up and let your friend surf it.

Don’t talk to them as they do - but watch carefully how they use your blog.

• How do they navigate?
• Where do they click?
• What do they pause to read?
• What do they skip over?

Once they’ve surfed your blog ask them some questions about the experience.

• What were their first impressions?
• What did they first think your blog was about when they arrived at it?
• Did they find it easy to read/navigate/understand?
• What did they ‘feel’ when they first arrived at your blog?
• What suggestions do they have on how you could improve your blog?
• What questions do they have having surfed your blog?
• What words would they use to describe the design?
• What are the main things that they remember about your blog 10 minutes later?

It’s amazing to see what you’ll learn by watching someone use your blog.

Once you’ve done your First Time Reader Audit come back to this post and let us know what you learned.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 1. Email a New Reader of Your Blog

This is the central page of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project that I’m running here at ProBlogger.
What is the 31 Day Project About?

To put it most simply - it’s a month long series of posts here at ProBlogger designed to walk you through 31 tasks that you can do to make your blog better. You can read more about how the project works and how to participate in my introduction to the project.

The project is made up of two parts:

My Tips and Reader Tips

Below you’ll find a summary of both. To keep up to date with the project subscribe to ProBlogger’s RSS feed or to our daily email updates.

To participate with a tip of your own simply follow the steps outlined in this post.
The Posts So Far

Your task for this first day of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge is to email a new reader of your blog.

Create a great impression upon a brand new readers to your blog by choosing a commenter that is new and emailing them to thank them for their comment.

It might not sound like the most profound tip but I’ll let you in on a secret - this is one of the main strategies I used to build up ProBlogger’s audience a couple of years ago.

What I found is that when you do it the chances of the readers that you email coming back to your blog again increases significantly. Get them to come back to your blog once and you increase the chances of them coming back again… and again….

So email a reader now, thank them for commenting and tell them that you’re looking forward to further interactions.

Make sure you include a link back to your blog so they know who you are and make the email relevant to their comment (ie answer a question they asked or add to their comment in some way). While there are some tools out there that do this automatically for you - the more personal you can make it the better.

This simple tip takes just a moment to do but can create a loyal long time reader. Do it at least once a day (or set yourself a higher target) and you’ll build your blog consistently over time.
Is this Tip Not SPECTACULAR Enough For You?

Last time I shared this tip with a fellow blogger they rolled their eyes at me and told me that they didn’t want to find just one more reader for their blog - they wanted hundreds or thousands.

This blogger failed to realize two things:

1. Loyal Readers Spread the Word - I’ve found that in many cases a single reader quickly becomes numerous loyal readers because they like to spread the word. They do this through their own blogs, word of mouth and social networking sites etc.

2. Loyal Readers Build Page Views - One loyal reader can potentially view your blog hundreds (if not thousands) of times. A daily visit from that reader for a year brings an extra 365 page views to your blog. Gain an extra loyal reader every day for a full year and the numbers start to add up.

While there’s nothing wrong with attracting thousands of new readers to your blog quickly - the majority of times they’ll come and go very quickly. Build loyal readers one by one on a daily basis and can be a lot more fruitful in the long run.

Free Report Reveals Smart Way to Make Money Online

When Brian Clark from CopyBlogger releases a free report - you know it’s going to be something you want to read. So when he emailed me a draft copy last week I put everything else aside and immediately devoured it.

The report is titled ‘Teaching Sells‘ and having chatted to many of you about your frustrations with making money online lately I just know that this is going to connect with a lot of you.

You can download it here (both as a PDF and MP3 audio file).

“Forget About Blogging for Bucks and Make Some Real Money”

Some of you will read that section heading in Brian’s report and wonder why a blog about making money online would be promoting something that seems to undermine the idea of making money from blogging.

I’ve long said that making money from blogging is possible on two fronts:

1. Making money directly from your blog (usually through advertising or affiliate programs)
2. Making money indirectly because of your blog.

Most bloggers take option one, thinking that they’ll become rich from earnings directly from the blog - but I’ve long held the belief that it’s actually option two that has the biggest potential - ie using the blog as an attention grabber and a point of leverage that can open up bigger things for a blogger.

This report will help those wanting to explore the second option through selling content - and more specifically through selling ‘teaching’ content.

I could write a lot more about the report - but really it’s something I’d encourage you to download and read for yourself. Then perhaps I’ll write a follow up post where we can discuss it more fully once you’ve had a read.

PS: Brian’s told me a bit about where all of this is heading, and he’ll be offering training for people who want to get on the fast track to acting on the content of the report. There’s more free articles coming as well as some paid training later on.

Whether you go for the paid options or not I think this initial report is a great read and give you lots of food for thought.

Sharp Money - Making Money Online

Sharp Money is a blog about making money online which itself is an attempt at blogging for money.



‘With this blog, we will explore opportunities for making money on the web (without resorting to spam, spyware or other predatory practices). Of special interest, of course, will be generating money from blogging. We’ll also look at ebay, affiliate programs and anything else having to do with generating revenue on the web.’

Its still very embreonic by the looks of things but will be an interesting one to follow. They are running Google ads as an income stream (although none are showing at present on the front page - perhaps they need to set up some alternate ads).

BloggerCon - Making Money with Your Blog

Doc Searls has an interesting post on making money with blogs in preparation for a session on the topic at the next Blogger Con. He asks a lot of thought provoking questions and then puts forward an interesting case…

‘As you can see, I have a position here. I believe it’s far more important (and interesting) to make money because of our blogs, rather than with them; just as we make money because we have phones rather than with our phones.

There are exceptions. Some of us make money by selling on the phone. If that’s you, think about what trying to sell over your blog (instead of the phone) would do to your relationships with readers.

Of course, lots of people use advertising to defray the costs of blogging. And, to be frank, I really don’t care much if you have advertising on your blog, or if you make money that way. If that makes you happy, or makes you money, fine. I expect we’ll spend some time comparing various advertising options. But let’s also ask, How interesting is that, once you’re past describing whatever it takes to get going with Adsense or Blogads? It’s cool that they provide a service and an income stream. But I’d like to see us budget time for each of the potential topics we can cover.’

Read more at BloggerCon - Making Money Session

How to Make Money

“How do I make money your way Darren?”

This was a question I was asked today by a seminar that I was attending recently so I thought I’d put together a little list of links that might be useful in answering the ‘how to make money from blogging’ question that I get asked more and more.

By no means is this all that I’ve written about the topic of making money - but I thought it might be useful for this particular person.

• How Bloggers Make Money - a summary of a large ranges of how to make money if you are a blogger
• How I make Money from Blogs - My top Earners - my personal report on how I make money via blogging
• 31 Days to Building a Better Blog - a long series of posts on improving a blog which will also help you make more money from a blog
• How to Make Money from Internal Search Traffic with Chitika - a simple tip that has helped quite a few make more money using internal search functions of their WordPress blogs
• How to make Money from Your Blog - Direct Methods - this is how most bloggers make money online
• How to make Money from Your Blog - Indirect Methods - this is how I think we’ll see more bloggers making money
• Tools for Making Money from blogs - an A-Z of tools and services for bloggers wanting to make money
• 10 Reasons why many blogs don’t make money - looking at the topic of how to make money from the ‘negative’ side of things.