ProBlogger Podcast: Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging

ProBlogger 7-Day FREE Content Sprint More information and sign-up here https://problogger.com/contentsprint/ A Free 7-Day Course to Create New Content Does your blog need a momentum boost? We've decided to run a LIVE 7-day Content Sprint to help support you create a plan and 6 new pieces of content for your blog in just 7 days. Starting next week (Monday 23rd at 5pm PDT/8pm EDT / Tuesday 24th at 11AM AEDT) Darren will be teaching live daily on FB in our ProBlogger Community Facebook Group (join here). Each day for 7 days we'll roll out supporting resources here in the course and add the video in case you can't make it live. Join us here: https://problogger.com/contentsprint/ Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, friends. It’s Darren here from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 281 of the ProBlogger Podcast. I've also got a live audience watching us today. They've been chiming in and saying good day. We've got people watching from Singapore, California, Adelaide, and all around Australia. It seems to be quite a few Aussies on due to the time of day that we're going at the moment. I will explain to you I have my son playing trumpet in the background today and this is not to give you ambient music but because he's got an online trumpet lesson today as part of his schooling. Today, I want to give you a fun little opportunity. We have been hearing from a lot of ProBlogger readers, podcast listeners about their current situation and how they're feeling about the Coronavirus, what's been going on in their world, and how that's impacting their blogging. We talked a little bit about that in the last episode, episode 280. I gave some suggestions on moving through it and blogging through this crisis. We also wanted to do something for you, and this is something that we want to offer to you for free, which will hopefully keep some momentum going in on your blog, and I hope this will help you.  As I just said on the live video, we have created this on-the-fly, so it's not polished by any means, but we think there's some value in it. I'm going to share my screen for the live video viewers and I'll pop this same graphic up in the show notes for those of you who will be listening to this on the ProBlogger Podcast. This all comes out of us observing one of the big problems that a lot of our listeners have at the moment. That problem is that many people are really struggling right now with motivation for their blog, particularly with content at the moment. They have this big problem, that they're feeling a lack of motivation, they're feeling distracted by all the information that's coming out at the moment about Coronavirus, and many are feeling fear and uncertainty about their businesses.  Someone just in the live stream said that they've lost their job out of this and that has brought fear and uncertainty for many of our readers. We're certainly hearing that increasingly, or at least people feeling like their work, their employment might be coming to an end. They're looking to their blog for some income but not really knowing how to do that and feeling paralyzed by it.  One of the results of this is a lack of content on many of our reader’s blogs or at least some blockages when it comes to creating content. If that's you, then you're not alone. If you're watching the live video, let us know if that's something that you do feel. If you've got a reason for that, if it's fear, uncertainty, or it's just distraction, let us know about that. I have felt that myself even over the last week. A week ago, I remember sitting for almost a full day, just consuming the news about coronavirus, and I realized that I really wasn't any more informed at the end of the day than I was at the start. The next I got up and I decided I was going to do something positive instead of just consuming uncertainty...

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there friends, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 280 of the ProBlogger podcast.  It’s been a while since we chatted and I do apologize for that, I needed a little time to get my headspace right and work on a couple of other projects, but I’m glad to be back. I’m particularly glad to be back at this time that we find ourselves in. We currently find ourselves in a bit of a crazy time with COVID-19, CoronaVirus, and all that it is meaning for us in the world we’re living in. We’re seeing so many people impacted, the economy impacted, and we’re seeing lots of new things, or at least they’re new to some people. We’re seeing a lot of people now having to work at home, something that many of us, as bloggers, have been doing for a while. Today, what I want to talk a little bit about is how we navigate this time as bloggers. How do we, as bloggers, not only keep our businesses going, but how do we actually do something to serve our world where there’s so much need at the moment. I jumped on to Facebook Live earlier today and shared my thoughts on that.  What I want to share with you today is a recording of that Facebook Live. I did a bit of teaching in the middle of that. I talked a little bit about what the world doesn’t need right now, what the world does need right now, and why we, as bloggers, are actually ideally positioned to make a difference. I want to give you some practical thoughts on how to go about that. Some things to keep in mind, some things to avoid, also just tackling that tricky question of how do we actually make it a win-win for our audience and for us without seeming selfish in the midst of that as well, and actually about how not to be selfish in the midst of that as well. There are some of the things I cover in the recording I’m about to play for you. I just want to say though right up front, I hope you’re doing well. I’m doing well, I’ve had a bit of a scare and I’ll talk about that in the recording today, over the last week or so, but I hope you’re doing well. I really do want to emphasize the point that I make numerous times in this recording that I hope you look after yourself in this time.  We need you to look after yourself. If you are going to make a difference, if you’re going to use your blogging, your online profile to make the world a better place, right now we need you to look after yourself as well. I hope you’re doing well and I hope you do take seriously the question I pose of you in this recording: what can we do at ProBlogger to serve you better through this time? Is there something that you are facing right now in your blogging that you’d like some content to be produced to help you to navigate that challenge. If you would like to drop me a line, my team a line, you can send an email to help@problogger.com and that will go to our support team. We’ll put it in front of the person who is best able to help if we can, and hopefully that will inform some content going forward. If you do want to stay in touch with this, head over to our Facebook Page, facebook.com/problogger, and you will get any future Facebook Lives and updates from there. We’ve got our email newsletter which is still going out every week over in ProBlogger that you can sign up for. If you want the show notes today, head over to problogger.com/podcast/280. I’ll come back at the end of this recording and wrap things up. Thanks for listening! Hi there everyone, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast, also welcome to those of you who are watching this live. I am going live onto Facebook today while I’m recording. Because I think it is an important topic and it’s one that I do want to get our communities input in as well. Our love viewers may have some thoughts to share that I will include in the podcast as well as if I think...

How Blogging Led to a Million Dollar Business for Jeff Goins Jeff Goins shares how his blogging business has evolved over the years. What he’s doing now is very different than when he started. Blog 1: Jeff started blogging as an outlet to catalogue his journey across North America while on tour with a band.  “That was my first blog and my first experience with sharing my life and my ideas with the world. Just the thrill of pressing, Publish.” Wake-up Call: While living the dream of playing music for thousands of screaming fans, Jeff’s favorite part was writing blog posts. Blog 2: Jeff moved to Nashville and trained missionaries to blog for a nonprofit. Eventually, Jeff became the Marketing Director and learned about online marketing.  Wake-up Call: Jeff wanted to get back to his own blogging. “I had been helping other people share their stories. I had something to say and wanted to share it with the world.” Blogs 3 to Present: Jeff wanted to make a living as a writer, but didn’t know how.   Wake-up Call: Jeff’s failed blogs had one thing in common: He quit them. Time to get serious and stick to it:  Write every day  Get more subscribers Build email lists Learn from other bloggers Offer to write and accept guest posts Now, Jeff is a full-time blogger, author, speaker, and online entrepreneur.   Top Tips to Achieve Blogging Success Give before you ask; always give more than you take.  Listen to other bloggers’ advice. Connect with influential people. Next Steps in Blogging Evolution Masterminds: Creates relationships, connections, and community Events/Conferences: Tribe Conference Programs: Write a Bestseller  Based on his experiences as a writer and blogger, Jeff will be the keynote speaker at ProBlogger’s upcoming Evolve 2019 in Melbourne. A few tickets are still available! For more information: Problogger.com/events.  Links and Resources for How Jeff Goins Evolved His Blogging Into a Million Dollar Business: Jeff Goins The Jeff Goins Blog Real Artists Don't Starve by Jeff Goins  You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) by Jeff Goins Tribe Writers  Tribe Conference Write a Bestseller Jeff Goins’ Email ProBlogger Evolve Event  Evolve: Training Day Evolve: Mastermind Copyblogger Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk Brian Clarke Seth Godin Platform by Michael Hyatt Xanga MailChimp Zoom Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there friends and welcome to Episode 279 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com; a blog designed to help you to start and to grow a profitable blog.  Today on the podcast, we have a special guest, Jeff Goins. I’ve been wanting to bring Jeff Goins to the podcast for a while now. Many of you know of Jeff, he has a fantastic blog that I do encourage you to check out. We’ll link to it in the show notes today. He writes great advice for people who write. If you want to become a better writer, particularly if you want to write a book, he has some great advice. I wanted to get Jeff on the show today to talk a little bit about how his business or his blogging business has evolved over the years, because he started a number of years ago now. What he’s doing today is very different to the way he started. He really started in a personal record keeping kind of way with his blogging and he’s grown his brand, and his business around that. As he says in this interview, he’s actually had nine blogs over the years and his last one has really built the business. He’s got a lot of great advice today as we talk about this idea of evolving your blog. 

Evolve Your Blog Does it feel like you’re going around in circles with your blog? It's easy to revolve in your blogging. Let’s look back at my keynote presentation titled, Evolve Don't Revolve, from ProBlogger’s Evolve event in 2017.  It highlights my journey as a blogger and areas where you can evolve your own blog and online business. Plus, the 2017 keynote features a Q & A with Pat Flynn, who shares how he achieved success by evolving his blog, Smart Passive Income. https://www.slideshare.net/problogger/evolve-dont-revolve ProBlogger’s Evolve 2019 event in Melbourne is happening soon!   August 10: Training Day (Beginner/Intermediate) Four key areas of building a successful blog August 10-11: Mastermind (Intermediate/Advanced) Spend time with other bloggers, online creators, and entrepreneurs to workshop your blog and business Jeff Goins will present this year’s keynote titled, Finding Your Voice as a Blogger. He’s the author of Real Artists Don't Starve. Fellow expert bloggers, Nicole Avery, James Schramko, Kelly Exeter, and Shayne Tilley, will talk about their knowledge and experience. For more information about Evolve 2019, go to Problogger.com/events. Don’t forget to sign-up by June 30, 2019, to get the Early Bird price.  Links and Resources for Evolve Don't Revolve Your Blogging: ProBlogger Evolve Event  Evolve: Training Day Evolve: Mastermind Jeff Goins Real Artists Don't Starve by Jeff Goins  Nicole Avery of Planning with Kids James Schramko of SuperFastBusiness Kelly Exeter (writer and editor)  Shayne Tilley of 99Designs Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income  Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there, friends. It's Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to Episode 278 of the ProBlogger Podcast. The podcast is designed to help you start a blog, to build that blog, and to monetize it.  Today, I've got a special treat for you. It is a keynote that I gave a couple of years ago at our ProBlogger event in Melbourne. It's titled Evolve Don't Revolve. It's all about how as bloggers and online entrepreneurs, it's really easy to revolve in our blogging, to just go around in circles. I don't know if you can relate to that of feeling going around in circles. I certainly can. There's been so many times over my 15 years of blogging where I've realized I'm just treading water, I stopped growing, I stopped evolving. The call of this keynote is to look at seven different areas where you can evolve your blog and online business. Also, a taster of what we do at our Evolve event, at our ProBlogger event, which we've been running it for quite a few years. We've got our new event coming up in August of this year on the 10th and 11th of August, again, in Melbourne. I want to tell you a little bit about that event before we get into the keynote. There's two options for those of you who want to come to our event in Melbourne. On the 10th of August, we've got a training day. This is a one day event for beginners, intermediate level bloggers. It's also probably relevant for other content creators as well.  If you head to problogger.com/events you can actually see a rundown of what we're doing at that particular event. Largely though, it's me. You'll get a full day of me teaching on the four key areas of building a successful blog. I'm going to talk for about an hour about content and crafting great content for your blog. I'll talk about evolving your engagement with your readers, how to build community on your blog, how to find new readers for your blog, and then, how to monetize your blog.  This is perfect if you are a beginner or intermediate level. If you're just starting out,

31 Days to Build a Better Blog Today’s the day to sign up for our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course. Why? Well, it’s 50% off for a limited time. And if you register by the end of February you’ll get to be a part of our 31-day guided sprint in March. While the course has evolved, it remains the #1 reason most blogs become successful. But you need to consistently take action to implement what you learn.   The four pillars of blogging are actions and habits you should develop to grow and profit from your blog. Create great content Promote your content Enhance your relationships with your readers Monetize your blog Each day of the course you’ll be taught practical things to do for your blog, including: Setting objectives and goals Creating an editorial calendar Developing social media and email strategies Creating pillar content Optimizing for SEO Identifying and understanding your audience Strengthening reader engagement You don’t have to take the course to become an action-oriented blogger. But if you need help and want to give your blog a burst of love to get it back on track, feel free to join us. Links and Resources for The Secret to Building a Better Blog: Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to episode 277 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of ProBlogger, which is a site for bloggers and prebloggers designed to help them to start and grow profitable blogs. You can learn more about ProBlogger and all we do over at problogger.com. In today’s episode number 277, we’re going to talk a little bit of our secret of growing your blog. In fact, I think it’s the number one way to grow a blog and this ties into a promotion that we’ve got on at the moment on our 31 Days To Build A Better Blog course. I know many of you have gone through our Start A Blog course over the last couple of months and to continue the good work that you’ve done, we’ve decided to make 31 Days To Build A Better Blog 50% off for the next week or so until the end of February. Also in the month of March, we’re going to sprint through it. We are doing it as a group where we can support you and get bloggers interacting together. I’ll tell you a little bit more about that later in the episode. But if you do want to check out 31 Days To Build A Better Blog and grab it at 50% off, head over at problogger.com/31days. You can also find it through our courses tab over at problogger.com and in today’s show notes. Let’s get into today’s show where I do want to talk about the number one thing that is going to help you to grow your blog. In preparation for our 31 day sprint, I want to talk about why we had so much success with the 31 day program. I want to talk about the reason that they’ve been built into that course that I’ve seen help many bloggers over the years and I’ve seen help me as well. Over the years, I think it was back in 2007, I started 31 Days To Build A Better Blog and it’s been in many forms since then. In fact, I’ve counted seven different ways we’ve presented this program. Originally, it started off as a series of blog posts in I think it was in 2006–2007, and then I did that same series that evolved that every time, three times on the blog. It was completely for free. It was just a series of blog posts. At the end of the third series, I turned it into an ebook and then I updated the ebook into a second version. I think second version came out in 2012. Later on, I did it again on the podcast for free and then more recently, we’ve turned it into a course in the last year or so. There’ve been these seven different versions of 31 Days To Build A Better Blog and every time...

Learn How to Start a Successful Podcast Do you already have a blog, and want to expand into another medium? Then why not start a podcast? A lot of our Facegroup members have asked questions about starting a podcast, especially about gear, content, engagement, hosting, launching and monetization. And to help me answer all those questions I called on an expert. Craig Hewitt is the founder of Podcast Motor and Castos. When Craig started his own podcast, he quickly discovered that audio editing and producing a podcast was a pain. So he started Podcast Motor to help others. The technicalities of podcasting almost stopped me from starting the ProBlogger podcast. That’s why I turned to Craig and his team to handle them. Craig shares the nuts and bolts of podcasting: Reach existing audience in a different way, or reach an entirely new audience. Establish a dedicated hosting platform to store and distribute your media files. Differentiate yourself to develop a brand and identity (i.e. your accent). Start a podcast with everything you need for less than $100. Be comfortable with speaking, and assemble enough content to talk about. Identify and prepare guests to be on your podcast. Create an intro by recording it yourself or outsourcing it to a voiceover artist. Find a room without flat walls and hard spaces to eliminates echoes. (Try a closet). Edit audio to match your style (buttoned-up, conversational, etc.) Put your podcast on Android and Apple platforms, including Apple Podcast (formerly iTunes), Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and YouTube. Get and grow your audience by getting your podcast listed in search engines. Ask listeners to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and share with others. Record five episodes before launching. Then launch with two episodes, plus or minus an Episode 0 that offers a description of what listeners can expect from your podcast. Engage your listeners by using a call to action through a link in the podcast audio, or continue a podcast discussion and connect with audience via a Facebook group. Metrics don't really matter. Instead, review popularity, downloads and listening duration. We covered a lot in this episode, but to get all the details you need to successfully start a podcast sign up for Craig’s free course, Launch In A Week: Podcasting Microphone and Gear Audio Recording and Editing Your Ideal Listener and Podcast Personas The Perfect Podcast Recipe Media Host and Website Setup Getting Your Show Ready to Launch Launch Planning and Growing Your Audience Links and Resources for How to Start a Successful Podcast: Podcast Motor Launch In A Week Castos Seriously Simple Podcasting Audio-Technica ATR2100 Shure SM7B Focusrite Scarlett Preamp Zoom Skype Call Recorder (Mac only)   Fiverr Audacity International Start a Blog Day Class of 2019 Pat Flynn’s Podcast SiteGround CoSchedule Tim Ferriss's Podcast GarageBand Simplecast Libsyn Gary Vaynerchuk's Podcast RogueStartups Podcast with co-host Dave Rodenbaugh Blue - Yeti Calendly Apple Podcast Google Podcast Google Play Stitcher Spotify Amy Porterfield's Podcast Examples of How to Start a Successful Podcast: CoSchedule’s Blog CoSchedule’s Podcast Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey hey there, ProBlogger listeners. It’s Darren Rowse here from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 276 of the show. For those of you who are new to the show, ProBlogger is a site for bloggers and prebloggers designed to help them to start blogs, to grow those blogs, and to monetize those blogs. You can check out more of what we do over at ProBlogger...

How One Blogger Took Action, Left Her Job, and Began a Lifestyle Blog Today marks the end of our series featuring stories from new bloggers. We really hope you've enjoyed them. Jackie Baker recently started a lifestyle blog that celebrates the beauty in everyday life. She considered blogging as a business because she needed a career change that would both challenge her and leave time for a vacation once in a while. But what would she write about? Jackie narrowed her blog's focus to a few topics that bring joy, peace, and happiness to both her readers and herself. Hence the title of her blog: Pretty Things, Yummy Food. What Jackie has learned from blogging: Take action and keep pushing forward when you feel stuck or scared Create a plan to prioritize tasks you need to get done Sign up for courses that show you how to start/launch a blog Connect with other bloggers who understand your excitement and frustration Embrace social media to find readers and build a community Use Canva to design graphics Don’t stress about what others think about you or your blog Want to start a blog? Do it and don’t doubt yourself. Follow your gut, get into a blogging mindset, and find your message to discover you have plenty to offer the world. Sign up for ProBlogger’s free Start a Blog course and participate in its International Start a Blog Day on February 7. Links and Resources for How One Blogger Quit Her Job and Started a Lifestyle Blog: Pretty Things, Yummy Food Blog Canva International Start a Blog Day Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to episode 275 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, which is a site for you as a blogger or someone about to start a blog, that will help you grow that blog, create great content, and monetize it as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger and check out our two courses at problogger.com. Speaking of our courses, today we’re finishing up our series of podcasts from stories who did our free Start A Blog course. We’re going to hear today from Jackie Baker from Pretty Things, Yummy Food, which sounds like the kind of blog I need to check out, particularly the yummy food part of it. This series really is all about hearing from new bloggers, bloggers who haven’t been going for too long yet, to find out what they’ve learnt in their first year of blogging. I have loved the feedback we’ve had on this series. It seems that a lot of you have enjoyed hearing from new voices, people that they’ve never heard of before, rather than just hearing from experts or gurus or people who have been blogging for 10 years. The new bloggers have been sharing some of their journey as well. We’re doing this really to highlight that people are continuing to start blogs these days and that there is a simple way to do it. That’s through our Start A Blog course, which you can find over at problogger.com/startablog. It’s completely free and it’s set out in seven simple steps that will walk you through the process. Today, we’ve got Jackie Baker from Pretty Things, Yummy Food. It’s a lifestyle blog and it’s only been going for six months. Jackie started her blog as a result of going through our course and you’re going to hear her talk a little bit about that in today’s story. She recommends a great tool for those of you who are starting out and want to create some cool social graphics and gives you a few good tips as well. I’ll come back at the end of Jackie’s story to wrap things up and to pull out a few of the things that I love about her story. Jackie: Hi everyone. I’m Jackie, the creator of Pretty Things, Yummy Food.

How a Blogger Found the Right Plan and Business Idea Today our series of stories from new bloggers continues with Stefano Caioni, a web developer and photographer.   Stefano's blog offers guidance on various aspects of photography including focus modes, settings and equipment reviews. Using his tech experience, Stefano wrote all the code for his blog himself. But he soon discovered how fun it was to build and write content for it, even though it had no traffic. Then Stefano decided to migrate his existing content to WordPress to benefit from its SEO and security functionalities. But he was inconsistent with posting content, didn’t have a specific strategy or business idea in mind, and ran out of topics. He almost gave up on it. Then he came across ProBlogger.com. He started writing more consistently, this time with a plan and business idea in place. His blog lets him share his passion for photography by writing useful posts that inspire others and offer them value. He’s met many photographers who’ve inspired him as well. He never dreamed of making money from his blog or building a business around it. But traffic continues to grow, and he monetizes his blog through Amazon affiliate links. Blogging isn’t dead. The number of internet users increases every day. Fresh and updated content is needed to fulfill the growing demand for information. So start a blog. Sign up for our free Start a Blog course and join us for the International Start a Blog Day on February 7. Links and Resources for How Stefano Changed Blogging Platforms and Started Blogging with a Plan: Stefano Caioni’s Photography Stefano Caioni’s Blog Interview: Lauren Bath Olympus Visionary International Start a Blog Day Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to episode 274 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of problogger.com, a site for bloggers and prebloggers, designed to help you to start a great blog, and to monetize that blog. Today, we are continuing our series of podcast with stories from new bloggers, people in their first year of blogging. All these are short stories from participants from our Start A Blog course and we’re sharing them in the hope that they will inspire you or someone you know to start a blog, as part of our International Start A Blog Day on the seventh of February, which is fast approaching. There’s still time to participate if you would like to start a blog, either for that date or afterwards. We have a course that will walk you through exactly how to start a blog using a WordPress platform. That course is completely free to participate in and you can find it at problogger.com/startablog. Today’s story comes from Stefano Caioni from stefanocaioni.com and I’ve got a link to that in the show notes today. He is a photographer. He is a web developer, actually, who is a photographer as well and his blog is about photography, which grabbed my attention. But I also wanted to share this story today because it is a little bit different than some of the others. Stefano actually came to blogging with a bit of a tech background, which is different to many people. We’ve had others in this series who came with no technology kind of background whatsoever. Stefano has created a beautiful-looking blog with that background but he has some interesting reflections upon that journey which I will come back to at the end of his story, too, just pulled apart just a little bit. Here’s Stefano. Enjoy his story. Stefano: Hi. This is Stefano Caioni, a landscape and outdoor photographer, living in Sydney, Australia. My website is called Stefano Caioni Photography and you can find it at www.

How One Blogger Found Encouragement in Difficult Times Our new bloggers series continues with Melissa, who started Living in the Wait. Her blog serves as a resource for those waiting for something in their lives, whether it’s a job, spouse, home or something else. Melissa discovered you can still live life during that time of waiting for something your heart desperately desires. In Melissa’s case, she and her husband were waiting for a family due to infertility. It’s a painful topic to talk about, but Melissa felt like it was her calling to share her story. Blogging about her journey and wait has brought joy to her life. She wants to continue encouraging people going through difficult times.   First-year blogging highlights: Started The Wait List featuring guest posts to connect with others who were also waiting Selected as recipient of ProBlogger scholarship to further the blog's reach Generated cycle of encouragement: live life to the fullest, and give back to others Melissa’s blogging tips: Progress over perfection Celebrate your wins Don’t forget to sign up for our free Start a Blog course and join us for the International Start a Blog Day on February 7. Links and Resources for How One Blog Turned a Painful Situation into a Life-Changing Blog: Living in the Wait Podcast Motor Further Listening 263: How Mim Blogged Vulnerably to Grow a Six-Figure Blog 255: My Mid-Life Crisis and The Power of Being Vulnerable on a Blog Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Welcome to episode 273 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a site and a podcast to help you to start an ,amazing blog that’s going to change the lives of your readers in some way, and hopefully will change your life, too both in what it gives you personally but also hopefully some income as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger and find our courses at problogger.com. Speaking of courses, today we do continue our Start A Blog story series where we’re featuring stories from bloggers in their first year of blogging. There are all these bloggers who've been throughout Start A Blog course and many of them participated in our International Start A Blog Day last February. We’ve got the second iteration of that event coming up on the 7th of February this year. We’re running these stories to try and inspire as many people as possible to start a blog and be a part of that process. You can join in the fun of International Start A Blog Day and get a free course to help you set up a blog in that time over at problogger.com/startablog. Today’s story is from Melissa. She has a blog called Living In The Wait. I love the topic of this blog and that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to share her story today. I’m going to link to her blog which is livinginthewait.com on our show notes today. There’s also a full transcript of the show today and some further listening if you do want to be into one of the big themes that she talks about. You can find the show notes today at problogger.com/podcast/273. I’m going to let Melissa talk now and I’ll come back at the end to just pull out a few of the themes that I love in what she shares. Melissa: My name is Melissa. I started the blog called Living In the Wait and the URL is livinginthewait.com. What my blog is about is it’s a resource for those who are basically trying to live in the wait. Whether you’re waiting for a family, job, spouse, we all wait for something in our lives. For my husband and I, that wait happened to be infertility. Why I started my blog was based upon our own personal experience. For over three years,

How One Blogger is Making the Most from Networking and Interviewing Our series of stories from new bloggers continues with Penny Wilson, who started Lingo Mama to blog about language learning and travel. Penny’s reasons for starting a blog: Return to her passion for language learning Establish accountability and discipline with language learning Share love for language learning with others Inspire others to learn a second language Starting a blog involved a huge learning curve for Penny, especially when it came to the technical aspects of managing it. Fortunately, Penny hasn’t struggled for content ideas. The challenge is getting those ideas across in a way that’s interesting, entertaining and informative, and that adds value. One of the highlights of blogging came when Penny connected with bloggers she respects in her niche. She also created an interview series that lets her connect with other language learners. Making money from her blog has been slow, but Penny has been happy with affiliate ads she installed early on to generate traffic and referrals. Penny’s Top Tips: Don’t stress too much about being perfect Promote content that's most useful to readers Listen to feedback from readers Did Penny’s story inspire you to start a blog? Then, sign up for the free Start a Blog course as a way to celebrate our International Start a Blog Day on Feb. 7. Links and Resources for How Networking and Interviewing Helped One Blogger Built Her Blog: Lingo Mama Podcast Motor Further Listening 172: How to Build a Blogging Business Through Interviewing Others [An Interview with Michael Stelzner] 198: 6 First Income Streams Recommended for Bloggers Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to Episode 272 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name's Darren Rowse, and I'm the blogger behind ProBlogger, a site, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you start an amazing blog, to grow that blog, and to make some money from the process. You can find more about ProBlogger over at problogger.com. Today, we're continuing this short series of podcasts with stories from bloggers in their first year of blogging. Although stories have been gathered from participants of our Start a Blog course, which we are promoting at the moment, even though it's a free course, we're promoting it because, in the next few weeks, we have our International Start a Blog Day, which is being held on the 7th of February. Today, we're celebrating new blogs and we're launching a whole lot of blogs from students from our course, and we hope to send you a little bit of traffic as well to help that blog get off and running. We'll be highlighting some of those new blogs that have started our social media as well as on our blog as well. Each of the bloggers that are sharing in this series are sharing their story, just a really short story but also some tips that they've learned along the way. If you've been thinking about starting a blog, or you know someone who's thinking about it, or you know someone who should start a blog, please head to problogger.com/start-a-blog. You will find this free course that we've put together. It's a seven-step course that walks you through everything you need to know to get involved in our International Start a Blog Day but also to get that blog up and running. Now, today's story comes from Penny Wilson, an Aussie from lingomama.com. I'll link to that in the show notes as well today. You can find those show notes at problogger.com/podcast/272. I'm just going to hand it over to Penny because she's got a great story to tell, and I will come back at the end of her story just to wrap things ...

How One Blogger Worked With Others to Start a Blog We continue our series featuring stories from new bloggers who have recently completed our free Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog course. We hope they’ll inspire others as part of our International Start a Blog Day on February 7. Today’s story comes from Jacob West, who started the blog Live Life Liberated. His blog questions social norms and traditional ways of thinking. Jacob's blog doesn’t tell you what to think or do. Instead, it provides a friendly and open-minded environment to discuss such topics and build a like-minded community. Jacob’s tips on how to prepare, if you want to start a blog: Ask friends for help. Share skills, learning curve, and success Care about blog’s focus Stay passionate. Always have goals to pursue Be willing to work hard and plan for various tasks Links and Resources for How One Blogger Simplified Starting a Blog by Sharing the Load: Live Life Liberated Podcast Motor Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to Episode 271 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name's Darren Rowse and I'm the founder of ProBogger, a blog podcast, ebooks, courses, and events that are all designed to help you to start a blog, and to grow that blog, and to build profit around that blog. Now, today, with are continuing our series of podcasts with stories from bloggers in their first year of blogging. These are all short stories and tips from participants in our free starter blog course, which we launched last year. We're sharing these in the hope that they will inspire others to start blogs as part of our International Start a Blog Day on the 7th of February. Each of the bloggers in these series will be sharing their story and some tips that they learned along the way, which will help those of you who are starting a blog. If you've been thinking about starting a blog, and we know a lot of listeners this podcast are thinking about starting a blog, or you know someone who's thinking about starting a blog who should start a blog, head over to problogger.com/start-a-blog. You'll find our free seven-step course to help you through that process of getting a blog started and also some information on how to get involved on the International Start a Blog Day on the 7th of February. If you are listening to this after the 7th of February, that's totally fine. You can still start a blog using our course. It'll be there all year, so problogger.com/start-a-blog. Now, today's story comes from Jacob West, and he shares a short story that he submitted via video this week. He has a blog called Live Life Liberated, which you can find at livelifeliberated.com. He sent us in a video story. I'll strip the audio out to use on the podcast today. You can find the full transcript of his story as well as a link back to his site on our show notes over at problogger.com/podcast/271. I'll be back after he shares his story to pull out a few of the things that I noticed about what he shares. Here's Jacob. Jacob: Hey, everyone. My name's Jake West. I just wanted to spend five minutes of your time to talk about my experience as a 2018 blogger. My site is Live Life Liberated at central URL, livelifeliberated.com. It's a blog designed to question social norms, traditional ways of thinking, and a friendly, open-minded environment. It's not really telling you what we think but more or less discussing, and so it's very centered around the idea of having open debates, and commenting, and emailing between one another, and really just having a fair wondering of what's really going on. I started that in June 2018 so we're on five months now. Essentially, the reason that I decided to start it because I had ...

How Starting a Blog Helped Transform the Life of a Blogger Happy New Year! This first episode of 2019 launches a series of stories from new bloggers who started their blogs after completing our free Start a Blog course. The course features seven steps, which makes it a perfect way to celebrate International Start a Blog Day on February 7. The first story comes from Denise Bumby, who took our course last year and launched her Does Size Matter? blog about six months ago. Denise was searching for a way to cope with changes in her life. And she found her way through blogging, which brings her joy and hope. She may not have many subscribers yet, but that number is growing daily. And so is Denise. Denise’s tips on how to boost your blog: Consistently produce content Use social media Post content in various formats (videos, etc.) Get mentioned on other blogs Learn and implement affiliate marketing and sponsorship Keep working. Don’t give up or get discouraged Despite what you may think, anyone can start a blog – young or old, tech savvy or not. Blogging is for everyone. So, are you ready to start a blog? Links and Resources for How One Blogger Changed Her Life by Starting a Blog: Does Size Matter? Darren Rowse on Facebook Podcast Motor Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to the first episode of the ProBlogger podcast for 2019. This is episode 270. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/270. ProBlogger is a site for bloggers and prebloggers, who today’s episode is particularly for. It’s all designed to help you to build and grow a blog that not only makes your reader’s life better in some way but also helps you to achieve your goals and bring you a little joy to your life as well. We’re going to hear a story today where that happens. Today, we are launching another round of our bloggers’ stories. It’s a series that’s going to go for the next couple of weeks. They’re shorts stories from brand new bloggers. This series is all about starting a blog and hearing the stories of bloggers who started their blog over the last 12 months. They all started their blogs as a result of doing our Start A Blog course, which we are currently really pushing hard because on the 7th of February, we’re running our International Start A Blog Day for the second year in a row. Last year, we ran International Start A Blog Day and hundreds of bloggers started a blog on that particular day. As you’ll hear today, hundreds more started their blogs in the months afterwards. Some people needed a little bit more time. We want you to be a part of this year’s Start A Blog Day. Whether you are a blogger who’s about to start and you’ve been thinking about starting a blog or whether you know someone who should start a blog, we want you to encourage them to get involved. If you want to be a part of it or if you know someone who really does need to start a blog, our course is 100% free and it will help you to start that blog. You can find it at problogger.com/startablog. Before I introduce you to today’s story, I want to pause for a moment and say Happy New Year. I know it’s three weeks into the new year and I should apologize for the delay in getting this episode out but I do want to start off by saying Happy New Year. The reason for the delay this year is that it’s been a bit of a tough year so far. In fact, last year was a little bit tough as well. Many of you I know have been following my Facebook profile and my personal profile where I shared recently a couple of posts about my own battles with depression over the last year and also the recent loss of a friend.

How a Blogger Uses Pinterest to Boost His Following Welcome to the final episode of our Blogger Breakthroughs series. Today we share a story from Rowan Sims, Digital Photography School writer and ProBlogger podcast listener.   Rowan's also a landscape and travel photographer who uses his blog to teach readers how to improve their photography, as well as share his photo adventures and location guides. The biggest challenges he faced with blogging were being inconsistent and not attracting the right audience. So he switched his blog's focus from just sharing photography to teaching it as well. He's also written some guest posts. Don’t underestimate the power of guest blogging. It’s about more than just link building. Another breakthrough for Rowan was discovering the power of Pinterest. It’s become Rowan’s largest source of referral traffic. Rowan has used various tools and social media sites to promote his photography, but Pinterest needed a different approach and was a steep learning curve. No matter what your niche is, Rowan has suggestions on how to optimize Pinterest for best results: Set up a Pinterest business account and review your Pinterest insights/analytics to know what’s working and help identify your target audience Create attractive pins Use Tailwind to drip feed pins and create tribes Pinterest is one option, but experiment with different platforms to figure out what works best for you. Rowan’s blogging breakthroughs have not only helped increase his traffic, but has brought him the right traffic. People are genuinely interested in what he has to say and share. Links and Resources for How Rowan Grew His Pinterest Following to More Than 300,000 in Two Months: Rowan Sims Pinterest for Photographers - The Ultimate Guide 2018 Canva Tailwind Pinterest Digital Photography School Podcast Motor Further Listening PB 037: Grow Traffic to Your Blog Through Guest Posting and Creating Content for other Blogs, Forums, Media and Events The Rowse Report Podcast Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to episode 269 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. I’m the founder of ProBlogger which started out as a blog with lots of blog tips and has become a blog, a podcast, ebooks, courses, and a job board as well to help bloggers to find jobs. There’s a lot on ProBlogger. You can check it all out at problogger.com where we really are about trying to help bloggers to monetize their blogs. Today is the final episode in our blogger breakthrough series. We may do this again in the future because I’ve had a lot of really great feedback on the stories that we’ve been featuring. I’m going to get back to a noble flow of things next week. But today, I want to share with you a story from Rowan Sims. Rowan actually is a writer over on Digital Photography School. I didn’t realize he was also a listener of this podcast. You hear at the end, he worked his way back through all of the archives of the podcast—all 269 episodes. He may be up there as one of the most avid listeners of the podcast. He submitted his story of how he grew his blog. He took his blog from fairly inconsistent blogging, he switched his focus, and he shares two strategies that he used to help grow his traffic particularly Pinterest. He gives some good tips on driving traffic with Pinterest as well. He actually submitted a short 4 ½-minute story and then I asked him to submit a few more tips so you will a bit of a change in the audio—that’s kind of part two coming in halfway along where he gets to be a bit more practical about Pinterest. Before I introduce you or put Rowan onto you,

How a Blogger Expanded Her Income Streams and Engaged Readers in a New Way As a blogger, do you feel like you’re on a hamster wheel? Do you need to continually feed the machine to keep your blog generating traffic and income? We continue our Blogger Breakthroughs series with Anita Joyce, who experienced the same problem with her Cedar Hill Farmhouse blog.   Anita was working non-stop on her blog. She didn’t even have time to go to the grocery store or relax with her family. But the income from her blog was tied to page views, so she needed a breakthrough. Anita shares what she did to diversify her income streams and engage her readers in a new way. She started a podcast that turns listeners into friends, and a store that provides relevant products and valuable content for her audience. Anita has some tips to share with you: Survey your audience to find out what they want from you and what you want to give them Partner with others to gain expertise in areas you need covered Don’t give up if you fail. Focus on your failures and learn from your mistakes When something isn't working with your blog, try something new to diversify traffic sources and income streams. That way, if something does go wrong it increases your income and puts you in a better position to survive. Links and Resources for How Anita Diversified Her Blogging Income and Depended Less On Page Views: Anita Joyce French Accents Decorating Tips and Tricks Podcast Bespoke Decor Podcast Motor Further Reading The Day I Almost Lost My Blogging Business By Having Too Many Eggs in the One Basket 11 Ways I Diversified Traffic Sources for My Blogs to Become Less Reliant Upon Google [With a Surprising Twist] How I Diversified My Blogging Income Beyond Having All My Eggs in the AdSense Basket Further Listening How I Diversified My Blogging Income and Became a Full Time Blogger How to Grow Your Blogging Income Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hello there friends. Welcome to episode 268 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind ProBlogger. A blog that’s dedicated to really helping you to start an amazing blog, to grow the traffic of that blog, to grow an income from that blog, and to help your readers in some way as well. You can find more about ProBlogger and what we do at problogger.com. You might also, while you're there, check out our two free course. I have one free course, How to Start a Blog, and our other paid course, 31 Days to Build A Better Blog. Particularly check out that Start a Blog course if you are looking to get going with blogging. Now today, we're continuing our series all of blogger breakthrough stories and we've got Anita Joyce from cedarhillfarmhouse.com. She's got a great story that I think is going to really connect with many of you because she shares a problem that many bloggers have–that feeling of being on the hamster wheel with your blog. Have you ever felt like you've built a blog and you may have built some traffic, you may have built some income, but to keep generating that income, you need to keep feeding the machine? This is something that Anita talks about to her realized that her blog was very dependent upon page views and shares a story of what she did about that to diversify her income streams and to engage with her readers in a new way. So really some really practical things. I want to come back at the end of what Anita talks about to really share some of my own story with these as well and to give you a little bit of further reading because Anita's story is going to relate really well to some of you, but there are some ways that you can apply what she's talking a...

How One Blogger Pushed Through Her Fear We continue our Blogging Breakthroughs series with Krista O'Reilly-Davi-Digui, who has a blog called A Life in Progress. Krista knew nothing about setting up a social platform. But she overcame procrastination and fear to show up regularly. Krista shares how her first viral post "What If I All I Want is a Mediocre Life?" made a major impact, resonating with people across the world She's been invited by others to share her story. Through collaboration and connections, her number of followers grew from 1,000 to 35,000. Her work brings her joy and has given her a voice. She is just like everyone else - not perfect. She affects others by giving them a chance to be seen and heard as well. Take imperfect action, and remember to enjoy each step of your journey. The world is incredibly noisy. We don’t need more people being the same. We need honesty. Don’t be afraid to be you - raw and real. Krista’s always found a way to love herself through the freedom that telling the truth offers.   Bearing your soul and becoming an entrepreneur makes you grow. Links and Resources for How Krista Overcame Fear and Procrastination in Her Blogging: What If All I Want is a Mediocre Life? A Life in Progress Krista on Facebook Finally Deciding You’re Good Enough Can Quietly Change the World (on Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper) Podcast Motor Further Listening 263: How Mim Blogged Vulnerably to Grow a Six-Figure Blog 255: My Mid-Life Crisis and The Power of Being Vulnerable on a Blog Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey, there, friends. Welcome to episode 267 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. If this is your first time with us, welcome to you especially. ProBlogger is a space dedicated to helping you set up a blog that will be a profitable blog and also make a difference in the world that you live in and the topics that you're writing about. You can learn more about ProBlogger, particularly, our courses, our free Start A Blog course, and our 31 days to Build a Better Blog course over at problogger.com. Just look for the courses tab in the menu. Today, we're continuing our blogger breakthrough series with a story from Krista who comes to us from Canada. She has a blog called A Life in Progress, it's alifeinprogress.ca. She's going to tell us a story—a beautiful story, really, of her first experience of a viral post. It's actually a post that went viral a number of times and the impact that it had upon her blog. A bit of a theme because last week was about viral content as well but this is a very different story. I love this story because it talks about how Krista went from procrastination fear to showing up regularly and pushing through that. It is a beautiful story and I encourage you to listen to the end. I'm going to come back at the end of the story and just pull out some of the nuggets of gold that Krista mentions in this story because it is a beautiful one. I'm going to head over to Krista. Again, her blog is at alifeinprogress.ca and you can find the full transcript of today's show notes, as well as links to her blog over at problogger.com/podcast/267. Krista: Hello, I am Krista from Central Alberta, Canada. I write at alifeinprogress.ca. I help other messy humans like me show up through comparison, perfectionism, and fear so they can show up fully in their imperfect and beautiful lives. Again, you can find me at alifeinprogress.ca. I started vlogging three years ago. I had been showing up weekly to my blog for about 4 ½ months, when a post of mine went viral for the first time. I say for the first time because initially I was contacted by the BBC London about my post,

How a Blogger Used Viral Content to Grow Her Income Enough to Cover Her Mortgage Payments Rachel Miller is back on ProBlogger for our Blogging Breakthroughs series, which features bloggers’ stories about traffic, income, and other parts of blogging. Blogging has transformed Rachel's life, and made a difference in the lives of others. Rachel shares various breakthroughs that helped her generate a blogging income that went from paying for her groceries and mortgage to building a six-figure business. How’d she do it? By harnessing the power of her audience and going viral. Virals aren’t just about people seeing your content. They can also help you grow your bank account. Every time you love on your audience by creating content that engages and resonates with them, it takes your brand to the next level. Rachel went from affiliates to dropshipping and fulfillment through Amazon. She went from making pennies on each product to a decent percentage. She always puts a product on a viral. Don’t create a viral just for the sake of traffic. Add a monetization stream to it. Rachel also drives traffic to her eProducts to make sales. Blogging has given Rachel a debt-free lifestyle. Her audience benefits from it, too. Build your audience for the purpose of getting ad revenue and making a difference in their lives by selling them a product. What product can you create to celebrate an audience and what they love? Links and Resources for How Viral Content Grew Rachel's Income from 'Pay for Groceries' to 'Buy a House': Rachel Miller Moolah.life Rachel’s Free Facebook Group Audience Growth Pack: Top Traffic-Sending Resources Rachel’s Course: Transform Your Audience into Engaged & Raving Fans Make Money Blogging AdSense Podcast Motor Further Listening 5 Actionable Tips You Can Use to Get Better Results on Your Facebook Page Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there, friends. It's Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 266 of the ProBlogger Show. So today, I want to introduce you or re-introduce you to Rachel Miller. Many of you will know her from her previous episode where I interviewed her about Facebook strategies. It was titled "Five Actionable Tips For Better Results On Your Facebook Page." It was back in episode 208 and it's been one of our most popular episode and so I decided to invite Rachel to be a part of our blogger breakthrough series that we're currently running where we hand the podcast over to bloggers and other online entrepreneurs to talk to us about some of the breakthroughs that they've had in their blogging and online entrepreneurial journey. Rachel has been doing this for years now. I think it's about 11 years that she's been blogging and working particularly on Facebook where she's renowned that's why I interviewed her on that topic last time. Today she's going to share her story with a series of breakthroughs that have helped her to move from blogging income that paid for her groceries and paid for a modest mortgage through advertising revenue to building a business that’s in high six figures per year some years. And has literally transformed her life and the life all of others as well. I'll let her tell you a little bit more about that result later. It's one that is really impressive and I find quite inspirational because it's not just about buying things for her, it's actually about making a difference in the lives of others as well. I will mention that last time Rachel was on in that previous episode, she had some free downloadable cheat sheets to help you with your Facebook marketing and they're particularly going to help you with a story that she shares today around getting viral content.

One Blogger's Experience of Growing Traffic Without Producing New Content If you've been blogging for a while you'll relate to Todd Tresidder’s story in this episode of our Blogger Breakthroughs series. A blog that’s been around for a year or more ends up looking messy, and gives readers an inconsistent user experience. Content is old and repeated. Links are broken. Content comes in different styles and voices. Graphics look dated. A blog can become a house with many extensions that hasn't been architecturally designed with any clear thought or plan. So what should you do? Scrap the blog completely? Or is it worth giving it a major overhaul? That can take time – sometimes years – but the rewards come quickly. What Todd did: New code base New theme New redesign New internal linking New navigation structure Deleted junk, irrelevant and out-of-date content Redirected deleted content to other posts Rewrote, combined and updated remaining content Branded image and social media policy Todd stopped creating new content and started updating old content instead. And Google started rewarding his efforts. It’s not about more content. It's about better content. Quality is the new SEO. Links and Resources for How One Blogger Grew His Traffic Tenfold Without Producing New Content: FinancialMentor WordPress Pinterest Further Listening How to Get More Traffic by Updating Your Archives Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey, there. Welcome to episode 265 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger, a blog that is designed to help you start and grow a successful, profitable blog. Now, today you’re going to hear from Todd Tresidder who has a remarkable story to share with you. I first came across Todd a number of years ago now at a conference. In fact, I heard about him before I met him. I kept bumping into bloggers who said, “You’ve got to talk to Todd. You’ve got to hear his story about how he completely updated his whole blog, which had been around for years, and gave it a real overhaul that just drove so much traffic and good things.” Today, Todd is going to share his story of how he did that. He grew his traffic tenfold without producing hardly any new content on his blog. In fact, he deleted content on his blog and he’s going to talk to you about how he did that. I think you’re going to love today’s episode, particularly if you’ve been blogging for a couple of years. This is one that is particularly relevant for anyone who’s got an archive of content already. This is something that you can do. It’s not going to be something that you can do quickly. It’s a big job but it can have amazing benefits for your blog. So, hold on. This story doesn’t go too long but it is one that I’m sure you’ll get some real value out and you’ll probably have some questions. We may have to get Todd back on the podcast to answer them. So, hold on. Here’s Todd Tresidder. Todd: Hi. This is Todd Tresidder from Reno, Nevada, United States. My site is called Financial Mentor and you can find it at https://financialmentor.com. I teach advanced investment strategy and advanced retirement planning to build wealth. It’s an educational site that offers books, courses, the Financial Mentor Podcast, and one of the largest collections of free financial calculators anywhere on the internet. I started Financial Mentor back in 1998, basically prehistoric times for the internet. Back then, all I had was a brochure where static website, built-in frames that modelled every mistake you shouldn’t do building a website. It was a showcase for worst web practices.

How One Blogger is Using Online Events to Build Engagement and Make a Difference We continue our Blogger Breakthroughs series with a story from Trixi Symonds, whose Coloured Buttons blog teaches kids how to sew. She also created Sew a Softie Day. Trixi started her blog in 2009 to post kids craft projects. After a few years, she started posting more hand-sewn, well-designed and simple projects that kids could do. She soon discovered that kids love to sew. They feel empowered when they can make their own bag, cushion or soft toy. So Trixi decided to teach kids all over the world to sew. The goal behind Sew a Softie Day was to have a day where people all over the world would teach a friend, neighbor, or anyone how to sew a simple softie (a soft toy). July 16, 2016 became Sew a Softie Day. And Trixi knew she had to promote it. She contacted anyone and everyone for help – bloggers, friends, influencers and magazines. People were happy to help. Sew a Softie Day was so successful that it turned into Sew a Softie Month in July 2018. Each day, bloggers post a simple-to-sew softie tutorial. And kid ambassadors from around the world have taught a friend how to sew or held a Sew a Softie party. Anything you can do to get your readers to participate, gather together, and work on something collectively can be very powerful. A day or event gives your readers focus and purpose. It creates anticipation and excitement. It’s something you could do for any number of topics. If you need help promoting a day or event, ask for help. You’ll be amazed and overwhelmed with the positive response. Asking for help is such a valuable but hard lesson for many of us to learn. It might take you out of your comfort zone. But put yourself out there and network. You never know what will happen. You could make a real difference in the lives of your readers. Links and Resources for PB 264: How One Blogger Builds Engagement and Makes a Difference with Online Community Events: Sew a Softie Coloured Buttons How to Get Your Readership Involved and Grow Your Audience with Community Challenges How to Snap Readers Out of Passive Lurking to Become Engaged (refer to Content Events section) International Start a Blog Day Class of 2018 Uppercase Magazine Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey, there! Welcome to episode 264 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. I’m the blogger behind problogger.com which is all about helping you start a great blog that’s going to change the world in some way, that’s going to make the lives of your readers better, but also be profitable for you. You can learn more about ProBlogger and all we do particularly our courses and ebooks over at problogger.com. Today, we’re continuing our series of blogger breakthrough stories with a story of Trixi Symonds, a fellow Aussie who I think has been to some of our events, at least she’s networked with a number of people who have because she comes highly recommended. She has a great little blog called Coloured Buttons. You can find it at colouredbuttons.com. She’s also got another really interesting project which she’s going to tell us about in today’s story called Sew a Softie. Now, Trixi teaches kids how to sew. That’s what her Coloured Buttons blog is about. It’s got a lot of amazing tutorials that help people to do that, but she started this day, Sew a Softie Day. Now, I had to actually look up what a softie was. A softie is a soft toy and she teaches kids how to make their own softie. She started this day to have kids around the world join in on this project. She’s going to tell us the story about why she started that and how it’s gone for her.

How One Blogger's Vulnerability Resulted in Growing Her Blog In this episode of our Blogging Breakthroughs series we feature Mim Jenkinson and her blog Love From Mim. Mim started blogging for one reason, but ended up blogging for a different reason altogether. On her blog Mim shares tips on how she stays organized as a busy mom and juggles time for work, home, and herself. But when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she used her blog to share her story. It became a kind of therapeutic outlet for her, and made her feel better. And by showing her vulnerability she also grew her audience. Remember: readers are interested in your content because of you and the topic you're writing about. Mim now earns a six-figure income through multiple streams from her blog. She shares a few tips to help take your blog to the next level and monetize it: If you want it to be a job, treat it like one Set goals Create a structure Plan each week Work hard and be professional Mim stays true to herself and remains ethical when it comes to her blog. She is also brand ambassador and generous with other bloggers by sharing and working together. She finds blogging joyful, and has found her identity through it. She enjoys sharing things to help others. “I love my job,” she says. “There aren't enough hours in the day for all the ideas I have.” Links and Resources for How Mim Blogged Vulnerably to Grow a Six Figure Blog: Mim Jenkinson Further Listening 7 Strategies for Overcoming Imposter Syndrome 5 Areas to Focus on to Grow Your Blogging Income Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hello there and welcome to Episode 263 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name's Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, events, job board, series of e-books and courses all designed to help you have a profitable blog. Now, today, we're continuing our series on blogger breakthroughs, where we've got listeners of the podcast pitching their stories to us to share with you. We've chosen a few of them from many that were submitted in to share with you. We tried to choose a variety of bloggers from different parts of the world with different accents, with different niches and different experiences of blogging. Today, we've got Mim Jenkinson who has a blog called Love from Mim at lovefrommim.com. Now, Mim started out blogging for one reason and ended up blogging for another. I'll let her share that transition of her blog. She's got a story that I'm sure many of you will relate to but also find quite inspiring as well. It's got some real little nuggets in there, golden nuggets of advice that I want to pull out at the end so stay tuned until the end of her story. Again, you could check out her blog at lovefrommim.com and you can check out today's show notes where I will have links to her blog and also a full transcription of her story at problogger.com/podcast/263. Now, here's Mim. Creating great content, finding an audience, building engagement, monetizing your blog. This is ProBlogger. Mim: I'm Mim Jenkinson and my blog is Love from Mim. You can find ir at lovefrommim.com. I started blogging in 2013 in June and my blog is about how I stay organized as a busy mom of two small kids and how I work from home. I'd like to share my tips on how I try to stay organized and how I juggle my family time, work time and time for myself as well. Before my breakthrough, my blog was just a hobby blog so I would share everything about my life as a mom, a little bit about the kids and the things that we use to love the products and services, the things we got up to, and I made a small income occasionally from selling a few sponsored posts,

How One Blogger Created a Directory that Attracts Readers We continue our Blogging Breakthroughs series with Carolyn Edlund, whose Artsy Shark blog focuses on the business of art. Carolyn shares the story of how she created a directory to attract readers to her blog instead of having to chase after them. It revolutionized her blog, and helped her build a successful business around it. Carolyn understands the importance of building strong business relationships and creating win-win situations through collaboration. Her directory identifies places artists can sell their art online. It also provides solid business information and helps artists gain exposure. To attract readers for your blog, ask yourself: What do your readers want? What problem can you solve for your readers? What issue can you help your readers overcome? Based on tips from Carolyn, what kind of magnet do you plan on creating to draw readers to your blog? Links and Resources for PB 262 - How Carolyn Started a Directory to Attract Readers to Her Blog: Artsy Shark Carolyn Edlund’s Directory Inbound Marketing book Success Incubator ProBlogger Job Board Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there, friends! Welcome to episode 262 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog podcast, events, series of ebooks, and courses, all to help you start an amazing blog that’s going to change the world in some way, make people’s lives better, but also hopefully be profitable for you. You can learn more about ProBlogger and all that we do at problogger.com. Now this week, I’m actually in Orlando. As this episode goes live, I will be at our Success Incubator Event, and I know some of you will be at that event, I’m looking forward to seeing some of you. And while I’m away, we’re continuing our blogger breakthrough series of content, where we’re featuring stories from listeners of this podcast, and we’re talking about their breakthrough moments. Now, today’s listener is Carolyn Edlund, who has a great blog called Artsy Shark. You can find it at arstyshark.com. Her blog is about the business of art, and she’s going to tell us a story today that I think will be interesting to many of you. It’s a way of drawing readers into your blog that’s going to stop you from having to chase your readers, but hopefully attract them to your blog, and this has revolutionized her blog and has helped her to build a really successful business around the blog that she has. You can find show notes today at problogger.com/podcast/262, where you’ll find links to Carolyn’s blog, and also the directory that she’s about to talk about as well, and a book that she mentions, too. At the end of her story, I’ll come back and pull out a few of the golden nuggets that I heard her share, okay? Now, over to Carolyn. Carolyn: My name is Carolyn Edlund, and I’m the founder of Artsy Shark, which is the blog about the business of art. Before I ever became a blogger, I was a self-employed artist for more than twenty years, with a successful production studio, and subsequently, I was a sales representative for an art publishing company. I had a lot of experience marketing and selling art, and I also led a business networking group where I learned a lot about the importance of building strong business relationships and creating win-win situations where both parties can benefit by collaborating with each other. I got into blogging sheerly by accident back in 2009, after I took a free course held at a local community college. At that time, I had no idea what I was doing, and I wasn’t quite sure what would happen. I got started by writing some business articles for ...

Three Breakthrough Tips That Helped a Blogger Become Profitable Here’s another episode from our Blogging Breakthroughs series, which features bloggers’ stories about breakthroughs in traffic, income, and other aspects of blogging. About two years ago, after a career in Air Traffic Control and dealing with health issues, Michele Robson decided to start a blog about luxury travel on a budget called Turning Left for Less. Michele had some writing experience, but didn't really understand blogging. Her blog started out slowly, but has now reached a point where she earns a liveable income. Michele shares three breakthrough tips that helped her grow her luxury travel blog from just a few readers a day to where it’s at today. Post every day Befriend a blogger you admire and have them become your mentor Be first to market and review products and services Michele has built credibility, and industry leaders are now coming to her. She no longer needs to chase them for information. As bloggers, we all start with very few readers and doubts about whether to continue. Just think of Michele’s story, follow her three tips, and don’t give up. Links and Resources for Breakthroughs that Grew My Blog from 30 Readers a Day to Profitable in Less Than 2 Years: Turning Left for Less God Save The Points Further Listening 9 Types of Killer Filler Content that are Easy to Create How Often Should You Blog Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to episode 261 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger. A blog, podcast, events, courses, ebooks, and lots more that helps bloggers to start blogs, to grow their blogs, and to build profit around their blogs. You can find more about what we do over at problogger.com. Now, today, we continue our series of blogger breakthrough episodes, where we’re hearing from listeners of the podcast about how they’ve grown their blogs, particularly focusing upon their breakthrough moments, the things that have helped them to do what I’ve just said, grow their blogs, start their blogs and to build profit around their blogs. Today’s story is one that I love. It’s from Michele Robson, who has a blog called Turning Left for Less, and the tagline of her blog is Champagne Travel on Prosecco Budget, which will give you the indication of what it’s about. It’s about luxury travel on a budget. It’s something that I think is a great topic, but also the story that Michele tells is really worth listening to as well. I’m sure a lot of people will relate to her story, as well. After a long career in one particular industry, air traffic control, and a tough time with health, Michele decided to start a blog. She only started less than two years ago, I think it was November 2016, so not long at it, but in that time she’s, despite not really having any experience in blogging, she’s been able to build her blog where she’s now earned enough to survive on the income from her blog, which is a great story. She’s gone from literally having a very few readers to having a significant readership as well, and really doing some amazing things. In her story today, she shares three breakthrough moments that helped her to grow from just a few readers a day to the point that she’s at today. I’m going to let Michele share her story, but I will come back at the end of her story, and just share a few of the things that I appreciated from what she shared, and give you a little bit more further listening on a couple of things she talks about as well. You can find a link to Michele’s to blog turningleftforless.com at our show notes which are at problogger.

How a Mindshift Changed One Blogger's Perspective This episode of our Blogging Breakthroughs series features eight-year blogger Sarah Cook. Her blog Sustainable Cooks shares recipes, gardening tips, and real food for food people. Sarah describes how a simple and practical mindshift recently ramped up her efforts as a blogger. She changed her mindset from “me” to “we”. Most bloggers put the emphasis on themselves, which is natural. But if you want to build a big audience and monetize your blog you should focus on your readers. You can still inject yourself into your blog. Just remember who is reading, what their lives are like, what role you play in their lives, and how you can help them. Create an avatar to learn more about your readers. If you have one, revisit and update it. Another option, depending on how brave you are, is to connect with your readers directly. Before each post Sarah asks herself, "How will this post improve my readers' lives?" Keep it real, and show your readers what normal life looks like. Being vulnerable is powerful. Knowing more about your readers will help drive and reveal your blog’s design, branding, marketing, monetization and content. Never forget that your readers are human beings, not just numbers. Links and Resources for How One Recipe Blogger Turned Her Blog Around with a Simple Mindshift: Sustainable Cooks How to Create a Reader Avatar for Your Blog (with free downloadable template) Pat Flynn’s Blog Further Listening My Mid-Life Crisis and the Power of Being Vulnerable on a Blog Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Welcome to episode 260 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name's Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com which is a blog, a podcast and a series of courses, eBooks and events even, to help you to become a better blogger. You can find more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. Now today, we're going into our blogger breakthrough series where we’re sharing stories of bloggers who have had breakthroughs in some way. We've had three of these previously and they've been really popular. I've had a lot of really positive feedback about those episodes. People seem to like to hear from normal bloggers. I’m not saying I'm not a normal blogger, but normal bloggers who are at different stages of their journey. Today, we've got a story from Sarah Cook. Sarah has a blog called Sustainable Cooks. I guess, a bit of a play on her name but also the topic as well. She writes about recipes, and gardening, and I guess doing food from a family perspective in realistic ways. She will introduce that much better than I did. I love this story. It's a really short one today and it's simple on some levels, but it's incredibly powerful. Sarah has been blogging for eight or so years now. Things have really ramped up in the last year as a result of a mindshift. Also something really practical that she did. As in similar stories, it is a mindshift type thing that needs to start with, but it's also a practical. I'm going to let Sarah share that story. As I said, it's not long. At the end, I want to come back and share a few thoughts and give you a free downloadable resource that you can also use to do the exact thing that Sarah did. You'll find a link to that on today's show notes, and you'll find a full transcription as well as links to Sarah's blog, the show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/260. If you want to look at Sarah's blog as you listen, she is at sustainablecooks.com. Sarah: Hi, I'm Sarah Cook from Seattle, Washington and my blog is Sustainable Cooks. You can find it at www.sustainable cooks.com. I've been blogging for eight years though only seriously in the last 11 to 12 months.

How a Lawyer's Home Cooking Blog is Helping Her Replace Her Law Income Libby Hakim features in the fourth episode of our Blogging Breakthroughs series, where listeners share stories about traffic, income, mindset, and other blogging areas. Libby has a new blog, Cooking with Nana Ling, which focuses on home cooking based on her great-grandmother’s recipes. Before her blog, Libby was working a part-time legal job and had two small children. But with her blog, Libby has experienced four mini breakthroughs: Mindshift: Presumed she would never make more than she would as a lawyer, but started to believe she could make a living by blogging. What to Blog About: Had heaps of ideas, but got tired of them. Her cooking blog gives her and others joy and happiness, so she has been able to sustain it. Overcoming Perfection: Launch deadline makes you commit to moving forward with your blog, even if you don’t think it's good enough yet. Like-New Blogs: Don’t compare yourself to bloggers who’ve been around awhile. You’ll evolve your writing and the way your blog looks. With blogging, you’ve got to start somewhere to develop a sense of purpose and enjoy what you do. Don’t give up. Keep going. Breakthroughs lead to something special. Links and Resources for How This Home Cooking Blogger is Replacing Her Lawyer Income with Her Blogging Income: Cooking with Nana Ling Zoe Bingley-Pullin Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey, there and welcome to episode 259 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the founder of ProBlogger. You can find out more about what we do in helping the bloggers start blogs and monetize their blogs at problogger.com. Today is the fourth installment in our blogger breakthrough series where we’re sharing stories from listeners of the podcast in how they had different kinds of breakthroughs in their blogging. Today’s story comes from a blogger who’s relatively new to blogging. She started blogging six months ago using our Start A Blog course, which you can find the link to in today’s show notes. The blogger that I want to introduce you to today, her name is Libby Hakim. She’s got a fascinating blog. I love the topic of this blog. The title is Cooking With Nana Ling. I’ll let her introduce where the blog idea came from because that is part of the breakthrough that she wants to share today. But I just love this story because it is from a new blogger who’s already got to a point where she’s reaching some of her dreams in being able to give up other work and focus on her blogging. She’s still got a way to go, but she’s well on the way. The blog itself is a beautifully designed blog and just has a great concept. You’re going to hear four blogging breakthroughs today–just four short ones. At the end of Libby’s story, I’m going to come back and pull out a few of the things that I noticed about it. Libby’s another Aussie, so you’re going to hear a bit of an Aussie accent. You might hear a few words that I use from time to time as well, which is fun and at the end, I’ll come back and share some thoughts. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/259. You’ll find a full transcript there as well. Thanks, Libby. I’ll hand it over to you. Libby: Hi, there. My name’s Libby Hakim, and I’m from Sydney, Australia. My blog is called Cooking With Nana Ling. You can find it at www.cookingwithnanaling.com. My blog is only six months old, and as you probably guessed, it’s about cooking, more specifically, it’s about home cooking. It’s based around the recipes my Nana Ling—who is my great-grandmother—wrote down in the late 1930s, and early 1940s. I inherited her vast collection of handwritten recipes.

How a Table Tennis Blog Allowed This Blogger to Quit His Job This is the third episode in our Blogging Breakthroughs series, which features bloggers’ stories about breakthroughs in traffic, income, mindset and other aspects of blogging. Today we hear from Tom Lodziak, who has the Table Tennis Coaching blog. He started with nothing – no income and no audience. He started his blog in the wrong way and, at times, felt like he was blogging to nobody. Tom found a way to get to the point where his dream of quitting his job to pursue his passion was possible. Tips: Focus on great, quality content to increase traffic and grow audience. Spend 90% of time on article that serves your audience, and 10% on income-generating posts. Experiment with content and income streams. Some income streams don’t work now, but may later. Monetize early with a small product to test the waters. Try something that's easy to make and not too expensive to buy. When it comes to blogging, be persistent. It takes practice. Keep going. Just like table tennis, blogging isn't easy at first. But you'll have greater chances of success if you continue. Do you want to become a successful blogger? Then, try the Success Incubator. Use the code: PROBLOGGER until Aug. 31 to receive 25% off. Links and Resources for How My Table Tennis Blog Helped Me Quit My Job: Tom Lodziak’s Table Tennis Coaching blog Tom Lodziak on YouTube Success Incubator Event (use the code PROBLOGGER for 25% off) Ping Pong-A-Thon 2018 (sponsor me) Amazon Associates Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there, welcome to episode 258 of the ProBlogger podcast, my name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com. A blog, a podcast, events, job boards, and eBooks and courses, all designed to help you to build a great blog to build profit around that blog as well. Now, today is the third in the series of our blogging breakthrough series of content where we're featuring stories of listeners of this podcast who’ve had breakthroughs in their own blogging, whether they be breakthroughs around traffic, income, mindset, building community, or other opportunities have come their way. This is the third in the series and we’ve had some really great feedback from previous ones. So, if you haven’t listened to those, do dig back after this one to episode 256 and 257 and you’ll hear those. Now, today’s story is actually from Tom Lodziak who has a blog called Table Tennis Coaching. There’s a URL in today’s show notes, which you can find it, if you want to check it out and I love this story because it’s a story of someone who started with absolutely nothing but a dream. He had no income coming in from another source, no audience, no real profile that he can build on and he started incompletely the wrong way, as he puts it, but he gets to a point with his blogging where he’s able to reach his dream of quitting his job to pursue his passion of table tennis coaching. You're going to love this story, it's got some really practical tips but very relatable as well. Certainly, there’s a few things that I want to pull out at the end this episode just to emphasize to give you some encouragement as well. Lastly, before we get into Tom’s story, I do want to mention your last chance to get discounted tickets for our Success Incubator event, which is happening in Orlando, Florida, pretty much this time next month, on the 24th and 25th of September in Orlando, Florida. Success Incubator is the event. If you go to the problogger.com/success, you’ll find details of the event and if you use the word ProBlogger in the check out, you’ll get a 25% discount on attending that event.

How One Blogger Grew Her Readership by 500% with Help from Three Practical Writing Tips In this episode we continue our Blogging Breakthroughs series, this time with a story from my friend Kelly Exeter. Kelly is a regular speaker at our events, has contributed ProBlogger content as a guest writer, and has been a guest on this podcast several times. Today, the story Kelly shares is a great companion piece to the “How to Become a Prolific Content Creator” episode. Her blogging breakthrough is about going from someone who is a good and proficient but bland writer with a plateauing audience to someone who writes with more personality and in a way that's magnetic to readers. A lot of readers. To get to that point, Kelly was willing to find someone to critique her writing. We all know it can be difficult to accept criticism, but it’s well worth doing. Sometimes you write something that has good information and is well written, but doesn’t connect with people. It’s too vanilla. It isn’t read, commented on, or shared. The problems Kelly experienced are probably things many bloggers can relate to. Kelly describes three practical tips to improve your content: Messy drafts: Hand-write random ideas, previous stories, and tangents (some may not make it into a post). Form core idea with developed personality Don’t sit on the fence: You don’t need to be confrontational or controversial. But you do need to define your stance. Just be you Write the way you talk: Have faith in your voice, and let your personality shine. Use quirks, funny words and expressions you use when you talk in your content By improving her writing, Kelly increased her reader traffic from 2,500 to 15,000 a month – a 500% increase. It also helped her make about $100,000 in off-blog income. Links and Resources for PB 257: 3 Writing Tips That Helped Kelly Grow Her Readership by 500%: Kelly Exeter Success Incubator FinCon Further Listening How to Become a Prolific Content Creator (an Interview with Kelly Exeter) My Mid-Life Crisis and the Power of Being Vulnerable on a Blog Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to episode 257 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, I'm the blogger behind problogger.com. A site dedicated to help you to create a great blog and to build profit around your blog. You can find at problogger.com where you'll also our eBooks and more importantly probably our courses, our starter blog course for those of you who haven’t yet started, but also our 31-Days To Build A Better Blog course which is ideal for those of you who are early in the blogging or even intermediate, and advanced bloggers that need a bit of a kick start for your blog. Just look for the courses tab at problogger.com. Today, we're going to continue our blogger breakthrough series of podcast with a story from my friend, Kelly Exeter. Kelly is going to be familiar to many of you because she has regularly spoken at our events here in Australia. She has contributed guest content on the ProBlogger, the blog but also has been on this podcast a number of times. I interviewed her back in episode 193 on how to be a prolific content creator. That was a hugely popular episode, one of the more popular interviews that I've done. You can find a link to that in today's show notes. Today she's going to share a story that I think it's a great companion piece to that interview that I did. I do encourage you to listen to both if you haven't listened to the previous one or if you want to relisten to it, too. Today, Kelly is going to share a story about how she went from being a good proficient, but a bit bland writer whose audience had plateaued,

How a Book Deal Launched the Career of a Blogger We’re kicking off our Blogging Breakthroughs series, where a variety of bloggers share their stories of breakthroughs they’ve experienced over the years with their blogs. We received submissions from numerous bloggers. And today I want to introduce you to Andrea Vahl. When Andrea started getting into social media, she realized nobody was teaching it in an entertaining way. So she invented a character: 'Grandma Mary: Social Media Edutainer'. She'd even show up at events as Grandma Mary – a great way to stand out! Here's Grandma Mary and myself at an event several years ago. Andrea is also the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and a public speaker. She was a presenter at last year’s Success Incubator event. In her blogging breakthrough story, she describes how she started her blog in 2009 and how she got her book deal. She also shares some good blogging tips: Start experimenting with monetization early on Be open to where your blog may take you, and stay open to possibilities/opportunities Show up consistently and participate Network: Be well connected and relational, even if you have to wear a costume Her first eBooks may not have sold many copies, but they got the attention of a publisher. So she created more eBooks that were profitable, and created opportunities for her to speak, consult and teach. Much of what Andrea does today started as a simple blog. She pushed herself out of her comfort zone to do some great things. Links and Resources for PB 256: How One Blogger Landed a Book Deal That Launched Her Career: Andrea Vahl Andrea Vahl’s Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies book Andrea Vahl as Grandma Mary Success Incubator Further Listening Why You Should Create a Product to Sell on Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) How to Create a Library of Products to Sell on Your Blog Blogging Breakthroughs - Your Invitation to be on the ProBlogger Podcast Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Welcome to episode 256 of the ProBlogger Podcast the podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind the problogger.com. A blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of eBooks, and courses all designed to help you as a blogger to start an amazing blog that's going to help people, that's going to give you an opportunity to make the world a better place in some way, and also that will hopefully build some profit for you as well, and give you an extra income stream. You can learn more about ProBlogger and check out our courses and eBooks over at problogger.com. Now, today we're kicking off our blogging breakthroughs series where you'll be hearing over the coming weeks from a variety of bloggers who are going to tell you their stories of breakthroughs that they've had over the years. I put the call out a couple episodes ago for this series, and we were inundated with amazing stories. We can't use them all, but we are going to use quite a few of them over the coming weeks. We're still working through those applications to be honest, there's so many of them, but today I want to introduce you to the first of them, a friend of mine called Andrea Vahl. I actually asked Andrea to submit her story while we went through all the other submissions. Now, Andrea is someone I met many years ago now at a blogging conference, I think it was in Las Vegas of all places, but at the time of meeting her, she wasn't actually Andrea Vahl, she was Grandma Mary, which is a strange one, and I was a little bit freaked out when I first met her because she was obviously someone dressed up in costume. Andrea is someone who had been doing improvisational comedy be...

The Power of Being Vulnerable with Your Readers Have you experienced the power of taking a step out of your comfort zone and being vulnerable with your readers? I have long believed in the power of being vulnerable. It can be hard to be vulnerable. It feels very risky, but brings about a feeling of freedom. I’ve witnessed the power of vulnerability. But I am always wary about being too vulnerable. I worry that to show weakness might take away some authority I’ve built, or that too much vulnerability will frustrate some readers and listeners. I’ve built my brand around how-to content, and I know just talking about my insecurities, problems, and failures isn’t really going to help anyone. But I was recently reminded that allowing myself to be more vulnerable can make good things happen. You may have read the article I published on Medium about having a bit of a mid-life crisis. I don’t want to talk about that crisis, but about what happened when I did share this information with my audience. I put the post on Medium and not ProBlogger because although it touches on blogging, it’s not a post about it and relates to many, not just bloggers. The reactions were almost 100% positive. Stats since it was published: Almost 8,000 views, 1,400 “Claps” and 38 comments Resonated with a much wider age range than expected (20-85) People responded with personal, vulnerable, and in-depth comments More than 350 people have joined the Facebook group to discuss the article Real-life friends, family members, blog readers, and complete strangers are contacting me and talking to each other to form a community People find it refreshing that I’m transparent and don’t always have it all together Feedback creates energy and freedom The journey isn’t over. There are more parts that I want and need to share - in time. While I’m arguing the case for being vulnerable with your readers, I’m not saying  you need to strip yourself bare in every area of your life. Boundaries are a good thing. I also think there’s a time and a place for being vulnerable. There are things in my life that I’m not ready to talk about. I need to sort out my thoughts and feelings. Before being vulnerable, ask yourself these questions: Are you ready to share your story? Why are your sharing the story? Are you over-sharing? Will this story hurt someone you love? Quotes of the Week from Brene Brown, author of Daring Greatly: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness.” P.S. Thanks to everyone who submitted stories about their blogging breakthroughs. We can’t possibly use them all, but we look forward to sharing some of them with you soon. Further Listening How to Build Authority, Influence and Trust when Nobody Knows Who You Are 9 Hurdles I’ve Faced as a Blogger and How I Got Over Them The Biggest Lesson I Learned About Building a Profitable Blog in 2015 My Million Dollar Blog Post (and How Procrastination Almost Stopped Me Writing It) Examples of My Mid-Life Crisis and The Power of Being Vulnerable on a Blog How I’m Dealing with My Third Mid-Life Crisis The Vulnerability of Blogging Kelly Exeter Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 255 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger, a blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of ebooks,

Share Your Blogging Breakthrough on the ProBlogger Podcast Do you have a blog? Why not? It’s time to get started. Imagine the breakthroughs you could experience. And if you do already have a blog, have you had a breakthrough? You have? Then tell us about it. We're seeking submissions of stories to appear on the ProBlogger podcast for the theme, My Blog Breakthrough. Our goal with this series is to feature bloggers from around the world telling stories about breakthroughs in their blogging. We want to inspire ProBlogger listeners and give them practical ideas to try with their own blogs. Your breakthrough can be about anything, big or small. For example: How an influencer helped you grow your blog A new income stream How you made your first dollars blogging How a post went viral An opportunity that arose from blogging A mindset shift that led to growth in your blog A tool you started using that led to new results Refocusing your blog on a new, narrower, or broader niche How you overcame fear or some other obstacle in your blogging We want to feature a variety of bloggers’ stories, including bloggers of different experience levels, countries, and niches. If you’d like to participate, submit your story and complete the form at problogger.com/breakthrough. You can be brief and only include: Your name Your blog URL Your blog topic What blogging was like before the breakthrough What the breakthrough was What blogging was like after the breakthrough A tip you’d give listeners that might help them with this breakthrough Anything else you think we need to know that relates to your breakthrough story If your story is selected, you will be asked to record your breakthrough story as an audio file. Ready to share your story and help others? Further Listening 10 Things I Wish I’d Known About Blogging My Million Dollar Blog Post (and How Procrastination Almost Stopped Me from Writing It) Why You Should Create a Product to Sell on Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) I Guarantee This Will Improve Your Blog Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 254 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name's Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, events, job board, ebooks, and a couple of courses now that help you to start a great blog, and to build a profit around that blog as well. In today’s episode, episode 254 which you can find the show notes for it at problogger.com/podcast/254, I want to invite you to be a part of an upcoming show on this podcast. We want to do a series of shows actually called My Blog Breakthrough. We are seeking submissions from you, listeners of the podcast and readers of the blog, to appear on the podcast by submitting a short audio clip where you talk about a blogging breakthrough that you have had. My hope is that this series is going to both inspire our listeners by hearing some different voices from bloggers around the world, sharing their stories, but also giving a few practical ideas of things that other listeners could apply as well. If that interests you, listen on, and I’ll talk to you a little bit more about what we’re looking for and how you can participate in today’s challenge. Again, the show notes today where you find links to how to submit your story, the show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/254. As part of our Start A Blog course which we launched at the start of this year. We did a similar series to what we are planning with this new one–where we invited listeners to submit stories of them starting a blog and it was amazing. People really enjoyed that series. We featured,

What You Can Learn From the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Course From a blog post series to an eBook and now a course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog has certainly evolved. And in doing so it has helped many people. Today’s episode is based on information about the course. I created the course, which is a combination of repurposed teaching from places on ProBlogger and the blog post series, to: offer teaching that inspired action help people develop good habits give them a variety of things to try. The goal is to give you 31 modules that each contain teaching, a challenge, and further reading using a combination of videos, audio files, printable worksheets and links. There’s also a private Facebook group just for the students in the course to share what they’re doing and interact with each other on their journey. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Who is it for? Those who already have a blog; beginners to advanced bloggers; and groups. Does it have to be done daily? No, it can be done at your own pace. How much work is it? It varies depending on the stage you’re at; it usually takes 1–5 hours a week. Tips for Taking the Course: Regularity is key Be accountable Take action We’re extending the Early Bird price of $49 until the end of June. When it turns midnight (Pacific time) on June 30, the price goes up to $99. So if you're interested, sign up now. Links and Resources for I Guarantee This Will Improve Your Blog: 31 Days to Build a Better Blog eBook Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 253 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name's Darren Rowse, and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start an amazing blog that will hopefully change the world, change the lives of your readers, but also change your life as well both through the blogging experience which can bring you a lot of joy and ideas. Help you to develop your ideas, but also hopefully will become a profitable thing as well, that's what we teach over at problogger.com. Today's show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/253 that’s number 253. In this week's episode, I want to touch base with you about our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course, which I have mentioned a few times in passing over the last month or so. I've been talking about how it was coming and then last week, I mentioned that it was live and I had a number of you give me feedback that you needed a little bit more time to make a purchase. A couple of things I want to let you know, firstly we're going to extend the early bird discount a little bit until the end of the month but I also wanted to answer some of the questions today that we've had about the course and also talk a little bit about the backstory of the course as well. I want to talk today about why I first came out with 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, how it has evolved, and particularly this last step in the evolution to bring it into a course rather than an ebook. I want to talk a little bit about why I think this format has helped so many people. I hope you find that interesting for those of you who want to build a course, or a product as well. We're going to talk about what's in it, who it's best suited for, and I want to answer some of those frequently asked questions about who it is for, how much work is involved, and then also want to give you a few tips on taking this course as well. For those of you who've already purchased and there's quite a few of you who are already enrolled in the course as well. If you've been wondering about whether this course is right for you, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog,

11 Things Thomas Edison Can Teach You About Profitable Blogging If it wasn’t for Thomas Edison, you'd probably be sitting in the dark feeling quite bored. Edison was a prolific and influential inventor. He invented world-changing technologies including the light bulb, the phonograph and motion picture camera. And his views back then on emerging technologies can teach you about blogging today. Quotes from Edison and thoughts on how they apply to blogging:   Start with a need: “I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.” When building a blog, think about what problems it will solve, how it will serve people, and what changes it will bring.   Work smart: “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.” It’s easy to fill your time with tasks that seem urgent but aren't necessarily important. Avoid distractions. Write content, update archives, and drive traffic.   Work and wait: “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.” It takes time to build a blog to its full potential. While search engines index your blog, establish trust with readers and build a profile in your niche.   It takes work: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Coming up with a great idea for a new blog is just the beginning. It takes a lot of hard work to make it successful. Lots of little actions add up to a great blog.   Failure brings You closer to success: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Treat every post you write, every attempt you make to promote your blog and every tool you use as learning experiences that shape your future.   You are capable of astounding things: “If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.” You have incredible potential. You are unique. And you know something no-one else does. Tap into what makes you special, and don’t sell yourself short.   Sometimes failing is the start of success: “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” Even when things don’t turn out the way you want, they can still be a success. What you include in your blog can rise to something new.   Don’t give up too early: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Most blogs are abandoned after a month or two. The average time that it takes a blog to rise to the top is about 3 years or longer. Don’t give up on it.   Make it fun: “I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.” Blog about something you enjoy and are passionate about. Readers pick up on your energy and love for the topic.   Have lots of ideas: “To have a great idea, have a lot of them.” Put time aside to dream, brainstorm, and wonder “What if?” Not every idea for your blog will work, so it pays to have lots of ideas. Practice the art of curiosity.   You don’t have to start with a finished product: “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” Don’t get trapped into thinking you need to start with all the bells and whistles. Most successful bloggers start with just the basics.   Links and Resources for What Thomas Edison Can Teach YOU About Profitable Blogging: What Are YOU About? [Choosing a Topic for Your Blog] What You Say is What You Are – The Problem of Blogger Inferiority Complex A Secret to Blogging Success – Build Upon What You Build Top 100 Blogs Have an Average Age of 33.8 months ProBlogger eBooks Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Everything You Need to Know About Getting Started with Email Have people been telling you for years that you need to create an email list for your blog? Is it time to finally bite the bullet? Let’s talk about email – how to get started, email providers, types of messages, opt-ins, and sequences or auto-responders. When it comes to choosing an email provider, start simple You don't need all the bells and whistles. Get subscribers used to hearing from you. Send a simple email message once a week or so to keep in touch with readers. The more useful and actionable the message, the better. Readers will look forward to receiving them from you. Once you have an email provider, you can start collecting email addresses of new subscribers. Grow your email list fast by using an opt-in, exit popup, sign-up form or incentive. While opt-ins can be good, some subscribers will sign up just to get whatever freebie you're offering rather than what comes later. To increase engagement, make opt-ins related to what comes next: ongoing emails, increased engagement, long-term opens, and reduced annoyance. Email sequences and auto-responders to set up: exclusive content, best posts, affiliate promotions, product promotions, surveys and asking questions. Being able to segment your audience, and then deliver auto-responders based on their needs or situations, is very powerful. Email serves as a win-win-win for you, your blog, and your subscribers. Links and Resources for What You Should Know about Getting Started with Email: Members Download Area Blog Post Ideas MailChimp ConvertKit Drip Aweber Further Listening: 10 Things You Can Do Today that Will Pay Off On Your Blog Forever   How to Increase Your Email List Subscribers By 100% Or More Today   Create an Opt-In to Increase Your Email Subscriber Numbers How to Drive Traffic and Profit in Your Blogging with Autoresponders Courses: Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 251 of The ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job boards, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to grow a profitable blog. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s episode, I want to talk about email. In particular, I want to answer three questions that I got from some of our Facebook group on the topic of email. The questions are coming from Marco, Lisa, and Lia. Marco asks some questions about getting started, choosing an email provider, and what to send in those initial emails. Lisa asked about tips for opt-ins to get more people to sign up. Lia asked about the sequence of emails that you might want to set up as an autoresponder afterwards. The questions do progress a little bit from the easier, beginner ones through to something a little bit more intermediate. You can find today’s show notes and there’s going to be plenty of extra reading for you. I’ve got some resources for you as well. You can find those show notes at problogger.com/podcast/251 and I will recommend that you get a problogger.com/members and that’s where you can get some downloadable resources, one of which is relevant for today’s show. There are six worksheets and guides that we’ve got there, they’re completely free. You just have to give us your email address and we’ll send them and log in through to you so you can access those and the new ones that we will be adding in there as well. Again, that’s problogger.com/members and that’s just a member’s area that we’ve got set up for you completely free. You will see our courses there as well, some of which are free and some of which are paid but that’s w...

How to Create Killer Filler Content for Your Blog This week I’m sharing a list of content filler types you can use for your blog. And they don’t take a lot of effort or time to create. If you’re struggling to create thoughtful, original long-form content, these will help fill some of the gaps. Here’s how to create killer filler content and add value to both your blog and your readers. Reader Discussions: Ask a question to generate a debate/community workshop Polls: Increase reader engagement and start a good discussion with a question Homework/Challenges: Specify a topic, and give readers an assignment Link Posts: Link to another blog/article (or include a list of links) to build relationships and find out what others are thinking Best Of/Archive Posts: Post useful posts new readers have never seen Guest Posts/Regular Contributors: Include posts written by others, or find a regular writer to do a semi-regular post Embeddable Content: Use photos, cartoons, or go to YouTube; search keywords related to your blog topic, and find a high-value video that helps your readers Interviews: Find interesting experts, and ask them questions to help your readers Answer Question: Address questions from readers and beginners (but make the answers short and sweet) These posts are a little less labor intensive to create, but still serve a purpose for your readers. The key is to experiment. Which get positive reactions? Evolve them into something you can add on a regular basis to your blog. But remember, don’t publish ‘filler content’ just for the sake of posting. Quote of the Week: “If you treat every situation as a life-and-death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.” – Dean Smith Links and Resources for 9 Types of Killer Filler Content that are Easy to Create: Pat Flynn: AskPat podcast Further Listening Deadlines - Are They Good or Bad for Your Blogging? 6 Places to Find Writers to Hire for Your Blog How to Use Embedded Content on Your Blog Examples of 9 Types of Killer Filler Content that are Easy to Create Are You a Binge Photographer or a Snack Photographer? Help this Locationally Challenged Photographer Improve Her Portraiture What Mode Do You Shoot in Most? Photographer in the Picture 18 [+7] Great Photography Links from Around the Web One Year Ago on Lifehacker How to Create Impossible Images Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hello. It’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 250. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog, to build that audience, to create great content, and to build profit around your blog. You can learn more about what we do at problogger.com. In today’s episode, I want to suggest to you a list of types of content that you can use on your blog and potentially in other mediums as well that don’t take a massive amount of time to create. This episode does build upon what I talked about in the last episode– episode 249–where I was talking about deadlines, schedules, and editorial calendars. In that episode, we heard a question from a blogger who was finding it difficult to keep up with the schedule. That actually found having a deadline each week, having that schedule was limiting and they decided to slow down and only post when they had something to say, which I agreed with on some levels, but I did mention that there was a danger associated with that. One of the dangers is that you can slow down so much that you don’t publish anything at all. I suggested last episode that there might be some ways of creating content that...

Do Schedules and Deadlines Help or Hurt Your Blogging? Have you ever missed a deadline? Do you have a content schedule or editorial calendar for your blog? Yes, today’s episode is all about schedules and deadlines. Whether you follow a daily, weekly or monthly schedule, does it allow you to produce the best content? What if you can’t come up with something good enough to publish? I don’t have a schedule at all because it seems to be too limiting. I won’t publish anything unless I have something that's worthwhile. Am I doing the right thing? Or am I overthinking and over-worrying? Will my readers even care? Do they pay that much attention to what I do? No rules exist, but here are some lessons I've learned from blogging: Quality beats quantity: If the quality of your blog content is suffering, it won't lead to long-term, sustained growth. Quantity is still important: Don’t slow down so much that you hardly post anything; if you feel everything you write is second rate, that perfectionism will stop you from producing quality content. Deadlines can help or hinder. They can be incredibly motivating for some bloggers, who do their best work under pressure. But for others, schedules and deadlines are crippling. Panic sets in, and stifles creativity. Then there are those who would never have completed high school or kept a job if there weren't any deadlines. So deadlines can be your friend or your enemy. Deadlines aren't the be all and end all. Missing one can be a good thing: If your content isn’t great, you don’t have to publish it. If your planned schedule is causing anxiety, you don’t have to stick to it. It''s okay to change your schedule. It's okay to stop publishing new content for a while to focus on other parts of your blog (or just to have a break). Whether you love them or hate them, deadlines and schedules are a part of most people’s lives. Strive for timely goals that produce quality content for your blog. Quote of the Day: “Working hard is not a waste of time, but a state of mind. Keep pushing your limits until you reach the edge. Then be kind and rewind.” ― Ana Claudia Antunes Links and Resources for Deadlines - Are They Good or Bad for Your Blogging: AdSense Further Listening How to Use Embedded Content On Your Blog Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to episode 249 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses designed to help you to grow a profitable blog. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s episode, I want to talk about schedules and deadlines. I want to talk about keeping your content coming out on a regular basis, and if having a schedule or a deadline or an editorial calendar is actually a good thing or not, because this week I had a question coming from someone who is really struggling with having a deadline. They’re actually finding the deadline, maybe, actually holding them back in some way. I want to give some advice around that. Particularly for those of you who do struggle with deadlines. I know some of you love a deadline, others of you struggle with deadlines. We’re going to explore that a little bit today. You can learn more about today’s show and get a full transcript of it and comment on today’s show in our show notes at problogger.com/podcast/249. This week I had a question that came in from Betty. It actually really coincides with another thread that I saw on Reddit this week as well, and I left a comment for it. Hearing the same question twice made me think there’s probably other people who struggle with thi...

6 Places You Can Find Writers to Help with Your Blog As much as we'd all like to write posts for our blogs, it's not always that easy. You may find you don't have enough time to dedicate to your blog. Or you may lose your passion for the topic after writing about it for so long. So why not look for another writer who can help you out? Always be on the lookout for people who: Demonstrate knowledge Seem genuine and generous in helping others Communicate well Put themselves out there and look for opportunities Are interesting and different Understand social media and online communication Six places you can find writers for your blog: Guest Posters: If you have published guest posts in the past, take a look at them. How much traffic did they get? What was the quality like? How easy were they to work with? Did they go above and beyond with the post? If one of the guest posters stands out, contact them. Readership/Commenters: Look at the comments people leave on your blog, and contact the writers who know a lot about the topic, are genuinely helpful, and are well written. Commenters/Participants in Other Places: Check out comments people leave in other places, such as other people’s forums and blogs, Facebook pages/groups and podcasts. Magazines/Freelancers: Find people who already create paid content elsewhere, whether it's as a freelancer or on their own blog. Word of Mouth: If you’re looking for someone, put the word out through friends, colleagues, business partners and others. Advertising: Use tips and tricks when looking to hire by advertising on the ProBlogger Job Board. If you’re willing to put a little work into going through the applications, you’ll usually find some gold. Once you've found someone and they agree to help, do a trial run with them to get a sense of what they're like to work with, their content, and how your audience responds to them. Quote of the Day: “If you think hiring professionals is expensive, try hiring amateurs.” - Anonymous Links and Resources for 6 Places to Find Writers to Hire for Your Blog: How to Hire Writers for Your Blog ProBlogger Job Board Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there friends, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 248 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, as I said and I am the blogger behind ProBlogger, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start an amazing blog, to create some great content on that blog, to grow your audience, and to build profit around it. Also, you can find more about what we do at problogger.com. Now, in today’s episode, I want to talk about where to find writers for your blog, particularly where to find paid writers— those writers that you want to add your own voice and to help you to create more content for your blog on an ongoing basis. I want to share with you the five places that I found writers for free without having to advertise for them at all. These are five places that are probably under your nose right now, they may be writers already in your network and it’s about how to unearth them. And then also, I want to share some tips of how to advertise for writers as well if you can’t find them within those free places that I've talked about. You can find today’s show notes over at progblogger.com/podcast/248, where is a full transcript of today’s show as well as any links that I mentioned along the way as well. Today’s show was inspired by Richard, who’s one of our listeners who sent in this question. He writes, "I’ve been blogging for three years now, and while my blog is making enough income for me to probably go full time with my blog.

Starting a Blog on a Topic Where You're Not an Expert Can you start a new blog when you're not an expert on the topic you'll be writing about? Of course you can. You can blog about any topic you like. But should you blog about a topic you don’t have any expertise in? I think it’s okay to start a blog on a topic you don’t know a lot about. I certainly wasn't an expert when I started my blogs. I had some experience, but I was far from being an expert. I'm not sure I even consider myself an expert now. Part of the success I’ve had with my blogs is due to the factI wasn’t an expert. Experts are great, but they sometimes come across as inaccessible or unrelatable. And not being an expert gave my blogs a sense of momentum and excitement. I was actively learning, growing, improving, and sharing with my readers. Here are a few tips to help you get started with your new blog and topic: Be ethical and transparent. Be upfront about who you are, how much experience you have, and why you’re blogging. Be careful about the content you post. Avoid teaching or giving advice beyond what you know. Actively pursue learning. You may not be an expert yet, but your growth helps people connect with you and your blog. What kind of content should you create if you're not an expert? What interests you about the topic? What grabs your attention about it? Here are some content sources: Personal stories Case studies Interviews Guest content News items Curated content Research results Answers to discussion questions Links and Resources for How to Create a Blog on a Topic You’re Not an Expert In: Rob Bell Further Listening How to Build a Blogging Business Through Interviewing Others with Mike Stelzner How to Create a Link Post [Challenge] How to Use Quotes in Your Blog Content Legally and Ethically How to Use Embedded Content on Your Blog [Challenge] Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, welcome to episode 247 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name's Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to grow an amazing blog that changes the world in some way, but also hopefully, is profitable for you. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger over at problogger.com. Now, in today's episode, I want to talk about something that I get asked quite often about from people thinking about starting a new blog, but also from some who have already started who have doubts and insecurities around this kind of topic. It's something that I know there's probably a variety of opinions on, but which I have a fairly strong one on as well. The question that I get asked is, "Should you start a blog on a topic that you don't have expertise in?" I want to say right up front, I think you could or even should. I think there's definitely a case for it, and in this episode, I want to tell you why, but I also want to, more importantly, give you some tips on how to do that, because this is something I know a lot of people do struggle with. "I've got this blog on a topic, I'm not really sure, I feel secure enough in this topic," you have these doubts that nag at you. I want to give you some ideas of the type of content that you can create if you don't yet feel like you're enough of an expert in that topic. You can find today's show notes with a full transcription of today's show at problogger.com/podcast/247. Before I get into today's show, I just want to say thank you because I have received some wonderful emails over the last few days from readers, some lovely messages on Twitter particularly. I've been trying a few new things on Twitter rec...

9 Things I Wish I Knew About Blogging That Will Accelerate the Growth of YOUR Blog In today’s episode I want to share my keynote at this year’s Social Media Marketing World – 9 Things I Wish I Knew About Blogging that Will Accelerate the Growth of YOUR Blog. Here are the slides from my talk: 9 Things I Wish I Knew About Blogging that Will Accelerate the Growth of Your Blog from Darren Rowse Keep focusing on the pillars of pro blogging: Profitable blogs are built on great content Take the initiative to drive traffic to your blog Take ownership of building engagement with your readers Monetization. Don’t skip over these pillars or take shortcuts. And here are 9 accelerators to grow your blog faster: Understand and engage with your audience. Know your readers’ needs. Transform your readers’ lives. Great content leaves a mark on your readers. Focus less on the number of eyeballs, and more on engaging the hearts of the right readers. Create a design based on what you know about your readers. Customize their experience. Teach and engage readers through challenges using various mediums. Collaborate with others to: exchange services generate content drive traffic create revenue streams. Focus on creating evergreen content that maintains relevance and doesn't date as fast as other content. Maintain your archives, or they depreciate. Archives are an income-generating asset. Be careful about where you go all-in on.. Where should you spend your time? Quotes of the Week: “Speed is only useful if you are running in the right direction.” – Joel Barker, Future Edge “Everyone wants to live at the top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.” – Andy Rooney “Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing, and regrouping.” – Julia Margaret Cameron Links and Resources for 9 Ways to Accelerate the Growth of Your Blog: Success Incubator New Members Area Social Media Marketing World Social Media Marketing World last year’s virtual pass Further Listening: Strategies to Help Convert First Time Visitors Into Interested Readers of Your Blog How Collaborations Can Accelerate Your Blog’s Growth The Ultimate Guide to Creating Evergreen Content for Your Blog 7 Types of Evergreen Content You Can Create on Your Blog More Evergreen Content Ideas for Your Blog How to get More Traffic By Updating Your Archives Trends in Social Media - Where Should You Focus Your Energy? Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Good morning and welcome to episode 246 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com. A blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses, all designed to help you to start an amazing blog to grow the audience on their blog, to create great content, and to build some profit around that blog as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today's episode, I want to share with you a recording of a talk I gave this year at Social Media Marketing World. A great event run by Mike Stelzner and his team from Social Media Examiner. This talk is one that I got a lot of positive feedback on. In fact, I don't think I've have so much positive feedback on a talk at Social Media Marketing World as I've received both at the event this year and since the event. I've got permission from Mike and his team, who've kindly allowed me to republish it here on the podcast in its entirety. The title of the talk is Nine Things I knew About Blogging that will Accelerate the Growth of your Blog. It's nine things that really–today,

Why Shiny Object Syndrome Can Be Good for Your Blog and Business Do you suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome? Are you easily distracted by something new – a tool, medium, tactic, or income stream? Whatever it is, it captivates and distracts you in the moment. And it can easily take over your day, week, or even month. Shiny Object Syndrome has the power to take you away from your core business, which can be destructive. But it can be a good thing, too. JR Caparas asked me how to avoid Shiny Object Syndrome in blogging. My answer? Don’t avoid it. Just make sure you put boundaries around it. Sometimes shiny objects can give you energy, spark new ideas, and help you discover new ways to engage your audience. So rather than avoiding shiny objects, make time for them. But don't let them hijack your business, your time and your life. You need to spend most of your time focusing on what’s most important, what keeps your blog growing, what’s already working, and what’s proven to work. But put some time aside to play, experiment, learn, and be curious. And look for what makes sparks fly and gives you energy when you play with that shiny object. Put shiny objects in their place. Quote of the Week: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Washington Thurman, author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader. Links and Resources for Why Shiny Object Syndrome is Sometimes a Good Thing Success Incubator Further Listening 3 Productivity Tips to Help You Build Healthy Habits 7 Productivity Tips for Bloggers Examples of Why Shiny Object Syndrome is Sometimes a Good Thing The ProBlogger podcast started out as a shiny object. Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to episode 245 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start an amazing blog, to grow that blog, to monetize that blog and hopefully have a good time while you're doing it. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. Now, today's podcast is all about something that I know many of us struggle with in this space, it is shiny object syndrome, that time when you're working away and suddenly you find yourself doing something completely different to what you had set down to do. You're being distracted by something; it could be a game on your phone, but it also could be something that is good, a new tool, a medium, a new tactic, a new income string. Whatever it is, it captivates you in that moment, it looms large, it can distract you right where you're sitting not only for that moment, but it can end up distracting you if you're anything like me, for a day, for a week, for a month, or for the rest of the year. It has the power to take you away from your core business and to be really distracted, but, and this is what I want to talk about today, I think it can actually be a good thing too. There's some positives when it comes to shiny object syndrome. I want to explore that a little bit in today's show. It will be a short one, but I want to put to you that shiny object syndrome is actually something you can—maybe you should plan for, maybe you should actually build into your week. Hang with me though, before I get into that, I want to just let you know that this episode is brought to you by this year's Success Incubator event which I'm running with some good friends this coming September on the 24th and 25th in Orlando, Florida. If you are in the U.S. or you feel like a troop out to the U.

How to Promote Your Blog Offline Today I'm tackling questions from listener, Julianna Barnaby about whether it’s important to spend time offline building your blog’s personal brand and reputation. The answer is simple. “Yes.” Offline promotion is worth it. Get creative, and get out and meet people. You may need to step out of your comfort zone, but that can be rewarding. You never know when someone you meet will become a reader, collaborator, team member, or even sponsor. The sky's the limit when it comes to offline promotion, and engagement is sometimes much stronger. People are more likely to comment on, share, and buy your products and services. Offline methods to promote and grow your readership: Events (conferences, conventions, and meetups): Go to events (or create your own) to speed up engagement and build relationships. Media: Pitch ideas for stories to newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, etc. Publications: Pitch story ideas to industry group publications, too. They're always looking for stories and content. Notice Boards: Post flyers about your blog in cafes, libraries, stores, etc. Collaborate: Find organizations and retailers with networks of people you want to have as readers and receive value from your blog. Links and Resources for How to Find More Traffic for Your Blog Offline: Success Incubator HARO (Help a Reporter) SourceBottle Michael Stelzner Meetup.com Examples of How to Find More Traffic for Your Blog Offline Digital Photography School lets camera clubs republish its articles in newsletters Virgin Australia Airline features blog content for in-flight entertainment Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to Episode 244 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start an amazing blog, to create brilliant content for that blog that’s going to change the lives of your readers, and also to work out how to sustain that blog, to make it a profitable venture not only for your readers but for you. You can learn more about ProBlogger and all that we do over at problogger.com. Now, today’s podcast is brought to you by this year’s Success Incubator event, which I’m running with some good friends this coming September in Orlando, Florida. We ran our first Success Incubator last year and it was one of the highlights of my year. We’re going to evolve the event slightly this year to make it a little bit more of a Mastermind-style event. We’re limiting the numbers to keep it a little bit more intimate, and we’re also including considerable time not only for teaching—there’ll be a series of sessions which will be more workshop style—but also putting aside considerable time for Masterminding. We’re running the event over an afternoon and then full day on the afternoon of the 24th of September, and then into the 25th of September, all day on the 25th. On the afternoon of the 24th, there’s going to be what we call our Power Sessions which are short, sharp teaching sessions, finished off by an unofficial kind of dinner, an opportunity for you to meet some of the other attendees. And then, all-day Tuesday you’re going to get some great teaching. We have four sessions which we’re lining up, which we’re calling our Workshop Sessions, so there’s going to be input. And then also around those, having four opportunities for Masterminding. The Masterminds are all about you presenting your challenges, your situation of your online business, and allowing the rest of the group at your table to give you input, including our speakers. You’re going to get access to some of the speakers, some people who’ve got years and years of experience,

Tools and Techniques for Blogging While Travelling Today I tackle a question from a listener about blogging on the road. Carmen Fellows asked about technicalities such as how to get content online and ways to access your blog. How can you balance blogging while traveling for work or vacation? It depends on the situation, and sometimes it's a juggling act.   While you're away, here are seven approaches to try when it comes to blogging: Take a complete break, and give your readers a break too Work harder, and schedule as much as you can before you go Highlight previous content, or feature a “Best of” series Schedule one of more guest bloggers Blog on the road Use posts that are easy to create (polls, embeddable content, link posts, etc.) Do a combination of the above If you plan on blogging on the road, think about where you can find internet access, and whether you want to bring your computer equipment or leave it behind. There are pros and cons to bringing and using devices such as a smartphone, iPad and laptop. How much do you really need to do with your blog? Working while you're away can have an impact on what you're there to do, whether it’s to have fun with your family or speak at a conference. Allow yourself to be present. It's okay (and important) to have time off from your blog. Links and Resources for Tools and Techniques to Blog Effectively on the Road: How to Take a Break from Your Blog Further Listening Blogger Apps for Smartphone and Tablet Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to Episode 243 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com – a blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of ebooks all designed to help you as a blogger to start a great blog, to grow that blog in terms of the content on it but also your audience, and the engagement you have with that audience, and then to build profit around your blog as well. You can learn more about what we do over at problogger.com. Particularly, check out our two courses once you’re there, look for the courses tab up in the navigation and there you will find out two courses, our How to Start a Blog course which is completely free. It will walk you through the steps to getting your blog up and running. And our brand new course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog which is all about giving you a 31 different activities that you can do to improve your blogging. Head to problogger.com, look for the courses tab and you will find them. In today’s episode, I wanna tackle a question that came in this week from one of our listeners. The listener was Carmen Fellows, thanks for asking the question, Carmen. It’s all about blogging while you’re on the road. I wanna talk to you about how I approach blogging whilst I’m away, whether it’d be for vacation or for work. Carmen particularly wanted me to talk about the technicalities of doing it, how do you actually get your content up online, whether you do it on mobile or iPad or some other way. Also, I wanna talk a little bit about balancing blogging with whatever else you’re doing in your travels, whether that’d be vacation with family and friends or work. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/243. As I said, today’s show was inspired by Carmen Fellows who wrote in with this question via our Facebook group. She says, “Hi Darren, if you haven’t addressed this already, can you review different ways to access your blog while travelling to keep it up? For example, if I can’t get on my computer, do you find that updating via your mobile is suggested or is there a better way? I can be on the road for two to three weeks at a time and find it difficult to...

Creating a Product Library for Your Blog In today’s episode I’m tackling a question from a Facebook group member about creating products to sell on your blog. Kathy Farrokhzad of Horselistening.com is wondering how often she should create, sell, schedule, and roadmap new products on her blog. Is she doing too much in too little time? Try to publish 3-4 new products on your blog each year, whether they're courses, software, ebooks, templates or updates. You want to avoid audience fatigue. But at the same time you don’t want to wait too long between launches. Either of these two extremes may cost you customers and money. Engage your customers, but don’t burn them out. Create a schedule to plan content and products a year in advance. Figure out what products to create, redo or replace, as well as what promotions to include. The frequency of new products depends on various factors, such as how many products you can create and how many different tools need to be created. Come up with themes for your products based on popularity and whether they're easy to research and write about. You can also gear your products toward specific audiences, such as beginners or new customers. And don’t forget about your old products. Consider turning into new products by upselling and bundling them. Yes, you can do lots of regular launches. But you can also get by with just one product. Both will work, so the choice is yours.  Links and Resources for How to Create a Library of Products to Sell On Your Blog: Digital Photography School Ebooks 7 Types of Products to Sell on Your Blog Further Listening Why You Should Create a Product for Your Blog Courses Digital Photography School Courses ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Starting a Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there friends. Welcome to episode 242 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger. At a recent conference, I had a number of people say, “I love the way you say ProBlogger.” I’ve never really thought about that before but ProBlogger is a blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of ebooks, all designed to help you as a blogger to grow as a blogger, to grow your audience, and to build some profit around your blog as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger over at problogger.com. Today’s episode is brought to you by our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course, which launches this month. We are currently taking a group of about 100 bloggers through this course in its beta version. We’re getting very close to being able to launch it for everyone. The feedback coming in has been fantastic so far. If you are interested in improving your blog, taking it to the next level, I really encourage you to head over to problogger.com/31days to register your interest in the course or if you’re listening to this in a week or two’s time, it should be already live and you can just enroll in the course. We’ve designed this course really to take you through a month of teaching but more importantly, some action items, which are designed to help you improve your blog whether you’re a new blogger or whether you’re more of an intermediate blogger and been going for awhile. This is a system that we’ve been using since about 2009, previously in ebook format. It’s helped tens of thousands of bloggers to really level up their blogs. I encourage you to check it out. Head over to problogger.com/31days. In today’s episode, I’m tackling a question about creating products to sell on your blog. It’s a question that came in from one of our group members on Facebook, Cathy, who was asking around how often she should she be creating new products for her particular blog. She’s been creating ebooks.

Social Media Trends – Where Should You Focus Your Energy In our last episode I covered seven trends in social media and blogging. In today’s episode I want to discuss where you should focus your energy as a blogger. There’s so much we could do.but what should we do? Don't become overwhelmed and perplexed. Instead, be inspired about where to put your effort. Should you focus on: live video? bots and messenger marketing? Facebook advertising? long-form video? Instagram stories? blog? all of the above? And how do you decide? Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) there's no right answer. The 'best spot' will be different for everyone. Just don't be pressured into doing what everyone else is doing. Consider your style, topic, audience, and objectives and goals. Get in touch with who you are and what makes you shine. Focus on conversions. Don't give up something that's already working just to start something new. Nine times out of ten it won'y be any better. Instead, focus on good SEO practices. Stay in control, and focus on building your own platform and assets rather than building on other people’s. Use your own to host a podcast or blog. Save some time and effort for new ways to  build your audience, brand, and engagement. Be cautious, but also be willing to pivot and diversify. And don’t feel as if  you have to do it all. Focus on being great at just one or two trends. What are you going to try? Links and Resources for Trends in Social Media - Where Should You Focus Your Energy?: Periscope Gary Vaynerchuk Darren Rowse on Twitter Darren Rowse in Instagram Further Listening 7 Social Media Trends I Noticed at Social Media Marketing World Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to Episode 241 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and the courses all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience, to create great content, to build engagement around your blog, and ultimately to build profit around your blog. I should say profit can be money but it can be other outcomes as well. However you define it, we hope to help you along that journey. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. Today’s podcast is brought to you by our brand new course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog which is launching around now. We’ve already opened it up to a small group of beta testers. I think there’s actually about a hundred bloggers so far who have signed up and are working through that course. It’s closed off at the moment but if you are interested in joining that beta testing group, please go to problogger.com/31days. It’s a course designed to help you over a month to give you a burst of love, bring a burst of love to your blog, to give some really intentional love and care to your blog to write some new content, to think about your editorial strategy, to think about how you can build engagement with your blog, to do some things to help you to get some new readers, and to begin to think about monetization. We don’t focus a lot on monetization in this course, it’s more about getting the foundations right that will help you to monetize but we touch on it towards the end. You can learn more about it at problogger.com/31days. We will be opening it up for a wider audience in the coming weeks. If you don’t get it on that beta test, you just signup there. We’ll let you know when it does open up. In today’s episode, I wanna talk about working out where to put your energy. This is really a follow up to the last episode, in 240. Back in that last episode,

Key Themes and Trends from the Social Media Marketing World Conference In today’s episode, I want to share seven trends people were talking about at the Social Media Marketing World mega-conference recently held in San Diego. Social Media Marketing World is probably one of the biggest social media conferences in the world.  Seven main themes came about from the conference: Facebook Armageddon: Changes have shaken up things. Be Human: It’s time for you to be real. Ask questions, and respond personally. Going Live: There are more platforms to choose from now.  Episodic Video: These are stories on steroids.  Stories Style Content: Design sequences that take your audience on a journey, and stories that provide background or behind-the-scenes action. Bots and Messenger Marketing: Bots may not be real, but they can be useful in blogging to notify people of new information and to ask them questions.  Blogging is Back: People know written content is not going away. Should you do bots, go live, or create episodic content? Or blog, vlog, or do a podcast? Which social network should you focus on? Whatever you decide, make sure you don't build your entire business around a specific social network. Links and Resources for 7 Social Media Trends I Noticed at Social Media Marketing World: SMMW FB Live YT Live Instagram Live Ecamm Live Mike Stelzner Live Streaming Pros Further Listening How Collaborations Can Accelerate Your Blog’s Growth How to Get More Traffic by Updating Your Archives 3 Principles of Building an Engaged Blog Audience Examples of Trends in Social Media Social Media Examiner’s ‘The Journey’ series of videos Gary Vaynerchuk’s ‘First in Line’ ManyChat ChatFuel Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hello my friends and welcome to episode 240 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger—a blog, podcast, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start an amazing blog, to create content that changes your audience’s life, to grow that audience, and to build a profit around your blog. You can learn more about that at problogger.com. Today’s podcast is brought to you by a brand new course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which is launching around this time, and I’m a bit vague about that because we are allowing people into it gradually. We want to test it out with a smaller group of people before we release it into the world. You can head over to problogger.com/31days and sign-up to be notified when we’re ready to welcome you into that community. We do look forward to having you involved in that because it’s a product that has lived as an ebook for many years, and has helped tens of thousands of bloggers over that time. Since back in 2009, I first did that ebook and we’ve had a couple of versions of that. Now we want to release it as a course because we think it will help you to move through the full 31 days. An ebook sometimes can be a little bit hard to do that, so a course with a few emails along the way to prompt you to keep moving through we hope will be a positive experience for you. For those who do join in that beta, we have a special offer for you as well. It’s a paid course but we’re keeping it as affordable as possible. Again problogger.com/31days to register your interest and we’ll let you know when it’s ready for more people. In today’s episode I want to share with you seven key themes and trends that I saw talked about at Social Media Marketing World a few weeks ago in San Diego. Over the last few weeks in this podcast, I’ve been sharing parts of my talk from Social Media Marketing World.

How to Develop an Engaged Blog Audience In today’s episode I want to talk about building engagement on your blog, and building a sense of community around it and your online business. Building engagement is so important for your blog. It helps word-of-mouth growth, gives you energy, builds social proof on your site, and leads to more effective monetization. When people see engagement, they want to stick around and spend money. Three ways to build engagement with your audience Show up predictably - You need to show up regularly. Show up mentally - Be prepared and ready to engage. Show up randomly - Adding an element of surprise can make a massive difference to people. Links and Resources for Principles of Building an Engaged Blog Audience: Bob  Burg Tom Shefchunas Further Listening About Why You Should Build Community on Your Blog Why You Should Make Building Community a Priority in Your Blogging How to Build a Culture of Community on Your Blog Courses ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog ProBlogger’s Ultimate Guide to Start a Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 239 of the ProBlogger podcast. I can’t believe I got to 239, to be honest. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog, to create great content, to build engagement around your blog which is what we’re talking about today, and to build profit around that blog as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger at problogger.com. Today’s podcast is brought to you by our brand new course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog which launches this week to some of you. This is a course that’s built upon our bestselling ebook by the same name. It’s been completely updated for today and contains 31 days of teaching, more importantly, 31 activities that you can do to improve your blog. You can head over to problogger.com/31days to register your interest in the course. If you’re lucky, you might just see the page is live now. We’re going to open it up to 50 users at a time to beta test it and we’re going to do that with a bit of a discount. To be involved in that beta test, head over to problogger.com/31days. We will invite 50 at a time and gradually over time we will get more and more people in there as we get people’s feedback. Hopefully, over the next couple of weeks it’ll be live for everyone. 31 Days to Build a Better Blog launching in the next week or so, depending on how early you get on that list. In today’s episode, I want to talk about building engagement on your blog, building a sense of community around your blog and your online business. If that is something that is a goal for you, tune in for the next 5 or 10 minutes. It’s a relatively short one today. You can also check out the show notes at problogger.com/podcast/239. Building engagement is such an important part of building a profitable blog. If you’ve been listening to ProBlogger for a while now, you do know that it’s one of the pillars of ProBlogging that I talk about. Those four pillars, creating great content is the first one. Number two is driving traffic to your blog which is something you need to actually participate in. It doesn’t just happen. You need to be proactive about it. Number three is to build engagement, to build community so that the traffic that comes actually feels engaged. Then, the fourth pillar is monetization. These idea of building community or building engagement with your readers is so important. For me, it really brings everything alive. As bloggers, we often focus upon getting more readers to our blog. We want more traffic, we want more eyeballs. That’s important because we do need to build awareness ...

How Updating Your Archives Can Drive More Traffic to Your Blog In today’s episode I want to talk about a trend I’ve noticed among many experienced bloggers – tending to their archives. Many experienced bloggers are slowing down on new content, while increasing traffic to to their blog by revising posts they've already written. Individual blog posts tend to get the most traffic on your site, which means there’s gold in them thar archives. But like any asset – your car, your home, even your body – your archives depreciate. Go back to the first post you wrote. You'll probably cringe at what you see – broken links, out-of-date content, and a really awful image (assuming it even has one). If you don’t maintain your archives, they become worthless. Fortunately, maintaining your archives can slow down or even reverse that depreciation. So today I want to challenge you to pay more attention to your archives. (I'm challenging myself as well.) Go to one of your previous posts and update it. (Don't worry – your internal cringe meter will tell you what needs changing.) Even small tweaks, such as fixing the obvious errors, will help. Share your updated post with my Facebook group for input and help. Finally, add a task to your editorial calendar to update at least one post a week.    Links and Resources for How to Get More Traffic by Updating Your Archives: Social Media Marketing World conference Google Analytics; Google AdSense Amazon affiliate accounts Facebook group Examples of Updating Your Archives Case Study Update – Digital Photography School Courses ProBlogger’s Ultimate Guide to Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to episode 238 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses, check those out especially, all designed to help you to grow your blog and to build a profitable blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at problogger.com. Particularly check out those two new courses, How To Start a Blog, Our Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog which is completely free for those of you who are thinking about blogging and want to build to build a blog upon solid foundations. Check that out over on problogger.com and just look for the courses tab. And also, our brand new 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course, which we’ll be launching in the next week or two. Check that out also on the courses tab. You can pre-register to be notified when that goes live and to receive a special discount as well. In today’s episode, I want to talk about a trend that I’ve noticed amongst many experienced bloggers that may explain something you might have noticed amongst them. A lot of more experienced bloggers are slowing down how much new content they are producing. This is partly because many of them are lengthening the content, it takes a little bit longer to write. But there’s also another reason. I want to talk a little bit about one of the trends I’ve noticed amongst full time bloggers. Experienced bloggers who’ve been around for a while that might explain a little bit why they’re not publishing as much, yet they’re still building traffic to their blog. It’s got to do with looking after their archives and it’s something that I think most of us have been blogging even for six or so months should be paying attention to. This is something I talked about at Social Media Marketing World over the last week or so. I just got home from that conference. As I talked about this, I had a lot of people come out to me after my session and say this is something they’ve been doing or something they want to do more of. You can get today’s show notes over at problogger.

How to Use Collaborations to Grow Your Blog Have you ever felt that too many things need doing to build a successful blog? A student I spoke to this week who recently completed our Start A Blog course said they were a little overwhelmed by how much needed to be done. They said it felt like juggling with too many balls in the air. So today I want to share a principle that has helped me keep a lot of balls in the air, and scale my business beyond what I ever thought I could manage–collaborations. When you’re juggling alone you can only keep so many balls in the air. (The current record is 9 balls for 55 seconds.) But if you juggle with other people, you can keep more balls in the air for longer. And this podcast is all about how you can make your blogging a more collaborative experience. Links and Resources for How to Accelerate the Growth of Your Blog with Collaborations: Further Listening 7 Productivity Tips for Bloggers 3 Tips to Increase Your Productivity How to Create a Product for Your Blog Examples of Collaborative Content Creating Products Week: Before You Even Think About Creating Products, Think About This Creating Products Week: Which Product Should I Create? Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 237 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses designed to help you to start and have an amazing blog that’s going to change the world in some way, that’s going to change the lives of your audience but also build a profit, and in doing so, change your life a little way as well. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at problogger.com. Of course, check out our two brand new courses. Firstly, our Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog which was released earlier this year, and our soon to be released, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. You can find the Start a Blog course at problogger.com/startablog and you can sign up to be notified when our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course goes live at problogger.com/31days. In today’s episode, I want to talk about collaborations as a way to grow your blog, to accelerate the growth of your blog. I want to give you some practical ways that you can collaborate with other bloggers to grow you traffic, to create content, to build engagement on your blogs, and to monetize your blog. Collaborations have helped me incredibly to grow my blog, to scale it so much faster than I could’ve ever done alone, and I want to help you to do the same. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/237. Have you ever felt that there’s just too many things that need to be done to build your blog to make it successful? This week, I was speaking to one of the students who’ve recently completed our a Start a Blog course and they said to me that they felt like they were completely overwhelmed by how much needed to be done. The words they used were they felt like it was a juggle and that they had too many balls in the air at once. This is a feeling that I can relate too and I’m sure many of you can relate too as well because there’s so many things that need to be done to build a successful blog. You need to write content, edit that content, polish that content, and schedule that content. You need to promote that content, drive some traffic to your blog, engage on social media, set up an email list. Then when the traffic comes, you’ve got to moderate the comments and engage with the audience, there’s email lists, there’s blog design, there’s servers, there’s plugins, and WordPress that needs to be updated, then there’s the monetization and finding the advertisers,

Growing Your Blog's Income In today's episode, I want to talk about growing your blogging income, particularly when you’ve already started building some traffic and income streams on your blog. This one will be most relevant if you're at an intermediate to more advanced level. If you're just starting out you'll learn things that may not be relevant for you today, but will be good to know going forward. Series on Growing Traffic to Your Blog: 2 Questions to Ask to Help You Find Readers for Your Blog 2 Types of Content that Help You to Find Readers for Your Blog Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog Find Readers for Your Blog Through Commenting and Relationships Grow Traffic to Your Blog Through Guest Posting and Creating Content for Other Blogs, Forums, Media and Events Podcast on Autoresponders: How to Drive Traffic and Profit in your Blogging with Autoresponders Check out our two courses - ProBlogger’s ultimate guide to start a blog and the soon to be released 31 Days to Build a better blog: Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook Group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 236 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, events, job board, series of ebooks, and courses, all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog and to build profit around your blog which is exactly what we’re talking today in today’s episode. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. Also, check out our two new courses, How to Start a Blog course for those of you who are wanting to start a blog. You can get it at problogger.com/startablog or 31 Days to Build a Better Blog which will be launching in March which is more relevant for those of you who’ve already got a blog whether it’s a relatively new one or you’re at that intermediate stage. You can find that at problogger.com/31days. In today’s episode, I wanna talk to you about growing your blog’s income, particularly those of you who’ve already got a bit of a start with building some traffic and income streams to your blog. This episode will be much relevant for those of you are perhaps at more of an intermediate level, maybe more of an advanced level. You’ve got a start but you’re not satisfied with the level of your income. Those of you who are just starting out, you’re probably gonna hear some things that may not be relevant to you today but you might also find them useful to have in the back of your mind as you go forward. Today’s show notes and full transcript of the show are at problogger.com/podcast/236. Today’s show is inspired by a conversation I had this week with a blogger who had been blogging for a couple of years now. She built some traffic up to her blog. She’d already started to experiment with selling sponsored content on her blog. She was in sort of a style, fashion, beauty type niche and had been selling sponsored posts on the site but was not satisfied with the level that she was at. She’s been blogging for two or three years and when she started out had hoped she’d be full time by this point. Whilst she had some success so far with building the income on her blog, she came to me asking, “How do I double what I’m doing?” She really needed to double what she was doing to get to a full time level. On one hand, it was great, getting to a half time level with your blog is something that many bloggers dream of but she also had this thirst for more because she wanted to be able to give up other par- time work, children were going to school now and she had a little bit more time on her hands and so she wanted to really sink herself into her blogging, and to justify being able to do that full time rather than ...

How to Build Authority and Influence with Your Audience In today’s episode, I want to talk about building authority and influence. This topic came about from talking to a number of bloggers who've just completed our Start a Blog course. They're starting from scratch (as we all did), and want not only to be found, but also to make an impression on those who arrive at their blog. How can you be seen as a trusted authority on your topic, and a credible source of information, people don’t yet know who you are? Getting traffic is one thing, but how do you build influence? In this episode, I want to share 13 things that I’ve noticed good influencers do to build authority and credibility with their audience. Resources for How to Build Authority, Influence and Trust When Nobody Knows Who You Are New Blog Honor Roll Facebook group Courses ProBlogger’s ultimate guide to start a blog 31 Days to Build a better blog Further Reading Demian Farmworth - CopyBlogger - 10 ways to build authority as an author Shane Snow - some writing he did on the level that great writers write at This Surprising Reading Level Analysis Will Change the Way You Write Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. Welcome to episode 235 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start an amazing blog, to create content for that blog that’s going to change the world, that’s going to change your reader’s lives, to grow traffic to your blog, and to build profit around your blog as well. You can learn more about what we do at problogger.com. In particular, check out our brand new course How to Start a Blog, our ultimate guide to starting a blog. Check out our new course which is coming in the next few weeks, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which is perfect for new bloggers and intermediate bloggers who want to give their blog a kickstart. You can find our How to Start a Blog course at problogger.com/startablog and 31 Days to Build a Better Blog at problogger.com/31days or just over on ProBlogger, look for the courses tab and you’ll find them all. In today’s episode, I want to talk about building authority and influence with your audience. This topic came up as I was talking to a number of the bloggers who just completed our Start a Blog course. We just graduated 103 bloggers. They’ve just started their brand new blogs. We posted links to all of them on our site. If you want to check them out, head over to ProBlogger. Today I’ll actually link to them in our show notes as well. These 103 bloggers, just like all bloggers starting out, they’re starting from scratch. They’ve got a number of challenges. One, they need to create content. Two, they need to build traffic. But also more important than building traffic, they need to actually build influence, they need to build authority, they need to build credibility. This is one of the things that a number of new bloggers have talked to me about in the last few weeks. They can see the traffic coming in but how do they actually become someone with authority on their topic? How do they become someone who is trusted as a credible source of information? How do you build this when the traffic that’s coming in has no idea who you are? It’s one thing to get traffic but how do you build influence? In this episode I want to share 13 things that I’ve noticed good influencers do to build this authority and credibility with their audience. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/235. Today we’re talking about how do you build authority, how do you build influence, how do you take this traffic from giving you their attention to actually beginning to feel connected to you on this deeper lev...

How to Relaunch a Dormant Blog In today’s episode, I want to answer a question I get regularly from listeners: How do you relaunch a blog that has died or become dormant? I want to talk you through two scenarios for relaunching a blog, and give you 11 things to consider during a relaunch. Before I get into today’s show though, a couple of things. Firstly, this week on 7th February we’ve got our first ever International Start a Blog Day. For those of you enrolled in our Start a Blog Course, keep working on your launch. And secondly, coming up in March we have our brand new course – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. This is a perfect course for anyone in their first month of blogging, anyone relaunching a blog, or anyone who is blogging and just wants to give their blog a bit of a kick start. It’s a brilliant month of learning, but more importantly doing small things every day to improve your blog. Whether you do the tasks daily or tackle the course slower, it’ll give your blog a boost. Register your interest in the course at problogger.com/31days and we’ll send you an email when it launches with a special early bird discount. Further Listening on How to Relaunch Your Blog After It Becomes Dormant 10 Things I Wish I Knew About Blogging and Content Marketing When I Started A Blogger Shares How She Made $28,000 Using The 4 Stages of Warming Her Readers Up Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Good morning and welcome to episode 234 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses, all designed to help you as a blogger to start a great blog, to create great content on that blog that’s gonna change your reader’s lives, to find new readers for your blog, and to build profit around your blog as well. You can learn more about what we do ProBlogger at problogger.com. You can also dig into previous episodes of the show and thousands of tutorials that we’ve published over the years. In today’s episode, episode 234, I wanna answer a question I get regularly from readers. How do you relaunch a blog that’s previously died or become dormant? I wanna talk you through two scenarios for relaunching your blog and give you 11 things to consider during the relaunch, 11 questions to ask yourself that will help you to relaunch with your best foot forward. Before I get into today’s show, I want to mention two things. Firstly, this week, on the 7th of February, we’ve got our first ever International Start a Blog Day. For those of you who have previously enrolled in our Start a Blog course, keep working on your launch and look out for emails from us of details on how to participate in that. If you already have a blog and you wanna check out some amazing new blogs, watch out on problogger.com on the 7th of February and you’ll see a massive list of some amazing new blogs. If you follow us on our Facebook page, facebook.com/problogger, I will also be featuring some of the new blogs on that day and some live videos. The other thing to mention is that coming up in March, we have a brand new course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which has previously been an ebook and a series of blog posts, and a series of podcasts as well. We’ve updated it all and we’ve put it together in a course format. For anyone who is in the first month of blogging, maybe you’ve just done that Start a Blog course or anyone who is relaunching a dormant blog, this would be perfect for you and anyone who's been blogging for a while who just wants to give their blog a bit of a kickstart, maybe it's that time of the year and you wanna get things going again, this is a brilliant course that’s really going to walk you through over a month or you can take it slow if you want t...

The Tools We’re Using in 2018 to Get More Subscribers and Customers In today’s episode, I want to introduce you to a Thrive - a suite of WordPress plugin tools we’ve been using on our blogs for the past six months or so that we’re really excited about. Today’s show is brought to you by two brand new courses from ProBlogger. I’ve been talking about one of them - our Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog - for the past month or so. It’s perfect for those people who want to get a blog launched with solid foundations. We’ve had more than 1000 people start the course already, and we’re now seeing many of them launch their blogs. We’ll be celebrating the launches on the 7th February with what we’re calling ProBlogger’s International Start a Blog day. To be included in that day simply register for the course by 31 January and launch your blog by 7th Feb. The second course we’ve developed that we’ll be launching in March isn't just for new bloggers. It's also for those of you who have been blogging for a while. It’s our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course. Long-time listeners will be familiar with that name. I originally ran 31DBBB back in 2009 as a blog post series. Later it was turned into an eBook, which we’ve since updated. That eBook sold tens of thousands of copies. I also did a version of the series to launch this podcast. But now we’re giving it a complete overhaul and will be launching it as a course. I’ll give you more details of it in coming episodes. But it’s perfect both for new bloggers who have just set up a blog with our start a blog course, as well as more established bloggers who want to give their blog a real kick start. It’s really about developing good habits over an intentional month of blogging. This will be a paid course, although we’ve kept it as affordable as we can. And we'll be launching it to anyone who preregisters their interest at a launch discount. Links and Resources on Tools We’re Using to Get More Subscribers and Customers in 2018 Facebook Group Thrive Episode on CoSchedule Courses Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren : Hi there and welcome to episode 233 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com. A blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses, all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog, to get the blog started but also to grow it and to build profit around your blog as well. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at problogger.com. Now, today’s episode, I wanna introduce you to a suite of WordPress plugins, tools that we’ve been using on my blogs over the last six or so months and that we will be investing more and more time into using more of in the coming year ahead. We’re very excited about these particular tools. I brought my general manager, Laney Galligan, on to talk about those tools. I wanna talk about those in a minute but before I do, I do want to mention that today’s show is brought not by an external sponsor but by our brand new courses at ProBlogger and yes, you heard me right, courses. I’ve been talking about one of them now for about a month, our Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog and it has been going so well. We’ve had over a thousand people start the course already. There’s another thousand or so who’ve already registered in addition to that who are yet to start the course. But what’s really exciting me is we’re starting now to see blogs launched as a result of this particular course. We’ve got a little Facebook group where we’re celebrating the launches of the new blogs. It is so exciting to see these brand new blogs coming out the other end of the course. Some are getting some great reviews of the course as well.

Collaborative Blogging - One Blogger Shares How She Started a Blog with over 200 Collaborators Today’s episode is the last in our series where I handed the podcast over to you, the listeners, to tell your stories and tips of starting and growing your blogs. It was all part of our Start a Blog course, which launches tomorrow.  Today’s episode features blogger Chrissann Nickel from Women Who Live on Rocks. She shares her challenges and insights when it comes to collaboration, not listening to critiques, and working with multiple writers. Links and Resources for Collaborative Blogging - How One Blogger Started a Blog with Over 200 Collaborators Women Who Live on Rocks Blogger Chrissann Nickel Register for ProBlogger's FREE Ultimate Guide to Start a Blog Course Facebook Group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there, welcome to episode 232 of the ProBlogger podcast. This is the last to the series of blogger stories that we’ve been featuring since way back in 221, the 221st episode. It’s part of our Start a Blog course which launches tomorrow. My name is Darren Rowse. I’m the blogger behind problogger.com – a blog, a podcast, event, job board, a series of ebooks, and tomorrow a course which we have designed to help you to start a blog, to grow your audience, and to make money from your blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. You can sign up for our brand new free course at problogger.com/startablog. As I said, this has been a part of a series of blogger stories that we’ve been running since episode 221. Really, this whole series has been about trying to inspire as many new bloggers as possible, and also helping those of you who are already on your journey to pick up some tips as well from other bloggers. You hear my voice every episode. We want to add in some other voices as part of this series. I’ve been loving the feedback that we’ve been getting as a result of this. We’ve featured tech bloggers, travel bloggers, recipe bloggers, nutrition bloggers, a voice coach, all kinds of bloggers over the last 10 or so episodes. Today we’ve got a really interesting one for you. It is Chrissann Nickel. Chrissann has a blog called womenwholiveonrocks.com, which I think is just a fascinating name. Women who live on rocks got me curious. Chrissann actually talks a little bit about the name of her blog and how it’s actually been one of the things she’s been most grateful for in starting this blog. Chrissann’s blog is a collaborative blog. It’s a little bit different from some of the others that we’ve been mentioning so far. She gives some tips on that and talks a little bit about a thing about your readers. I’m going to hand over to Chrissann now. Just a quick reminder, our Start a Blog course does launch tomorrow, the 10th of January 2018. If you’re listening after that time, you can join in any time on that course into the future. It’s really designed to help pre-bloggers to start their first blog. We’re going to talk you through the technicalities of how to set up a blog on your own domain, on your own servers in an affordable way. But we’re also going to help you make some good decisions about your blog and to think about how to build a profitable blog. Not just the technicalities of it but to make good decisions in the early days so that you set up a blog with good, strong foundations. Again, that course can be found at problogger.com/startablog. Please go up and sign up. It will launch tomorrow, the 10th of January. Over the next month or so we’ve got a whole lot of exciting things to share with you as part of that launch. I really can’t wait to see the hundreds, if not thousands of blogs that will come from that course. I’m going to hand over to Chrissann now who’s going to tell you a little bit about her blog, womenwholiveonrocks.

From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer - A Tech Podcaster Tells His Story Today's episode continues our series where I hand the podcast over to you, the listeners, to tell your stories and tips of starting and growing your blogs. Today’s blogger is Neil Hughes from Technology Blog Writer. Neil shares how he started out writing articles on LinkedIn, and talks about some of his struggles, accomplishments, and goals. Links and Resources for From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer - One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story Technology Blog Writer Blogger Neil Hughes Register for ProBlogger's FREE Ultimate Guide to Start a Blog Course Facebook Group PB121: 7 Strategies for Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to Episode 231 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of problogger.com – a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks and a course all designed to help you as a blogger to start an amazing blog, to grow that blog, the traffic to it, the content on it, and to make some money from it as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger over at problogger.com. In today’s episode, we’re continuing our little series of blogger stories which we are ending 2017 and starting 2018 with in the lead up to our Start a Blog course. My goal in 2018 is to see hundreds, if not thousands, of new blogs started. We’ve developed this great little course which you can find at problogger.com/startablog. It’s free and it will help you, all your friends, to start a blog. As part of the launch of this new course, we wanted to feature the stories of bloggers who had started blogging and to tell the stories of the opportunities that came from that. Also, to share some tips particularly for those starting out but also for those who are on the journey. Today I’ve got a tech blogger from the UK who is gonna share some of his tips. He’s actually used blogging, podcasting. He started out on LinkedIn. He’s got some expertise in that as well. He’s really built himself an amazing little business as a result of that, a business that has enabled him to leave his full time job and work for himself. He talks a little bit about imposter syndrome and pushing through that. He gives a brilliant tip that I wanna add some thoughts to at the end of his story as well. I’m gonna hand over now to Neil Hughes from Tech Blog Writer. You can find his blog at techblogwriter.co.uk. You can also find a link to that on today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/231. I’ll be back at the end of Neil’s story to wrap things up and tell you a little bit about tomorrow’s show too. Neil: My name is Neil Hughes. My blog, podcast, and everything that I do comes into the name Tech Blog Writer. My URL is predictably www.techblogwriter.co.uk. I’m hoping that you know what I do from the title there. That was the idea from the very beginning. My story really began in July 2014 when I published my very first post on the LinkedIn publishing platform. It was a simple post calling out gurus, ninjas and those self-proclaimed influences, you know the kind, the Instagram expert with 72 followers. The post was called The Rise of the Social Media Guru. This is where my tech blogging journey started. At the time, I didn’t have any objectives, any hopes, goals or dreams for the blog. I just wanted to share my insights having spent 20 years working in IT. I gotta be honest with you, I was originally scared about blogging on the LinkedIn publishing platform and crippled with that self-doubt and imposter syndrome that so many of us go through. I still, to this day, remember nervously hovering over the publish button full of fears and doubts. What would my professional colleagues, friends, and contacts say?