Many bloggers have the same problem…..trying to connect with their readers.

Sometimes it can feel like you are writing your backside off and getting nothing in return. No-one is responding to your posts and your traffic levels are just levelling out.

So what can you do?

Well, trying to connect directly to your readers is one of the best ways to improve your readership and improve your long term growth.

Here are 3 ways that can help your blog:

#1 – Talk from Experience

Sharing your experience about a particular topic is a great way to become seen as an authority. Many people might have had the same experience and it makes them more likely to comment on your posts.

It also proves that you do know what you are talking about and your readers will see this clearly.

#2 – Have Your Own Opinion

The problem with many blogs is that they are written in a way that appeals to everyone. Whilst this isn’t technically a “bad” thing, what it means is that you won’t get much buzz around the blog.

If everything you are writing about appeals to everyone, then no-one will add their own opinions to your posts.

But if you share your own opinions then people are more likely to agree or disagree with you. When this happens it starts a conversation and your comment count can start increasing quite a lot.

#3 – Show Yourself

People can relate better to information on websites or blogs if they can see or hear the person writing it.

By adding your photo to your blog and also audios and videos, people can see exactly who you are and they will connect far more easily than if they were just reading text.

Don’t worry about how you look or sound either, people will see you for who you are and what experience you have that can help them. That is what is important to them.

Conclusion

Just these 3 tips can make a real difference to your blog and how appealing it is.

Try giving at least one of them a trial and monitor your results. You might just like it.

Enjoy Your Blogging!

Tony

Interviewing authority figures within your niche can be an awesome way to get a lot of traffic fast to your blog.

So how do you go about it?

Step #1 – Find People To Interview

Just go and spend some time noting down the most popular people (they don’t have to be bloggers) within your niche. Write down their names and contact details.

Then send them a polite email, introducing yourself and ask them if they would mind doing a quick interview (using skype). Tell them they can use it to give great value to their own customers and also you will be posting it on your blog.

Try and get over to them the benefits it will give them and their business.

Step #2 – Get Your Questions Together

Make a list of 5-20 questions that you want them to answer and be sure they all give value and would be useful for other people to know.

Once you have the list of questions, send them to the people who agree to be interviewed so that they can prepare their answers.

Step #3 – Interview Time

You would arrange to do the interview at a time that suits the person you are interviewing.

Begin by introducing the person and a brief bio of who they are and what they have achieved. Then move onto the questions until you reach the end.

Just use Skype to do the interview and recording software such as Pamela to record it.

Step #4 – Promote It

You now have a podcast that can be added to your blog. So write a post on your blog, telling your readers what they will learn by listening to it and have it available on the post for them to listen to.

You should also then submit the podcast to as many podcast directories as you can.

Also get the person you interviewed to tell their own customers about the interview and get them to link to your blog post.

Conclusion

These types of interviews can be done in a very short space of time but can bring in hundreds of extra readers to your blog. Especially if you manage to find real authority figures to interview.

So try it out and get those extra readers today

Enjoy Your Blogging!

Tony

Here’s the difference between blog commenting and blog comment spamming:

Blog Commenting – Leaving useful and informative comments on other people’s blogs.

Blog Comment Spamming – Using software to leave comments on thousands of blogs overnight.

There are several pieces of software that you can buy right now and start spamming your comments onto other people’s blogs.

Are they worth the money?

Well I guess it depends on how much you value your blog. If you just want to earn money from a blog and want to get lots of links to them, then comment spamming will do just that.

But how the search engines will view your blog when it suddenly gets hundreds, possibly thousands, of links overnight is something you won’t know unless you try it. But do so at your own risk is all I am saying.

Blog Commenting The Right Way

Leaving comments on other blogs is a fantastic way to get targeted traffic onto your own blog. People will read your comments and see your link, so as long as your comments are useful, you should get visitors from each comment.

All you need to do is go and search for related blogs to your own niche and see if the blog owner is allowing comments. Just look at previous posts and see if they have comments on them. If they do then find a post that you can share some thoughts on.

The key for leaving your comments is to make sure they are related to the blog post you are commenting on and actually add value to it.

Maybe you could share a related tip? Add something extra to the post to create more value? Ask a question? Thank them for a great post?

One thing that will help your comments to be accepted is to make sure you reference something in the post. This proves you have actually read it and not using automated software.

Most bloggers love getting real comments on their blogs. It proves to them that people actually like what they are doing and like to read their blog.

So find at least an hour a week to go and leave 5-10 useful comments on other blogs and you may be surprised at just how much traffic they start to bring in

Enjoy Your Blogging!

Tony

I personally sold more than 200 websites in 2009. All were profitable, some were very profitable.

But is website flipping still a good option for making money in 2010?

You bet it is!

Click Here to get some awesome FREE site flipping videos before they are taken down…

One thing that did appear towards the end of 2009 was a decrease in the prices for brand new websites. This was probably due to an increase in the number of people rebranding WordPress blogs and pasting 10-20 PLR articles on them and selling them straight away.

That technique seems to be dying off a little now, as buyers just won’t pay more than $100 for them.

So What Is Working in 2010?

To put it plainly, websites that are established and making money will sell every day of the week. If proof can be provided of steady traffic levels and earnings, then the sites will sell.

Just take a look on Flippa and you’ll very rarely see sites that are established not selling. When they do it is often because the buyer has set a reserve too high.

Not a hard and fast rule but generally websites sell for 6-12 times their monthly earnings. If they are more established then it is possible to get several years revenue, just like you see in these FREE site flipping videos.

It’s Not Always about Revenue

Website buyers who purchase high end websites know how to monetize a website effectively. So they see the potential in a site that has high traffic but isn’t earning that much revenue.

So, many times a high price can be reached even if a website isn’t earning a lot of revenue. Steady or increasing traffic levels can still reap huge rewards.

So the key to being successful in 2010 by selling websites is to make sure you focus on building established websites that are getting traffic. By doing this your efforts will be paid off far more than trying to sell brand new websites.

Enjoy Your Blogging (and website flipping)!

Tony

In this video I look at why hosting your own WordPress blog is highly recommended:

Enjoy Your Blogging!

Tony

No matter what niche you are involved in, it’s always a good idea to keep expanding your knowledge and learning all the latest information within your niche.

So having a list of several blogs that are related to your own and considered to be authorities is crucial. It allows you to see what is popular, what the latest news is, what the latest trends are and so much more.

It’s also a great way to give yourself some ideas about what to blog about, especially if you are having trouble coming up with your own ideas.

Here are 5 blogs within my own niche that I love to read:

ProBlogger – A great blog for anything related to making money by blogging. Run by Darren Rowse and one of the most popular blogs online. It’s an essential read to keep up to date with what is happening in the blogosphere.

Darren is a guy I have a huge amount of respect for and considered THE authority when it comes to blogging. I’ve been following his blog for several years and it has certainly taught me a great deal.

Entrepreneurs Journey – Another hugely popular blog run by another Aussie named Yaro Starak. Unlike Problogger, Yaro focuses on internet marketing as well as blogging. So there is a lot of sound business advice on his blog too.

Blogging Tips – This blog focuses purely on (yes, you guessed it!) blogging tips. They have several authors who provide some very useful tips. Everything from building traffic to posting content is covered and makes a good daily read.

Copyblogger – Another one of the most popular blogs in the world, copyblogger is run by Brian Clark and gives a huge amount of information about writing and producing compelling copy.

John Chow – This one I like reading because he shares a lot of information about what it takes to become a dot com mogul and also the lifestyle it brings. It’s more personal than other business style blogs, which is why I like it so much. You can really relate to John and follow his every move!

So those are 5 blogs I like to read as often as I can. Make sure you have your own list of blogs and keep track of what is going on in your own niche.

Enjoy Your Blogging!

Tony

Here is a list of 6 WordPress plugins that I install on every blog I create and wouldn’t be without them. Of course there are hundreds more but these should be on every blog you have yourself.

Akismet – This comes already installed when you create a new WordPress blog. It helps to reduce the amount of spam comments you receive.

Platinum SEO – This plugin adds SEO functionality to your pages of content, such as adding META tags. If you don’t know much about SEO, just install it and it will take care of the rest for you.

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin creates an XML sitemap for your blogs and also informs the major search engines when you update. This is a great plugin for getting content indexed fast.

Ping Optimizer – This plugin prevents your blog from pinging everytime you make changes to a post or import scheduled posts.

SEO Smart Links – This will automatically link to other related posts on your blogs and is great to increase the SEO and “spiderability” for the search engines.

Sociable – Adds popular social bookmarking links to your blog posts so that visitors can bookmark them. Great for getting extra backlinks.

Enjoy Your Blogging!

Tony

Following on from yesterday, in this video we look at how to create quick blog content. If you ever get stuck for ideas of what to post, it gives you some quick ways of coming up with ideas.

Enjoy Your Blogging!

Tony

Please leave your comments below, as I would love to know your thoughts on this post

It can be one of the most difficult things each day when you want to write a post to your blog but just can’t think of what to write about.

I’m sure it happens to many bloggers, including myself sometimes.

Fortunately there are certain things you can do to help this.

Plan a Week Ahead

The first, which is something I like to do myself, is to plan out 7 days of posts at the weekend. Just sit down on a Saturday or Sunday and brainstorm 7 ideas for blog posts.

You don’t have to write the posts, just get the 7 ideas together. Then each day for the next week, you just have to pick one of the ideas and write the post. This will really speed things up each day and will save you lots of brain power!

Here are a few other things you can use to help too:

Google Alerts – Sign up to receive news and blog alerts for terms in your niche. Each day you will receive news about the particular keywords you enter. What you can do then is just re-write this news into your own words and in your own unique style. This can also be a great way to tap into new readers who are searching for a particular news item.

Blogs In Your Niche – You should already know who the other bloggers are in your niche (first rule of business is to know your competition ). So visit their blogs and see what they are writing about. Obviously don’t blatantly steal any of their hard work, just use them to get some ideas of what to write about. Look back through their archives or see their popular posts, you can then see what subjects will give your blog more benefit too.

Keyword Research – Although there is always an argument over whether bloggers should write for their readers or for the search engines, doing some form of keyword research will always help you to get more visitors. So use the Google Keyword Tool and find 50-100 keywords that are related to your niche. Then when you want to think of some ideas for new posts, look through them and see if you can incorporate them into your blog.

Hopefully these ideas will help you out when you hit the wall in terms of what to write about today.

Enjoy Your Blogging!

Tony

In this video I look at the contents of the ideal blog post and how to get more benefit from every post you make.

Hope you like it:

Enjoy Your Blogging!

Tony