This guest post is by Regine Becher of Syndicated Partners.

Like most bloggers, you probably want to make some money from your blog. Chances are good you’ve tried things like writing product reviews or putting banners or links to affiliate products into your sidebar.

But while many bloggers have mastered the “Art of Blogging” (or at least the basic principles) successfully, earning money from your blog doesn’t seem to be that easy. So what could be better for you than to use your blogging experiences and skills to improve the results of your affiliate promotions?

In this post, I’ll show you how you can re-purpose three of the most successful blogging strategies to get more out of your affiliate promotions. As a nice extra, these tactics will also have a positive effect on your blog. But more importantly, you’ll learn how you can merge them into a combined and even more powerful strategy for your affiliate promotions.

While some of what I write may seem simple or self-evident to the more experienced affiliate bloggers, it’s this way of tying it all together into one strategy that will make the affiliate promotions on your blog really stand out.

Let’s look at the three important blogging strategies on their own first.

Write (and promote) for your audience

You know that well enough—if you want your stuff to be read, it has to match your audience’s interests. The same is true for your affiliate promotions, in particular for the products you choose to promote: they have to be relevant for your audience.

This sounds self-evident, but frankly I’m stumped at the number of bloggers who have an affiliate banner for a hosting company on their blog—even though their audience clearly isn’t thinking about computers or internet when visiting their blog.

So instead of promoting your hosting company on your garden blog, why not try it with an affiliate link for garden tools, or link to an ebook about gardening?

Publish (and promote) quality

You know the game… Quality content attracts real readers which are interested in the topic. An excited and engaged audience. (Just look around here on BlogSenseIncome if you don’t believe me.) It also makes people stay on your site longer, come back for more, engage with you and others, and recommend you to friends.

Just the things you want for your blog.

The same holds true for any products you promote: choose quality. Again, this seems to be self-evident. But take a look around at some blogs and see what they promote. (Or take a close look at your own blog, just for good measure.)

A lot of times, I see just the same banners or “product reviews” for the same old products. It seems that a lot of affiliate bloggers don’t bother to pick a product by its quality. Nor do they care about the “quality” of the vendor, i.e. about his integrity, and about how much he cares about his customers.

In the long run, your readers will notice the difference. And they will trust your recommendations just because they know you watch out for them.

Even the quality of the affiliate program should matter to you as affiliate. After all, you can and should expect a fair treatment for your efforts. Affiliate promotions are a business deal between the vendor and you, the affiliate. If a vendor doesn’t care about the success of his affiliates, why should you bother to promote his products?

So, again, be picky. Choose the right kind of products to promote.

Establish expertise—not only for yourself

This powerful blogging strategy has several facets which can all play together:

• You can establish yourself as expert on your own blog by posting the right kind of content.
• You can establish yourself as expert to a wider audience by guest posting on other blogs.
• You can establish other people as experts on your blog by publishing their guest posts.
• And you can establish yourself as a “meta expert”, as the go-to guy/girl of the experts in your field, by publishing a selection of guest posts by recognized experts in your field and/or by interacting with them on your blog, e.g. through interviews.

Again, you can make use of the same strategy in your affiliate marketing. If you want your readers to buy the products you’ve selected for them, they need to do two things: trust your judgement, and trust the vendor to deliver quality. A big step towards the first is if your readers see you as the expert. That will make them much more likely to trust your recommendations.

But don’t forget about the second part, about trusting the vendor. Before somebody buys from a vendor you recommend, they have to be reasonably sure that this person will be honest, and that (s)he will deliver quality.

To some extent, you can establish that trust towards the vendor with your recommendation: if readers see you as trust-worthy, your recommendation carries some weight, too.

But you should also consider establishing expert status for the product creator on your blog. Then when a reader clicks on your affiliate link, he will already be prepared to trust the vendor whom he sees as expert.

Tie these strategies together for even more power

Just by using these three strategies, you can improve the results from your affiliate efforts a lot. But there’s a very simple, though rarely used way to combine these strategies into something even more powerful:

Publish guest posts by product vendors on your blog, and include your affiliate link in the byline.

Now, just to be clear about it: I’m not talking about promotional content or “product reviews”. I’m talking about guest articles with real, quality content. And about establishing the vendor as the expert (unlike a product review, where you are the “expert” who reviews). And, of course, about picking and promoting the right kind of products in the first place.

To fully understand the power of this strategy, put yourself in the shoes of your readers for a moment:

They come to your blog. They know you publish good stuff, and you’re an expert in the field—you’ve done your best to establish that status. On your blog, they read a guest article by another expert. It contains great content, is helpful, informative, and entertaining.

They like the style and want to read more of the same.

Do you think they’re likely to click on the link (your affiliate link) in the byline? And do you think they might be willing to spend money on a product by this expert?

To achieve this, you only need to re-purpose and tie together the three simple strategies you’re already following when you blog: write for your audience, publish quality, and establish expertise. Do this by choosing the right products, and then publishing informative guest posts by product vendors with your affiliate link included.

In return, you get more out of your affiliate promotions for everybody involved:

• Your readers get to read great content.
• You recommend a good product which will improve your readers’ lives in some way.
• You make it easier for your audience to trust your recommendation, to buy the product and thus to improve their life.
• The vendor has a chance to make more sales and get happy customers.
• And you? You benefit from fresh quality content. You have a chance to enhance your reputation even further. And of course there’s the thing with the affiliate commissions…

In short, it’s a win-win-win. What I like most about this strategy is its simplicity. Despite being a really powerful strategy, it’s also about as simple and easy as it gets.

To show you just how easy it can be, I’ll give you the outline again in eight simple action steps. Why don’t you just give it a try and actually do the steps while you read along?

1. Choose a few good products to promote

By “good”, I mean quality products from trustworthy vendors with a quality affiliate program. And of course products which fit the interests and needs of your audience.

2. Sign up for the affiliate programs of the vendors

Make sure you read the terms of the affiliate programs, and are happy with them.

3. Check the existing promotional material

If the vendor offers promotional material for his affiliates, browse through it to check if there are any suitable articles you could use.

Don’t be disappointed if there aren’t any, though—usually vendors provide what is most asked-for by affiliates, and most affiliates don’t use this strategy… (bad for them, good for you!).

If you find ready-made articles by the vendor anywhere, make sure you’re allowed to enter your affiliate link. If in doubt, ask. If no suitable articles are readily available, go to step 4.

4. Get in touch with the vendors

Introduce yourself, and give them the URL of your blog. Be professional: you’re contacting a potential business partner.

Ask for suitable articles, and explain what you want to do with them (establish the vendor as expert on your blog, give your audience good content, and generate sales for both of you). It should be clear that you’re not looking for purely promotional material, but for actual content.

Make sure it’s absolutely clear that you will use your affiliate link in the resource box and/or the article content—you don’t want to risk any misunderstandings about this.

To increase your chances of getting suitable material, you can also point out that the articles could have been published elsewhere before. Most vendors, especially the more established and successful ones, won’t provide each affiliate with a different set of “unique” articles.

I’m not going into the depths of the “unique content” discussion here, but since this is not primarily an SEO strategy, it may not matter for you whether the guest articles on your blog have been published in other places, too. The quality of the articles is much more important! The internet is a huge place, and chances are very high your readers haven’t seen them before.

5. Read between the lines

Not every vendor will send you suitable articles. But regardless of that, their replies might tell you a lot about how they do business, and how they treat their customers and affiliates. Even if somebody can’t provide you with articles, he/she might be a great guy or girl, and there might be options for other business ventures in the future.

Just be open for ideas.

6. Check the material you get

Seriously. You want to feature the vendor as expert. So to make this strategy work, you have to stick to your standards. Make sure you only publish articles which:

• are a good fit for your audience and topic
• contain real content, are entertaining, informative, or helpful
• aren’t promotional
• meet your quality standards

A good test is to ask yourself if this article would be worth publishing without your affiliate link. If an article doesn’t match your requirements, don’t use it.

7. Insert your affiliate link

Insert your affiliate link for the vendor in the places you two agreed upon. Then double-check the link, just in case.

8. Publish

To add even more leverage, don’t just publish the article on your blog. We’re talking about serious, quality content here—about guest articles you could and should be proud to anounce to your audience and to the world.

Use social media to point people to the article. Link to it in your newsletter, or publish it in your ezine. Add it to an autoresponder sequence for your mailing list, so that any future subscribers can read it, too. Or link to it from your “thanks for opting in” page.

After all, if you’ve chosen the right kind of guest article, your audience will love you for the pointer to the post! Once you’re done with all the steps, go back to step 1 and start over.

The biggest enemy of success…

We’ve all been there: you read about a great new strategy that would move you forward quite a bit. You’re very excited about the idea, and make plans to implement it as soon as possible. Only “asap” usually turns out to be tomorrow. Then next week. Then next month. And then never.

Sound familiar? Why don’t you do it a bit different this time? I’ve given you eight action steps above. Take a piece of paper or open a file right now and start a list of suitable products and affiliate programs. If you’re already signed up for such affiliate programs, go straight to step 3. Check the available content for suitable pieces. And if you can’t find any, don’t pass go, proceed with step 4 and send a note to the vendor(s). Right now.

Worst case is you’ll spend the next hour getting in touch with potential business partners—not the worst thing that can happen to you today, is it?

Editor’s note: tomorrow, our final posts in this series look at blogging smarter (and more profitably) with WordPress.

Regine Becher is an affiliate manager and JV broker. To help affiliates and bloggers get more out of their affiliate promotions, Regine runs a service called Syndicated Partners, where affiliates can download quality articles and publish them with their affiliate link inside.

This guest post is by Daniel Scocco of DailyBlogTips.com.

Let’s start with a question: What’s the single most important factor when it comes to making money with Google AdSense?

It’s organic traffic (i.e. traffic from Google and other search engines).

Here’s a simple example to illustrate the point. Suppose you have an online forum which receives 500,000 unique visitors per month, but 100% of those are coming directly to the forum, either by a bookmark or by typing the URL on their browsers, because they are already regular members. The second website is a niche site that receives only 250,000 unique visitors per month, but 80% of those are coming from search engines, while the remaining 20% are coming from referring sites. Despite the huge different in traffic levels, if both sites started using Google AdSense the niche, one would earn a lot more (I wouldn’t be surprised if it would be five or even ten times more).

How come?

That’s because visitors coming from search engines are already looking for something in specific (i.e. they are looking whatever they searched on Google) and when they end up on your site they are very likely to click on your AdSense units should they see something that is related to what they’re looking for. Other types tend to click on ads much less often (the ones that visit your site regularly even stop seeing your ads—it’s called ad blindness).

The bottom line is that if you want to increase your AdSense earnings, one of the best things you can do is to increase your organic traffic. That’s easier said than done, I know, but it’s totally possible, and below I want to to share a strategy you can use for this.

The long tail

The central idea of this strategy is to use the long tail to increase your organic traffic.

If you are not familiar with the term, the long tail refers to the tail-shaped curve that is produced when you consider the distribution of certain things. For example, consider the books sold on Amazon.com. There are some books that end up selling millions of copies. Those are the best-sellers, and they are responsible for a big part of Amazon’s revenues. Nothing new here. What about the more obscure books that sell a much fewer number of copies (e.g., from 100 up to 1000). One could think they are negligible to Amazon’s business model, but quite the opposite! The sales volume from each of those books individually might be insignificant, but there are hundreds of thousands of such books, so if you combine their sales the result is quite significant (and some people argued that this is a key advantage for Amazon).

The same principle applies to many things online, including search queries on search engines. A small number of search queries (e.g. “money”, “health”, “business”) take the bulk of the resources on search engines. However, if you sum all the rare and obscure search queries (e.g. “how to make money selling pets”, “health therapy with dolphins”), their volume end up being significant. The image below illustrates this:

How can you use this principle to get more organic traffic? It’s simple: discover the long tail keywords related to your niche and create content to fill the needs of those users. Here’s a step-by-step guide for doing this:

Step 1: Use the double-filter process to find long tail keywords

You can do this step using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. 

Before getting started, on the Filter options make sure to select the locations as “all countries” and the language as “all languages” (after all you are aiming from global traffic). Also, on the left sidebar, change the type of match from “Broad” to “Exact” (this is to ensure the data will be more reliable).

Let’s suppose you have a blog about PC games. You should start with the broadest possible keyword, “PC games”. Now scroll through the results looking for narrower keywords that have at least 50,000 monthly searches. For instance, “pc games download”, “free games for pc” and “pc game list.” Write those on notepad. This is the first filter.

To filter the keywords one more time, pick each of the narrower terms you selected on the previous step and put the on Google’s tool. For instance, I’ll use “pc games download”, as you can see with the screenshot below:

Now you need to scroll through the results one more time, looking for very narrow (i.e. long tail) keywords that have between 1000 and 15000 monthly searches. Some examples I found are: “old pc games download”, “full pc games downloads”, “free pc games downloads for windows 7″, and “games download free full version”.

The longer the keyword the better (as long as it has at least 1000 monthly searches) because ranking for it will be easier.

Step 2: Create a piece of content filling the needs of those users

Google’s main business is search. This means that it needs to deliver results that will completely satisfy its users, else it will start losing money. Knowing this, the starting point for any promotional effort to increase your organic traffic should be the needs of the users you want to attract.

In other words, if you want to receive traffic from the keyword “old pc games download” you must make sure that the page in your site that is supposed to rank well for that keyword has all the information, links and resources someone searching for that term could be looking for.

Now your goal is to create one page/blog post for each of the long tail keywords you found in the first step. You don’t need to do this all in the same day. Instead you could aim to publish a new one every week or so.

Just make sure that the content on that page will be complete and top notch (i.e., don’t be afraid to spend some hours researching and composing it).

Step 3: Promote those pages like you mean it

As you probably know, having great content is only part of the equation if you want to rank well in Google and receive organic traffic. The other part is promotion and backlinks.

Here are some methods you can use to promote each of your pages/posts once you publish them:

• Email the URL of your page to bloggers in your niche saying they might find it interesting. And I don’t mean five or six of them. I mean email it to 100 bloggers and website owners. If you can’t find 100 in websites your niche, you aren’t trying hard enough.
• Guest post on other blogs and, instead of linking to your homepage on the byline, link to the page you are trying to promote. Again, I am not talking about one or two guest posts, but ten or 20 for each page you publish targeting a long tail keyword.
• Leverage social networks like Twitter and Facebook to promote the page, and perhaps create a contest to encourage people to share the page with their friends.
• Post about your page on online forums, Q and A sites, social bookmarking sites, you name it.

Step 4: Wait and profit

That’s pretty much it. After you do all of the above, you’ll just need to wait while your pages go up in the search rankings. Usually this take between four and eight weeks to happen. At this point you should start seeing an increase in the organic traffic, and consequently on your AdSense earnings.

If it works as planned you can go back to Step 1 and repeat the process with other keywords or with other niches as well.

editor’s note: tomorrow, we look at blogging smarter with affiliate sales.

Daniel Scocco is the owner of DailyBlogTips.com, and today he’s launching his AdSense Profits Course. Check it out if you want to discover new strategies and methods you can use to boost your AdSense earnings.

This guest post is by Sunil of extramoneyblog.com.

Many business owners leave or start their businesses thinking they can achieve more freedom only to find themselves toiling away in their businesses and thus having bought or created themselves another job. Blogging is no different for most bloggers.

Many bloggers who enter the blogosphere with the intention of making money online and someday freeing themselves up from time commitments such as a 9 to 5 job often end up getting tied up to their blogs and don’t realize it until often it’s too late.

That is quite alright if your intention is simply to work online from home, but if your intention is to free yourself up so that you have more time, you must approach blogging from the lens of building a business that generates passive income for you.

See many people that want to break free from their jobs often have the illusion that they want to make more money online and that they can. What they don’t realize is that what their subconscious really wants is more freedom and flexibility. Money is secondary.

Think about it, how long can one continue to trade five days in exchange for only two (weekends)? This never made sense to me. Does it make sense to you? Why? Even if you love your job, you have to be there and show up even when you don’t feel like it some days. Why should you have to?

After an individual reaches a certain point in their career or profession, there comes a point when the incremental money gained from incremental time and effort invested is simply not worth it. At that stage, individuals start craving for time more so than money. Study after study has been conducted on this subject and the results are fairly consistent (watch out because after money, freedom and flexibility, the hunger for power is next).

If you haven’t yet caught on, this post is not meant for someone who wants to supplement their income by blogging, or someone who wants to quit their jobs to work online full time, but rather those who are interested in building a business online that generates passive income for them, thus giving them the balance of time and money.

I am not going to go into what passive income is and whether it exists. There are about 1,943 different schools of thought on that subject. For the purposes of this post, let’s say passive income is income that is at least the same or more from what you make at your job without having you put much effort into generating it on an ongoing basis. Simple and conservative enough?

Most bloggers produce content, guest post, market their blogs, find advertising partners, then rinse and repeat the cycle. Many take up writing gigs to supplement their incomes because the blog doesn’t generate enough. Others take up freelance gigs to help other bloggers out.

What ends up happening is the constant trade of hours for dollars. There is nothing wrong with that if that’s what you want. But if you want the freedom brought by passive income, then your approach to blogging must change. Most blogs would die overnight if the authors stopped posting to them. Like I said, it’s like buying yourself (or creating) another job. Ask yourself, what would happen to your blog if you stopped blogging today?

So how can bloggers move away from trading hours for dollars so they can focus on semi or fully automating their “online business”? Here are a handful of ideas for starters. Take them as a little food for thought.

While trading hours for dollars working online may give you the flexibility to work remotely from home or anywhere else (after all, you have the ability to travel), it does not necessarily mean that you have the freedom and flexibility to decide how much you want to work and when, which most likely was your underlying motive to begin with.

Keeping that critical distinction in mind from the outset helps develop a business strategy that supports a fairly passive and self-sustainable model if that’s what you want. Simply saying that you work online doesn’t convey the full story at all. A data entry person works online from home. We need to understand the broader picture, address what we truly desire, and then develop a strategy that will get us closer to our desire. I hope this article helps you reflect on your true desire behind blogging.

Editor’s note: We’ll be building on the idea of scalable blogging over the coming days in a series of posts on Blogging Smarter. This series will look more closely at particular aspects of blogging where you can get more value for the time you put in.

In the meantime, let us know if you’ve thought about your motivations for blogging, and whether you’ve wound up simply trading hours for dollars on your blog.

Sunil owns over two dozen profitable niche websites, over 20 successfully selling ebooks, and is the author of “How to Go from $0 to $1,000 a month in Passive and Residual Income in Under 180 Days All in Your Spare Time“, a FREE report you can download instantly from his blog, where he discusses expedited wealth creation through solid personal finance, entrepreneurship and internet marketing. You can read more about him and his work on his blog.

As a father of three boys aged five and under, there’s a word I hear a lot in my house. I’m sure other parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, child care workers, and people with kids in their lives will know what it is.

“Why?”

• Why do I have to brush my teeth?
• Why are there clouds in the sky?
• Why do you have to feed the baby again?
• Why do have to wear clothes and not my PJs to Grandpa’s birthday party?
• Why does daddy get more chips than me?
• Why does poo smell so bad?
• Why do I have to go to bed now?

The questions come fast and while there are a few “what,” “when,” “where,” and “how” questions mixed in, “why” questions seem to dominate—at least at our place.

Of course why questions are a normal healthy part of a child’s life. They’re curious little beings and asking “why” is partly about making sense of the world they live in.

The other part of the “why” obsession is a little different, though. It has more to do with gathering information to help them make decisions.

Take “Why do I have to wear clothes and not PJs to Grandpa’s birthday party?” for example. Behind that question is a three-year-old trying to work out what to wear to grandpa’s birthday party, and whether to make a stand on it being PJs.

What he’s really trying to work out (in his own way) are the benefits of getting dressed as opposed to wearing PJs to the party. As his parent, if I can give him some compelling benefits of one or the other option, I’m hopefully going to convince him to make a good decision (although it doesn’t always work with three-year-olds).

As a result, after many “why” questions there is always a “because…” response.

• Because your PJs are not clean.
• Because we want to show Grandpa your brand new party shirt.
• Because you’ll match daddy if you wear your clothes.
• Because nobody else will be wearing PJs.
• Because I’ll give you a chocolate if you wear your clothes (second-last resort—bribery!).
• Because I said so! (last resort—only occasionally works if said in the right tone of voice).

Why isn’t just a “kids’” word

While my boys will mature in many areas of their life, they are unlikely to ever stop asking “why?” I know this because it’s still a word that I use all day every day. It’s not always spoken, but it’s definitely one that echoes in my mind all day long as I make decisions.

In fact, almost any time I come to make any kind of decision, big or small, I question “why?”

• Why should I buy the Volvo over the Mazda?
• Why should I go for a run today?
• Why should I read a book to my boys?
• Why should I buy this app or ebook?
• Why should I give money to that charity?

The questions are big and small, important and insignificant—but “why?” is a question I ponder almost every time. The “because” responses can be compelling … although at times it can be as simple as “because it will make me feel good.”

Why is this relevant to bloggers?

As bloggers I think it’s good to think about this, because “why?” is also something that your readers will be asking as they read your blog. Constantly.

Every time you ask your readers to do anything, they’ll be wondering “Why?”

• Why should I read this blog?
• Why should I subscribe to that newsletter?
• Why should I read this post?
• Why should I tweet out a link to this?
• Why should I buy that ebook?
• Why should I bookmark this?

Readers are asking these “Why?” questions almost every time you ask them to do anything explicitly (and sometimes just as they decide if or how to use your blog).

Knowing this, you can put yourself in a good position to respond. As you look at your blog on a big-picture level—as well as when you’re doing micro tasks like writing posts—identifying the “why?” moments and then providing compelling “because” statements can be a very effective exercise.

Sometimes you might weave the “because” into your writing in a gentle way, but other times, you might explicitly give voice to the “why?” questions and then give “because” answers.

Why? in practice

Let me give you an example. One of the important points of action that we have on Digital Photography School is around the selling of our ebooks. It’s not the first action we call people to take, but for the sustainability of the site, it’s obviously important that we generate income.

So as we put an offer to readers, I’m very aware that they’ll be asking a series of “why?” questions including:

• Why should I buy this ebook?
• Why is the topic relevant to me?
• Why an ebook? Why not a “real” book?
• Why buy this ebook over buying another ebook?
• Why should I trust this site to deliver value?

Identifying some of these main “why?” questions allows me to begin to answer them in the marketing material for our products.

I first did this exercise on dPS with our very first ebook after reading some work by Michael Daehn (and some of Michael Fortin’s work on “why”). Michael Daehn talks in a case study in which they found that explicitly using the word “because” in your marketing had real impact.

The resulting sales page for our bestselling portrait ebook includes this section:

Why Invest in The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography?

Let’s answer the question of why this is a resource for you:

• Because it will teach you how to take portraits with that “wow” factor.
• Because it contains our very best portrait photography tips on 25 topics—all in the one easy-to-read book.
• Because it has inspiring illustrations to show how the teaching along side them can be implemented.
• Because each page is packed with teaching—there’s no padding here.
• Because you get six bonus interviews with pro photographers who make a living from taking portraits.
• Because you get a 30-day, no questions asked, money-back guarantee.
• Because you get it immediately—there’s no delivery fee because it is a downloadable ebook.

If you look over the marketing material surrounding our other photography ebooks you’ll see similar “because” paragraphs in a number of them.

Not only that, but most of what you see in other parts of our sales pages also emerges from answering “why?” questions. Identifying the real benefits, rather than just listing features, gives readers a reason why what you’re offering is worth acting upon.

Again, this isn’t just about selling products or services—it’s an important consideration in any action you might ask people to take, whether that be subscribing, commenting, sharing, or even just reading.

So, if you want readers to act upon your calls to action:

1. Identify the “why?” questions your readers will be asking in different parts of your blog.
2. Identifying the benefits of their taking an action.
3. Provide “because” statements (whether they be explicitly stated with the word “because” or not).

You can do this exercise on a post-by-post level, on sales pages, when you’re thinking about your navigation and site-wide calls to action, services pages, advertisers’ pages—even on your social media profiles!

Why?

Because it works (and I’ll give you chocolate if you do).

When I asked my contacts how they felt about asking “Why?” in their blogging work, I got some interesting responses. Patricia Patton, who’s had trouble developing a unique selling proposition for her blog, said she felt this approach would help her “to be more objective” about herself and what she has to offer.

And Andrij Harasewych shared some thoughts from the perspective of a customer, saying, “there really needs to be some sort of truly unique content to get me motivated enough to buy an ebook.” All too often, he said, the “Why?” question is not even answered intrinsically by the product itself, let alone in the marketing copy.

Do you ask yourself “Why?” as you work to improve different aspects of your blog? Do you think this technique could be helpful? I’d love to get your insight in the comments.

This guest post is by Chris The Traffic Blogger.

This past month my fiancé and I went to a wedding expo. No, I am not one of those guys who lets the girl run around and do everything for the wedding! So I was there getting sold on everything from limos to flowers, and watching marketing at its finest (and worst).

Most of the vendors practiced the art of scummy marketing—you know, making mediocre products look worth much more than they actually were. Even though I understood this, I fell for a marketing scam that ended up costing me initially $1600 and quite a few phone calls to my credit card company to get the transaction voided.

However, I’m not upset that I was scammed. The experience actually reinforced several things I have learned over the years about marketing, and I’m going to use the story of what happened to me to reinforce these core concepts with you. But before I get into the lessons I want to share, here’s exactly what happened to us:

We entered a raffle for a free honeymoon. When we were called and told that we were selected to win, my fiancé and I were ecstatic. We were told that we had to listen to a one hour seminar on pots and pans from the company and then we could collect our reward. That should have been red flag #1.

The seminar lasted two hours. Red flag #2. The pots looked amazing, but they cooked twice as long as they were advertised to cook when the saleswoman made chicken for us to try. Red flag #3. A quick internet search for the company in question came up with articles about how it was an expensive scam. That should have been the biggest red flag of them all!

Despite these red flags, my fiancé and I still bought the pots. Why? Because the saleswoman made the decision ours, and a no-brainer. It was only after we made the decision to buy that we found out she was lying to us, on everything from prices to quality of the pots.

So what did the saleswoman do that made us believe every word she said? What made us think that the all expenses paid vacation was really that, even though it would have cost us a couple hundred dollars in taxes and then enough fees to pay for a second vacation? I’ll show you in this post, but please keep in mind that the entire point is to use this marketing knowledge for good. You know: to promote great products and deliver on the promises you make, not rely on legal gimmicks and tricky documentation to confuse your buyers into buying mediocre products.

Every single day that you post on your blog, you are selling your audience on your blog’s value. Use the following information that I saw on display at the marketing seminar to improve the value of your website and your products.

1. Presentation matters

As you probably already know, the average person looks a fraction of a second at your site before deciding if they want to click away. Sometimes, they don’t even read a single word of your headline!

In this blink of an eye, your graphics are the only way to hold their attention. Having a really nice, eye catching graphic is essential to your blog’s success. Personally, I saw around a 30 second increase on the average time people spent on my first blog, once I had an eye catching graphic for the title.

2. Internet readers are a mix of skim and full readers

Some will just read your headlines and sub headlines before deciding if they actually want to read your paragraphs between them. Make an effort to create interesting headlines throughout your article, not just at the top. A mixture of bold and different sizes for your headings will also draw the eye to the information you want readers to focus on. Lists and numbers do this naturally and our brains want to read each and every bullet, especially if there’s an ounce of OCD in us!

The trick is to hit as many sense as possible in your audience. This is difficult to do online, as you are limited to just site and sound, but offline you can go for touch, taste and smell.

3. Relatability is huge!

I related quite a bit to the saleswoman who spoke to us at the seminar. She was from Jersey (I grew up going to the shore quite a bit) and had an awesome accent. She also grew up in a large family, played outside all the time as a child, and ate meals with her family every night. I related to this so much and this drew me into the experience by recalling memories of my past. I really felt like I had a lot in common with the presenter.

I don’t care if you talk about picking your nose as a child, do everything in your post to try to relate to your audience in any way possible.

4. Interesting facts really do make a difference

Saying something like, “X% of internet readers find facts interesting” goes a long way towards making people believe you are researching the information you present. If you actually do the research and come up with cool facts then readers will pay far more attention to your post.

Also, any fact about life that people ignore is going to have the same effect. For example, the lady at the seminar mentioned that ground meat in the supermarket appears to bleed red, but that’s dye because ground meat can’t bleed! In that moment, I actually admired the intelligence of the statement because I had never thought of that before. Do this to your audience as often as possible, as it greatly improves your credibility and will lock people into reading your entire article.

5. Laughter works

No matter how dry a personality you have, always attempt to incorporate humor into your posts. I don’t care if you have to steal cheesy lines from standup comedians, do as much as you can to make your audience laugh. It helps to hold their attention and keep them locked in throughout the experience of reading your blog.

What’s more, if your headline is funny, then people will pass your post around simply because of the headline! That will greatly improve the chances of someone new being exposed to your work.

6. Price points make decisions easier

In fact, having price points naturally makes people consider the consequences of buying, or rather, not buying your product. Here’s the strategy that the saleswoman used to sell her pots and pans to us.

• Step #1: Pick a really expensive product that does work for what the audience needs.
• Step #2: Explain why this product is way too expensive and unnecessary.
• Step #3: Pick a really inexpensive product that is of low quality and can’t get the job done.
• Step #4: Explain why this product is subpar for the job and will break, eventually costing you the same over time in repairs or repurchases as the expensive product.
• Step #5: Show your product that is right between the two other price points.
• Step #6: Explain why your product is perfect for the job and just the right price.

7. Selling is about never actually selling

By picking the right price points and products to showcase those price points, you create a decision for your audience. When done correctly, this decision is obvious and a no-brainer. Just as it was for us, buying pots for twice the price (or so we thought, it ended up being over four times) of a regular set of pots and getting a lifetime warranty on them seemed like a great deal. It made no sense for us as a young couple to pass up this opportunity!

You can create the same simple decisions for your audience and if you have a product to sell, I highly recommend that you make comparisons to cheaper/worse products and more expensive/equally useful ones. That way you can say that your product is of higher quality yet cheaper than what you would pay anywhere else for that same quality. If you do this, then your audience will not feel sold to; instead, they will feel like they are making a conscious choice.

8. Time limits create hype

By the end of the seminar we were on the fence about the pots, but being told that we only had ten minutes to decide if we wanted them made us buy them. Why? Because we had just been sold on the value of these pots for two hours, the presentation was wonderfully entertaining, and the price points made the decision a no brainer! Of course we bought them, and almost everyone else there did as well.

You can create hype with your blog, even if the purpose isn’t to make money. One great way to do this is to offer a special report by the next day that requires a subscription to your list to see it. In 24 hours I have increased my normal subscription growth by 50% doing this.

Each of these eight lessons rely on the previous one to work. As a blogger, these kinds of ideas create a template for your posts. If you start off with the first point and work your way down, you can create an awesome post that sells the audience by convincing them to make a decision. Most people want to skip all the way down to the deal, without taking the time to build a relationship with their audience. This could take months, weeks, days or even hours, but it rarely happens in a few minutes.

As an internet marketer and blogger, understand that people need to trust you before they will believe in your products and services. Even if you just want to get more subscribers, you need to first convince them that you are valuable. It’s no different than getting them to open their wallet!

If you have the opportunity, go to one of these scams and see how the salespeople target your emotions, sense and reason… just don’t bring your wallet!

Chris “The Traffic Blogger” writes to help bloggers learn how to drive traffic, build relationships and earn revenue through blogging. His most recent efforts have been on teaching others What to Tweet to get more followers and make money on Twitter.

This guest post is by Shakira Dawud of Deliberate Ink.

You’re getting regular traffic, but it’s flatlining. The regular crowd is still with you, but your subscriber base is fluctuating. And you’ve noticed you’re not being shared on social media very often.

If you were to ask, you’d hear all kinds of reasons why, but I guarantee you the basis of all of them is always personal.

There is no way around the adage, “People do business with people they know, like, and trust.” Your blog is serious business. So why is it we’re told not to take business personal (and business between friends is retold as the stuff of Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado“), when every single business decision comes from a personal place?

You need that personal place to get the following and response you want from your readers. Find it and put it to work building your blog’s traffic in the following three steps.

Step 1: Complete the picture of your existing following

I’ll use Twitter as an example. I seldom follow people with just the hope they’ll follow me back (although that’s a reason, too).

I want to take part in their Twitter banter, find likeminded people, siphon useful information from their posts, get them to visit my blog, and build relationships I deem important. I unfollow only after I’ve lost hope of getting those things. Sometimes I lose hope sooner, sometimes later. I know I’m not alone in this.

If we don’t follow our followers, we’re blind to too many quality people who’ve made it a point to follow us. So make the most of your social relationships by finding the real and active people connected to you on each platform and reciprocating, before they lose hope in you.

Step 2: Unravel a “thread of discontent”

Start listening to your crowd closely. Watch the comments they leave on posts and blogs, and note what they share most often. In a recent post, Derek Halpern introduces the concept of the thread of discontent. He encourages being the “pebble dropped in the pond” by creating “ripples” in the standard.

Derek’s point is well taken. But before you become a pebble, I advise that you pick up that thread and unravel it to its origin. I bet you’ll find it’s ultimately a personal one. Something based on their values, beliefs, or experiences. You may even find more than one thread. Once you find out what it’s made up of, hold onto it. Now it’s time for the final step.

Step 3: Provide content they want—but not like you have been

“That’s all you got?” you’re thinking. “Lady, I’ve been creating content out the wazoo, every day for months–and it ain’t too shabby, either!”

No, that’s not all. Let me explain with an example.

Listening in on a webinar for email marketers, I noticed the presenter played up the rivalry between marketing and sales departments. He dotted his discourse with pointed statements like: Salespeople are only interested in their numbers, not our strategy… They asked for all the hot leads we could get, and then let them go cold… So much of our hard marketing work is wasted on the sales end.

On the individual level, marketing employees who’d been frustrated by salesepeople were remembering those feelings of futlity, concern for their careers, and even a bit of self-righteousness. You can be sure he had our undivided attention when he explained how we could refine our strategies to build the credibility of our numbers, and waste less time and energy—in spite of those pesky salespeople. This was personal.

Superglue-strength loyalty

So you see, to be worth sharing, you can’t just deliver consistently high quality content. You don’t have to rock the boat (although it will give you quite a boost). You do need to produce content that provides the value readers can carry out with them in a package that confirms their personal reality.

Subscriber loyalty will grow to superglue strength, and what you write will demand to be shared with more and more likeminded people. Without any further ado, perfectly targeted, better traffic will pour in.

How have you used these ideas to your advantage? Can you share any examples?

Shakirah Dawud is the writer and editor behind Deliberate Ink. Based in Maryland with roots in New York, she’s been crafting effective marketing copy as a writer and polishing many forms of prose as an editor since 2002. Clients in many fun sizes, industries, and locations reach her through the Web.

This guest post is by Shakira Dawud of Deliberate Ink.

You’re getting regular traffic, but it’s flatlining. The regular crowd is still with you, but your subscriber base is fluctuating. And you’ve noticed you’re not being shared on social media very often.

If you were to ask, you’d hear all kinds of reasons why, but I guarantee you the basis of all of them is always personal.

There is no way around the adage, “People do business with people they know, like, and trust.” Your blog is serious business. So why is it we’re told not to take business personal (and business between friends is retold as the stuff of Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado“), when every single business decision comes from a personal place?

You need that personal place to get the following and response you want from your readers. Find it and put it to work building your blog’s traffic in the following three steps.

Step 1: Complete the picture of your existing following

I’ll use Twitter as an example. I seldom follow people with just the hope they’ll follow me back (although that’s a reason, too).

I want to take part in their Twitter banter, find likeminded people, siphon useful information from their posts, get them to visit my blog, and build relationships I deem important. I unfollow only after I’ve lost hope of getting those things. Sometimes I lose hope sooner, sometimes later. I know I’m not alone in this.

If we don’t follow our followers, we’re blind to too many quality people who’ve made it a point to follow us. So make the most of your social relationships by finding the real and active people connected to you on each platform and reciprocating, before they lose hope in you.

Step 2: Unravel a “thread of discontent”

Start listening to your crowd closely. Watch the comments they leave on posts and blogs, and note what they share most often. In a recent post, Derek Halpern introduces the concept of the thread of discontent. He encourages being the “pebble dropped in the pond” by creating “ripples” in the standard.

Derek’s point is well taken. But before you become a pebble, I advise that you pick up that thread and unravel it to its origin. I bet you’ll find it’s ultimately a personal one. Something based on their values, beliefs, or experiences. You may even find more than one thread. Once you find out what it’s made up of, hold onto it. Now it’s time for the final step.

Step 3: Provide content they want—but not like you have been

“That’s all you got?” you’re thinking. “Lady, I’ve been creating content out the wazoo, every day for months–and it ain’t too shabby, either!”

No, that’s not all. Let me explain with an example.

Listening in on a webinar for email marketers, I noticed the presenter played up the rivalry between marketing and sales departments. He dotted his discourse with pointed statements like: Salespeople are only interested in their numbers, not our strategy… They asked for all the hot leads we could get, and then let them go cold… So much of our hard marketing work is wasted on the sales end.

On the individual level, marketing employees who’d been frustrated by salesepeople were remembering those feelings of futlity, concern for their careers, and even a bit of self-righteousness. You can be sure he had our undivided attention when he explained how we could refine our strategies to build the credibility of our numbers, and waste less time and energy—in spite of those pesky salespeople. This was personal.

Superglue-strength loyalty

So you see, to be worth sharing, you can’t just deliver consistently high quality content. You don’t have to rock the boat (although it will give you quite a boost). You do need to produce content that provides the value readers can carry out with them in a package that confirms their personal reality.

Subscriber loyalty will grow to superglue strength, and what you write will demand to be shared with more and more likeminded people. Without any further ado, perfectly targeted, better traffic will pour in.

How have you used these ideas to your advantage? Can you share any examples?

Shakirah Dawud is the writer and editor behind Deliberate Ink. Based in Maryland with roots in New York, she’s been crafting effective marketing copy as a writer and polishing many forms of prose as an editor since 2002. Clients in many fun sizes, industries, and locations reach her through the Web.

The last couple of weeks have turned up some valuable blogging advice for those who are working to hone their craft and become better blog post writers.

Not everyone falls into this category—some bloggers are happy with the way they write. Others publish videos or sound files instead of text. And that’s fine.

But for the rest of us, I wanted to put together a little roundup of advice on each of the parts of a text-based blog post.

1. 4 Post Headlines that are Guaranteed to Get Readers Excited
   This post by Greg Ciotti was published here at BlogSenseIncome late last year. It has some great ideas to help you focus as your writing headlines, and produce really compelling titles.
2. 10 Tips for Opening Your Next Blog Post
   I designed this post to help you overcome Opening Line Paralysis (OLP)—something I suffer from often!
3. How to Write Irresistible Blog Intros
   In this post, Andrea Wren analyses possible introductions, providing a different perspective that I found valuable.
4. 5 Tips for Creating a Truly Valuable Tutorial
   Sharpen your skills in writing tutorials and how-tos with this straightforward BlogSenseIncome guide.
5. Finding Truth in Fiction
   max Andrew Dubinksy’s post about the power of story, which was published on Jeff Goins’s blog, is guaranteed to help you bring life to the story you tell in your next post.
6. How to Use Images in Your Blog Posts
   Karol K covers all the basics of using images to accompany your text content, so even if you’re not technical, this guide’s perfect.
7. 8 Quick Tips for Writing Bullet Points People Actually Want to Read
   I found Robert Bruce’s Copyblogger article very interesting. I’ll be trying some of these tips myself—who wouldn’t? Great advice.
8. Is Your Link Text Letting You Down?
   Here, Georgina explores a few different ways you can include links within your blog posts.
9. 7 Powerful Ways to End Your Next Blog Post
   Of course, today we published Ali Luke’s advice for wrapping up a post—great ways to avoid having your post trail off into nothing.

Have you seen a great article on crafting quality blog posts recently? Help us build this list by adding it in the comments below.

This guest post is by Ali Luke of Aliventures.

You know your title has to hook readers.

You know your first line needs to keep them reading.

The start of your blog post matters. But so does the end.

In fact, without a powerful end to your post, all the work that you put into the title and paragraph one is wasted. Because the end of your post is what keeps your readers coming back for more.

Here are seven powerful ways to end your post.

1. Sum up your key message

Sometimes, you need to hammer a point home. The final few lines of your post are a great opportunity to make sure that your key message gets across.

If you can, bring out a new point—or sum up in an engaging way. If you just rehash what you’ve already said, readers will wander off, bored.

Example:

To write 100 books (75,000 words per book) over the next 30 years, you need to be writing 1,000 words per day (writing five days a week, 50 weeks per year). At a brisk but comfortable pace, that’s an hour a day.

If you want to write 100 books in the next ten years, that’s 3,000 words a day.

Being prolific is closer to possible than you might have believed.
—David Masters, Writing Secrets of Prolific Authors, Write to Done

2. Encourage the reader to take action

Many blog posts are full of excellent advice, but how often does that advice actually get put into practice?

Readers love posts that are practical, and if you can persuade them to do something (and see the benefits) then they’ll be much more likely to return to your blog.

Example:

But in the meantime, here’s a tip you can use right away. You’ll have vastly better copy on your website in 20 minutes by following these two simple steps:

Go look at your web copy right now.

Take out every word that doesn’t contribute something new.

Come back here and tell us about the before-and-after. I bet you’ll have something to say!
—James Chartrand, Do You Have Useless Website Content?, Men with Pens

3. Ask the reader to share your post

If you want more tweets or Facebook shares, ask for them. Readers won’t always think of sharing your post, and they may not notice that you’ve got a “retweet” button waiting—unless you tell them.

You might also want to encourage readers to forward a post to friends: unless you’re writing for a predominantly techy audience, there’s a good chance that a lot of your subscribers are getting your feed by email.

Example:

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!
—Ali Luke, How to Have Confidence in Your Writing – and Yourself, Aliventures

4. Link to another useful resource

When readers finish one post, they’ll often be ready to read another on a similar topic. If you’ve written an inspirational piece, for instance, it’s a great idea to link to a practical guide that helps readers turn that inspiration into action.

You don’t need to link to blog posts, either. Pointing readers towards newspaper articles or books in your field isn’t just useful—it also helps demonstrate that you’re on top of what’s happening in your niche.

Example:

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy these posts inspired by art:

• Writing as an emerging sculpture: Inspiration from Michelangelo’s slaves
• 15 ways modern art galleries can inspire writers

—Joanna Penn, 7 Lessons For Writers From Leonardo Da Vinci, The Creative Penn

5. Ask a question to encourage comments

Questions work well in titles and first lines—and they’re also a good way to end a post. Asking a question for readers to respond to (e.g. “do you any tips to add?”) is likely to increase the number of comments you get.

Don’t go over the top with questions, though: one or two are usually enough. You don’t want your readers to feel bombarded with a whole string of questions.

Example:

Did you find some great strategies of your own in the videos? What are the exciting ideas informing your own marketing—and how are you implementing them?

Let us know in the comments.

—Sonia Simone, 3 Content Marketing Ideas You Should Steal from Coca Cola, Copyblogger

6. Tell readers what’s coming next

If you want people to subscribe to your blog, or to keep visiting the site for updates, you need to let them know that you’ve got good stuff coming up.

At the end of your post, let readers know what’s coming tomorrow (or next week). You might simply drop a hint like “I’ve got something big to announce next week…” or you might tell them to stay tuned for a more advanced post on a similar topic to the one they’ve just read.

Example:

Next week I’ll post about moving larger WordPress sites. Those might not work with this method because your export XML file will be too large, and you might not be able to upload it via the WordPress import feature.
—Daniel Scocco, How to Move A Small WordPress Site Via the Import/Export Tool, DailyBlogTips

7. Promote your product or service

Even though you might have information about your book/ebook/ecourse/etc. in your sidebar, some readers won’t see that—they’ll either be reading in an RSS reader or they simply won’t notice.

The final line of your post is a great place to let readers know about your product (or to remind them that it exists). This works especially well if your post has been on a similar topic—for instance, if you’ve written about procrastination and you’ve got an ecourse on getting things done, there’s an obvious link between the two!

Example:

Also, check out our Blogging for Beginners Series for more blog tips and BlogSenseIncome the Book for a comprehensive guide to improving your blog and deriving an income from it.
—Darren Rowse, 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog, BlogSenseIncome

Which of these tips would work well on your next post? Leave a comment below to tell us what you’ll be trying out…

Ali Luke is a writer and writing coach, and blogs for a number of large sites. If you’re struggling to keep up the motivation to write for your blog, check out her post on Six Common Writing Excuses (And How to Overcome Them).

This guest post is by Amy Harrison of Harrisonamy.com.

To the public, not all experts are created equal.

What’s more, this division exists in all industries, and in every blogging niche.

And it’s not just about working harder, or longer than other people. It’s about knowing how to rise through the ranks of the expert “hierarchy.”

To illustrate, consider for a moment the difference between a chef in a restaurant, a head chef in a five-star restaurant, and then Gordon Ramsay.

In reality, they could have the exact same cooking abilities, but in terms of perceived value, you’re looking at an annual wage of: $30,000, $100,000 and … $24million.

Between the head chef and Gordon Ramsay, that’s an increase of 23,900%

This might seem like quite a leap, but when you understand the following five rungs on the expert ladder,  you’ll see how your own value can change dramatically in the eyes of your audience.

1: Generalist (the fry cook)

Most start out as generalists in their careers. In chef terms, this is like a fry cook. You can cook a number of different meals, but could be replaced by someone with little training and experience.

Your blog is on this level if:

You’ve just started and are still finding your blogging voice. You might cover a variety of topics, or taking a general view of a wide subject such as health and beauty or finance.

You’ll notice other bloggers writing about your subject and may be struggling to get your content shared and traffic to your site.

This is your starting step, and the launch pad of your expert journey. If you want to start standing out though, you need to move to the next level which is…

2: Specialist (the vegan chef)

Here you have a more focused area of expertise, for example a chef who only creates vegan meals. This specialist view means that when it comes to vegan cuisine, we value this level of expert more than the fry cook.

Your blog is on this level if:

You’ve drilled down your blogging topic to a more specific niche, such as skin care routines to help with acne, or how to get the best deal from credit cards.

By covering a smaller topic, your blog content has a more consistent theme, and you’re able to make points which are more in-depth and of greater value to your audience. You’re less overwhelmed by what other generalist bloggers are writing about and more aware of what topics fit into your niche, and what don’t.

This is where some bloggers stay, yet it’s only the second rung on the expert ladder.

You can continue to increase your expert value by moving to the third stage which is…

3: The certified specialist (the five-star restaurant chef)

People love credentials.

A certified Executive Chef has a competitive edge over someone with only “hands-on” experience.  They might both know how to cook a great steak, but when a Michelin starred restaurant is hiring, who do you think they pick for the position (and handsome compensation)?

Your blog is on this level if:

You have relevant qualifications within your topic AND you are displaying them on your blog, letting readers know your certified level of expertise.

If your goal is to prove your expertise to your audience, don’t underestimate the value of a sign that says “Approved by the Board Of…” and “Certified Specialist in…”

After that, you’re ready for the fourth stage of expertise.

4: Expert authority (the food critic)

Expert authorities invest time creating more in-depth studies and publishing the results. They may also have a firm stance on issues within their niche (which may or may not be controversial).

This is like a chef who has spent a year travelling to produce a guide to the top seafood restaurants, or written a paper on the effect of global warming on seasonal food production. Others can then access this information as a “shortcut” to answers without having to do the research themselves.

Your blog is on this level if:

You have published an in-depth white paper, ebook or series of articles. You may choose to focus on a recent trend in your industry, or some controversial news, or to simply create a “shortcut” to a more complex matter.

For example:

• a white paper on why native plants should be encouraged into any garden
• an ebook about how changes in financial legislation will affect home owners
• a series of articles explaining a complicated news topic such as the SOPA bill.

It doesn’t have to be complicated, if you do the research others don’t want to (e.g. the top 100 free resources for web designers) you will gain an authoritative status.

From there, we move to the final rung of the expert ladder which is:

5: All of the above, plus celebrity status (Gordon Ramsay)

The highest level of being an expert comes with celebrity status. This is about being the go-to person within that niche.

Millionaire Chef Gordon Ramsay has 13 Michelin Stars, has published 21 books, has a controversial, outspoken style, and is featured in his own TV shows.

An extreme example? Perhaps, but if you’re passionate about your subject, why not strive for the highest level of expertise? Reaching this level takes hard work, but it might be the hard work people in your industry aren’t doing.

Warning: You cannot build celebrity status without having anything to say, or being properly qualified on your subject. You might see many bloggers shoot to fame seemingly overnight, but the ones that stay at the top are the ones who have mastered their art and skills for years.

Your blog is at this level if:

You are consistently producing and promoting content based on your expertise.

Some of the tools bloggers have used to achieve a celebrity status include:

• “out of the box”  ways of getting online attention
• offline speaking at conferences
• guest posting regularly on other blogs
• writing for trade publications or magazines
• pitching for interviews on other websites
• pitching your side of a current news story to media outlets
• writing regular books or ebooks
• holding regular events for example webinars, seminars and teleseminars
• hosting your own online TV show
• having a regular radio podcast.

Achieving this level as a blogger means you expand your audience and attract people who are willing to pay more to work with you, not just because of what you are trained to do, but because they get access to you.

What do you think? Who do you see as other experts in your industry, and can you see how they’ve used different tools to increase their value to their audience?

Next have a look at where you are and see what you can do get to the next level of blogging expertise!

Amy Harrison is a copywriter and content marketer for Personality Entrepreneurs wanting to connect and sell authentically to their audience. You can now download her free report on how to write sales copy when personality is part of your business at Harrisonamy.com.