Be Your Own Boss!

How to use your blog to:

Be more popular

Increase your credibility

Create an alternative revenue stream

Become independent from the 9-to-5 system

Independent Publishing is for everyone A presentation by

The other day an old friend of mine called and said to me: “ Listen Robin, I would like to do a blog... I have lots of things I want to say, I would like to earn some money doing this and see whether I can create a work alternative to my Bank job. I have already made up my mind.... Do not try to discourage me.... Tell me rather... What do I need to start?

Find your passion 1

Find what you really like

Give way to your true interests – follow your passions – think of what you would do the whole time if you didn’t have to work (aside from eating, sleeping and loving) and focus on that.

Do not follow what others do as a reference for what choices you have available to yourself.

Find your passion 1

Create your shack 2

Do not think of being able to do it all by yourself.

Unless you are an expert geek who knows everything about “valid” XHTML, CSS, DIV layers, PHP scripting and more, I would suggest you to find someone who will give you a hand everytime you want to do something beyond your technical abilities (add new components to your site, change the layout, etc.).

Find a server for you – avoid “cheap” and “free” offerings with the excuse that “...I am just starting”

Select a blogging software which will not make your life too complicated.

Create your shack

eLance – http://www.elance.com

WordPress – http ://www.wordpress.org

MovableType – http://www.movabletype.org

Link Sleuth – http ://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Niche, Theme, Focus 3

Find a specific “theme – topic”.

The more precise and defined , the easier and faster it will be for you to build a revenue around it (as long as a commercial sector of products and services exists around your selected area of interest)

Do not fear of “niching” yourself too much. If your theme can be clearly defined and if Google shows relevant results and ads when you place a query containing your theme (it should be a 2-4 words definition) you are ready to set up your micro publishing house.

Niche, Theme, Focus

WordTracker – http://www.wordtracker.com

HitTail – Tap the long tail to find your niche

Niche Blogs Can Be Outstanding Advertising Channels

Write daily 4 4

If you can, write daily.

Be regular in your publishing schedule.

Publish at the same hour or at around the same time each time.

If you cannot write daily, consider the possibility of integrating some newsmastering activity with your writing / reporting one

Write daily

Become a Newsmaster 5

A newsmaster is a News-DJ

A newsmaster selects, edits, filters, corrects and publishes the most relevant news for a very specific topic.

No RSS, no newsmaster – Newsmastering is made possible thanks to the huge quantity of content s and news in RSS format, which standardizes contents by separating them from their looks and from the sources from which they are gathered.

To be a newsmaster you need one or more tools that would allow you to aggregate, filter, deduplicate and splice together a thematic news digest via the Internet.

By devoting a relatively limited time a quest’attività si può offrire un servizio molto utile ai lettori che mantiene il tuo sito aggiornato anche quando non hai articoli nuovi

Newsmastering tools MySyndicaat – http://www.mysyndicaat Yahoo Pipes – http://pipes.yahoo.com

Become a Newsmaster

Quality not Quantity 6

Spell check – your contents before publsihing them: always

Let someone else read your text before publishing it.

Add reference links without economy – as well as define always new terms and buzzwords.

If you can write in more than one language. If not, find some partners that can help you do it.

Read and research what others have written on a topic , before writing an article yourself.

Take up new topics , those that interest you the most, instead of always giving echo to what others talk about.

Do a quality control pass also after having published your article. You may be able to spot lots of extra things you didn’t see in draft.

Online spell checker IE Spell , Google Toolbar

Off-line blogging tools Qumana , Ecto , wBloggar

Quality not Quantity

Make Yourself Be Found 7

Title your articles effectively. Throw away all traditional journalism rules and re-think how to create titles that will help your potential readers find what you have written about without knowing you (via search engines).

Make sure that page titles on your site contain the title of your articles first and not the name of your blog.

Give a descriptive and meaningful name to your blog / site and if you can, select a domain name and URL that are as much descriptive and meaningful too.

Make Yourself Be Found

How To Write Great Titles And Headlines For The Web

How To Optimize Your Site For Major Search Engines: The Top 10 Things To Do

38 Web Marketing Myths

Make Yourself Be Read 8

Learn what chunking is and start using it in a methodical fashion.

Use bolds and hyperlinks untraditionally as visual hook points that can help your readers find your key content more easily.l

Line length – do not your readers screen resolution and monitor size determine how difficult it will be to read your contents.

Attention to details – extreme care in watching after details may appear secondary to a reporter, but it does generally instill a sense of credibility, competence and professionalism to the contents and topics you write about.

Make Yourself Be Read

Communicate Visually 9

Utilize images to support your articles everytime you can.

Select images with care – this is a little art in and of itself that requires skill and dedication – start by modelling and emulating the work of others.

Consider text and other page components as a whole visual universe. Go and discover what is Information Design and apply it ruthlessly to everything you do.

Communicate Visually

How To Select Appropriate Images For Publication

Online Picture Editing: Free Web-Based Image Editing Tools

How To Search For Images Online

Where to Find Free Images and Visuals for My Blog

If you want them to return, send them away 10

Provide links and pointers to external resources without hesitation.

Go the extra mile and find complementary sources and references to your content and promote them.

Select the best from others and offer it to your readers.

To become a point of reference for others , you need to become a hub for all information that is relevant to the topic you cover.

Think of yourself as a guide, a cicerone , a tour operator, a content dj.

If you want them to return, send them away

Want Some Attention? Tell Your Readers To Go Away!

Open the conversation 11.

Open comments on your site.

Pose questions to your readers: they always know more than you do.

Make it easy for your readers to post and follow all comments on your site.

Open the conversation

Create your own “brand” 12

Think like a free agent.

Discover what sets you apart and market it shamelessly.

Get visible.

Stop networking , and build a network.

Add value - and then some.

Accelerate your brand power by getting in sync with a major trend in your field and moving to the head of it. " I would add:

Marry an important, ethical cause as a complement to what you like to do

Share before looking for profit

Help others become as successful as you

Question yourself and your approach systematically - get forever

Create your own “brand”

Brand your brilliance

Brands are inside-out

Promote your contents 13

Utilize a Creative Commons license.

Let others use your contents freely , expecting only proper credit for your work.

Do not limit , but rather help others take up and re-use your contents.

Learn all you can about RSS and use it to the max to distribute your contents online.

Submit your RSS feed to the most popular RSS search engines and blog directories.

Leverage the potential ofered by social bookmarking tools.

Help your feed / content be included within tools and services that re-distribute content to others.

Provide always your bio, references and link-backs in the bottom of your articles.

Comment with relevance on blogs and important news sites and forums.

Promote your contents

Give wings to your dreams – Top ten tips for becoming independent

Monetize 14.

Amazon Associate Program

Chitika

Adbrite

Blogads

Text-Link-Ads

Commission Junction

Zlio Shops

Bidvertiser

Quigo

Se usi i video, considera:

Brightcove

AdBrite InVideo

Revver

Brightroll

Immen.se

Monetize Adopt a set of complementary services dedicated to monetizing your quality content. Here some ideas with which to start:

How to Make Money with your Blog Site

Create your Online Store

Create your Online Advertising Network

How to Monetize your Blog Content

Internet Video - How To Monetize Your Independent Video Content

Monetize

E-Books

Merchandising

Direct advertising and sponsorships

DVD or Print collections

Ad-free access to your site

Access to Premium paid research / content

Google AdSense 15

Google AdSense is the monetization tool that offers the greatest opportunity to convert quality contents on the web into revenues that can abundantly pay back production costs.

Study with attention the placement , the color and the style of the AdSense ad strips that you integrate in your web pages.

Remember that placinjg more ads doesn’t always correspond to making more money.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense – https://www.google.com/adsense/

Optimize AdSense - https://www.google.com/adsense/tips

Track, Monitor, Test 16

Measure constantly traffic trends on your site, how individual ads work anmd possible technical issues you may have to address.

Tes, test, test. Ex periment with a scientific approach alternative solutions to all that you do onlien and adopt those that work better. Then keep refining.

Track your readers’ preferences , as much as their dislikes. Stats can tell you a great deal toward learning what works best and what doesn’t work with the audience that follows you. Following this data you can continuosly improve your editorial direction and the types of services you may want to offer to your readers.

Track, Monitor, Test

Google Analytics

Google Website Optimizer

Hitbox – www.hitboxprofessional.com

CrazyEgg – www.crazyegg.com

Clicktracks – www.clicktracks.com

Browsercam – www.browsercam.com

After I wrote to my friend all these things, he replied back : “Hey Robin, I thought that making money with blogs was all about posting some cool video or new tool that just came out and pastering ads all around it. I now understand it takes a lot more effort, focus, attention and care than I ever would have thought of... So, while I can see this is really something anyone could do, I now understand how much of a difference it makes the approach, style and quality one places into it. Thanks for making this clear to me.

www.robingood.com [email_address] Be Your Own Boss!