Why Similar Blogs Sell for Different Prices
This guest post is by Jock Purtle of brokercorp.com.
If you are selling your blog, the first thing you will want to know is how much it is worth. You type into Google is something like “what is my website worth?” What you will get is a whole lot of free website valuation tools. If you use something like www.mywebsiteworth.com and type in “google.com” you get an arbitrary value of 1 billion dollars.
Now we all know these tools are can’t be right. So we might then type into Google “what factors determine a website’s value?” and when we collate all the information. we are going to get a long list of different things to look for when valuing a website. Things like domain age, PageRank, Google rankings, and so on.
But what these articles fail to identify is the single most important factor in valuing a website, and that is the future maintainable earnings of the site.
What needs to be understood is that the assets of the business are only indicators of future maintainable earnings, and do not add any extra value to the site. Value is determined by whether the site will make money in the future, and what level of risk the potential buyer is willing to take.
Let’s take the example of company A and company B. Each company has the same income and same net profit for the year. However, as we will find, their value differs completely.
How values can differ
| Company A | Company B | |
| Business Type | Advertising | Advertising |
| Annual Sales | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Annual Profit | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Trends | Flat | Room for growth |
| High Margins | No | Yes |
| Recurring Clients | No | No |
| Largest Customer List | No | Yes |
| Traffic
|
Heavily reliant on SEO | Multiple Source |
| Income Source | 1 Source | 3 Sources |
| Complex To Operate | Yes | No |
| Low Barrier To Entry | Yes | No |
| Business Level | Mature | Growth Stage |
| Staff | High Turnover | Stable |
| Accounts | Messy | Neat |
| Owner Help after Sale | No | Yes |
| Owner Financing | No | Yes |
| Owner Non-compete | No | Yes |
| Brandable Domain | No | Yes |
| Old Site with unbroken Whois | No | Yes |
| Quality and diverse Links | No | Yes |
| Repeat & Direct Traffic | No | Yes |
| Solid Page Rank | No | Yes |
| High Levels of Traffic | No | Yes |
| Commercial Target Audience | No | Yes |
| Quality Content | No | Yes |
| Partnerships and JV’s | No | Yes |
| Solid Sales Presentation | No | Yes |
| Directories (Yahoo and DMOZ) | No | Yes |
| Strong Alexa and Compete rank | No | Yes |
| Easily Transferable | No | Yes |
| Press Coverage | No | Yes |
| Affiliate Program | No | Yes |
| Synergistic Purchase | No | Yes |
| FINAL SALE PRICE: | 0,000 | 0,0000 |
How value differs
The market has a strong opinion on what a site is worth. Buyers are looking for a good return on investment and the value is based on what they are willing to pay. That is why valuation is really only educated guess-work about what a site will sell for.
From the above example you may think that your blog meets all the criteria of company B, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to sell it for that amount.
The reason company B is deemed more valuable is because, from the information available, the site looks like it will continue to increase in revenue every year and there is a lower risk that the site will fail. Thus there is less risk for a potential buyer, and they would be willing to pay more to acquire it.
The table represents a rule of thumb that you can apply to any website. The factors listed represent the variables that should be considered in any valuation. There may be some outlying factors that skew the data if either site were to be purchased and that is why true valuation is only represented by the final sale price and the money has been exchanged.
An explanation of valuation: How to determine risk
The risk a buyer is willing to take in purchasing a website will determine the multiple of earnings that they’re willing to pay.
The general rule you will find in valuation follows something like this:
Net Income x Some Multiplier = Your Website Value
Here is a breakdown of those two factors.
Net Income
Net income is represented by a company’s total profit for the year and is calculated by taking revenues and adjusting for the cost of doing business, depreciation, interest, taxes and other expenses, or in accounting speak, EBITDA (earning before interest tax, depreciation, and amortization).
A web business normally doesn’t have the usual expenses that an offline business has, like rent, office space, and so on, and this is reflected in the financials.
A multiplier
A simple multiplier will be based on an expected Rate of Return. This is used to calculate the final sale price and is reflective of the risk that the purchaser is willing to take.
Consider these multipliers:
- 12 times Monthly Multiple = 100% return (your money back in one year)
- 24 time Monthly Multiple = 50% return (your money back in two years)
- 36 times Monthly Multiple = 33% return (your money back in three years).
You are beginning to see why Internet businesses are a good investment. With low staff and expenses and less hassle than a traditional business, they can offer much better value than putting your money in the bank and getting 1-5% interest.
What doesn’t count as value?
“But what about the value of my domain, and the rankings in Google, and the cost of the web development? Why isn’t that included in the site?” you may be thinking.
Unfortunately, the market doesn’t look at your site as a sum of all its parts. So even if you site cost you k to develop, and the domain cost k, if it only makes k per year, you are only likely to get k—k for the site, even though it cost you k to develop.
The assets of the business (content, rankings, domain, and so on) add no more value than what has already been calculated. The assets of the business simply form the structure for its revenue-generating capabilities.
It is important to understand this principle when valuing your site. Even though it might have cost you k to get the site up and running, your blog is no more valuable than the income a potential buyer can see the site making in the future.
Have you had your blog valued? Tell us about your experiences in the comments.
Jock Purtle is a Senior Broker at Brokercorp.com. They are a full-service website brokerage specializing in website sales and acquisitions. Jock is currently offering a free website valuation at http://brokercorp.com/sell/.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Why Similar Blogs Sell for Different Prices
Got 30 Minutes? Learn How The Ninja Turns Blogs Into Real Businesses
Skip the Backstory and Take me to the Free Video and MindMap!
In 2002 I started my first blog without even the hint that blogging would be anything more to me than a hobby.
Over the years that have followed I began to see the potential of blogging to make money and began to experiment – growing blogging from a hobby, to a part time job to a full time job and beyond.
The evolution of my blogs was wonderful in many ways but meant I ended up with…. a bit of a mess.
A couple of years ago I sat down to do some strategic thinking about my blogging and realised that I’d created something that resembled a house that had had many extensions added to it.
It all worked – but it was far from the strategic business that it could be.
Really what it needed was an Architect.
Meet the Architect
Today I’m excited to introduce you to someone who in many ways has become the Architect of my business – The Web Marketing Ninja.
The Ninja has literally added 0′s to my blogs revenue with his advice. He’s smart, humble, warm hearted and ethical (and a little shy). Just my kind of online marketer.
Regular readers of ProBlogger already are familiar with the Ninja – he’s been guest posting here for a year or so.
Get inside the Ninjas Mind with this Free In Depth MindMap
But today the Ninja is stepping things up a notch and is going to reveal an in depth overview of how he approaches helping blogs transition from hobbies to businesses.
I was meeting with the Ninja recently to talk about a product launch that I’m doing and as we chatted I realised this guy has so much great strategy in his head that we just had to capture it somehow.
I issued him a challenge – get your approach down and share it with ProBlogger readers. Off the cuff I suggested he create a Mind Map outlining what he does.
Little did I know that the Ninja would not only create a MindMap – but he’d also go on to create a complete 31 chapter guide to online marketing complete with a heap of other tools for bloggers!
We’ll launch the full online marketing kit that he’s produced in the coming week or so but in the lead up to it I’ve asked the Ninja to share the Mind Map with ProBlogger readers today and to talk us through it step by step in a video.
The free video he’s created is not for the light hearted – it is 30 minutes long and is a meaty overview into the topic of online marketing. You’ll need to set aside some time, make yourself comfy and grab something to take notes with to make the most of this.
The Ninja is a little nervous about presenting it – it’s his first foray into the public limelight – but I love his gentle and yet smart approach and trust you will to.
The video is completely free and we’re not asking for your email address to watch it. We’ve also included the actual MindMap as a free PDF download too.
It is part of the lead up to launching the Online Marketing Kit but I’m confident that it’ll provide value to any blogger wanting to make money from their blog – whether you go on to buy the full kit or not.
Check out the Video and Download the Mind Map here.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Got 30 Minutes? Learn How The Ninja Turns Blogs Into Real Businesses
Building Blogs is Like Building Muscles
“Building blogs is like building muscles—in order for them to grow you need to use them.”
I tweeted the above statement a few weeks back and it got so much traction I decided to create this video on the topic.
The idea for the video came out of the a Skype chat session I had with five readers who all worked through the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook together. Their feedback was that they felt like they’d all signed up to the gym together and had just had a month of intense training. In each case, their blogs had grown (both in terms of content and traffic), and they’d come to the realization that daily blogging exercise was what had led to the results.
Transcription of Building Blogs is like Building Muscles
Hi. It’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Today I want to talk about a principle of blogging that I think most people understand but many bloggers I come across don’t actually do anything with that knowledge. And that is this: a blog is like a muscle, it only grows when you use it.
Most of us understand that to have a successful blog you need to actually blog. You need to actually create content. You need to do the activities of a blogger in the same way that if I want to grow my biceps I need to actually pick up something heavy and I need to exercise those biceps. If I’m just passive with them they won’t grow at all.
So most of us understand that, but most of us also just let our blogs happen when we feel like blogging. Most bloggers I interact with? You ask them, you know, “what is your blog posting schedule like?” and they kind of look at you a little bit blankly. “Well it’s kind of like when I sit down at my computer and I think maybe I should come up with something to write about”. It’s very impulsive, and it’s not very strategic.
Now, using this exercise metaphor, I’m actually someone who doesn’t exercise very well on an impulsive basis. I actually need to be a little bit strategic about it.
The times in my life where I’ve been the most fit and most healthy are the times in my life where I’ve actually put a plan in place to become fit and healthy. They’re the times in my life where I’ve enrolled in a program of some type to exercise. They’re the times in my life where I’ve enrolled in a gym and talked to a fitness instructor and got them to devise me a plan of the type of exercises that I need to do. They’re the times in my life where I’ve talked to a dietician who’s helped to put together a plan of foods that I should be eating at certain times of the day. They’re the times where I’ve been intentional, and have actually done something and put something in place to help me to be fit and healthy are the times that I’ve actually been fit and healthy.
And the same is true with my blogs. I remember in the early days understanding this principle for the first time, and noticing that the more I posted, the more readers would come to my blog. The more I posted, the more people would leave comments on my blog. The more I would interact with my readers, the more they would interact with me. The more you use your blog, the more successful it becomes. And so when I began to notice this, I started to put some plans in place to help me to blog.
I remember the first time, about three months into my first blog, I developed an editorial calendar. I didn’t call it that at the time—I had no idea what an editorial calendar was—but I got a spreadsheet out, and I put down the different days of the week, and the different activities that I would do on my blog. At that point I was posting on a daily basis, but I began to think, “Well, on Mondays I could ask a question. On Tuesdays I could do a “how to” type post. On Wednesdays I could link to another blog and bounce off something that they’d written and link back to them.”
And so I began to think about different types of posts for different days of the week as a strategy to get my blogging regular, and to be a little bit more strategic about it in some ways. In many ways it was kind of like an exercise plan for your body, but it was an exercise plan for my blog.
Over the years I guess that editorial calendar has developed, and has changed at different times depending on the different stage that my blogs are at. There are other activities as well—it’s not just the content that you write that you need to be a bit strategic about. It can also be about promoting your blog. So you may add in to your schedule, “In Tuesdays, I will visit five other blogs in my niche and I will watch what they’re doing. I will email their authors. I might leave comments on their posts.” Those type of activities can be things that you can be a bit strategic about as well.
Another area that you can be strategic about is around building community on your blog. So you may say, “On Thursdays, I’m going to email three of my readers and just say ‘Hi, I appreciate you reading, is there anything I can do for you?’” You can interact with your readers in the comments of your blog—that type of activity can be scheduled in. You can be a bit strategic about it.
Similarly you could add in activities around doing search engine optimization if you want to grow your readers through Google, or you could schedule in things about monetization, you know—looking at how your ads are placed on your blog, and doing some optimization of that on a regular basis as well.
None of these things just happen any more than muscles growing without exercising them, so be a little bit strategic about it. Now you may have the incentive and the initiative to be able to do that for yourself, or you may need to do one of two other things.
You might get a program like ProBlogger’s 31 Days To Build a Better Blog or ProBlogger’s Guide to Your First Week of Blogging. The reason I actually created those ebooks was to get people doing daily activities that would get them in the rhythm of blogging. So you may choose to use a program like that, or you may devise your own, or use someone else’s.
And the other thing I’d say is: don’t do it alone. One of the things I know about health and my body and being fit as a person, is that I’m much more likely to exercise if I’m somehow doing it with another person. Whether that be a fitness instructor, or whether that be a friend who I go for a run with, or a friend who I might play a game of tennis with. When we are social in what we do with our bodies, for many of us it’s easier, and the same I think is true with blogging.
When you join with someone else to work through a program like 31 Days To Build A Better Blog, or some sort of other program that you devise to take your blog to the next level, you’re more likely to actually put that into practice. There’s that sense of accountability. It’s a little bit more fun, and you can help each other and resource each other through that as well. So I’d encourage you to think about not only being strategic about your blogging and putting a plan in place for it, but to also think about how you can do that with someone else. How you can build some accountability and cooperation with another blogger to build your blog.
So I guess I’d encourage you with that advice again: a blog is like a muscle. You need to use it to grow it. And for most of us, that means actually being a little bit strategic and putting some sort of a system or a rhythm or a routine in place to help us to go to the next level. Whatever you do, don’t just leave it to chance. If you want your blog to be successful, if you want it to achieve certain goals, you need to put some systems and rhythms in place to take you to those places.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Building Blogs is Like Building Muscles
The Team Behind My Blogs: From Solo Blogger to Business
One of the requests that I’ve received a fair bit lately from readers here at ProBlogger is for me to write a little more on the team I’ve put together to help me run and grow my blogs. So today I thought I’d tell a bit of that back story.
But first, let’s go back in time… (this full story can be found in ProBlogger the book).
Blogging: from hobby to job
- November 2002: I started my first personal blog almost nine years ago, without even the faintest suspicion that it’d be anything more than a hobby. In fact, I half suspected I wouldn’t still be blogging by the end of 2002—I don’t really have a good history of sticking with most of my hobbies for more than a month or two (hence the collection of sporting equipment and gadgets in my attic).
- December 2003: By this point, I’d started to experiment with making money from my blogs (I had a couple by this point). By no means was it a “job” (not even a part-time one), but I was earning a day and was starting to get an inkling that there could just be some potential if I could only keep the earnings from my AdSense ads trending up each month.
- April 2004: I was now earning per day from my blogs, having put extra effort into them over the last few months, and at this rate I started to consider my blogs as a part-time job. As a result my wife (V) and I decided I would dedicate a little more time to blogging to see what impact that would have.
- June 2004: May and June continued to see the income grow and it passed 00 in a month for the first time. The goal of being a full time blogger grew. We decided to give it a six-month deadline to get to a full-time level, or I’d have to “get a real job.” I began to slowly give up other work as the blogging income grew.
- December 2004: We made a decision that things were at a level I could go full-time as a blogger. Income went up and down over the next year or so. but I was able to give up all other work and just focus upon blogging.
- September 2005: I published a post here on ProBlogger talking about how I’d reached the “six-figure” level of income from blogging.
To this point, things had really just evolved. There were not too many months where there’d been spectacular growth or spikes in income. Rather, it was a very steady growth and I while I was working a lot of hours, the idea of hiring someone to help on an ongoing basis never really entered my mind.
I did hire blog designers once or twice in these early years, but that’s about as far as it went.
I look at this first phase of my blogging for income as blogging moving from a hobby to a part-time job, then to a full-time job.
Blogging: from job to business
The next phase involved moving to more of a “business” mindset.
I guess the transition of moving to more of a business model began with the starting of b5media—a blog network that I began with a small group of other bloggers in 2005. While I’m still a minor shareholder of the company, I am no longer actively involved. But the idea was that each of us founders realized we could probably achieve a lot more if we pooled out efforts and worked with an expanded team.
That business grew rapidly, and while we made mistakes, we also learned a lot about business, blogging, and working with teams. b5media took on a number of rounds of venture capital, which enabled us to grow, and I began to see the beauty of having a team working on the same projects rather than just doing everything myself.
While I didn’t focus all of my energies on b5media, I learned a lot in that period.
It was also at this time that I began to explore other partnerships and also began to toy with the idea of hiring staff and/or contractors to help me. I realized that in my own blogs, I was approaching a ceiling in terms of how much I could do each day. As a result, in this time I took a number of steps:
- There was a period where I outsourced the writing of one of my old blogs (no longer active) to another blogger on a contract/revenue share basis.
- I took on Lara Kulpa to help with the administrative load (Lara still contracts with me today to help with comment moderation and community management on ProBlogger.com).
- I worked with others on a revenue share basis for a while on the ProBlogger Job Boards (I now maintain this myself).
Today: the team
My blogs have grown beyond what I can really manage alone. Lara still is involved but the last year or so has seen a number of additions to the team. What follows is an attempt to give some insight into the different levels of involvement that others have on my sites—both voluntarily and in a paid capactity (I’m sure I’ll forget someone):
- Guest writers: Gradually over the last few years I’ve involved others in the writing of content on my blogs. I did this first on my photography blog, where today almost all of our posts are either from guests or a small team of regular paid contributors.
- Paid writers: Toda,y this is solely limited to the photography site (I did have a couple of paid contributors here on ProBlogger, but that never really panned out). These paid writers on dPS write between one and eight posts per month and are paid on a per-post basis. At times there were up to 10 paid writers on the team, but this has decreased a little as we’ve developed more of a guest writer team—as dPS has a considerable audience writers are mainly involved to help grow their profiles.
- Editors: I’m currently working with a number of editors on different levels. The main editor that regulars of ProBlogger will know is Georgina Laidlaw, who edits ProBlogger and FeelGooder. Georgina works with guest writers on both blogs as well as creating content of her own. She is also involved in the creation of ebooks, writing sales copy, and other editorial tasks. We also have a couple of other editors who have helped with editing and proofreading ebooks.
- Ebook authors: Over the last few years, I’ve expanded my focus to create more products to sell. These have largely been ebooks to this point. At this stage we’ve created six ebooks on Digital Photography School, three here on ProBlogger, and one on FeelGooder. I’ve written some of these myself, but have also partnered with other authors on some. Authors work with us on a revenue share arrangement where my company acts as a publisher and brings audience, marketing, customer service, and so on, and the author brings expertise. At this point, we have published ebooks with four other authors, but will release another four or five collaborative projects by the end of the year.
- Product production: To help with this increased production I recently contracted with Jasmin Tragas, who heads up the production of new products. Jasmin works with authors, editors, designers, and marketing to get products to publication. It’s enabled us to increase product creation incredibly, and has allowed me to focus my attention on other activities.
- Community management: As I mentioned above, Lara helps with community management at ProBlogger.com, but I’ve also got the involvement of Simon Pollock (my brother-in-law) to manage the community at dPS (among other roles).
- Customer service: Simon is also involved in giving customer support on dPS. We’ve recently installed ZenDesk to funnel all incoming emails on that site into the one place, and Simon handles all of that.
- Designers: Designers were perhaps the first people that I hired in the early days of my blogging, and I continue to work with a number of them (all on a contract basis). These come in on short-term basis to design/redesign our blogs but we also work with two designers on our ebook designs.
- Social media: I do the bulk of my own social media marketing, but in the last month or so Simon has also become more involved in this for dPS.
- Technology: Last year, I contracted someone to manage the servers and back end of my blogs. This had previously been handled by b5media for numerous years, but last year, we moved everything over to Amazon (and a variety of other technology partners).
- Ad Sales: Gabrielle Green heads up ad sales on both ProBlogger and dPS. While we do use some more automated ad solutions (like AdSense) on dPS, we’re also growing the number of ads we are selling directly to advertisers—both banner ads and newsletter ads. It’s been great to have someone dedicated to this task.
- Marketing: Lastly I’m fortunate to have the involvement of the Web Marketing Ninja (who has been a regular guest poster here on ProBlogger). The Ninja has helped sharpen sales pages and emails, and formulate strategy for product launches and promotions.
None of the above people work full-time just on my blogs, and none are “staff”—they all work on a contract basis. Interestingly, in the last 12 months the main additions to the team have all been local to me here in Melbourne, which has enabled more face-to-face interactions among my team (including the recent team lunch, where we took the above photo).
So … what do I do?
Having brought others in to take on different roles, one might wonder what it is that I do these days. Having an expanding team has certainly taken pressure off on some levels, but there is still plenty to do.
My main focus these days is on:
- editing dPS (coordinating guest and paid writers, scheduling posts, writing email newsletters, etc.)
- social media (mainly on ProBlogger)
- team management—with more team members come more management tasks
- writing and developing content, both for the blogs as well as products that we’re developing
- strategy and partnership development—at present there are at least four other products/projects that I’m working on
- administration—I’m amazed just how much admin there is, and while some of my email is now flowing through ZenDesk to Simon there’s still a tonne that needs to be done each day
- speaking—this tends to come in fits and starts but it’s been nice to be able to allocate a bit more time to local speaking opportunities lately.
I realize that this post has been quite long, but I hope it answers some of those questions that I’ve been getting more and more of lately.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
The Team Behind My Blogs: From Solo Blogger to Business
Why Honesty Matters … for Blogs and Brands
This guest post is by Enzo F. Cesario of Brandsplat.
Will someone please tell me what “hip” means? Does it mean “popular?” Is it what the kids are doing today? Well, just who are the kids? Do you mean teenagers? Early 20s? Hipsters? No, not hipsters … we’ve heard enough from them.
The same goes for words like edgy, trendy, hot, clever—managers seem to use these words all the time, and yet when pressed for an answer can’t seem to provide any input for what they’re going on about. It’s about as helpful as saying, “Make this product a bestseller,” but answering “How?” with an, “Oh, you know…”
Ccopyright James Steidl - Fotolia.com
A lot of people wanting to make a good blog ask these kinds of questions, though. “How do I make it hip? How do I make it really pop?”
Far from being a problem merely of unimaginative employees, vague guidelines do represent an obvious problem in the greater blogging world. The problem comes up from two separate directions: The first is not knowing how things work, and the second is not being willing to admit you don’t know how things work.
The first problem lies in the nature of modern branding and advertising itself. A blog is very much about creating a brand image—specifically, branding yourself and the way you have with words.
The sad, cold, utterly frightening fact of the matter is that there is no formula. There is no silver bullet, no magical way to do things that will result in viral success, online or off. This is because people are inconsistent, confusing, unusual creatures with the ability to change their minds about things. Sometimes people will respond to a well-done light show, other times they want to see an angry rant, and still other times they grow inordinately fond of a man in a towel parading through a Magic Realism sequence of events.
The second matter is a bit of necessary misdirection: there are things people can do to make branding work. There are rules for how pictures should be composed, the ratio of text to images and other sorts of guidelines that can make something work and another something not. But none of this is that fabled silver bullet that will guarantee branding success—everything that’s done in the field of branding is an attempt.
Take two examples from the same company, Apple. The first is the company’s classic, “I use a Mac” series, and the second is its “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” promotion.
The “I use a Mac” series didn’t take off quite as well as the Mac/PC series, and there’s no hard and fast reason why. Some opined that the ads were just too bland, others thought they represented a kind of snobby elitisim.
On the other hand, the fame of the Mac/PC ads is very well-established. They connected with people for some reason. Opinions, again, vary as to why—some thought it was the clever banter, others point to the fact that making the machines into people allowed viewers to connect more. Whatever the reason, the “I use a Mac” ads are forgotten, while the Mac/PC format is still being copied by such luminaries as Sprint.
Yet when examined visually, the two ads are almost indistinguishable. Both show people against white backgrounds, talking. What the heck made one work, and one not—especially given that no one can seem to agree as to the reasons why folks seemed to go for one or the other?
There are answers, but there is no one answer.
Here’s my personal take on these two ads: I think it was because Apple embraced its market more in producing the latter format. With the “I use a Mac” format, they were trying to target a new market—people who use Macs were talking to people who don’t. It’s hard to bring in new clients; most business comes from repeat customers. Further, it’s word of mouth from existing clients that tends to bring in new people rather than advertising.
So with the second set of ads, Apple targeted its own audience with arguments that were familiar to them: Macs work, PCs don’t. This made them more satisfied with their purchases and more likely to use their purchasing power, as well as trying to bring their friends and families into the fold. Again, this isn’t the definitive answer, but it is one that makes as much sense as any of the others.
So, how exactly does this translate to you? How do you make something hip and edgy and all those other fun, potentially meaningless words?
First, know your product. When you’re writing a blog, you are selling yourself and your writing. Before you do anything else, you need to know what niche you and your blog fill. Mac hit on this with the “Macs just work” argument that served the company so well. Be familiar with what you want to discuss and the way you intend to discuss it before you get started.
Second, know your market. You can have the best hair restoration product in the world, but marketing it to the Hair Metal glam rock set is probably not going to work out so well. Figure out who your audience is and what they like.
This is where the social side of blogging comes in. Take a few minutes and actually talk to people, socialize, discuss, laugh, tell jokes, be the butt of a joke. Do something to connect with people and have a discussion. Demographic research is great—but someone else can do that part. You should go talk to someone and get a feel for what their mood is.
Between these two elements, you will be able to come to a more honest vision of what they want, put out a blog that’s both entertaining and genuine, and “hip” can remain a description of a body part, rather than a meaningless adjective.
Enzo F. Cesario is an expert on blogs and social media for business and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. For the free Brandsplat Report go to Brandsplat.com or visit our blog at http://www.ibrandcasting.com
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Why Honesty Matters … for Blogs and Brands
He’s a Rogue … that’s Why He Blogs so Well
This guest post is by Graham Phoenix of Male eXperience.
Okay, let’s be clear about this: I am a man and I am a blogger. In fact I’ve turned it back on itself—I blog about men!
Now, some men are rogues. We all know rogues: they are focused, calculating, dedicated, and only want one thing. These are the qualities of a real rogue—and the qualities of a successful blogger.
Look at what Chris Guillebeau, at Art of Non-Conformity, said:
“The reality that I need to work more than I thought has required some sacrifices I did not expect in the beginning, and it took me a while to become comfortable with this.”
I’m not surprised! Surely we all came into blogging because it was an easy source of income that we could work at from home.
Corbett Barr, at Think Traffic, really blew the whistle when he said:
“I’m saying you have to look fear in the eye, realize that fear is hiding some of your richest potential material, punch fear in the face and take whatever it was hiding from you and put that in your writing.”
What a rogue! Where are his good manners?
Darren Rowse, here at ProBlogger, really made it sound easy when he said:
“I’ve had my fair share of luck, I worked insane hours, and I started out at a time that was a lot less competitive than it is now—all of these things have contributed to any success I might have had.”
There it is in black and white: they are all men, and had to be rogues to succeed as bloggers. None of them had an easy ride—or not one they will admit to, anyway! So they took every chance they could get, and stomped on the competition, as they strove to make their harsh journey to the top that little bit easier.
What is the secret to blogging well? Why do you need to be a rogue?
You need to be focused
Any successful blog dominates a niche. Most blogs fail because they wander around the mind of the writer. They often start as musings and end as a no-show. We all have a few good posts in us, but we need to sustain that over a significant period of time.
“One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.”
—Tony Robbins
You need to be mad
Really: why else would you do it? As a blogger, you expose yourself, day after day, to an unforgiving world only to have people knock you down in the comments. You spend all your time on it and earn precious little.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
—Albert Einstein
You need to kill the competition
At the very least, you need to kill them with kindness. Supporting your competition is a great way to get noticed out there. You do, nevertheless, need to dominate: readers need to see yours as the blog to read, the one that’s hot.
“Kill the competition is the only way to think about your business and especially your competition. Most people do not desire competition in business but then do little or nothing to eliminate it.”
—Grant Cardone
You need to be opinionated
How many blogs have you read, and returned to, that don’t have anything to say? Blogs are about opinion. In the world of men’s issues, the blogs that stand out are the ones that are most outrageous, such as Citizen Renegade. They may not be the best, but they get the visitors.
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”
—Albert Einstein
You need to be like a man
You need the qualities of a man. You need to dominate, be tough, and be true to yourself and what you believe. Being compassionate, open, and receptive are great qualities but in blogging, like in business, you need to shine and stand above the rest.
“Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.”
—John F. Kennedy
In talking to men about men, as I do, I’ve realized that I need to hit them between the eyes to get them to listen. I think the same applies to all blogging niches.
What do you think?
Graham Phoenix writes about the Male eXperience of Men, Women, and Relationships. He has created a sizeable following in the area of men’s issues and men’s groups and while doing so has learned a lot about the art of blogging. Get his feed here.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
He’s a Rogue … that’s Why He Blogs so Well
Which Blogs Should You Be Watching?
This guest post is by Kevin Sanders, of strongandfit.net.
What if I said you’re only as good as the blogs you follow? Maybe that’s not completely true for everyone, but I’m willing to bet all the A-listers have several blogs they check out every day.
I think there are basically two types of blogs you should follow.
Type 1: Blogging blogs
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I believe every blogger should keep an eye on several pro blogs in the field—whether they’re on making money or SEO tips, etc). Why? Here are three reasons:
1. Game-changer posts
Every once in a while, I’ll run across a post that radically impacts my blogging from that point forward. One example would be a post I read here that explained how to optimize the position of ads. Following that advice greatly improved the profits I made through both Adsense and affiliate banners. I don’t find these high-impact posts every day, but they easily make up for the effort I spend following the blogs I read.
2. Motivation
I wasn’t even sure you could make money with blogging when I first started. It’s hard to keep posting every day when you aren’t even sure there’s a possibility of financial reward for your efforts. Following the pro bloggers gave me the encouragement I needed to keep going, even when profits were slow (or non-existent). It also helped me to have realistic expectations and patience. Building a good blog takes work and determination; never underestimate the power of motivation.
3. SEO tips
I was completely clueless about SEO in my early blogging days. I still don’t consider myself an expert—not by a long shot. I also don’t obsess over SEO. Having said all this, I needed to learn how to work with search engines—best SEO practices, so to speak. I learned most of what I know from reading what other bloggers had to say.
I follow about 17 blogs through feeds on my Google page. Do I read every post on every blog? No. I just keep an eye on them and click any titles that get my attention. Also:
- Don’t overanalyze them. At some point you just need to shut up and blog. Don’t try to follow every single bit of advice you read—some of it may not apply to you, your niche, or your blog. You’ll even run across contradictory advice if you follow the blogging niche long enough. Just use what helps you and disregard what doesn’t.
- Don’t snub the B-listers. Keep an eye out for up-and-coming bloggers who may not be well known yet. Some of these guys really know their stuff and are more accessible than their A-list counterparts. Some of my favorite blogs, in fact, are not nearly as popular as Problogger.net. One example is SEO-Hacker, a blog created by one of my friends here in Asia.
Type 2: Niche blogs
I mentioned that I follow several pro blogs through RSS feeds. I also follow several blogs within the same niche as mine (fitness blogs). Following blogs in your niche, or related niches, can help you in several ways:
1. Potential income streams
Your fellow bloggers can help you keep an eye on new ways of making money. You may learn of a new product or service to promote by watching other blogs in your niche. Most of us try to keep track of these opportunities through affiliate newsletters, but other bloggers can help you find even more opportunities.
2. Trends within your niche
Blogs within your niche will alert you to “hot topics” in your industry or specialization. You may want to post your own two cents about those trends—there’s always a chance you’ll get ranked well in search engines on a topic that everyone’s talking about (and searching for).
This is especially helpful if you live outside the country that’s responsible for most of your traffic. I live in Asia, but most of my fitness blog’s traffic (and revenue) comes from North America. It’s very beneficial for me to follow bloggers back in the States.
3. Rebuttal posts
Following other bloggers is also an opportunity to be a voice of dissent. If you read a post you disagree with, you can give your own unique point of view on a particular topic within the niche. This would likely be a post you would have never thought of if you weren’t watching the blogosphere in your niche.
The bottom line: watching blogs within my own niche gives me lots of new ideas for producing fresh, relevant, high-quality content. I think it will do the same for you.
What should you keep in mind as you follow niche blogs?
- Be yourself. Don’t just repeat what everyone else is saying. Always try to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Loyal readers want to hear what you have to say.
- Do your homework. Hopefully you’ll inspiration from other blogs, but be sure to do your own research. You’ll need to go back to original sources and studies to check the accuracy of other bloggers. You’ll also need to carefully look at products you choose to endorse—what’s right for one blogger may not be right for you (even if you are in the same niche).
Are there other types of blogs that you consider essential reading? Share them in the comments.
Kevin is a missionary, author and fitness enthusiast. You can check out his fitness tips at strongandfit.net. You can read his devotional thoughts and personal reflections at KuyaKevin.com.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
Which Blogs Should You Be Watching?
10 tips for managing multiple blogs
Once you’ve mastered the art of blogging, setting up additional blogs is something you should consider doing. Here are 10 tips for managing multiple blogs.
1. Get one blog right before starting any more.
The key here is to figure out what works and what doesn’t before you make the same mistakes on all of your blogs, and you only realise this when you’ve potentially wasted a lot of time doing things the wrong way.
In other words – get it wrong on one blog, then fix it before you launch any other blogs.
2. Don’t start too many at once.
It’s a lot harder to make an impact if you launch loads of blogs in one go, than if you gradually release them one at a time. Give people a chance to check out one blog before you start another.
3. Use WordPress Multisite to reduce your workload.
I used to install each blog individually, which becomes a huge hassle once you get to your third or fourth blog. The multi-site options in WordPress 3.0 will make your life much, much easier in this respect.
If you’ve already set up some blogs separately, the following migration guide will be of interest.
4. Have a “master blog” and link to all your blogs from there.
This is required for WordPress Multisite – at least the “master blog” is – you don’t have to display cross-site links if you don’t want to. But it’s a great way to get people checking out your other blogs. My portfolio is how I do this at the moment.
5. Mix up your posting schedule.
When you only have one blog, choosing a posting schedule is relatively simple. Figure out how much content you can write in a week, think about the days when you’ll be able to commit to writing posts, and set a goal that’s both ambitious and realistic. If it doesn’t work, change it. Job done.
With multiple jobs, finding a posting schedule is a much more complex matter. For instance, if you run five blogs and you like to write on a Saturday, you’ll need to write five posts just to get one new post onto each of your blogs. It’s a lot more work – but you can work it into a sensible schedule.
I try not to have too many posts going up on the same day, even if the blogs are on different topics. So if I know I’ll be publishing a post on a Wednesday, I might choose Thursday for one of my other blogs, and Tuesday for yet another blog.
This might not work if your readers like to see new content on a Monday across all of your blogs… so let’s look at a way to deal with that.
6. Write posts in advance.
If you want to publish one post a day on a single blog, it’s a good idea to try and write some posts in advance and schedule them to go live at the time of your choosing. Especially if you’re going away, or if you are better at writing lots of posts in one sitting.
With multiple blogs, the stack of posts you want/need to write is going to increase. However, the same rule applies: it’s good to get ahead. On some of my blogs, I write when I think of a post and publish it immediately. On others, I write in advance. It all depends on the type of content I’m writing, how many posts I publish in an average week, and how organised I am with my schedule.
Here are three examples:
- Weekly Blogging: for the upcoming week, I wrote 5 posts on a Sunday afternoon and scheduled them to go out on Monday to Friday.
- Spam Comment: at the moment, there are 45 scheduled posts. This blog has one new post every weekday, so the current schedule will be good for 9 weeks. Currently, the last scheduled post is dated March 4th.
- Ben Barden: no scheduled posts, I write on this blog when I have something to say.
None of my other blogs (including Top Ten Blog Tips) have any posts scheduled at the moment. How you organise your schedule is up to you, but queuing up posts in advance is a very good idea if you have multiple blogs.
7. Have a clear separation from one blog to the next.
Each blog should have a clear focus – otherwise, how will you know which blog should contain a certain type of post?
If you have several multi-topic blogs, you may find that some of them get neglected, or they suffer from poor quality content as you post on them just to keep them somewhat up to date.
There’s very little reason to set up multiple blogs if you don’t have different things to say on each one. Finding a new social networking site that happens to have a blog widget is not a good enough reason to have a blog on every site you use.
8. Have some overlap.
Contrary to the above, allowing your blogs to overlap will allow you to link them together. There should still be a clear separation so you can tell where one blog ends and the next begins, but isolating each blog will create work for you as you’ll need to promote each blog one by one.
You’ll probably need to promote each blog individually anyway. But in much the same way you should link to previous blog posts to get people clicking around a bit, being able to cross-promote your blogs is a very powerful way to make your content much richer and keep readers on your blogs for longer.
How many times have you been on Wikipedia, clicked a link, and ended up on a totally random article an hour later? Maybe it’s just me…
9. Accept guest posts.
Don’t depend on them as your only source of content – but do invite readers to become writers, by accepting guest posts on your blogs. This can help you to schedule many more posts in advance, and allow the blog to run itself for a period of time.
10. Comment with different links.
Another cross-promotion technique is to alter the link you use when commenting on other people’s blogs. This can be tricky to manage, as you’ll somehow need to keep track of which links you’ve used and how often each one has been used.
One method is to comment on blogs in your niche using the most relevant link, and simply broaden your commenting community to include blogs from every niche you’re currently writing in.
Alternatively, you could comment with a link to your “master blog”, or your portfolio page, if you have one.
What do you think?
Do you have multiple blogs? How many do you have? How do you keep on top of them?
This Blog’s Final Post
A note to readers: This post is the last for the Idea of the Day blog, started by the editors of the Week in Review more than two years ago as a place to highlight the most interesting current writing on the Web. The blog's end is a result of limited resources in a medium where any number of worthy projects are possible, and where new priorities continually emerge. Thanks to all our readers and commenters, and regrets.
Idea of the Day
How to Suck at Writing, and then Write for the Biggest Blogs in the World
This is a guest post by Danny Wong. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
Writing hasn’t always been a skill of mine. I rarely ever read when I was younger, and still had my father read me books for years after I had learned how to read for myself.
So how did I go from a forced writer (I only wrote things when I had to for school and never for recreation) to an influential blogger?
I started writing for our business blog just because we needed content creators. I was new to this whole Social Media thing, and I could hardly write coherent content, nevertheless quality content. I dreaded it.
We quickly killed my future contributions to the blog because I wasn’t enjoying it, the content wasn’t incredibly beneficial or engaging, and instead I focused more efforts on things I could do to really impact the business.
So I turned to learning how to manage Public Relations because I thought, “If I can’t inbound any visitors to the site and business blog by writing quality content, then let me go out and get traffic from other people’s sites and blogs.”
So I spent a lot of time schmoozing bloggers and writers and then I closed a feature article with a writer on a site called Examiner.com. I thought it was the neatest thing to have such a high traffic site featuring me since it had millions of unique visitors a month. After reading and reveling in the feature article, I saw a Call-To-Action saying, “Write for us” and I thought, “Hm. This seems like an interesting opportunity to build brand awareness through links in my byline and increase my personal brand by just being a (sort of) professional writer.”
The CTA called to me and I answered. Using a referral from the writer that featured me, I ended up becoming the Boston Startup Examiner, and then things just snowballed from there. I starting reading blogs like DailyBlogTips, reading more content on Examiner and other news-oriented blogs, and then starting doing guest posts any blogs that would take my work!
Then I just kept stumbling upon opportunities, and quickly built relationships with lots of editors through my formal PR work and then reached out to them with a guest post ready for their review.
Finally, I started publishing on some of the biggest sites in their niche, like SearchEngineJournal and a local NY Times blog, and then I started publishing on some of the biggest blogs in the world like TheNextWeb and ReadWriteWeb.
Now, I have a blogger account with the world’s #1 blog, HuffingtonPost, and I have a pretty strong portfolio of writings published in an even stronger set of blogs, which gives me leverage when trying to publish articles on other sites when I can say, “My name is Danny Wong and I have contributed writings to NY Times (blog), HuffingtonPost, ReadWriteWeb, TheNextWeb and Examiner.”
Just to break down how I went from sucking at writing to writing for some of the world’s biggest blogs:
1. I had a relationship with a writer at a media outlet that had open invitations for writers to join, and spent way too many hours crafting my application writings as well as my first few posts.
2. I was reading more blogs and books, and spent more time writing blog posts that I would never publish just for the sake of practicing writing.
3. I started publishing anywhere and everywhere that would talk to a small-time writer like me, especially one that had some interesting thoughts and experience in startups and entrepreneurship.
4. Some of the bigger blogs I read had published guest posts on their site, so I contacted the first person I knew who was a writer (a relationship I built through my PR work) and asked how I might become a contributor. Sometimes, I was directed to the editor who would then request I submit a post to them directly, or I would have already had contact with an editor who was anxious to see how I could contribute to their business.
5. The bigger sites bit. Admittedly, I did spend several hours writing my first post for each outlet, but it was well worth the time investment because I started the relationship off on the right foot, and then became a semi-frequent contributor.
6. I name-dropped all the different media outlets I had contributed to when pitching myself to publish with a new media outlet, so things just snowballed as I built up my credibility. As I became more credible after publishing posts with more and more influential blogs, the bigger blogs started to pay attention to me and were more than happy to take my contributions.
It took quite a bit of hard work, networking and determination to build up my writing skills and my writing portfolio so now I can proudly say I am a blogger with the #1 blog in the world and write for several of the biggest blogs out there.
What tactics did you use to publish with big blogs and sites?
About the author: Danny Wong is a writer at HuffingtonPost (you can see his column here), the #1 blog in the world, and the co-founder of co-created dress shirts startup, Blank Label.
Original Post: How to Suck at Writing, and then Write for the Biggest Blogs in the World
