Archive for May, 2008

This post was guest blogged by Shannon Lilly of Infected by Bugs, a blog that teaches you how to make money online. If you would like to guest blog for MonkeyBlogger, I am still looking for more and you can email your posts to mark[at]monkeyblogger[dot]com. Thanks!

I often wonder why more people don’t take advantage of adding a blog to their websites. I know a blog can be tough to upkeep but it really only take 1-2 posts per week to do that. Only a few of us phycos make posts every day (me of course).

However I believe if business owners as well as personal site owners understood the importance of a blog they would get one up post haste. I am guilty of not putting

blogs on several of my sites or I have put a blog up but never update it. This is what you call (over worked and under paid blogging) but its really no excuse at all!

Today I want to talk a little bit about how to add some pizazz to your blog and get people interested in reading it, subscribing to it and even buying ads from you!

- Get Them To Actually Read Your Posts: Sometimes its difficult to determine why visitors don’t actually read your blog, however there are some things we can do to intrigue visitors to read more. You can place images, video and other forms of media further down in your posts to excite your readers and hopefully they will stick around to read the whole post if not then just the highlighted areas where video and images are appearing.

So far I haven’t had much trouble or complaints about my posts being boring or anything of that nature and I get lots of page views which tells me people are reading. That brings me to another tip we can do to each post to get readers more involved. Basically whenever you can without it looking spammy link to other posts from your new posts, this allows the search engines to find older posts easier and I guarantee your page views per month will jump if not double just by doing this.

- Get Them To Subscribe Already: When you think about subscribing to a blog multiple thoughts may come to mind, however one important factor is (why would they need to sign up?). What are you offering your visitors who actually subscribe, anything at all?

If you look at some of the bigger bloggers in the MMO niche you will see nearly all of them offer a free ebook of some kind from the blog owner on how to make money online, improve seo or other related topics. These ebooks are highly wanted because you are after all reading a ebook written by the pro blogger himself.

My suggestion is that you go ahead and offer a similar ebook or free product to everyone who signs up to your rss feed. Don’t be afraid to put a nice image and small text description about the ebook in your subscribe section on the front page of your blog (I hope you have it their). I can pretty much guarantee people will sign up and possibly tell their friends about you and your blog / ebook if its of good quality and worth reading.

- Start With The End In Mind: Well there you have it, a couple tips to wet your soda appetite. Each of these techniques have worked for me and I am confident they will work for you to. Be sure and share your experiences / opinions with us by commenting below!

This post was written by Paul Piotrowski over at InspiredMoneyMaker.com which is a Blog that focuses on teaching people how to make money doing what they love. I really want to thank him for the support, guest posting for me. If you are interested in guest posting on MonkeyBlogger, email it to mark[at]monkeyblogger[dot]com

As Mark has written about on a few occasions, the Blogging community is full of “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” Bloggers. New Blogs pop up every day, only to disappear into witness protection tomorrow.

I believe that one of the biggest reasons for that is that Blogging by nature is a medium of expression based on giving, not getting. A successful Blogger is a Blogger who gives first and gives often, without really expecting anything in return. Bloggers who have followed that formula have grown rather quickly as their readers have felt that energy from the first time they stumbled across their Blogs.

The rest of the herd who read an income report by a professional Blogger and begin drooling over the idea of “getting paid for nothing”, run out and start a Blog with the misconception that there’s a big prize waiting for them once they sign up for a free Wordpress account and they publish a couple of senseless articles. Professional Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. If that’s what you’re seeking, you might want to look elsewhere.

For the rest of us who genuinely want to help people in our specific area of expertise there is a lot of potential in Blogging, but we must embrace the concept of Giving to accelerate our results.

Take this article, for example. When I heard Mark broke his clavicle, I jumped at the opportunity to help the guy out even though I don’t really know him. I stopped by his Blog one day and I liked his Mascot design and I found it quite impressive for him to be getting into this line of business at such a young age so I subscribed to his RSS feed.

If you really study Professional Bloggers, and meet some of them, you will very quickly learn that the REAL reason that they are so successful in what they do is because they are some of the most giving people you have ever met. People think that when Professional Bloggers run contests, it’s all just about drawing attention and publicity to our Blogs. It does have that effect, but in reality it’s not about that. It’s because we really do enjoy giving stuff away to people!

You want to be a successful Blogger? Try thinking from the point of view of “How can I give the most amount of value to my readers?” every day for 90 days and you’ll see how different the world looks like for you after that.

That, and also don’t forget to have fun in the process.

Heya guys – this is Jason of The University Kid and Blog Premiere. Thought I’d help Mark out a lil

I just finished reading Purple Cow by Seth Godin; if you haven’t, pick it up as it’s a cracking read and will help you in your internet marketing business.

If you’re a newbie, entering into the whole internet marketing game – especially in something as cutthroat competitive as blogging, you’re going to find it difficult. Why the hell should I read your blog when there are thousands of others, more established, more discussion, bigger valued prizes? That’s the problem a lot of newbie bloggers face – and this is where the Purple Cow comes into play.

The Purple Cow is basically something so brilliant, so remarkable that people have to stand up and take notice. It could be a killer custom drawn header (hehe) or an amazing blog theme that no one’s ever seen before… basically something that leaves people wanting to come back to your website.

Once you add the Purple Cow to your business, it doesn’t matter what others do – people will always visit you. No matter who the competition, no matter what they do; people will look at your blog in the hope that you will astound them with yet another Purple Cow… leaving them writhing in blogging ecstasy yet again.

I’m embracing the Purple Cow… and that’s in my list that talks about ideas never discussed before. Are you using the Purple Cow to further your blogging journey, and if so why not?

Remember, life is short and your blogging journey will be even shorter… so you want to make your mark, and make it big as soon as possible. Unheard of wealth awaits, and this is why you should differentiate yourself from the thousands of other losers out there… stand out above the rest and explode your blogging business.

This post is guest blogged by Tom Sinfield from StandOutBlogger.com where he provides challenging posts that will help you increase your blogging potential. I want to thank him, it really is helping me out big time. Check out his blog, I really, honestly like it, it’s a great one. (And I’m not just saying that ) I also need more guest posters, so if your interested, shoot me an email. Thanks!

How many times have you seen a blogger bounce into the scene, claiming that he will be the next John Chow, blogs frantically for a couple of weeks and just seems to be getting some momentum – and then disappears?

I don’t know about you, but I have seen this happen all to often. People come in thinking that blogging is just easy money and when they realize that you have to work hard on it just like any other business, they quit.

I think that these new bloggers are being sold a fantasy by ‘get rich quick’ ebooks promoted by internet marketers looking to make a quick buck and other bloggers who fudge their figures to make themselves look good.

I guess what I am trying to say is that blogging is hard work. However that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t give it a go, because there is the potential to make big money blogging. But it isn’t going to happen over night – it will take time and effort and training, and mistakes, and ups and downs. Your success will depend on how much you really want to succeed blogging, because I have seen people who have a lot of head knowledge about a topic and so much potential but their blog just fizzles out. But I have also seen young everyday people, who if you asked them, had nothing special to offer – yet they had a drive within them to make something of blogging no matter what. And you know what? They are doing fantastic. Their blogs are successful. They are getting high traffic levels. They are making a good living from their blogs, and they have built themselves an influence that money cannot buy.

So let me ask you one more time.

How much do you really want to succeed in your blogging?

Hey guys, the arm is still pretty bad, but I thought I’d update you a little bit.

The contact form is working now, but if you want to email me directly, my email is:

mark[at]monkeyblogger[dot]com

Also, some people want to guest blog to help me, that’d be great.

Just email those guest posts to my email.

I really wanna thank you all for your support while I go through this tough time.