Dean: Did you know you can use your blog to make money offline?

Blogger: Offline? What is this “offline” you speak of?

Dean: It’s the opposite of “online.”

Blogger: (confused silence)

Dean: You know. Offline. Not on the internet. The real world.

Blogger: (shaking phone) Not only does this stupid phone drop my calls, now it’s translating them into crazy moon language.

Okay, I jest. But to listen to some bloggers, you would think a blog’s only purpose is to make money online, by selling ebooks, membership sites, or advertising.

The truth is, blogs have grown into a more powerful tool than anyone ever imagined. They’re ideal for making money online, of course. But they can also be used to generate profits for nearly any kind of business, including those that provide real services in the offline world.

This often means generating sales leads for a service or consulting business. This is how I use my copywriting business blog, which accounts for most of the new clients who call me these days.

Okay, sounds great. People read your blog and then call to hire you, right?

Well, not quite.

Are you selling a product or a service?

First, it’s important to understand that selling a service is not like selling a product.

When you sell a product, the process is usually pretty straightforward. Basically, you introduce the product, spell out some benefits, make an offer, and people make a buying decision.

Selling a service can be a little more involved.

Prospects first inquire about the service, usually comparing you with other providers. If the service is expensive, like my copywriting and marketing consulting, people are even more careful about their decision.

I’ve had clients take years to finally made the decision to hire me. And it’s common for people to start a phone call by saying, “I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while now. Do you have a moment to talk about a copywriting project?”

This shouldn’t surprise you. The more expensive the service, the more important it is, and the more commitment it requires from the customer, the more careful that customer is going to be.

Think about it. If you need your bathroom painted, you might spend an afternoon looking for a decent painter. If you need to build an extension onto your house, you might spend weeks or even months finding the perfect contractor for the job.

So if you provide a service, such as freelance writing, graphic design, web consulting, wedding photography, event planning, translation, or whatever, you can use your blog to attract prospects and begin the process of selling them on your services.

Here’s how.

Create your sales funnel

Professional sales people often talk about filling their “sales funnel” or “sales pipeline.”

What they mean is that in order to make a sale sometime in the future, they want people to inquire today. They always want to have lots of people who are in various stages of readiness to buy.

To keep things simple, I like to think of the sales funnel as having just 4 simple steps.

1. Generate inquiries

This means getting people to contact you. Typically this is done by offering something of value in exchange for contact information.

For my business, I offer a free newsletter. If people go to my main website, I also offer a free white paper. In both cases, they have to give me some contact information before they get the freebie. I also provide a contact form and phone number for “hot” leads who are ready to talk business.

I get many inquiries every week. Most can’t afford my services. But a few are high quality and good candidates for future business.

2. Follow up

After you’ve delivered the freebie or provided whatever information you have promised, it’s time to schedule your follow-up, usually either by email or phone.

Because you are responding to someone’s inquiry, it’s not a cold call. You have a valid reason for making contact and have an opportunity to gauge how serious the person is. Are they just gathering information? Do they need your services immediately? Or are they somewhere in between?

The most serious are your sales leads. Everyone else is a prospect. You will want to spend more time on sales leads than prospects.

3. Nurture leads

This is the step most people are tempted to skip.

Like every other person selling a service, you want to make a sale right away. But while a few people will hire you immediately, most will not. Their interest needs to be nurtured until they’re ready to buy.

You should store all contact information in a database, which could be a simple customer relationship management system like Highrise or a desktop-based program such as ACT!.

Find ways to regularly communicate with your leads. Over time, they will become more familiar with you and more comfortable with the idea of hiring you. People always prefer the familiar over the unknown.

There are many ways to nurture leads. You can send news or information they might be interested in, make additional offers for low-cost or introductory services, connect with them socially, and even seek their advice from time to time.

4. Close sales

This step is self-explanatory. A potential customer needs your service. You provide a quote or estimate, answer questions, overcome objections, and eventually close the sale.

This is your end game, the goal of your efforts. And if you’ve set up a good lead generation system and kept your sales funnel consistently full, it will actually be the easiest step in the process.

Easy ways to generate inquiries from your blog

The hardest part about generating sales leads is getting people to contact you in the first place. If you’re just starting out and no one knows who you are, this may seem impossible.

As a blogger, you may know a variety of ways to promote your blog. Obviously, the more blog traffic you get, the easier it will be to generate leads. But you don’t need a ton of traffic to make it work.

According to Alexa, my business blog is ranked at around 100,000 or so. That’s not bad, but it’s nowhere near superstar blogs such as Copyblogger. However, I get enough of the right kind of people reading it to generate a steady stream of inquiries for my services.

So don’t worry about becoming a top-ranked blog. To successfully sell your services, you just need regular inquiries from the right kind of people. The more specialized you are, and the more targeted your blog posts, the more likely this will happen.

Of course, bringing people to your blog is one thing. Generating inquiries is another. Here are some simple things you can do to make those inquiries happen.

Contact Form — If you have a blog, you almost certainly have a contact form. However, the standard contact form is not enough. You should modify your form to match the service you sell. Take a look at the highly specialized form I use.

E-Newsletter — This is an easy way to stay in touch with many people and provide great value while you’re at it. Since I specialize in copywriting for direct mail and direct marketing, my newsletter features articles and information on the subject. I have several thousand subscribers and about half of my new clients say they became pre-sold on my abilities by subscribing.

Free White Paper — While a newsletter requires an ongoing commitment, a white paper is a one-time effort. Write it, post a contact/request form, and send a link to the PDF when requests come in. You could also automate the process with an auto responder, but I like to fulfill these requests personally so I can watch for hot leads from companies I want to work with. My white paper on improving direct mail response generates many requests every week.

Information Kit — If you’ve built a blog or site around your services, you should provide plenty of information online. However, you can offer pricing, forms, a client list, and other information in the form of a downloadable PDF. Remember, when someone requests information, it gives you the opportunity to capture contact information.

Webinars — These days it’s fairly simple to put together a webinar using services such as GoToWebinar. You can also create non-interactive presentations with software like PowerPoint or OpenOffice. The idea is to provide something of value that enables you to collect contact information.

Videos — Using software and hardware built into many computers, you can create simple, informative videos. They don’t have to be fancy. Just look into the camera and talk. Or edit together simple footage demonstrating your work or how you solved a problem. Video can also be a helpful tool to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter, webinar, or other information.

Pay Per Click — If you write and promote a good blog, you’re probably getting a fair amount of natural traffic. But pay-per-click ads can give you a boost for people looking for your particular services. Your results will vary depending on the level of competition and amount you’re willing to spend, but it’s worth a test.

Just remember: Your blog is a means to an end. If you use your blog to attract the right kind of traffic, and follow the advice above to generate sales leads, you should see a dramatic increase in your business.

About the Author: Dean Rieck is one of America’s most in-demand direct marketing copywriters who shares his writing and freelancing know-how at Pro Copy Tips.

Bloggers have been asking the question “Do long or short headlines work better?” for a long time.

But the answer to the riddle of how to create a headline that pulls in readers doesn’t necessarily lie in subtracting or adding one more word. There’s not a mysterious formula or arcane copywriter’s trick.

The answer is much simpler than that.

The best way to get a headline that works is by using the breath test.

Try saying this headline aloud:

How To Recognize Six Difficult Telltale Signs Of Disinterest And Lack Of Motivation In Your Student And Customer

Ran out of breath, didn’t you? And even if you didn’t quite run out of breath, you had a hard time getting through the whole thing.

You’ll also find that you struggle to recall the contents of that headline. Because if you can’t say it in one breath, you can’t hear it in one breath, either.

When your headline can’t be easily said aloud in a single breath, your message gets garbled.

Look at some of the most enduring headlines ever:

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Do You Make these Mistakes in English?

They Laughed when I Sat Down at the Piano. But when I Started
to Play …

That last one was a mouthful, wasn’t it?

No matter how you try, it’s hard to say: “They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play … ” in one breath.

So what’s going on here? How come this headline works when it clearly fails the breath test?

It’s called punctuation.

If you have a long headline, all you have to do is punctuate to indicate that there’s a pause there. You’re ending one thought and beginning another.

How you punctuate it is totally up to you. You could use parentheses. Or an em dash. Or a comma.

The original headline used a period, making it two separate sentences. But that headline could also be punctuated like this:

They Laughed when I Sat Down at the Piano (But when I Started
to Play…)

They Laughed when I Sat Down at the Piano — But when I Started
to Play …

They Laughed when I Sat Down at the Piano, but when I Started
to Play …

Punctuation exists to give a mental pause between thoughts. When you have that pause built into your headline, a reader can read it as if it were two sentences. So even though it looks like one big sentence, it’s really two.

Next time you’ve written a great headline and you’re wondering if it’s too long, just do the breath test. If it fails, add some punctuation.

If it still fails, dump the headline and start again. You should never compromise when writing headlines.

If your reader can’t process your headline in a single breath, they can’t process it in their heads, either — which will render a perfectly good headline perfectly useless.

About the Author: Sean D’Souza offers a great free article on ‘Why Headlines Fail’ when you subscribe to his Psychotactics Newsletter. Be sure to check out his blog, too.

As I get set up and prepared to start podcasting professionally, which will include video podcasts in addition to audio, a brand new free report just happened to cross my screen. The title: Rapid Video Blogging
by Gideon Shalwick. Perfect timing!

I should tell you now that Gideon is giving away 3 iPads – because there is only ONE left. When you download the free guide you’ll find 3 free videos on the next page. Two of the iPads have already been given away, and the 2nd one went to our very own Lain Ehmann of 30minutemartha.com (she’s an Elite Member of my Private Brainstorming Group). Congrats Lain!!

The 3rd iPad is still up for grabs (or still was at the time this post was published). All you have to do is download your guide and comment on the 3rd video post for a chance to win that last iPad.

First: Who is Gideon Shalwick?

Besides the guy giving away iPads (this week) and the author of Rapid Video Blogging, who is this Gideon Shalwick anyway?? Personally, hearing about this report is the first I’ve heard of Gideon himself. But the more digging I do, the more I realize he’s been around for awhile now. And that he is very well-liked and trusted among people in the industry that I know and respect.

His report is free, and it does go into detail about his history online and in video marketing, and you’ll also hear from some of his peers. But to give you a sneak peek: he runs a 6-figure business online doing niche video blogging. His guide is a detailed look at the exact formula he’s using to achieve that success.

Gideon is from New Zealand, but now lives in Australia. Oh – and he’s been using/refining this video marketing + blogging strategy for 4 years now…

Rapid Video Blogging Review

I sat down today and read all 92 pages of Rapid Video Blogging. I read the Table of Contents. The Foreword by Darren Rowse (aka Problogger). The testimonials by professional bloggers such as Yaro Starak, Maria Andros, Paul Colligan, Chris Garrett & many more. All the way through to the 7-step Action Plan at the end.

It’s good. Really good. The “Rapid Video Blogging” system is simple, yet brilliant. It’s very well presented, Gideon has a great writing style – and it’s a fun read. You’ll enjoy it, for sure. He started out like most of us: learning through trial & error with a variety of ideas and methods. And then he landed on one that really worked, and tweaked it until it was a working formula.

There are 7 steps. First he tells you what they are, then he goes into the how-to detail for each step, and he wraps it up with a checklist and Action Plan.

“Inside this report I want to show you the exact same system I developed over the last 4 years. A video marketing system that you can easily implement to help you drive insane amounts of traffic to your site, help grow your email list at a phenomenal rate, and turn your video views into cold hard cash!” Page 19

And guess where it starts? With choosing the right niche (or topic) – so this is even a great guide for beginners. But by Step 2 he appeals to ALL of us by getting into the meat of it.

There are 2 potential negatives. The first is that the Step 2 section is lacking some detail. Not a major deal because it does give you a resource for more information, but I finished that section feeling like it was missing something. The second is that his experience with this strategy comes from two major projects. One a JV with a major player, where he refined his formula. The other in an obscure niche where they were unknown – which is the interesting part (to me, at least).

I said obscure. I meant a niche outside of Internet Marketing or “make money online”. It’s actually a very popular topic.

That 2nd project has resulted in almost 2 million video views, and 100 new newsletter sign-ups every day - so far! Pretty impressive. Enough so to keep me reading.

I was impressed by the amount of detail Gideon shared in the report. I actually learned quite a bit from it. There was a connection he made about video marketing and list building that really hit home with me. A no brainer, but not something I’ve personally implemented. (make that a big fat: YET -lol)

He gave detailed Video Optimization strategies to help your videos rank better in both YouTube AND Google. He teaches how to get natural backlinks to your YouTube channel. He talks about YouTube Joint Ventures. Why you should embed your website address IN your video. He gives a working example on YouTube of his Viral Competition Method. And of course, in Step 7 he goes into how to monetize.

It’s all very simple and straightforward, and something that anyone can do – which is what I loved about it. But it’s not something I *have* been doing, or would have even thought to try necessarily. It was definitely worth the quick read.

Grab a copy if you haven’t already: Download Rapid Video Blogging (Free). Be prepared to jot down some notes, and print out the Action Plan at the end…

Enjoy!

Best,

p.s. Gideon is launching a product on Wednesday, so I’m not sure how long this Free Report will be available. Hopefully he will continue to offer it. But just in case, make sure you go ahead and get your copy today.

Ever wonder where you’re supposed to find the time to promote your blog?

If you’re blogging in your spare time, it can seem impossible. You’re already struggling just to publish a post every weekday, and sometimes you can’t even manage that. You want to work on your SEO, twitter following, and relationships with popular bloggers, but you also have a job, family, friends — responsibilities that are just more important.

And so you wonder: should you just keep going, doing the best you can?

Or is there a strategy you can use that doesn’t require so much time?

I started to research the answer to that question about a year ago, and after working with more than 50 bloggers, trying different things, I think I’ve found one.

As it turns out, the answer isn’t doing more. It’s doing less.

Let me explain.

Step One: Publish only one blog post per week

Whoever said you have to publish a blog post every weekday?

Nobody, as far as I can tell. It’s just what everyone does, and so most of us assume it’s the only way to do it.

But it’s not.

If you’re strapped for time, there’s nothing wrong with cutting back on the number of posts you publish each week. Your readers might even be grateful. Most people have so much to read that they don’t have time to keep up with all of your blog posts, and they feel bad about it. By cutting back, you make it easier for them to stay a subscriber.

So how many posts should you publish, exactly?

There’s no set number, but here’s a suggestion: start with one really good post per week, and if you have time, work your way up.

The key word is “good.” One well-written, well-thought-out blog post can get you more links and traffic than hundreds of hurried ones. Some writers are faster than others, but in general, if you’re spending less than two hours on most of your posts, you’re probably going too fast. Cut back the quantity, and focus on quality.

By itself, this will often double or triple your traffic. But it also does something else: it frees up time to focus on promotion.

Step Two: Publish one guest post per month on popular blogs

As you’ve probably seen, there are hundreds of strategies for promoting a blog. In an ideal world, you would use them all, digging dozens of channels for traffic to come flowing in.

There’s only one problem: you don’t live in an ideal world. And neither do I.

Even if you were working on your blog full-time with a dozen employees to help you, you couldn’t do everything.

So don’t try. Instead, focus on one strategy, and get really good at it.

My advice: start with guest blogging.

Here’s why: pretty much every other traffic strategy depends on you having connections.

To make SEO work, you need links from trusted sites. To make twitter work, you need to get retweets from people who have a lot of followers. To make social bookmarking work, you need connections with social media power users who can bring you dozens or even hundreds of votes.

And that’s hard when you’re a beginner, because you don’t have any of those connections.

In my opinion, it’s far, far easier to establish relationships with influential people first, and then use those connections to fuel the other strategies.

If you can publish just one guest post per month for popular blogs, at the end of the year, you’ll have made connections with twelve very influential people who can help you grow your blog. That’s not going to give you 100,000 subscribers all by itself. But it will give you a nice foundation, and it’s one you can build on.

Step Three: Slowly start doing more posts and promotions

Once you start getting results, I think you’ll find it’s a lot easier to expand your efforts.

Everyone is more motivated to work on something that’s working. If you land a guest post on a big blog and pick up a few hundred subscribers, you won’t have to push yourself quite so hard to work on your next post. You’ll want to do it, and that makes blogging a lot more enjoyable.

You’ll also have the connections you need to slowly start trying some other traffic strategies. For instance, you could:

• Publish a special piece of content, such as a free report or video, and then use your connections to get links from popular blogs (Here’s a free tutorial on how to do that).
• Build a following on twitter to help promote your posts, and then strategically make a post go viral (Here’s a free tutorial on how to do that, too).
• Pick a search phrase that gets hundreds of thousands of searches per month, and then use your connections to get trusted links (That tutorial is coming this Friday).

By themselves, none of those strategies are new. Anyone who has been blogging for more than a few months probably dreams about attracting links, building a twitter following, and getting a first page ranking on Google.

The difference is you’ll actually be able to do it.

Cutting your posting schedule will free up the time you need to work on promotion, and guest blogging will give you the connections you need to pull them off.

It’s a very simple system, but it’s also one that gives you everything you need while investing a more reasonable amount of time.

Is the system perfect?

No.

In fact, it has one serious flaw:

Isn’t getting a guest post on a popular blog kind of hard?

Yeah, it can be.

With audiences numbering in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, popular bloggers are justifiably careful about the quality of content they publish. Frequently, they also have a lot of bloggers volunteering to do guest posts, so the competition can be stiff.

But it’s not impossible. New bloggers do it on a regular basis here at Copyblogger, as well as many other popular blogs.

There’s no reason you can’t do it too. You just need a few tricks of the trade to help you get started.

Check out the free GuestBlogging.com videos

If you haven’t seen the GuestBlogging.com videos yet, you should check them out.

They’re free, and they contain some of the most powerful strategies I’ve learned while writing for Copyblogger and building popular blogs of my own. So far, thousands of people have signed up for them, and many are saying it’s some of the best blogging advice ever published.

The bad news is that I’m about to take it all down.

No, it’s not because I’m the King of Mean. (Even though I am.)

It’s because next week, I’m opening the doors to a new training program I’ve put together specifically for people who are serious about building a popular blog. I’ll leave the videos up for about another week, but once the training program starts, I’ll be taking them down to give members 100% of my attention.

I’ll probably be releasing them again at some point, but I’m not sure when, and I didn’t want the Copyblogger readers to miss out. So, if you’ve been looking for a strategy you can implement in your spare time without having a lot of connections, be sure to take a look.

It’s not the only strategy for building a popular blog. But if you’re strapped for time, I think it’ll work well for you.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of GuestBlogging.com. Get more from Jon on twitter.

So, you’ve heard my take on why guest blogging is important. Over the years, you’ve probably seen other popular bloggers talking about it too.

But maybe you can’t help thinking … how does it help you build a popular blog of your own?

If you’ve been wondering, head over to GuestBlogging.com, because over the next 10 days, I’m going to show you. We’ll talk about:

• How to get your first 1000 blog subscribers, even if none of the leaders in your niche know who you are yet
• How to stop getting ignored by popular bloggers and get the links you deserve
• How to build a following on twitter to help you promote your blog posts
• How to get your blog a first page ranking on Google, without knowing all of the technical details of SEO

Didn’t know guest blogging could help you do all of that?

I didn’t either, when I first started. Over the years though, I’ve gotten to see some pretty powerful examples, and so I decided to make some videos for you and share them with you on Guestblogging.com.

Here’s how it’ll work:

Every few days, I’ll release a new video that walks you through real-world examples and strategies for how you can use guest blogging to build a popular blog. Right now, only the first video is available, but opt in, and I’ll e-mail you as I post new ones.

As of right now, there’s nothing for sale. The videos are 100% content, no sales or marketing messages at all.

When we’re done with them, I will tell you about a new training program I’m creating specifically for bloggers who are serious about increasing their traffic.

But that’s at least a week or so away. For now, enjoy the free videos, and learn about all of the cool ways guest blogging can help you.

Click here to get started.

See you there!

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the Founder of GuestBlogging.com. Get more from him on twitter.

Admit it … you’ve wondered.

You’re writing and writing and writing, and a few people say they like it, but you’re just not getting results. Traffic is coming in at a trickle, links are hard to come by, and your comments section is about as lively as a nightclub at breakfast.

And you can’t help wondering …

Do you just need to be patient, waiting for your traffic to snowball?

Or could it be possible that, really, your content sucks (thereby breaking the first rule of Copyblogger), and everyone is just being nice so as not to hurt your delicate artistic feelings?

The hard truth: there’s no way to know for sure

For one, we’re talking about quality, which is subjective by definition. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure, and all that jazz.

It’s also a matter of scale. This isn’t American Idol, where you have 30 million people voting, transforming a singer into a superstar through the power of public consensus.

If you’re a beginning blogger, you might have fewer than 100 regular readers, and 20 of them are your friends and family. And let’s face it; your mother is going to like everything you do, no matter how bad it is. That’s her job.

So who are you supposed to listen to?

Well … nobody, and everybody, all the same time. The maddening thing about creating anything is no one can tell you how to do it, and yet everyone’s opinion can teach you something.

There aren’t any rules, no, but there are warnings. If your content sucks, you’ll see dozens, maybe hundreds of telltale signs, hinting that something is wrong.

I’ve collected 20 of the most common here. Take a look through them, and see if any describe you:

1. You think your content is “good enough”

If you had to rate your content on a scale of 1 to 10, what would you give it? A 6? A 7? That’s what most bloggers say.

But here’s the problem: you can’t really grade content on a scale. You’re either blowing people’s minds or putting them to sleep, and there’s nothing in between.

Put another way, content graded as a 6 or 7 gets the same reaction as a 1. It’s a waste of time to publish it.

2. Your posts read like journal entries

Not too long ago, most people used their blog as a sort of online journal, where people took a few minutes every day to write down their thoughts. But blogs have evolved beyond that. Now they’re more like online magazines, with highly polished content.

If your posts look more like “Dear Diary” than a magazine you would see at the newsstand, you’ve probably got a problem.

3. You’re not getting many (or any) comments

Comments are one of the best ways to measure reader engagement. If you have a few hundred subscribers, and yet none of them are commenting, then it might be because they find your content unworthy of their attention.

Translation: it sucks.

4. Your visitors stay less than two minutes, on average

Install Google Analytics, and look at the average amount of time visitors are staying on your website.

For most traffic sources, anything less than two minutes is bad. If you are at less than one minute, then your content is repelling people. You can do better.

5. You spend less than an hour on each post

Yes, it’s possible to write a great blog post in 15 minutes, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that it doesn’t happen very often. Most of the popular bloggers I know spend anywhere from 2 to 10 hours on each blog post they write. If you’re not, you should be.

6. You’ve never received fan mail

If your content is good, people will go out of their way to tell you how good it is. We’re not just talking about nice little tweets; we’re talking about five page e-mails where they tell you their life story and thank God for your existence.

No, you won’t get much of it when you’re a beginner, but you will get some. If you haven’t, then your content isn’t as good as it should be.

7. You’ve never received hate mail

The opposite is also true. If your content is good, you’ll always have a small but vocal group of people who think you’re wrong, rude, or inconsiderate. They are the righteous majority for moral authority, and nothing you can say will appease them.

So don’t try. Their mockery and screams of outrage are merely signs that you’re headed in the right direction.

8. You focus on SEO before you get your first link

Whenever a newbie starts asking me about SEO before they’ve even written a post, I always know they’re doomed. There is no better way to write horrible, crappy content than to deliberately stuff it with keywords in an attempt to boost your search engine rankings, when what you really need is for people to link to you in the first place.

If this is you, immediately throw salt over your shoulder, turn around three times, and spit. Then forget everything you think you know about SEO. Study smart SEO instead. (But pay attention to the next item.)

9. You believe SEO is the secret to building a popular blog

First, let me set the record straight. I am a big fan of SEO. I’m just not a fan of the pedestal many beginners put it on.

SEO can’t, by itself, make a popular blog. First, you need remarkable content, and then you optimize it for search engines. Skip the remarkable part, and all the optimization in the world won’t help you.

10. You’re saving your best ideas for later

Are you planning to do an e-book or course, and you’re holding back all of your best ideas, waiting for your blog to get popular before you publish them and make gobs of money?

If so, stop. To riff on Warren Buffett, waiting until your blog is popular to publish your best ideas is like waiting until you’re old to have sex. Get your good stuff published today.

11. Your blog is about … well … everything

One of the quickest way is to frustrate your readers is to write about everything that’s on your mind.

Here’s why: people don’t come to your blog to find out what you think. They come to your blog for solutions to their problems. The moment you stop talking about them is the moment they stop reading.

12. You don’t know the benefit

Pop quiz: one year from now, how will your reader’s life be better? What specific, measurable results will you have helped them obtain?

We are not talking about “Having a greater sense of fulfillment and prosperity.” We’re talking about “They’ve lost 20 pounds” or “They’ve brought in five high-quality new clients.”

If you can’t put your content in these terms, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

13. You think you deserve more traffic than you’re getting

Do you feel annoyed that no one appreciates the value of the knowledge that you’re giving away for free?

I know I used to, and it took several years of struggling to realize no one is entitled to attention.

You have to earn it, day in and day out. No exceptions.

14. You have a science, engineering, or technology background

I know, it sounds horribly prejudiced. But here’s the deal: scientists, engineers, and other types of technologists are trained to be objective, passive, and detached — all three of which will destroy you as a blogger.

No, you’re not doomed if you have a background in one of these disciplines. But it is a handicap, and you need to be aware of it.

15. You’ve never read a book on copywriting

Writing a blog post without studying copywriting is like hunting for buried treasure without a map. You might be able to do it, but you’ll have to get astoundingly lucky.

If you haven’t studied copywriting, you should. Like right now.

16. You have no idea what keeps your readers up at night

Great writing is about intimacy, and nothing is more intimate than knowing what keeps your readers up at night.

Find out what makes them afraid, find out what makes them excited, find out what’s going through their mind at 2 a.m. Then use it in your blog posts. You’ll be communicating with them on such a deep, emotional level that it will be impossible for them to ignore you.

17. You write less than 1,000 words per day

Of all the warning signs, this is probably the biggest. If you’re not writing at least 1,000 words per day, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for you to write anything but mediocre content.

Try writing at least 1000 words every day for 30 days, and see what an impact it has on your writing. You’ll be astounded.

18. You read less than 10 hours per week

Besides writing a lot, you also need to read a lot. It exposes you to different writing styles to learn from; it gives you new stories and metaphors; it keeps you abreast of what’s going on in your field.

In my opinion, 10 hours a week is a bare minimum. If you really want to be good, think more in the range of 20-40 hours a week.

19. You’ve never talked to a reader on the phone or in person

A one-hour conversation with one of your most ardent readers will teach you more about how to communicate with your audience than anything else you can do. If you’re not doing it at least once every month or two, there’s a good chance you’re falling out of touch.

20. You’ve been blogging for less than six months

Okay, we’re at the end, so I’ll go ahead and admit it: not everything is your fault. If you’ve been blogging for less than six months, there’s almost nothing you can do; your content is going to suck to some degree.

Keep your chin up, expect to be ignored, and just keep going. You’ll get good soon.

The bottom line

I’d love to tell you that producing great content is easy. I’d love to tell you that there are shortcuts. I’d love to tell you can do it with your brain on auto pilot.

But I won’t, because we’re being honest here, right?

Producing great content is work. No, it’s not building a pyramid or putting a man on the moon or curing cancer, but it does take time, energy, and dedication.

If you’re sitting here, right now, worrying about whether your content sucks or not, that’s actually a good sign. If you’re worrying about it at 2 in the morning, that’s even better.

Achieving greatness in blogging is the same as anything else. You have to work your butt off.

If you’re willing to do that, then there will always be a place for you on the web. You’ll always be in demand. You’ll always be able to stand out.

It’s tough, yes, but it’s worth it.

So, what are you waiting for?

Hurry up and get started.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is Associate Editor of Copyblogger. Get more from him on twitter.

When you’re about to launch a new product or service, you need some buzz.

Sure, you can use your blog to mention your plans a few times leading up to the launch. You’ll probably ask some fellow bloggers to write reviews. You’ll use your best copywriting techniques to craft pitches for your blog and email list, and send as many people as you can to the sales page on the day of the launch.

That’s all good.

But there’s also a more subtle route.

You can generate interest in what you want to promote without actually mentioning it — and you can start building that interest long before you’re ready to announce it’s on the market.

Here’s how:

Blog about the problem

Every product or service should address a problem that your potential customers have.

(Note: if your product or service doesn’t address a problem, you don’t have a good product or service yet. Please go back and try again.)

Quite often, your customers don’t realize yet that they have this problem.

For example, my friend John Hoff created a product to help bloggers protect WordPress blogs from hackers. He knew that blog hacking is a problem many people have, but most bloggers don’t know they’re at risk.

For John, a bunch of guest posts around the web and a series on common ways blogs are hacked would have worked well to build some buzz for his product.

By the end of the series, readers would be getting a little concerned. “Hey, maybe this is something I should look into. This might happen to me, too.”

Then John could pop up with a nifty solution to the problem, and those worried people would be grateful.

A little education saves him the trouble of convincing customers that they need the product, and it benefits the reader at the same time. His sale gets infinitely easier — and he gets a bunch of informative blog posts, traffic, and readers out of the deal as well. Sweet.

Blog about the solution

When you blog, be sure to mention solutions to problems you’re going to solve.

You don’t need to go into step-by-step lessons and give every single answer away. That’s usually something you save for the product or service itself.

But you definitely should talk about what to do, and then sell how to do it. Blog about what solutions you think are best for different angles on the problem. Then sell them your expertise in the best way to go about carrying out those solutions for themselves.

This approach lets you show readers that you know what needs to be done. And your confidence lets them see that you have a very good idea of exactly how to do it.

Blog about the client

A good way to reinforce the impression that you have expertise is by blogging about clients you’ve already helped. There are a couple of ways to do this:

• Case studies: Write up a story about a problem your client came to you with, and how you solved that problem. You don’t need to give away all your tricks, but be specific about what problem the client had (she had pests in her garden) and what you did (you eliminated pests completely). You don’t need to go into every nitty gritty detail of how you did it (you released ladybugs in her garden), but a few well-chosen specifics will make the story more compelling.
• Interviews: If your client is willing, do a full-scale interview centered around the topic of the problem and post it to your blog. Ask your client what it was like to live with this problem. Ask her what she’s learned and what she would do differently next time. Her story will help your potential clients see the value of what you’ve got.

By the time you’ve spent a few weeks blogging on topics that relate to the problem you’re about to solve, your readers will be fully informed and ready to buy. And you won’t need to beat them over the head with pushy sales talk. That’s a win for everybody.

About the Author: For fantastic web copy that solves your problems without using any ladybugs, get in touch with James Chartrand at Men with Pens. Or skip right through the garden and grab the Men with Pens RSS feed right here.

There’s a scene in “Mad Men”, the TV drama about a 1960s advertising agency.

One of the junior copywriters is showing the Creative Director an ad he’s just written. The ad is clever, flowery, and poetic.

The Creative Director cuts the copywriter down in five short, stern words:

“Don’t write for other writers.”

Bingo. It’s not the copywriter’s literary chums who are buying the product. It’s housewives in Indiana. Clever copy might get the copywriter clapped on the back by his colleagues, but it won’t get the product sold.

I’ve seen this happen a lot in the blogosphere. I’ve done it. You’ve probably done it, too.

We’ve written blog posts that other bloggers like (especially high-traffic, “A-Lister” bloggers who link to us). And we squealed like happy children when we saw our traffic stats spike up massively.

But there’s a downside

Traffic spikes can be quite addictive. The type of blog post that might get you a lot of “bloggerly love” may not be (and probably isn’t) the kind of blog post that gets people to buy whatever it is you’re selling.

Traffic and influence are great. It’s lovely having all these people kissing your hiney at social media conferences.

But at the end of the day, it’s not the A-Listers or the pajama-clad, Web 2.0 basement-dwellers who are paying your mortgage. It’s the regular shmoes with a regular problem who are willing to pull out their credit cards to get it solved.

Back in 2005, I was working with Thomas Mahon to create the blog EnglishCut.com so Tom could sell his $4,000 hand-made tailored English suits.

When I first started talking about the idea, a lot of people said,

This will never work. Bloggers don’t wear suits. They’re geeks. They like dressing down.

Those people were making the same mistake as the copywriter on Mad Men. That guy thought that just because he was writing, he was trying to impress other writers.

These people thought that just because we were blogging, we were trying to impress other bloggers with our product.

They were wrong

We knew the people who liked $4,000 suits were out there. We knew our content was better than anybody else’s out there. We knew our product was world-class, up there with the best of the best. We knew if we just kept at it, the right people would find us.

We weren’t trying to sell the suits to bloggers. We weren’t “writing for other writers”. We weren’t “blogging for other bloggers”.

We were writing and blogging about suits for people who loved suits.

And it worked. Spectacularly well. These days, for every suit order Tom accepts, he has to turn down four or five offers. He’s just too busy now.

Five years later, I’m applying what I learned with Tom to my own art business.

I never think about traffic any more. I think about my friends and people who can and want to support my business. “Bloggerly Love” might be good PR, but it’s a hugely unproductive time-sink if you spend too much time worrying about it — which many people do.

Sure, if you’re writing for Copyblogger, writing for other writers is what you do. But most of you don’t, so writing for other writers isn’t something to worry about.

Worry about the people who really matter to you. Create killer content that really matters to them. Create a killer product people actually want to buy.

Do that, and you’ll find very little reason to worry what writers think.

Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist who blogs over at gapingvoid.com. He makes his living by selling fine art prints, doing “Cube Grenade” commissioned art work and sending out daily cartoons on “Hugh’s Daily Frickin’ Newsletter.”

You know what I’ve discovered? Most of the people writing about blogging are experts. Funny thing, that.

These expert bloggers have been doing it for a while and they have thousands (if not tens or hundreds of thousands) of subscribers. The best give lots of free stuff away that’s actually worth reading, and we know we’re standing on the shoulders of giants when we follow their advice.

And all that’s good. Don’t get me wrong.

But when I first started blogging about six months ago, I struggled to find a succinct summary all in one place. I spent a full day online giving myself an MBA -– Masters in Blogging (Advanced). I subscribed to this, downloaded that, printed out something else, read everything I could without my eyes becoming permanently crossed.

Because I couldn’t find what I needed — a straightforward checklist-style guideline to getting started as a newbie — I put my own together.

Does a newbie have anything to teach you?

I know what you’re thinking:

What does this Jill person know about brilliant blog posts? She’s just getting started herself.

I’ll readily confess my own lack of experience. My knowledge is growing (subscribing to copyblogger is helping), but my confidence still lags behind what I’m learning.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I reckon there might be a few others who are in this same boat. And it’s to these newbies (and maybe some more experienced bloggers who are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of info about How To Blog So your Bank Balance Explodes) that I write today.

I broke it down into 17 (relatively) easy steps, so you can find everything in one place. Use this post checklist-style, to start writing the kind of content that attracts links and readers:

Four factors to remember before you start to write

1. Write a draft headline. You’ll come back to it at the end, and it may very well change and evolve. But a basic proposition and a compelling hook will help guide your content.
2. Make sure you have one idea per post. My first draft post had about 47 ideas in it. This turned out to be a good thing. Once I got it through my camera battery-sized brain that my post was too complex, I then had 47 possible posts, which should keep me going for about six months. But I did have to trim that first post (and every subsequent one) down to One Idea. When in doubt, leave it out.
3. Make sure you know your purpose. What are you trying to accomplish with this post? Are you hoping to sell a product? Get referrals? Attract links? Be bookmarked on Delicious? Get lots of attention on Twitter and Facebook? Disclose some irrelevant personal information to a bevy of strangers? (The first five are recommended, the last one should be undertaken with extreme caution.)
4. Who are you writing to? Come up with an ideal reader, with a full set of personality characteristics. This is a person who loves what you do, buys everything you sell, and tells everyone they ever meet about you and your site. Write to that person, whether fictional or real. My ideal reader is Carolyn, who happens to be a real person who lives in Boston. When I write, I imagine it’s a (semi) personal note from me to Carolyn.

I’ll give you an example for that last point. After the enormous success of her memoir eat pray love, Elizabeth Gilbert was harassed and harangued to write another best seller that millions of readers around the world would want to read. (And as a platform for a movie that Julia Roberts would want to star in.)

No pressure there.

Gilbert says that she tried for months to write that book, and failed. She threw her first attempt at Committed away because she was trying to write to the millions and it just wasn’t working.

She ended up writing the book for a small circle of women who know, love, and support her. The millions who ended up buying and reading the published book came later.

So, to sum it up: come up with a solid headline, for a post based on one idea, with a clear purpose, and for a single ideal reader. Now you’re ready to start writing this sucker!

Eight idea sparks for more compelling content

Here are some tried-and-true techniques that can help you write stronger posts. Try igniting one or more of these idea sparks when your fingers are on the keyboard but your brain is drawing a blank.

1. Make it eye-friendly. If you use them wisely, a nice bunch of fascinating bullets is a great way to break up your copy and make it easy to read.
2. Embrace the list post. Building a post around a numbered list is still one of the strongest ways you can organize content. If you’re skeptical, take a look at those “popular posts” to the right. See a few numbers in those headlines?
3. Examples and stories. What has your own journey been? What light bulb moments have you had? Where do the themes you write about show up in the everyday? (Seth Godin is the master of this; study how he does it.) And how does this relate to what you do and to the products/services you are selling?
4. What are you reading and watching? Articles, news stories, research papers –- all good stuff to refer to and comment on, drawing a connection back to what you do.
5. NEWS FLASH! Is something in your world new? Have a project launch in the works? What about a speaking gig or workshop you are running? Perhaps someone well-known in your field is coming to town? You can use your own news flashes or “borrow” other people’s, they both work.
6. Interviews. Who’s fascinating to your readers and willing to give you some time? Ask them some good questions, write their responses down, then wrap it all up with a jazzy conclusion.
7. Challenges and bugbears. What’s bothering you or your (potential) customers? Offer input to help them with their real or imagined problems, or talk about how you overcame something on the dark side.
8. Who do you admire? Pick a famous person and write about the link between something about them (their work, their interests, their charity appearances, their drug rehab story of pain) and how it relates to your own work.

Five last things to check before you post

You’re nearly done! You’ve created some killer content (well, it just about killed you, anyway), so now it’s time to wrap up.

Let’s finish off with some style! Five quick things to remember here:

1. Hyperlinks. Linking out is an important part of developing relationships with other bloggers, and it’s also helpful for SEO. Try to include a hyperlink about every 120 – 200 words.
2. Make your last paragraph sing. Give us a call to action (tell us what to do), make us an offer we can’t refuse (and put a ticking clock on it), or reach a surprising conclusion.
3. Come full circle back to your title. Does it need any tweaking to reflect your content (your one idea, your clear purpose, and to speak to your ideal reader)? Is it compelling? Is it something your readers will want to bookmark, link to, and share?
4. Do a final check for structure. How does the post look on the page? Have you broken all that text up so it’s easy for us to read?
5. Say something about yourself. You know, it could start with “About the Author:”

How about you — what’s on your own personal “checklist” for creating brilliant posts? Let us know in the comments.

Want more easy steps to online marketing success? You’re in luck — Copyblogger has a free online newsletter to help you with that. Click here to find out more about it.

About the Author: Jill Chivers is a quick study. Since starting her blogging career six months ago, she has made many fine mistakes. She intends to use this terrific checklist to improve her own blog posts. From her home base of the Sunshine Coast, Australia, Jill presides over her new online business, which helps her customers resolve tricky problems of all kinds.

While I was catching up on my email this weekend, I had a nice conversation with Ann Smarty of MyBlogGuest.com.

I’ve mentioned before that Guest Blogging is a great way to increase blog traffic, and also get quality inbound links that will help your pages rank better in the major search engines. It’s the easiest way to get targeted traffic.

Ann has created an online community to bring together bloggers who are looking for guest posts, and people who are interested in writing guest posts. You can search by category, tag, topic and specific offers…

It’s free, it’s super fast to get signed up, and within minutes you’ll be able to browse opportunities for fresh blog content – or for guest blogging opportunities.

The link is: http://myblogguest.com

I just signed up myself as I am always looking for cool new people & topics to bring to you here at ClickNewz, and also use guest blogging to increase traffic and improve my search engine rankings. There are a lot of great opportunities posted. Here’s just a snippet of what you’ll find inside:

As you can see there are writing opps for a women’s fitness blog, for tech writers, small business topics, etc. And this is just a sample – there are a variety of topics and niches covered in the network.

Of course, the more people that join and submit their requests, the more opportunities there will be! Check it out, let me know what you think, and share any other guest blogging networks you’ve discovered in the comments below.

Best,

Also See: How to Increase Blog Traffic – Fast!

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