Blogging
Earn An Income From Your Hobbies
Have you ever thought about earning a full time living from your hobbies? It doesn’t matter if it’s sports, crafts, or even trading merchandise – it’s more than possible to earn a living with your hobbies – it’s the major source of income for millions of people all over the world!
Sometimes what seems like a career actually begins as a hobby for someone. Many couples that are adept at home repairs have a hobby of investing property, fixing it up, and flipping it into a profit.
The key to making mounds of money from your hobby is to pick something that makes you happy. You may not enjoy home repairs like your neighbor. Maybe you have a passion for taking everyday things and making an extraordinary piece of art from them.
Why The Holidays Are the BEST Time to Sell
Ah yes, it’s the holiday season once again. Time to set aside our marketing efforts and our information products until the first of the new year, right?
Actually, no. It’s a common myth that the only things sold in December are tangible products. In fact, December can be a great time of year to market information products precisely because others are taking a break from marketing, thus your competition tends to be lower. Plus you’ve got to remember that not everyone participates in the holiday madness of shopping and parties, and even those who do will welcome a change of pace.
What NOT To Name Your Website
It’s come to my attention that not everyone is paying close attention when they choose a website name and URL. Remember, just because words make sense when there is a space in between each word does not necessarily mean they will make the same sense without those spaces. In fact, your original meaning can become completely lost, and what you’re left with is a sad misunderstanding at best or some really annoyed people who never click your link at worst.
Here are some examples, and yes, these are 100% REAL and online right now…
Adams Extract adamsextract.com
Who Represents whorepresents.com
Speed Of Art www.speedofart.com
Pen Island www.penisland.net
Go Tahoe www.gotahoe.com (Since changed to http://www.gotahoenorth.com – is that any better??)
How to Add 836 Million Potential Readers To Your Website or Blog
Translate your website into another language to attract more readers. English is a very common language, but Mandarin Chinese is even more common – to the tune of 836 million people (or more, depending on which source you use.)
And you might want to consider other languages, too, such as…
Hindi (333 million)
Spanish (332 million)
English (322 million)
Bengali (189 million)
Arabic (186 million)
Russian (170 million)
Portuguese (170 million)
Japanese (125 million)
German (98 million)
French (72 million)
And it gets even more interesting. What percentage of online shoppers speak English? Probably 80-90%, right?
Is Your Website LOSING You Business?
Let’s say you have an SEO service, a website building service and a Facebook page service. Someone comes to your website looking to get a professional Facebook page built for their business and finds all kinds of info on website building and SEO. He leaves.
Next, he goes to a website that offers JUST Facebook pages. He buys.
What happened? Your website didn’t cater specifically to what he was looking for, so he kept searching until he found a website that did.
Solution? If you sell distinctly different services or products, you might want to consider building microsites for each one.
9 Great Tips for Better Business Blogging
1. Forgo the advertorial dribble. Decades ago some bright entrepreneur realized that if he wrote his sales copy to look like an editorial, he’d get more readers and more sales. Thus we entered into the age of the “advertorial,” and it still works in print publications. Where it does NOT work well is on your blog.
Yes, by all means, advertise your products and services on your website, but don’t be devious about it. Don’t make it look like an article when it’s really a self-promotion – it annoys your readers and makes them feel let down when you’ve got them thinking they’re going to learn something new, only to discover they’ve got to pay to get it.
Thus, do not title your blog post, “Revealed: 35 Ways to Drive Traffic” and then reveal nothing about driving traffic except the order link to your new product. Instead, title your blog post, “Revealed: 5 Ways to Drive Traffic,” and then GIVE them the 5 ways. At the end, let them know that if they’re interested, you reveal 30 additional methods inside your product and give them the link. They’ll respect you for this, and because you’ve given them good information and demonstrated that you know what you’re talking about, it will actually INCREASE your sales.
6 Tips for Writing Great Content
1. Write for your readers, NOT for the search engines. Sometimes we get so caught up in optimizing our content for SEO that we forget we’re really writing for our readers and not Google. Create content that is useful for people, that helps them, educates them and entertains them. Make SEO your second priority in writing your content, not your first. Otherwise, your traffic isn’t going to get past your second paragraph before they’re closing your site and moving on to someone else’s.