Three Things That Could Be Limiting the Potential of Your Blog In today’s lesson, I will highlight 3 things that I see a lot of bloggers ignoring - or not paying enough attention to - that could be limiting the potential of their blog. Note: this podcast is available here on iTunes. Subscribe there to get notified of all new episodes. It can be difficult to know where to turn your attention to when it comes to blogging. While we do each need to work out our own priorities with our blogging, thes...
Oct 20, 2016•24 min
Challenge: Write an Opinion Post on Your Blog In today’s episode, I’m issuing you with a challenge to create a piece of content that centers around your opinion on a topic relevant to your audience. Adding your opinion to your content is such an important way to make your blog more useful to your audience, and it also makes it stand out from the crowd. Today, I’m going to share with you not only why opinion posts are so important, but I also want to give you some practical tips on how to structu...
Oct 17, 2016•25 min
Link Building Tip - Generate Hundreds of Links for Your Blog in 5 Minutes a Day In today’s lesson, you are going to learn a simple technique that has generated 100 new links for my blogs in the last month. This technique is fairly simple, and it only takes me about 5 to 10 minutes to do it. Yet, this technique is quite powerful. Incoming links to your blog are important because they drive traffic to your site from other parts of the web, and they also help you to rank higher in search engines li...
Oct 13, 2016•20 min
Feeling Stuck? How to Regain Momentum Are you feeling stuck with some area of your blogging or business life? If so, today’s episode is for you because I’m going to talk about getting unstuck and building momentum. What we are going to talk about today applies to many areas of life, but we are going to focus particularly on blogging and business. I am going to share with you a simple tip to help you get unstuck. Take imperfect action is a theme that came up numerous times at the ProBlogger event...
Oct 10, 2016•15 min
An Interview with Brian Fanzo - Perfection is a Fairytale Today, I have a great conversation to play for you. It’s a conversation that we recorded at the ProBlogger Event with our opening keynote speaker, Brian Fanzo from iSocialFanz. Brian is someone that I’ve admired for the last couple of years. I happened to stumble upon Brian on Periscope, where he was discussing using live video and high level methods of using newer social platforms. Brian knew what he was talking about at a technical leve...
Oct 06, 2016•26 min
11 Techniques for Writing Great Blog Post Titles Today, I’m going to talk about crafting the titles for your blog posts. This is such an important topic, and I can’t believe I haven’t done a podcast about it in the last 155 episodes. This is a topic I get asked about quite a bit. Get your title right and it will completely change the destiny of your blog post. This may sound a little bit grand and overstated, but it is true. People make a decision on whether they will read and take action on you...
Oct 03, 2016•35 min
The 5 Top Tips from Full Time Bloggers Today, I want to give you some advice. It’s not advice from me. It’s advice from about 50 full-time bloggers that I surveyed about two years ago. I was testing a survey software, and I sent the survey to some bloggers that I knew. I asked all of them one simple question What is the number one tip you would give a new blogger who is just starting out and dreaming of becoming a full-time blogger? In Today’s Episode 5 Tips from Full Time Bloggers Listen to thi...
Sep 29, 2016•14 min
Grow Your Blogging Income Today, I am going to continue on from episode 153 where I outlined a timeline of how I added different income streams over time. I felt like there was a little more I could say about diversifying your income in that way and growing your income. I think there are some principles that you can pull out of the story. I hope that you find these observations and words of encouragement helpful. Further Resources on How to Grow Your Blogging Income How I Diversified My Blogging...
Sep 26, 2016•20 min
My Blogging Income Streams Today, I’m going to talk about my income streams. In episode 150 I talked about how I make money blogging and broke it down by percentages. Today I want to follow that episode up with the context. People may think that my report seems big and unattainable. People also have a tendency to compare themselves which isn’t a fair comparison because it is just a snapshot at the end of a journey. In today’s episode, I am going to walk you through the last 13 years of my life, ...
Sep 22, 2016•24 min
Embedded Content Challenge Today, I want to give you a challenge to create a certain type of content. This is in the vein of our blogging groove challenge which we did about six weeks ago. I’ve just returned from the ProBlogger Event, and I am inspired. I received a lot of listener feedback about how the podcast has helped listeners and how the challenge series have had a positive impact on listeners. I hope to do one challenge a month. Instead of completing the content in 24 hours, I would like...
Sep 19, 2016•23 min
Build Trust With Your Blog Today, I’m talking about how to build trust with your blog, podcast, YouTube channel, and social media. This question came in from Stacie. “I’ve heard that blogs are great for building trust with potential customers - how would you suggest speeding that up?” - Asked by Stacie I’m going to tackle this question today and talk about how trust is built using content online and give you some tips on how to maybe speed it up a little bit. Although, it does need to take some ...
Sep 12, 2016•19 min
Profit Streams Revealed: How I Make Money Blogging Today, I’m going to go through exactly how I make money blogging. I’m going to talk you through the income streams that I use to monetize my blogs and build an income for my family. This is something that I have done on the blog, but today I’m going to give you the information on the podcast because some of you don’t read the blog. Today’s podcast is based off of this article on ProBlogger, “My Blogging Income Breakdown for the First Half of 201...
Sep 05, 2016•34 min
The Pros and Cons of Long Posts Today, we have a question from Emma Cameron. “Hi Darren, I love your podcast! I found your 7 day intensive blogging series very helpful, and it led me to write a post I might never have gotten around to otherwise. In answering my most frequently asked question, which is 'What is Art Therapy'? This has turned into an incredibly long post which covers things which are not easily found elsewhere online. I have a question for you: is it better to leave it as a single,...
Aug 29, 2016•28 min
Finding a Balance Between Family Life and Blogging Life Today, we are talking about family and blogging. One of the reasons I was attracted to blogging was because it seemed like something that would allow me to have some flexibility in my life and time for family. Today, I’m going to talk about how that turned out, and the struggle and tensions that can arise when blogging with family around. My blogging career didn’t turn out quite as we expected it would, but my full-time blogging does allow ...
Aug 22, 2016•30 min
Tips on How to Manage Incoming Email Is email sucking away all of your time, and taking away from your blogging? Today’s topic comes from one of our readers. Phil says, “I’ve been blogging a couple of years now and in the last 6 months have seen quite a bit of growth in traffic to my blog. This is great but I’m noticing with it is coming a significant rise in the incoming emails I get. I feel like I’m drowning in it and that it’s taking me away from my blogging. "Do you have any systems or tools...
Aug 18, 2016•29 min
How Being a Good Listener Can Help You Write Effective Sales Copy Today, I want to talk about writing great sales copy. Whether that would be blog post, sales emails, creating a sales pages, or even selling on social media. A lot has been written about the topic particularly focusing upon techniques to use in headlines or titles, keywords, power words, and getting the call to action right. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever had when it comes to writing sales copy is something that doesn’...
Aug 15, 2016•23 min
Is Your Blog Being Hurt by Your Obsession to Create New Content? Today, I want to talk about an obsession that many bloggers have - an obsession with creating NEW content and want to suggest that we all take a little step back from spending quite so much time on that task and pay attention to something that might have a better payoff for us. I’m going to share with you a practice that I’ve build into my daily rhythm. You can listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTunes. But befor...
Aug 11, 2016•26 min
Challenge: Create a Link Post This is 7th and final challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off back in episode 137. You can listen to this podcast in the player above or here on iTunes (please take a moment to give us a rating and review if you could). If you’re new to the challenge - this week I’m nominating a different style of content for you to create each day over the week and the challenge is to create a post within 24 hours of hearin...
Aug 08, 2016•18 min
Challenge: Create a Discussion Starter This is 6th challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off back in episode 138. You can listen to it in the player above or here on iTunes. If you’re new to the challenge - this week I’m nominating a different style of content for you to create each day over the week and the challenge is to create a post within 24 hours of hearing about it and then sharing it with us in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Fa...
Aug 07, 2016•21 min
Challenge: Create a 'How to' Post This is 5th challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off back in episode 138. If you’re new to the challenge - this week I’m nominating a different style of content for you to create each day over the week and the challenge is to create a post within 24 hours of hearing about it and then sharing it with us in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook. Listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTu...
Aug 06, 2016•26 min
Challenge: Create a Story Post This is 4th challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off a couple of episodes ago. To recap - every day for the next week I’m going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. My challenge is to create and publish that challenge - to join our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and to share your post on this thread and to check out the other posts others are submitting. Today your challenge ...
Aug 05, 2016•14 min
Challenge: Create a Review Post This is the 3rd challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off a couple of episodes ago. To recap - every day for the next week I’m going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. My challenge is to create and publish that content - to join our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and to share your post here and to check out the other posts others are submitting. Today’s challenge could be a...
Aug 04, 2016•12 min
Challenge: Create Content That Answers a FAQ This is the 2nd Challenge of our 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off a couple of episodes ago. To recap - every day for the next week I’m going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. My challenge is to create and publish that content - to join our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and to share your post on this thread and to check out the other posts others are submitting. In Today’s Epi...
Aug 03, 2016•13 min
Challenge: Create a List Post This is part 1 of our 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off in the last episode of this podcast. To recap - Every day for the next week, I’m going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. Create and publish the challenge post Share your post on This Thread in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook, and check out other posts fellow challengers are submitting. Today’s Challenge: Write a List Post In this epis...
Aug 02, 2016•15 min
Challenge: 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Have you lost your blogging groove? It’s easy to do - particularly in the middle of a year when so many other aspects of life compete for your attention and where motivation can sometimes go missing. If your blog is feeling a little stagnant - today is for you. In fact this whole week is for you because this episode starts a week long daily series that is all about getting back into the groove of creating great regular content for your blog....
Aug 01, 2016•15 min
Why Evergreen Content is the Best Investment of Time for a Blogger "If you could only write one type of content on your blogs - what would it be?" I was asked this question while on a Q&A panel back in 2007 while at a conference in Las Vegas. It’s a question that I go back to again and again, and the answer hasn’t changed a bit. I also think writing this type of content is why I have had success over the last 13 years. One of the most important things I’ve done in my blogging has been to focus o...
Jul 28, 2016•1 hr 1 min
Setting Goals to Grow Your Traffic and Income Today’s podcast is about setting goals to grow your traffic and income. Pamela, one of our readers asked this question: “Darren I’ve been blogging now for 12 months and I’ve seen some growth in my traffic and more recently income - but I’m finding it hard to know whether I’m going well or not because I don’t know where a 12 month old blog should be at? Maybe it’s too hard to give a number but do you have any advice on what kind of goals I should be s...
Jul 25, 2016•17 min
How to Decide if a New Social Network or Medium is Right for You Today I’m going to help you decide if you should start on that new social network or that new medium like a podcast or a YouTube channel. As bloggers, we are constantly bombarded with choice as to how we can spend our time. There is an unlimited amount of things we could be doing to support our blogs, but not all of them are right for us. I am going to go through some areas where we can ask questions to determine where we really sh...
Jul 21, 2016•39 min
The Seven Secrets of Making Money Blogging Today, I am traveling back in time and playing for you the audio of a video I made back in 2010. This video is called The Secrets of Making Money Blogging, and I share seven different secrets on how to make money blogging. Of course, these aren’t secrets at all since I shared them in 2010. A lot of this may be stuff that you have heard before, but I put it together for a friend that was really struggling and grappling with whether he should continue to ...
Jul 18, 2016•16 min
How to Use Subheadings to Add Structure to Your Blog Posts Today we are talking about written content. I have one of our regular contributors Ali Luke, from Aliventures.com on the show today to talk about subheadings. I haven’t talked much about using subheadings, but as I was listening to Ali it struck me that it is one of the most important techniques we can use when writing content today. Listen to this podcast in the player above or here on iTunes. Some of the Subheading Related Topics Ali C...
Jul 14, 2016•16 min
