Making the Most of Tools, Apps and Services to Create Visual Content for Your Blog In today’s lesson, we’re going to talk tools for creating great visual content for your blog. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring different types of content that you can use on your blog. In episode 187 we talked written content, in 189 video content and back in 180 we talked about live video. Each are important types of content to be able to create for your blog - but one that is increasingly important ...
May 01, 2017•1 hr
How to Move Through Failure in 6 Steps In today’s lesson, I want to talk about failure in business and how to move through it. I’ve been asked questions on this topic a number of times in the last few weeks and while it’s a topic most of us probably don’t want to have to learn about - it’s something that we all will need to deal with at one point or another because it’s a part of any business story. We all fail - in fact failure is an essential part of any startup and if you’re not having it it ...
Apr 24, 2017•26 min
Removing the Barriers to Create Video Content on Your Blog In today’s lesson, I’ve got some very practical and actionable information for you on how to shoot great video for your blog using your smartphone. As I’ve mentioned a few times lately in episodes - video is becoming one of the hottest types of content online. While the written word isn’t going anywhere video content helps you to grow your reach, stand out from the crowd, make a connection with your audience and is highly shareable. We’v...
Apr 17, 2017•46 min
The Pros and Cons of Having More Than One Blog In today’s lesson, I want to talk about having more than one blog on the go at once. Regular listeners of this podcast know I have two main blog - ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. I’m fortunate enough to have been able to build them up so that either one of them could be a full time venture which is great - but having two businesses to focus upon not only comes with some benefits - but some costs. In this episode I want to share: The story...
Apr 10, 2017•41 min
What the Future Looks Like for Written Content In today’s lesson, I want to talk to you about written content vs other mediums and respond to a few questions I’ve been getting lately about which medium is best to focus upon and to answer the question - is the future of written content dead! Listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTunes (look for episode 187). Events: Before I get into today’s show though I’ve been hinting for a few episodes now that I’ll have some news for you abo...
Apr 03, 2017•29 min
How I Write a Blog Post - My Step-By-Step Process Today, I want to walk you through my step by step process for writing a blog post! I get asked about this regularly over in the ProBlogger podcast listeners Facebook group. So today I put together some notes on the workflow I use and want to run you through. Before I do - and speaking of the Facebook group - I wanted to let you know that I’ve shared some exciting news with members of that group in the last week - particularly about an event that ...
Mar 27, 2017•30 min
How to Apply for a Blogging Job In today’s lesson, I want to talk about finding a job as a blogger - particularly how to apply for a blogging job. Back in 2006 I noticed I started getting a lot of two types of emails: People wanting to hire bloggers would email me asking if I knew anyone suitable for a blogging job that they had. Bloggers would email asking if I knew anyone looking to hire a blogger. After months of getting these kinds of emails and manually playing matchmaker I decided it would...
Mar 20, 2017•24 min
Strategies to Increase Your Blog Earnings In today’s lesson, I want to talk about two things I’ve been doing on my main blog to increase the profitability of the blog - both have been working really well! I’m going to talk about 3 income streams in particular - AdSense Ad network (although this will be relevant to other networks too), Affiliate promotions and selling our own products. So if you want to increase the profitability of your blog - this show is for you. Further Resources on 2 Blog Mo...
Mar 13, 2017•25 min
The 9 Questions You Can Ask to Increase FaceBook Engagement In today’s lesson, I want to give you some really practical things that you can do to increase engagement - particularly to get people to comment - on your Facebook page and if you have them - groups. Most bloggers spend a lot of time on Facebook and it’s for good reason. The amount of potential readers for our blogs who are on Facebook on a daily basis is staggering. It’s where people are online and so it makes sense to have a presence...
Mar 06, 2017•37 min
How to Create MindMaps for your Blogging In today’s lesson, I want to talk about one of my favorite techniques in business for organising my thoughts, helping me to review, plan and organise my business and to think creatively and generate loads of ideas. Today’s episode is about Mind Mapping. I want to talk about what mind maps are but more importantly I want to suggest a variety of different ways that you can use them in your blogging. I create mind maps almost every day in my business - they ...
Feb 27, 2017•34 min
Tackling the Biggest Challenges of Being a Solo Entrepreneur with Robert Gerrish of FlyingSolo In today’s lesson, I have a real treat for those of you who spend most of your working life alone as solo-entrepreneurs. Over in the ProBlogger Podcast listeners facebook group this week I ran a little poll to see how many of you as listeners work alone vs work in teams. The results were as I suspected - 93% of you work alone on your blogs. Of the other 7% - most had family members or readers volunteer...
Feb 20, 2017•59 min
Ways to Use Facebook Live to Grow Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to talk about Facebook live video which is a technology that has been around for a while now on Facebook and that I think continues to be something that bloggers could get a lot of value out of. We’ve seen Facebook continue to develop it over the last 12 months. Initially, it was only available to larger influencers and verified account holders, then they opened it up to everyone and in the last few weeks they’ve made it so yo...
Feb 13, 2017•22 min
11 Techniques for Lowering the Bounce Rate on Your Blog In today’s lesson I want to talk about a statistic or metric that is in Google analytics that I see bloggers talking about a lot - that of ‘bounce rate’. Just today I was asked twice about bounce rate and how to get it lower. So in this episode, I thought I’d tackle the topic and will talk briefly about what bounce rate is, about why I see many bloggers not really interpreting it in a helpful way and for the bulk of the episode I want to gi...
Feb 06, 2017•39 min
Strategies to Get Products to Review on Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to share 7 strategies that I used to get products to review on my first ever commercial blog - a camera review blog. It’s not always easy to get products to review in the early days of a blog when you perhaps don’t have a big profile so in this episode I rewind the clock to when I was just starting out and share how I did it. So if you’d like to create more product reviews on your blog - this one is for you. Listen to th...
Jan 30, 2017•26 min
Six Ways to Boost Traffic on Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to talk about getting your traffic kick started in the new year. Many bloggers struggle with getting traffic momentum early in the year after the holiday period traffic slump that most of us go through because our readers are not online as much or after we’ve taken a bit of time off blogging - and it can be frustrating to come back to your blog and see traffic lower than it was last year. In this lesson, I want to give you 6 things...
Jan 23, 2017•28 min
Techniques to Create Scannable Content for Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to share a simple way to write content that is much more likely to be actually read, understood and acted upon by your readers. We’re going to talk about techniques for creating more scannable content for your blog. As bloggers, we put a lot of time into carefully choosing the right words for our blog posts but many times what stops people really engaging with our content is the way those words are arranged on the pag...
Jan 16, 2017•21 min
How to Think About Giving up Your Day Job for an Online Business In today’s lesson I want to tell you a story - a story of advice I was given when I was starting out that I ignored - a story of regret and a story that I hope might move you to taking some action! Listen in the player above or here on iTunes. Further Resources on How to Quit Your Job and Build an Online Business Becoming a ProBlogger – A story in Many Parts How to Start a Blog in 5 Easy Steps Full Transcript Expand to view full tr...
Jan 09, 2017•13 min
An Alternate Resolution to Transform Your Blogging in 2017 In today’s lesson I want to talk about New Year’s Resolutions and Goals and want to suggest setting a goal that I think will help to set your blogging up for a great year of blogging. In fact - I’m really excited about this episode because it’s an alternative way of thinking about New Year’s goals and resolutions - something I’ve never really considered before that I am really excited to try myself. So if you’re looking at the new year a...
Jan 02, 2017•11 min
Using Quotes in Your Blog Legally and Ethically In today’s lesson, I want to talk about using quotes on your blog. I’m regularly asked - particularly by new bloggers - what the etiquette and legalities are around using content that others have written in your own content - or the practice of quoting others. It’s a good question because quoting others and building upon their ideas with your blog can be one way to improve the quality of your content, serve your readers and build relationships with...
Dec 26, 2016•27 min
Michael Stelzner on Building a Blogging Business Through Interviewing Others In today’s lesson, I want to talk about how to build a business around creating content that is based upon interviewing other people. To help me do that, I have invited my friend Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner and Social Media Marketing World onto the show because he’s someone who I’ve seen build an amazing business relatively quickly in the social media space. In the early days of that business, he did it si...
Dec 19, 2016•57 min
How I Doubled My Blogging Income to Achieve the Most Profitable Month In today’s lesson, I want to talk about my blogs monetization strategy that is responsible for our biggest month of profit every year. Back in December 2010, I rather impulsively did something on my photography blog that led to our biggest month of earnings ever. It almost doubled a normal month of earnings on my blogs. It was our very first 12 deals of Christmas campaign. In this episode, I want to walk you through exactly wh...
Dec 12, 2016•44 min
How to Stay Inspired and Avoid Bloggers Burn Out In today’s lesson I want to talk about blogger burnout and how to avoid it. Most bloggers start out blogging with an incredible burst of passion, excitement and energy with their blogging, but usually at some point within the first year or two, many bloggers come up against their first bout of blogger burnout. It can happen in different ways and for different reasons. Some bloggers push through it and others get stopped in their tracks by it. Most...
Dec 05, 2016•39 min
Transitioning From Single Author Blog to Multi Author Blog In today’s lesson, I want to talk about hiring writers for your blog. In order to do so, I want to share a case study of how I took my own photography blog from a single author blog, publishing 3 posts a week, to a blog that now has around 50 writers, and I don’t write anything. Most bloggers start out blogging as single author blogs and many remain that way. Even so, I’m regularly asked by bloggers how to add new writers to their blog w...
Nov 29, 2016•51 min
Edit Your Blog Posts With Seven Simple Steps A lot is taught about the importance of writing great blog posts, but it is in the editing of your writing that your post can really be made to shine. If left unedited, it can create a very different impression that can hurt people’s view of you and your blog. In today’s episode, I want to share with you a simple 7 step process to editing your posts. We’re going to talk a little about proof reading but also some bigger picture editing too - because re...
Nov 21, 2016•26 min
How to Overcome Blogger Procrastination In today’s lesson I want to talk about an issue that I think is at the heart of why many blogs don’t reach their potential. In fact it’s an issue that I think is at the heart of why many people don’t reach their potential in many areas of life. Listen to this episode here on iTunes. I want to talk about procrastination and why we so often don’t do what we know we should do. In this episode I’ll share a quote from my mum that changed my life. In this episod...
Nov 14, 2016•30 min
Factors to Consider When Shaping Content Strategy for Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to share 11 factors to consider when thinking about developing your blog’s editorial strategy and thinking about your blog’s editorial style. The success of your blog hinges on many factors but among the most important of them is your content. Putting thought into what content you want to focus upon creating is crucial. What I share with you today will help you to create a framework for content that not onl...
Nov 07, 2016•36 min
An Interview with Daniel Flynn - Co-founder of Thankyou In today’s episode, we hear from Daniel Flynn, co-founder and Managing Director of Thankyou a social enterprise that sells consumer products like water, nappies, hand sanitiser and much more here in Australia and soon to be New Zealand. They give 100% of their profits to end extreme poverty. Daniel closed day 1 at our event, a couple of months ago, with the most remarkable of keynotes. The title of his talk was Turning Stumbling Blocks Into...
Nov 03, 2016•24 min
3 MORE Tips to Help You Increase Your Productivity In today’s episode, I want to continue on from the previous episode and share 3 more thoughts on how to become more productive and build healthy habits around your blogging and in your life. While normally our episodes are designed as stand alone episodes this one really does build upon the last one, so I would encourage you to listen to that one first if you haven’t done so, yet. In it I talked about: Starting with your why and building goals a...
Oct 31, 2016•15 min
3 Tips to Help You Increase Your Productivity In today’s lesson, I want to chat about how to be more productive in your blogging (and life) through building good habits and systems into what you do. It’s so easy as an online entrepreneur to slip into bad habits when it comes to using our time or to lead a life where we spend our time frantically moving from one urgent thing to another without really putting much thought into what we need to get done. So today, I want to share with you 3 things t...
Oct 27, 2016•23 min
How Lisa Corduff Took Action and Built a Six Figure Business In today’s episode, we hear from Lisa Corduff from lisacorduff.com in an interview that Karly Nimmo from Radcasters recorded at the ProBlogger event a few weeks ago. Lisa spoke at the event in one of our most highly rated sessions titled ‘Anyone Can Create an Online Product’. It was a session that resonated with a lot of attendees. Lisa is a whole foods blogger who had been blogging and had a facebook page for a couple of years without...
Oct 24, 2016•20 min
