Podcast: Sophisticated Blogging Tips for Authors With Blogging Instructor, Paul Cunningham
by Joanna Penn on May possibly 14, 2010
Hi every person. This can be Joanna Penn for that Imaginative Penn podcast and right now I’m interviewing Paul Cunningham.
Paul is the Blogging Instructor and gives content articles, ideas and tutorials to help blogger defeat the various challenges they experience in building an effective blog. He's also an IT skilled along with a author. So, we’ve accomplished a podcast on basic blogging ahead of within the podcast series so this interview is far more about several of the innovative strategies for people who have already got a website, but want to boost it or expand site visitors. So, welcome Paul.
PC: Many thanks Joanna, an absolute enjoyment to be right here.
JP: It is wonderful to have you along. So, we met previous yr once you arrived along to 1 of my seminars, which was amazing. So, possibly you are able to start off by telling us somewhat about you, a bit about your internet site and also about your personal writing ambitions.
PC: Positive. So, I’m Paul Cunningham. I stay right here in Brisbane Australia with my wife and two youthful children, and I operate two weblogs. I’ve obtained BloggingTeacher.com, which is in which I talk about blogging and Online marketing, net style and things like that, and ExchangeServerPro.com, which is about my day job and that is an IT professional. So, I’ve been blogging for the few many years now so, and learned a few many years in the past that I truly loved blogging.
I like creating. I’ve almost certainly published numerous words in my work more than the final ten decades and yeah, I also take pleasure in helping folks. So, for now I’ve got my two blogs where I create my blog posts and we’ve received some totally free stuff there, some guides, some brief guides as well as a few of people matters and they seem to be truly obtained through the readers. So, I’m working on creating some a lot more thorough textbooks and guides to perform from those and my goal this 12 months is usually to self publish at the least a single e-book from the couple of dozen ideas that are in hand.
JP: Totally. Okay, so I suggest I’ve been obtaining a have a look at your website and obviously you’ve assisted me having a couple of queries also together with your WordPress expertise. So, we’re going to take the instance of the author or an writer that has had a totally free website for the even though.
So, they’ve acquired a WordPress.com blog site internet site and they’ve been blogging for maybe 4 or five months and now they’re heading to take it to a brand new degree. I’ve been by means of ahead of creating their own hosted weblog so we do not have to go into that, but what exactly are your 3 best tips for getting a much more skilled and effective heading once you’ve got into the essentials?
PC: Certainly you have already talked about free of charge solutions and getting onto an unbranded website, un-hosted site, that’s truly important. And then, the word professional – I think most likely people are two actually good words there and when men and women hear expert they shouldn’t think of stiff, informal and boring.
It’s actually a lot more about taking a website to the next stage and treating it as seriously as you would expect men and women to take it when they come and visit. So, you know, you’ve received to just examine just several key things and I think almost certainly the website design is one of the first things that individuals fall down early on. You’ve received to examine the style and think what does it say about you. Is it genuinely cluttered, covered in ads and widgets and that sort of thing and after all, you know, we’re writers, we want people created words to stand out the most. Why distract people from that with a cluttered design and style and, you know, that is not genuinely something that you must spend a lot of money on. It is possible to do really effectively with free things or even some of the less expensive commercial things. Just ones that are truly clean and tidy I think are perfect for any writer’s weblog and really absolutely everyone who is listening to this naturally is looking at your internet site too.
And they shouldn’t just read what you’re creating, they should have a very take a look at what you’re actually doing along with your layout there because there is a lot of actually good pointers that it is possible to consider, you know, from The Innovative Penn. It’s just nicely laid out, you’ve obtained a nice simple colour scheme, you’ve obtained a expert photo yourself, very handful of widgety ads and other distractions, but the ones you do they’re basically all for your individual products.
So, you know, what exactly are we trying to do as writers? We’re trying to create a product that we can sell so if you’re going to use that real estate on your weblog, you know, in a nice successful way, it could as well be for your own products other than somebody else’s.
Yeah, get a look at your blog site design and style and most likely take it somewhat much more seriously with your creating too. Establish something that’s somewhat a lot more like a routine and producing – blogging and writing are basically the same thing. They sort of both happen in fits and bursts and when inspiration strikes and when time allows, but you shouldn’t try to blog site in that genuinely erratic fashion. You should try to website in a much more sort of structured routine that builds far more momentum and gives the audience an expectation that on certain days from the week or at a certain frequency there will be new content there for them to read. And, that establishes possibly a lot far more audience engagement, that's a lot better for your visitors because individuals will come back to a website that’s,
Office Pro 2007 Key, you know, delivering at a sort of reliable rate.
Probably a third tip I’d say is try to make all of your blogging effort, your content and so on, the maximum effect and use you are able to get out of them by actually being very deliberate about what you’re doing. So really don't just weblog in a haphazard way and speak about any odd topic, throw out a podcast every now and after that and possibly put a photo on there and that sort of thing. Actually pay attention to what you’re doing yourself and what sort of reaction you’re acquiring from your audience.
So, if you try video one time and somewhere you discover that your videos work actually nicely and get a lot of excellent, positive reactions from your visitors, that’s a sign that you should probably do a lot more videos cause it is much more efficient for your audience. And if you find that your blog post is on Tuesday, you get a lot more comments on your blog post on Saturday, properly then you should probably make Tuesday one among your blogging days. You really don't have to create it on Tuesday, you are able to write it in advance, but that should be the day that you publish it.
And when you’re obtaining that good, consistent site visitors, make the most use of it. Really do not waste it by getting visitors coming along, ‘yeah, that’s fantastic, I’ve read your blog site post, off I go again’, you know, give them a way to subscribe and stay up to date so that they really don't have to remember to come back to you, they get those constant reminders. So, as long as you make the most use out of the little time that we all have to search after our weblogs, I think you can actually kick it up to the next level.
JP: Nicely, lots of things there. A couple of inquiries. You mentioned there about a routine in blogging, which I like and I know some folks will say, “oh nicely I have to wait for inspiration or whatever. But I sort of do – I do a lot of them in advance and I do generally 1 podcast a week, but I do not necessarily do things on a certain day, but I do make positive that I’m covering all my topics and only my matters, I guess. So,
Office 2010 Standard, I feel like that’s a definite I would recommend also.
One question I have about momentum, clearly if you’re posting, like I try and do every two or 3 days maximum, generally every two days, does Google come back according to a schedule or do you train Google to come back regularly or doesn’t it matter?
PC: It does matter. Google will come to your internet site a lot more often if they realise that you’re putting up knew content a lot more often. And so if you'll be able to – I guess train is most likely a good term. If Google thinks that you’re blogging every day, you’re probably heading to get noticed, scraped by Google or called by Google every day and your new content will show up faster. Whereas if you’re doing them in bursts, they don’t wish to waste resources by coming to a site that hasn’t received fresh content. There are truly big weblogs and these are blogs that post dozens of posts. That they’ve got staff writers and they post dozens of times a day covering all the latest news, Google hits them up every couple of minutes sometimes just to make certain that the absolute latest content is in the index and can be ranked and that sort of thing. Yeah, training Google that is most likely a good way of thinking of it. If you can – you’re training not just your viewers but also search engines and other things like that to know what to expect from your website.
JP: That’s wonderful. And thank you for mentioning my website, that was very nice. I have mentioned ahead of that I bought the thesis theme, which I think is wonderful but you said that there are sort of totally free things that individuals can use that are less cluttered. What’s your most recommended net website for people to get good themes?
PC: Properly, I will say thesis, I love it, I use it myself and it’s perfect for writers because it is so clean and simple and typography based. It genuinely emphasises the creating. It costs a little bit of money, not a lot.
JP: No, it’s actually seventy dollars or something isn’t it?
PC: About seventy dollars, yes. Totally worthwhile. It is a fantastic theme and you'll be able to even personalise it yourself quite easily using the sort of backend controls on it. That’s a whole massive other topic that I guarantee that genuinely hundreds of tutorials and things out there for free of charge to aid you do that including some fantastic videos around the web internet site, the diythemes.com net website where they sell thesis. So, anyone who’s obtained a few dollars to spend give that one some strong consideration, but if you’re looking for something for free of charge, that's also fine, just do a couple of Google searches.
Just Google “best totally free premium themes for WordPress”, a search like that. These sort of lists are commonly used by odd blogs as link bait. They try and attract targeted traffic to these wonderful lists of wonderful totally free resources and I almost guarantee you there will be a whole new certainly one of these best totally free premium themes pop up every month somewhere on one among the big blogging or internet layout internet sites. And some of these no cost things are completely gorgeous, they appear wonderful and they are truly wonderful. And they’re usually developed by genuinely good developers who are just trying to get a foothold in the premium marketplace by giving away a few totally free runs at first. So, a lot of the time you’ll find premium theme sites like woothemes.com. They sell dozen of premium themes at a price but they also leave their original free ones that you are able to just go and download at the same time, and they are fine, they are great.
JP: No, that is good.
PC: If you need to spend a little of money it is possible to but, you know, do some search for totally free premium themes exactly where you'll be able to find some actually great looking ones.
JP: Yes, that is amazing. You also mentioned there that the only ads I have are for my individual products and I truly have an issue with men and women using Adwords on sites.
What’s your opinion of using Adwords and what are a number of the ways that people can make revenue if they don’t use something like Adwords?
PC: Adsense is among individuals things that we all try at the commence because it is just truly easy to sign up. You get the little bits of code from Google and stick them on your website and like magic these ads appear. But there’s a nickname for Adsense, that is called “blogger welfare” and that is with good reason.
You’re showing these ads from Google on your internet site. Google is charging the advertiser. Every time someone clicks on that ad on your net website Google charges that advertiser then gives you a cut, but the cut that you get is trivial, it’s a couple of cents. Only a very small percentage of your internet web site visitors are even likely to click on an ad in the first place and so you’re obtaining a small percentage of the small percentage of the small percentage. That’s truly just some cents. You might be lucky to make a hundred dollars a month when you actually start to ramp up your targeted traffic and genuinely what you’re doing is doing work so hard to bring traffic and visitors to your personal site and then sending them away to someone else’s products for just a tiny little sliver of that money.
I think that that works great if the whole point of your blog site is usually to do that. If you are a blog site reviewing cameras or something like that folks who are coming to your web site to read your reviews they’ve got that buying intent previously. They need to buy something, they desire to read your reviews, or but there’s an ad I’ll click on it. Hundreds of thousands of those and you might actually make a decent bit of money. But for writers, why would you desire to work so hard to sell someone else’s products. You’re trying to create a guide, something to sell and once you strip away all of that imaginative passion and the joy that we feel when we’re doing these things, that’s what we’re doing. We’re creating a product to sell and that is a product of our very own, not someone else’s product, not for two cents every time 5% of your visitors click on it. I think it is a technique – it is a model that works for some web sites, but by and large it doesn’t work properly for bloggers and particularly I think writers.
JP: So, what are some other ways, what is more powerful to make some income from a weblog?
PC: Well, naturally you’ve received to have something that you can sell and I do not necessarily mean a physical thing because we are all trying to create textbooks, but you speak a lot about the writer platform and other ways that authors can make money and you’ve carried out that yourself. I went to your day long seminar having a dozen or so other people, so things like seminars and training programs and speaking gigs, doors that it is possible to open yourself by acquiring your book there for sale and having your weblog and obtaining your name out there. That’s the way to get revenue and that’s the way to get a lot better revenue that helps you out a lot more in the long term in terms of reputation and things like that, then any Google banner ad or whatever will ever do for you.
JP: Now,
Office Professional 2010, I think that’s fantastic and I really think men and women need to be concerned about, as you said, their reputation and I think their online brand and as we said if you want a specialist internet site and an efficient blog, you have to create that professional brand. Like you have the Blogging Instructor, that is a great name because it is very obvious what you do and as you say I try and do that myself at the same time.
PC: Yeah. Search I made that mistake earlier myself. I tried to use Adsense to fill spaces in my weblog and make a lttle bit of money and it was selling all kind of crap. It was selling click this and fill out this survey and we’ll send you a free ten dollar sign card, I imply it was just rubbish, complete rubbish and I think you’re right. I think it genuinely damages – exactly what you said, it damages your brand.
JP: I think so and it’s just not worth it and really I would recommend following the model of a few of the bigger bloggers too, is create your individual products. Not just a guide because we all know it is brilliant to publish a book and if you’re selling a lot you’re not making that much money whereas if you make a couple of dollars per book or if you publish a course that helps people they will pay much more money for that.
And as you said my day seminar I certainly charge a lot more people more money and again you are able to make a better income. So, yeah, encourage men and women to think somewhat outside the box as to what they can sell. Okay, so obviously that is selling things, but you obviously have some great free of charge giveaways, I have some free giveaways. So, can you explain the importance of having some sort of totally free giveaway around the blog site?
PC: Nicely, there’s sort of three attacks that you can use that free of charge giveaway technique.
One is you’re just attracting traffic by giving it away for free and hoping folks will go, ‘that’s wonderful,’ and link to it and share it around. The second is you’re trying to build a mailing list and the third is you might be trying to use it as something that you can up sell the paid products onto to them afterwards.
So, I think probably the one particular that I like to use because I think it gives you an actual tangible sort of feasible result that you are able to build on is always to use it to build a mailing list and that is what I do. I put a nice free resource, a no cost guide or something like that. So what folks do is they fill out a form with their email address and say yeah I will have that please and it sends an automatic email to them which has a download link plus they download it and hopefully they enjoy then they’re on my mailing list.
[See this recent article from Writer’s Digest Jane Friedman– Authors should build their mailing lists now]
The mailing list is I would say definitely critical, definitely critical because it makes it truly difficult without a mailing list to capture and keep an audience above the long term. It is kind of like insurance, like you have got to get it before you require it otherwise it’s too late. So, what exactly are you supposed to perform when you have finished your book and you have got no mailing list to market it? You’re not going to sell very numerous of them. You’re going to get to work really hard to attract all that targeted traffic and so it’s easy, like it is just so easy to start off 1. It takes only some minutes so if you have by now received a weblog, you just sign up to 1 of those provider like Aweber, that is who I use. MailChimp is another one that is – I really don't use, but men and women I talk to say their grade is up and you just create your list.
So, as soon as you have actually acquired that form up there, then you just obtained to start off encouraging folks to sign up and that no cost giveaway is one of the best incentives to complete that. It’s from among these things that the big bloggers have been doing for years and some individuals resist because building mailing lists and marketing, they are quite uncomfortable subjects for some individuals.
They feel a little bit awkward, ‘I’m collecting email addresses. Oh,
Microsoft Office 2010 Pro, I don’t want to be a spammer,” and all that things. ‘Oh I do not desire to market, I really do not desire to be pushy and push my content out to them,’ but you have got to sort of detach yourself from that mentality and think well yes I am a marketer, I’m creating a product that I’m trying to sell and individuals are free of charge to sign up. Individuals are totally free to unsubscribe if they do not like what you’ve got and the folks who stay subscribe to the folks who genuinely wish to see emails from you. And why wouldn’t you keep sending them out.
JP: Absolutely and I think as long as individuals do not spam their lists, you know I’m on quite a lot of lists and I unsubscribe if folks keep sending me things, but I do communicate once a month with my ezine and send it out to my list and after that like I’m doing a launch for my Blogging for Authors course (now available) and that will go out to my list. But as you say you treat your list with respect and give them lots of value and after that they are happy to buy once you have something that they want.
PC: And new writers have very good options because that is something that individuals are expecting and individuals like finding newsletters, small, precise summaries of useful information, but you’re right. You have got to use your list in the spirit in which you received people to sign up. You don’t sign them up to email your little no cost guide on how to create your first e-book or something like that and after that tell them, hey buy this other product. You don’t spam them with other unrelated emails. You stay on topic and only send them what you promised you would send them which can be your regular newsletter or your blog site posts and men and women are pretty happy with that. I was quite surprised. I thought at first, oh individuals are going to sign and grab my freebie then unsubscribe and I’ll never see them again, but very, very couple of folks actually do that. All these folks who do stay subscribed, that’s folks you would have missed out on if you didn’t commence developing your list.
JP: Yes, and we all started with zero. That’s the other thing. I remember when I started my list and I literally had zero people after which of course you sign up for your own list so you are able to have one particular person after which you get your first unsubscribe and that kind of hurts. I also made a mistake and started with 1 provider that was too expensive and after that I went to Aweber that's very reasonable at the same time.
So, I kind of restarted my list, but as you say it stacks up very quickly as well as the moment you have a very book and if you’re looking for a publisher it becomes part of evidence about your platform. So, folks can say, I have these a lot of thousands of men and women ready to buy my e-book, which might or may not be true, but if you possess a list you can actually do like a screen print of Aweber and show them, glimpse I’ve obtained eleven thousand people on my list.
PC: You’re right, you’re actually right and I think you probably hit on two points there. Naturally it really is a trickle, it’s a trickle at the commence. You get probably one particular a day, two a day, 3 a day, but even just five or ten a day for that six months that you’re creating a guide. At the end of six months that genuinely adds up to a decent list. A lot of bloggers tend to agree that the moment you get more than five hundred and start off getting your thousand, you’ve actually acquired a really good list on your hands that you are able to market to. Because 5% of the thousand folks that is a good number of sales straight off the bat to get a first time product or something like that, but you do wish to pick a good service to begin with because if you go with the wrong one particular or try a totally free one or something like that, it can be truly painful to try and bring this data too.
JP: Oh yeah, cause you lose a lot of individuals whenever you move over.
PC: You do, yes.
JP: I think I lost about 50% because Aweber has that double sign in.
PC: That is right because – see that’s to our advantage because it increases the trust. It is a little bit painful but…
JP: Effectively worth doing,
Office Standard, yes so we both recommend that. It is excellent. I’ve just go another question and we’re running out of time. There are so several things we could discuss about! Yes, so 1 thing that I’m really interested in personally, because I think that authors and writers and individuals who find my weblog are not very techie folks and don’t necessarily use RSS visitors and it is kind of niche in which people do not understand and therefore I really do not have as numerous subscribers as I have folks on my list for instance, which I find quite odd. So what is your best tip for building subscribers to your RSS feed?
PC: Forget about RSS.
JP: Oh, truly?
PC: Yeah. Look it’s fantastic to possess it there. I think you should offer it because some individuals want it. It’s built into WordPress and all that sort of thing. I really wouldn’t emphasise it as a subscription option. I’d just have it available.
I think your mailing list is genuinely what you should be promoting as the way to subscribe to your weblog for exactly the reason that how does anyone genuinely use RSS? Like it’s big in the techie world and the net world and everything. It’s a great technology, it is wonderful. I can’t fault the technology, but your average person doesn’t – hasn’t even ever heard of it. They haven’t heard of it and they haven’t got an RSS reader. They don’t have a very couple of hundred subscriptions that they religiously check everyday like I almost certainly do.
Why go to all the trouble of trying to educate them within the merits of RSS and assist them get set up with an RSS reader and hope that they remember to open their RSS reader everyday when they’re by now an email user, they by now read their email most likely every day plus they have that inbuilt sort of instinctive urge to, you know, an email’s come in I must deal with it. They will be reading your email. They won’t be letting it stack up until there is a thousand emails in their inbox. They’re heading to be looking at your emails.
I follow a lot of blogs by RSS because I know how it works and it’s convenient but I’m days behind on my RSS feed sometimes. I’m not reading what men and women wrote the day they wrote it, I’m reading it sometimes a week later. It just takes me that long to catch up whereas my inbox, if there is a dozen unread items that bothers me and I go and sort it out. So, yeah I think have it there, offer it, but I’d be trying to get men and women – add on folks towards your mailing list.
JP: There you go. That helps, but then I actually really don't mail my list that often versus the weblog post come out every few of days, but then of course you'll be able to subscribe by email also to the blog site.
PC: Yes, you’re right.
JP: Yeah, so perhaps I emphasise that a lot more. No, that’s very helpful. Properly, then let’s skew that round to a different way then. So, if people need to build visitors to try and get individuals to their mailing list, what would be your number a single tip for site visitors these days?
PC: Yeah. So we’ve currently talked about individuals incentives, so when the traffic actually arrives, but it is actually acquiring them to sign up with individuals incentives because you actually wish to attract the targeted traffic and you’ve basically acquired to go wherever your audience is. So, you have received to go and find them.
You can’t just blog site in isolation and hope men and women stumble across you in Google searches and things like that because search engine traffic is only a percentage of your – should only be a small percentage of your site visitors, it shouldn’t be relying on it. And it’s not as committed and as engaging as visitors that it is possible to attract from other venues.
So, if you think about discussion forums, Facebook groups, Twitter, social networks and things like that, that’s wherever your audience is. You have just got to go out there and find them. So, discussion forums which might be related to your topic, you go out there and you set up an account and you start off engaging with men and women and you have obtained your little forum signature that says my name, and right here is my blog site. And you just go out there and you just be interesting and useful and be yourself and helpful and men and women will go, you have acquired a blog I’ll click on the website. They show up at your website plus they like what they see. They see much more content relating to the matters that they’re interested in from that discussion forum and they’ve already built that trust and connection with you from being in the same forum and engaging a couple of discussions with you previously. They see your freebie plus they sign up to your mailing list plus they become a loyal subscriber. So, basically go where your audience is. Find out where they hang out within the world wide web then go and get involved in these communities.
JP: That is a good idea and…
PC: Yeah, do not spam though. Do not just get out there and go, ‘hey everybody check out my blog I think you’ll like it.’ Just go out there and be useful and friendly. It’s like showing up at a party. You wish to meet new friends in a fresh town, you show up at a party and you just don’t hang around in the corner and stare at absolutely everyone. You go and introduce yourself and speak about things and individuals will come and check you out basically.
JP: That’s excellent. This really is a kind of a different thing I have just been thinking about, is doing a lot more on amazon.com which I haven’t been focusing on too much. You can go on Amazon and it is possible to create as an author, I’m not certain as a just a commenter, but you are able to create a whole page about yourself which has a link to your blog actually on amazon.com. So, for authors it’s a fantastic idea to go and leave a review on a book that you’ve read that is similar to yours after which it is possible to put a link to your website on your own personal page. I’ve started obtaining site visitors that way that's quite random, which is something that – certainly you’re far more in the traditional Internet marketing field but I’m just trying to think a lttle bit much more about things that authors can do in which viewers are.
PC: There’s a place within the World wide web for basically every topic and hobby out there. You just got to go and find it and start with Facebook and glimpse for other discussion forums. Do Google searches, but I guarantee you’ll find your little corner from the World wide web in which individuals who like what you like are talking about the things you like. That’s in which you'll be able to sort of stick your toe in and commence to get engaged. If that means heading on Amazon and leaving reviews for all the other guides in your topic, genuine ones, really do not just throw any odd sentence out there and hope folks will click a link, but that is 1 way to accomplish it because people stay all more than individuals Amazon reviews obtaining all kinds of discussions and arguments and almost like a competition to see who can review the most textbooks and all individuals sort of things. So, if that’s where your folk are hanging out…
JP: Yeah, hang out there too. No, that’s fantastic. So, go find your audience and I primarily do that on Twitter. That is my fishing place, which works nicely for me, but I guess every person has to find the place wherever they wish to do that.
PC: Yeah, that’s right. I’ve got a lot of IT men and women that I chat to on Twitter and a lot of bloggers and things like that too and you have obtained writers that I know it’s – you’d be surprised. I think even sometimes the hobbies that people really do not actually bring to the surface, sometimes they keep hidden amongst their Twitter friends will suddenly come out as soon as they see you appear on Twitter as the greatest barbeque chef in the world or something like that. All of the sudden all these individuals interested in barbeque that you had never predicted are following you and talking to you and checking out your weblog. Sometimes it is surprising I think in which you find people which might be interested in the same thing.
JP: Yeah, totally. That is fantastic. Wow, there’s been some brilliant information there Paul. It is been so good. So, we have to wrap now, we’re out of time. Where can people find you online?
PC: Yes. So, most likely for your things we talked about tonight, probably BloggingTeacher.com will be the best place to go and possess a glimpse. It is possible to also find me on Twitter as Paul Cunningham, all 1 term, but you’ll find that link on bloggingteacher.com too. And yeah definitely love to hear from any of your listeners if they’ve obtained follow up questions or anything that. I’ve received a contact form there on my world wide web web site. Always happy to get inquiries by email, because that is instantly a blog site post that I can write with things like that as well, so I’m more than happy for people to follow up with me if they’ve got any further questions.
JP: Brilliant. Nicely I’m confident folks will because there are so several concerns about these subjects these days. So, thank you ever so much for your time, that was fantastic.
PC: My satisfaction Joanna.
Joanna: Many thanks for listening nowadays. I hope you found it helpful. It is possible to get more information on writing, publishing options, sales and promotion for your e-book at www.TheCreativePenn.com.
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