Tips 4 Web

This is a guest post by ZK. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

I’ve been running a web marketing blog for the last 15 months, but each time I sat down to write a post I ended up spending at least three to four times the amount of time that would take for me to write the post.

Over the last three to four months I reduced my blog writing time considerably by being more productive. In this blog post I’m going to explain how I achieved that.

1. Create a Daily Routine

This is a quite hard part, especially when you are just getting started with your blog. Getting into the habit of writing one blog post every day (or three times per week) is a challenged when you first try it.

But once you establish a daily writing routine it will get much easier because you just get used to it. You will still blog because you want to and because you like it, but you will grow the habit and force yourself to write no matter what.

2. Use a To-Do List

Or just a schedule. When you have a daily to-do list or a schedule you will be able to manage your time much better. You know what you need to do, when you need to do it and so on.

If you know you only have 30 minutes available, for example, you should skip working on a larger task and instead get rid of smaller things on your to-do list. The list itself, though, will be useful to make sure you spend your time as efficiently as possible.

3. Shut Down Distractions

Close down stuff like Thunderbird (e-mail client), Twitter client, Skype, Messenger and similar. If you don’t want to close Skype or Messenger, just set your status to “Message if important only” or simply just “Busy.” You just need to be able to set a point where you need to be very productive (while writing blog posts).

4. Take Notes When Something Important Comes to Your Mind

If you are in the middle of a task (for an example writing a blog post) have a notepad with you and write the idea there instead of doing it right now. If you jump from task to task you’ll lose focus and efficiency.

Just remember you need to finish whatever you are working on before you jump to the next task.

5. Outsource Stuff You Aren’t Good At

This is probably the best time-saver ever. You should always try to get help from people who are qualified on areas you are not. If you are not a good designer, for example, focus on writing content and outsource the design tasks on your blog to a designer. This will save you time and money in the long run.

Do you have any techniques for being and staying productive?

This is a guest post by ZK , who blogs about web marketing and search engine marketing at WebTrafficROI.com. You can follow him on
Twitter as well.

Source
How to Be Productive Without Caffeine

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This is a guest post by ZK. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

I’ve been running a web marketing blog for the last 15 months, but each time I sat down to write a post I ended up spending at least three to four times the amount of time that would take for me to write the post.

Over the last three to four months I reduced my blog writing time considerably by being more productive. In this blog post I’m going to explain how I achieved that.

1. Create a Daily Routine

This is a quite hard part, especially when you are just getting started with your blog. Getting into the habit of writing one blog post every day (or three times per week) is a challenged when you first try it.

But once you establish a daily writing routine it will get much easier because you just get used to it. You will still blog because you want to and because you like it, but you will grow the habit and force yourself to write no matter what.

2. Use a To-Do List

Or just a schedule. When you have a daily to-do list or a schedule you will be able to manage your time much better. You know what you need to do, when you need to do it and so on.

If you know you only have 30 minutes available, for example, you should skip working on a larger task and instead get rid of smaller things on your to-do list. The list itself, though, will be useful to make sure you spend your time as efficiently as possible.

3. Shut Down Distractions

Close down stuff like Thunderbird (e-mail client), Twitter client, Skype, Messenger and similar. If you don’t want to close Skype or Messenger, just set your status to “Message if important only” or simply just “Busy.” You just need to be able to set a point where you need to be very productive (while writing blog posts).

4. Take Notes When Something Important Comes to Your Mind

If you are in the middle of a task (for an example writing a blog post) have a notepad with you and write the idea there instead of doing it right now. If you jump from task to task you’ll lose focus and efficiency.

Just remember you need to finish whatever you are working on before you jump to the next task.

5. Outsource Stuff You Aren’t Good At

This is probably the best time-saver ever. You should always try to get help from people who are qualified on areas you are not. If you are not a good designer, for example, focus on writing content and outsource the design tasks on your blog to a designer. This will save you time and money in the long run.

Do you have any techniques for being and staying productive?

This is a guest post by ZK , who blogs about web marketing and search engine marketing at WebTrafficROI.com. You can follow him on
Twitter as well.

Source
How to Be Productive Without Caffeine

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It looks like Google used the new year’s eve to update the nominal PageRank around the web. My established websites didn’t experience any fluctuation, but I noticed that many of my recently created niche websites gained PageRank.

Most of them went from PR0 to PR2. I was surprised to see one of them jumping from PR0 to PR4 though, especially because the site is less than six months old.

What about you, did you notice any changes?

Finally, it looks like the frequency of the updates is indeed increasing. The last one was just two months ago (late in October), so keep an eye for the next one around March.

Source
Google Is Kick Starting 2010 with a PageRank Update

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I just wanted to wish a happy new year to all our readers. One of the cool things about blogging is that you get to make friends and meet some terrific people along the way, and that is exactly how I feel about you guys.

I am sure 2010 will be an awesome year for everyone.

Blog on!

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Happy New Year Everyone

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This is a guest post by Hannah Kevin. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Growing a blog to a successful, monetizable state is a long journey that requires a great deal of effort and dedication. Most bloggers fail to realize their initial goal of developing an income producing blog. I believe there are four stages of growth that a blog must pass through in order to achieve this goal. These stages can be described as follows:

Stage 1: Getting Established

The first stage of growing a blog is simply getting established. The focus during this stage is primarily content and blog setup. Most of your effort will go into creating a sufficient quantity of quality content for a sustainable blog launch. I believe a good way to do this is to actually write anywhere from 10 to 50 articles prior to launching the blog.

Basic blog setup tasks like SEO and plugin setup is also a part of this stage, although this takes much less time than creating the actual content. You also want to make sure that you get a handful of backlinks simply so that your blog gets indexed by the search engines. I typically like to do this the natural way of getting a backlink and letting the search engine “naturally discover” your blog versus submitting your blog to be added to the search engine. I’ve noticed a more quality indexing of your content through this more natural process.

Most people fail in this initial stage by focusing on monetization. You’re not going to make any money in the early stages, so you may as well ignore it.

Time to complete stage 1: 3 – 6 months

Stage 2: Traffic Growth

You’re ready to enter the growth stage if you have an established blog with quality content. You’re starting to get a handful of comments and maybe even some regular readers. You’re also getting some traffic from search engines based on your indexed content.

The growth stage is marked by traffic growth, subscriber growth, and the start of some income produced by the blog. Even at this point, traffic growth is still more important than income growth so it is there where we will focus. The growth of traffic is created by continuous quality content plus the addition of quality backlinks.

The best ways to get the backlinks are not the easy ways. I think it is good to assume that Google is smarter than we think they are and know how to weigh hard-to-get backlinks versus easy-to-get backlinks. As such, I don’t place much emphasis on backlinks in comments, forums and social media. The better backlinks will come from guest posts and natural backlinks (when someone decides to link to your site because they like what you have to say). Establishing relationships with other bloggers can help develop backlinks, since building a relationship with someone will make him or her aware of your existence.

The backlinks serve two purposes. First, it actually drives traffic to your blog and hopefully, some of this traffic turns into regular visitors. Second, these backlinks help your search engine status which is crucial.

Make a goal for yourself to write two guest posts per month on quality blogs with established readerships and preferably solid Page Rank numbers. Of course, part of this process of getting guest posts on blogs is convincing the blog owner to publish your stuff and a link to your blog.

Stage 2 is a long process that can go on for months, even years. The growth will be slow, but the goal is for it to be consistent. Some blogs based on some helpful circumstances and maybe even a little luck will get through this stage rapidly, but for most of us, you’re looking at a longer process.

Time to complete stage 2: 6 months – 2 years

Stage 3: Maturity & Monetization

The maturity stage in most business cycles usually refers to a leveling off of growth. In blogging, maturity doesn’t necessarily mean the slowing of growth. In my opinion, it simply means that achieving the same growth rate doesn’t require as much effort. I repeat, this stage still represents significant growth in traffic.

Because this stage does not require the same level of effort in producing quality content for your blog as well as other blogs (guest posts), you should now put effort into refining the monetization of your blog. This can include signing advertisement deal, optimizing Adsense performance and possibly trying out some affiliate programs. With that said, quality content still must be continuously produced during this stage.

In addition to continued growth in traffic during this stage, you should definitely see significant growth in income. It is during this stage, that you can begin enjoying some of the fruits of your hard work of the previous months and years.

Time to complete stage 3: 6 months – 1 year

Stage 4: Maintenance

This stage is very interesting because there are several big blogs that do very well that have let their blogs deteriorate with regards to quality and perhaps quantity of content. The reason for this is usually because they no longer have to produce the same quality of content in order to continue growing and driving significant income. Could they grow even more and make even more money if they didn’t let their quality slip? Probably, but it is probably a natural tendency of bloggers at this stage.

With that said, not everyone falls into that trap, but the point is that the level of effort required to maintain a blog that has successfully reached this stage is significantly less than the effort required during the previous stages. Once blogs reach this level, it has almost reached a self-sustaining point where the readers continue to grow and spread the word without your encouragement to do so. Content is still required but it is not nearly as important as it was in previous growth stages.

In this stage, there is significant income potential. Possibly career replacing income potential. Most blogs don’t reach this level. In fact, it’s probably a tiny percentage of the blogosphere.

Tips To Get Through The Stages

1. Blog about a topic that you are either really interested in or are already involved in professionally. This will help you continue to produce content when it becomes difficult to continue to do so.

2. Approach growing your blog like growing a business. It takes time and requires work. There are few short cuts.

3. Understand ahead of time that growth will take time, and you are likely to become discouraged at times. Be persistent.

Kevin owns and operates 20smoney.com, which is a blog focused on developing income streams and taking a business-like approach to blogging.

Source
The Four Stages of Growing a Blog

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This tip looks like common sense, but most of us make the mistake of jumping to conclusions based on our own opinions and preferences (myself included) sooner or later.

For example, you might be designing your website, and you might need to figure out where to put the subscription box. Most people would think where they themselves usually look for subscription boxes, and then place it there.

The mistake here is the assumption that other people will have similar preferences and behaviors. This is obviously not always the case.

If you are not supposed to trust your own opinions and preferences, then, what should you do? In one word: test.

The only way to be sure about the preferences of your visitors is by testing. If you need to figure out the best placement for your subscription box, therefore, experiment with several spots and track the conversion rate on each of them. Then analyze the data and let the numbers tell you the best spot.

Summing up: just because you like something in some way it does not mean that other people will, too.

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Don’t Jump to Conclusions Based on Your Own Opinions and Preferences

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If you often search for people on Twitter, you should check TweepSearch out. It basically allows you to search for keywords inside the bio of other Twitter users. This is quite useful if you want to find Twitter users with a specific characteristic.

For example, if you are looking to hire an SEO for your website you could search on TweepSearch for “seo expert,” and the tool would output a list of all the (supposed) SEO experts on Twitter.

There is also a feature to narrow the results to Twitter users following or being followed by a specific profile. For example, you could search for all the “seo experts” following or being followed by Matt Cutts (if they are not, after all, they can’t be real SEO experts…). To use this feature you just need to search for the profile first (e.g., @johndoe), and then search for the keyword.

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Search for People on Twitter with TweepSearch

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