Bringing a Little Organisation to This Blog
Over the last six months I have been pretty much blogging by the seat of my pants! I have rarely known what I was going to post more than a couple of days in advance and I have very few of those reserve posts that everybody tells us to do! Well, it’s time for a little change!
Re-Thinking My Goals
When I did my stats for February I ended the post with the nudge to myself that I could do better. I have been taking a long, hard look at my work over the last week or so and I have spent some time trying to get clear about exactly what I want to achieve. Here are my goals, though ‘goal’ is perhaps they wrong word as they are not very specific:
- I want to provide more value on the blog and grow the readership
- I want to make more of an effort to make money from the blog
- I want to generate more income from projects unrelated to the blog
Providing Value on the Blog
I surf around the blogosphere quite a lot and one of the first things I do when I arrive at a new blog is check out the recent posts section. This usually has around half a dozen posts or so. What surprises me is that sometimes I don’t see a single headline in that list that inspires me to click through and read. There is nothing of value there for me to read.
A long time ago I posted a list of 11 types of blog posts that waste my time and people still fill their blogs with this stuff now. Whilst some of these posts are necessary from the point of view of the blog owner, they rarely provide value to the reader. I have been guilty of this myself recently so from now on I want to dedicate at least two days a week to writing something that is truly valuable in some way. This might be…
- A strategy that can be replicated, such as my blog commenting strategy
- A resource, such as my list of free Internet marketing related ebooks
- A helpful (I hope!) opinion post, such as the reminder to build assets and skills
- An original idea I’ve had, such as product ideas almost guaranteed to sell
These are what Yaro Starak calls ‘pillar posts’. These kind of posts define your style as a blogger, they should stand the test of time, attract inbound links and do well in Social Media. These kind of posts grow your blog by providing your readers with the meaty content that they are looking for.
I’ve produced plenty of pillar content in the past but a lot of it has been spur of the moment and from now on I really want to put the effort into making sure that there are at least two of these a week.
Making Money From the Blog
This is a blog about making money online so I don’t feel any shame in trying to make money from it! However, I want to put a little more thought into how I do this. For the context of this discussion I am talking about affiliate marketing - the process of inserting affiliate links into the body of blog posts / emails. There are several strategies that I have seen used.
- The obvious pitch eg product review
- Inline affiliate links in related content
- Pitches disguised in stories
I have used the first two strategies extensively but I have never used the third and never will do. These are the posts (well, emails usually) that take you on this long story about some topic and you think you’re gonna get a wonderful secret and after you’ve been reading for about 45 minutes you realise the whole thing was just a pitch for the product they are trying to sell you!
The first strategy of creating a post which is designed to sell something is what I call a “money post”. Examples are a product review or announcement of a product launch, special offer and so on. These kinds of posts can be lucrative but the downside is that they turn a lot of readers off and if this is abused, blog readership will suffer. So my aim is to try to keep these type of money posts down to no more than one per week and clearly mark them as such so people reading in an RSS reader can just skip over them easily if they want to.
I’ll continue with the second strategy though which is where I insert inline affiliate links into the body text of my post whenever I mention something relevant. For example, I often talk about my hosting provider, BlueHost, when I talk about my ebook :-)
Currently I have a few products that I have purchased and not really reviewed properly on the blog but not very many. If you have created something related to making money online, blogging etc and would like me to review it then a great way of increasing your chances of success is to send me a free copy of the product :D However, that doesn’t guarantee you a favourable review!
Income From Projects
I have said many times that I dislike blogs about making money online where the only source of revenue for the blogger is that blog itself. I try to differentiate myself from people who do this by embarking on specific projects designed to make me money. So far the only project that I have successfully completed was my free ebook.
What I do is create a project page on the blog and on that I put in a summary of what the project is about, a list of activities that I plan to carry out and links to all of the blog posts that relate to that project. You can see all my current and pasts projects on my projects page.
I feel this is my cornerstone content that is unique to me. Nobody else can blog about this stuff because it is my personal experience. The projects seem to go down well with readers as I always try to show exactly what I have done in a way that can be replicated by others and I try to show the results of my efforts and critically analyse them accurately.
One goal of mine is to actually do the work of these projects and make some money! The second goal is to document them on the blog. However, not everybody will be interested in all of the projects that I am doing so I don’t want to fill up my blog with this stuff so my plan is to have just two project days per week.
Blogging Schedule
This is the first time I have ever tried to come up with any kind of schedule for posting on the blog. Here it is:
- Monday - Projects
- Tuesday - Pillar content
- Wednesday - Money post
- Thursday - Projects
- Friday - Pillar content
- Saturday - Miscellaneous
- Sunday - Weekly links
Of course, I won’t always stick to this schedule. For instance, I’ll always do my stats posts on the 1st of every month and if there is something desperately important happening then I’ll interrupt my schedule to talk about it.
So that’s what you can expect to be seeing on this blog in the immediate future. Feedback welcome as always.
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Mark
March 12, 2008
Caroline,
If you have been blogging “by the seat of your pants” for the last six months you have done a good job of hiding it! I can’t wait til you get organized :)
I really like the idea of a blogging schedule where you write specific types of posts on specific days. I have tried to develop a schedule for my blog (health and fitness related)and so far it seems to be working. I am shooting to post five days a week with:
-Two days dedicated to things I am currently doing to improve my own health and fitness that might help others
-One day dedicated to healthy food and cooking
-Two days dedicated to other areas such as tips and tricks and general information posts that relate to living an active, healthy life
Having the specific schedule forces me to think ahead about what I will be posting and hopefully results in better posts.
Also, one thing I am wondering as I write this is are there any “best” days to post in terms of readers, etc?
Mark’s last blog post..Let’s Get Ready To Rumble- Bike Riding In Traffic