Blog World Expo 2009 – John Chow Challenge

John Chow has challenged me to give him reasons why I should be chosen to receive a pass to attend Blog World Expo 2009. He probably doesn’t remember meeting me at the last Blog World Expo in 2008, so I have included my extremely unflattering photograph with him. Learn about this challenge at JohnChow.com

Last year at the Blog World Expo 2008, I was totally inspired by all the talks given by the Fab Five – four of whom are shown in the photograph below (Zac Johnson, Jim Kukral, Darren Rouse and John Chow). Notice that ShoeMoney is not in the photograph shown. He must have been off networking.

Anyway, I learned so many things at the conference that helped me with my business plans and I will always be grateful for that.  I don’t really like to reveal numbers about my income levels, but since last year in September, my affiliate income has increased by 660%. My blog traffic is now getting 14,444 unique hits a month and I can live on my affiliate earnings. I owe a lot of this success to the great information that I received from the Fab Five at the Blog World Expo 08.

I was also recently invited to attend the Shareasale ThinkTank that is going to be held in Newport Beach, California.  Without the training that I received at the conference, I never would have been successful enough to be invited to attend. So I thank you Fab Five again. Should you consider me to receive a pass to the conference I would be so grateful. I look forward to learning much more about being successful on the Internet.

23 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog

Every blogger wants more people to read their blog, but not every blogger knows how to do this.

Sure, you can get readers to your blog when you have already established some notoriety for yourself, such as writing a best selling book like “The 4 hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris.  Maybe you have somehow gotten masses of people to a website through some special offer like Zac Johnson did. Or you could be a popular blogger like John Chow who now has such wildly successful friends that they sit around discussing how they can’t live on $10,000 a month income anymore.

The question is, how do you get people to read your blog when you are first starting out and you don’t have these incredible stories to tell people?

Well, the answer is given to us by Denise Wakerman, co-founder of “The Blog Squad.” She has been assisting professionals and small businesses to use marketing strategies on the internet to improve their businesses.

Here are her 23 best tips to get more traffic to your blog

1. Post nearly every day  on your blog; the more you post, the more readers you’ll have.
2. If you have more than one blog and it’s appropriate, cross post to drive readers to each blog
3. Write and submit articles to directories with links to the appropriate blog
4. Write and post news releases online, about onece a week, with links back to the appropriate blog
5. Provide links to blogs in email signatures
6. Comment on other blogs
7. Write posts with links to other blogs and mention the blogger’s name (if they’re watching Google Alerts then they know you’ve posted about them and will usually visit your blog)
8. Thank people who post comments via email
9. Put links to your blog in product than-you emails
10. Put links to your blog on than you pages people see when they purchase your product and services
11. Encourage people to subscribe to your blog in follow up email autoresponder messages
12. Put blog links on LinkedIn profile, MySpace profile, Facebook profile and Twitter
13. Put links to your blog in your ebooks
14. Put links to your blog in your bios
15. Tell people about your blog when you do presentations
16. Encourage people to visit your blog when they sign up for your ezine so they can get even more free info
17. Put a featured blog post with a link in your weekly ezine
18. Pull blog feeds into your Facebook profile and other social networks
19. Include blog links in signature blocks on forum posts
20. Submit your blog to all the blog directories and search engines
21. when appropriate, direct people to specific blog posts to answer their questions in discussion forums
22. If you post videos on video sharing sites, include the URL for you blog in the description
23. Most importantly, write informative content using keywords that will be picked up in organic searches

When planning strategies to get more traffic to your blog, be sure to make a committment to yourself to post as frequently as possible and to provide your readers with some fresh new ideas. They’ll be glad you did.

Next post: Getting People to Comment on Your Blog Posts

Passionate Blogging Works

Have you ever wondered why some blogs become wildly successful while other blogs become ghost towns that no one visits?

In a recent interview on Breakfast Television, expert blogger John Chow was asked what is the biggest mistake that new bloggers make when they start blogging. His response was that it is a big mistake to start blogging just for the money. He recommends doing a blog just for fun.

When people start blogging just for the money, they neglect the passionate side of themselves. People like to read good content from others who are passionate about their topic. Choosing something to write about that you feel a lot of passion for basically makes the job, well, not a job. John said, “If you are passionate about it, it’s not really work, is it?”

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Blogging experts reveal their blogging tips

Learning To Blog Class Sessions

One of the fun things about going to BlogWorld Expo 2008 was listening to expert bloggers reveal their personal blogging tips and tell us how they make money with blogging.  Jim Krukal lead a question answer session with four very successful bloggers, Brian Clark, Zac Johnson , Darren Rowse  and for a brief time Jeremy Shoemaker.

Each guest was asked questions about what made their blog successful and what they recommended to others who are starting out a new blog.  They discussed issues such as which programs were making them the most money, whether Google Adsense was really Webmaster Welfare, and what topics are the best to blog about. They talked about how long it takes to establish a good blog and what to expect from your blog at the beginning.  All of them agreed that you need to have a passion for the topic you are going to be blogging about to avoid the dreaded “abandoned blog.”
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