By Jon Morrow
You know everyone thinks we’re fools, right?
To most of the world, blogging is a joke.
It isn’t a career. It isn’t a way to make money. It isn’t a tool for changing the world.
It’s a hobby, a diversion, a fad that’ll come and go. Sure, you can start a blog, but don’t count on it to take you anywhere. That’s just silly.
Try telling your family or friends or coworkers you want to quit your job and make money blogging. They’ll smile politely and ask, “Does anybody really make money from that?”
Yes, they want you to have dreams. Yes, they want you to chase them. Yes, they want you to succeed.
But they also want you to be “realistic.”
If you really want to improve your life, you should get an advanced degree, write a book, or even start your own business, not hang all your hopes and dreams on some stupid little blog. There’s no money in it.
Or is there?
I’m hesitant to say this, but…
This Blog Makes $100,000 per Month
In January and February, we cleared over $100,000 per month in sales. The verdict is still out on March, but if we didn’t make it, we should be close enough.
How?
Well, I’ll tell you. Not because I want to brag (well, maybe a little), but because most of the advice out there about monetizing your blog is complete crap.
For instance, do you see any ads on this site?
No? How about e-books for sale?
None of those either, huh? In fact, you might be hard-pressed to find anything for sale at all.
There’s a reason why.
Over the past six years, I’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the smartest bloggers on the planet. I worked with Brian Clark as he built Copyblogger to a multimillion dollar brand. Neil Patel and Hiten Shah also hired me to help them launch the KISSmetrics blog, and while they’re not big on publishing revenue numbers, they did recently close a $7 million venture capital round.
Combined, I wouldn’t be surprised if both blogs have earned more than $50 million. In comparison, the $100,000 per month I’ve managed to generate is a pittance.
But everyone has to start somewhere, right?
The reason this blog has made so much money so fast is I learned from the best, and then when I left, I kept learning. Every day, I crunch numbers, read books, talk to experts, and spend at least 30 minutes in silence, staring into the distance, doing nothing but thinking.
It’s paid off. If you’ll take some of these lessons to heart, it’ll pay off for you too.
Because here’s the thing:
You’re Not a Fool. You Can Make Money Blogging.
So, you want to make a living teaching other people what you know? Nothing wrong with that.
Professors do it. So do public speakers and best-selling authors.
Hell, consulting is a $415 billion industry, and what are all those consultants doing?
Getting paid to teach.
Blogging is no different. It’s just the same old models with some rocket fuel thrown in, courtesy of social media.
In fact, we might as well call that the first lesson:
Lesson #1: You’re Not Just a Blogger
You’re an expert, a teacher, a mentor, maybe even an entrepreneur. Your blog is simply a launchpad for all those things.
Look around, and you’ll find nearly all “bloggers” who make a decent income have books, courses, a side career as a keynote speaker, or even software. That’s how they make money. Their blog is just the “freebie” they give away to attract customers or clients.
Lesson #2: Don’t Sell Advertising
Selling ads is attractive, because it’s passive income, but you can usually make 3-10X more money using the same “ad space” to sell your own products and services or even promote an affiliate product.
Pat Flynn, for example, makes about $50,000 a month in commissions from promoting Bluehost.
Here at BBT, we mostly promote our own products, but we’re also in the process of creating affiliate sales funnels for LeadPages and Stablehost, both of which offer hefty commissions (and are great products too!)
Lesson #3: Build the Funnel in Reverse
We’ve all experienced sales funnels.
A company entices you with a freebie, then they offer you something cheap but irresistible, and then they gradually sweet talk you into buying more and more expensive stuff. It’s a tried and true marketing tactic, and you should absolutely build a sales funnel for your blog.
What you might not know is you should build it in reverse.
A lot of bloggers launch a cheap e-book as their first product, and then they get frustrated when they don’t make much money. Here’s why: the real profit is at the end of the funnel, not the beginning.
Selling e-books is fine and dandy if you have half a dozen more expensive products to offer your customer afterwards, but it’s downright silly if you don’t. You’re much better off creating and selling the expensive product first, and then gradually create cheaper and cheaper products.
When you do have some less expensive products to sell, you can offer those to new people first, safe in the knowledge that you have something more profitable up your sleeve to sell them later.
Here at BBT, our products cost $9,997, $997, and $591. We’re working our way down the funnel in reverse, releasing the most expensive products first and then gradually getting cheaper and cheaper. It’s been much, much more profitable this way.
Lesson #4: There’s No Such Thing As a “Cheap” Market
“But Jon,” I can hear you spluttering. “I can’t sell a $10,000 product! My customers don’t have that much money.”
My response: you’re 98% right. Unless you’re selling exclusively to multimillionaires, the vast majority of your customer base won’t be able to afford premium products, but what’s interesting is it doesn’t matter. Often times, you can make more money selling to the 2% than you can to the entire 98% combined.
For instance, our $10,000 product is a year-long coaching program for writers – a group that’s not exactly known for their wealth, but I always fill all 10 spots within minutes of opening the program. Here’s why: I notify 40,000 writers about it. 2% of 40,000 is 800 people who might possibly buy a product in that price range. By only accepting 10, I’m creating a situation of extreme scarcity.
You can do the same thing, even if your list is much smaller. If you have 100 subscribers, chances are two of them might be willing to buy premium products or services from you, and those two will often pay you more money than the other 98 combined.
Lesson #5: By Charging Premium Prices, You Can Offer Premium Service
Feel guilty about charging that much money? You shouldn’t.
By charging premium prices, you can offer premium service, doing everything possible to help your customers get results. For example, with my coaching program, I get on the phone with students every week, review their homework, answer their questions, look at their blog, and guide them through every step of the process.
Could I put that same information in a $7 e-book? Sure, but I couldn’t give anyone one-on-one help at that price, and that’s what people who buy premium products and services are paying for.
Lesson #6: Deliberately Delay the Sale
Another big shift in thinking: rather than trying to push everyone to buy your products upfront, smart bloggers delay the sale.
I first heard this idea from Rand Fishkin over at Moz. They offer their blog readers a free trial to their Analytics and SEO software, but after studying the behavior of their customers, they noticed something interesting: people who read several blog posts before signing up for a free trial stayed customers for two or three times longer than people who didn’t.
I’ve noticed the same thing with our customers. Instead of immediately clobbering readers with sales pitches, it’s much better to give them some content first and build trust before you begin talking about your products and services. Yes, you’ll make less money in the short term, but the long-term profits go through the roof.
Lesson #7: You Are the Bottleneck
Without a doubt, time is our biggest problem as bloggers. Not only are we expected to publish a continuous stream of content on our blogs, but we also have to deal with technical issues, read books and articles about our field, create new products to sell, answer questions from readers… the list goes on and on. The further into it you go, the more clear it becomes that you can’t do everything.
So, what’s the answer?
Believe it or not, I found answers from studying manufacturing processes. If one machine is working slower than others in a plant, it can literally cost the company tens of thousands of dollars per hour. To make sure it never happens, smart plant managers are willing to spend any amount of money to eliminate bottlenecks. They have an unlimited budget, because the cost of eliminating the bottleneck never comes anywhere close to the cost of the bottleneck itself.
The same is true for us, except the solutions are often different. Instead of buying a new machine, for example, we might purchase a new type of software that automates some of our business, or we might hire a virtual assistant or programmer. It can be expensive, yes, but it’s worthwhile if it saves you enough time, because then you can dedicate that time to higher value activities.
Lesson #8: Measure The Value of Everything You Do
What are those higher value activities, exactly?
Well, it depends on your goal. If your goal is to increase traffic, for example, start measuring the visitors per hour invested. Let’s say you invest three hours in writing a post, and it brings you 100 visitors, and you invest five hours in writing a guest post that brings you 500 visitors. The first activity has an hourly rate of 33 visitors per hour. The second activity has an hourly rate of 100 visitors per hour. Guest posting, therefore, is a better use of your time than writing content on your own blog.
Granted, it’s a short-term perspective, not taking into account long-term gains, but it’s still extremely useful to start measuring your time this way. Not just for traffic, but also for subscriber growth and revenue.
Lesson #9: In the Beginning, Creating Content for Your Own Blog Is Silly
I tried to sneak this one under lesson #8, but I think it’s important enough to get its own number, even if it does get me labeled a heretic and burned at the stake. Because here’s the deal:
In the beginning, your blog is like an empty classroom. Standing in front and giving a lecture is silly, because sure, it might make you feel important, but there’s nobody listening. You’re all alone, and you can come up with the smartest, most entertaining lecture in the history of mankind, but it won’t matter, because no one else heard it.
When you first start out, writing content for your own blog is one of the least efficient ways of building your audience. You’re far better off serving a little time as a “guest lecturer” first. In other words, write guest posts for someone else’s audience, impress the hell out of them, and siphon off a portion of their readership for your own.
That’s what we did here at BBT, and it resulted in the most successful blog launch in history: 13,000 email subscribers in 60 days, before I even wrote a single blog post. We had nothing but a coming soon page and an invitation to join our email list. Sounds strange, but I can promise you it’s vastly more efficient.
You don’t have to wait until you get to 13,000 subscribers to start, but I’d advise accumulating at least a few hundred. That way, you have an audience to share your content when you start publishing posts.
Lesson #10: Don’t Waste Time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.
Here’s another shocker: you know your dream of building up a huge following on Facebook or Twitter and then using it to promote your blog? Well, it’s a dumb idea. Out of everything we’ve tested, building our own social media accounts produced the lowest visitor per hour figure. In other words, it’s quite possibly the worst way you can spend your time.
Does that mean having followers in those places is useless?
No. Facebook is nice because you can advertise to your followers. Google+ can help boost your search engine rankings. Even with those benefits though, it shouldn’t be near the top of your list for things to do. In my opinion, you shouldn’t think about them at all until you hit 10,000 subscribers, and then outsource the management of them to someone else. You can use your time more efficiently in other places, such as:
Lesson #11: Webinars Kick Butt
If you’ve been on our list for long, you know that we do a lot of webinars. Here’s why: on average, each webinar generates $40,000 per hour invested. It’s by far the most profitable thing I do. Nothing else even comes close. If you’re wondering how on earth we make that much money, all you have to do is attend one of our webinars to find out. Everything we do is on display, and you can study it, free of charge.
Interestingly, webinars are also the most effective way to build our subscriber base. When doing webinars for other people, we average 500 new email subscribers per hour invested. It’s not uncommon to gain 1,000-2,000 email subscribers from a single webinar. If we’re promoting a product, we usually make at least $10,000 too.
Translation: webinars kick butt.
Lesson #12: Longer Content Gets More Traffic
You know what else works? Long content.
It might seem strange, but on average, longer content gets much more traffic than shorter content. Not just for us, but for our students too, regardless of the niche, and here’s a post where SEO expert Neil Patel came to the same conclusion. The sweet spot seems to be about 2,000–3,000 words per post. That’s why posts here on BBT are much longer than your average blog.
Granted, content of that length also takes longer to produce, but if you measure the visitors per hour invested, longer content still wins by a mile. Assuming you’re promoting it, of course.
Lesson #13: Promote The Crap Out of Your Content
The problem is almost no one promotes their content enough. And by “promotion,” I’m not talking about sharing your own posts on Twitter and Facebook. I’m talking about blogger outreach – the process of building relationships with influencers and asking them to share your work.
At a minimum, you should spend just as much time on outreach as you do creating your own content. So, if you’re spending 10 hours a week writing blog posts, you should be spending 10 hours a week on outreach too.
Can’t do that? Then scale back how much content you’re creating. Spend five hours on writing blog posts and five hours on outreach. You’ll get better results.
Lesson #14: Ignore SEO for the First Year
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not against SEO. Far from it. We now get tons of traffic from Google. I just think most bloggers focus on it way too early.
Again, it all comes down to time. When your blog is new, the most efficient uses of your time fall into three broad categories: building relationships with influencers (including guest blogging), creating content worth linking to, and selling your products and services. If you do those three things well, not only will your blog gain traffic and prominence, but you’ll also start getting search traffic without doing anything.
And then you can focus on other things that matter more, such as…
Lesson #15: Your Email List Is More Important Than Anything Else
In analytics, there is a principle called “the one metric that matters” (OMTM). The idea is that you find a single number that accurately predicts the success or failure of your project.
In the case of blogging, that number is the size of your email list. (Not RSS, mind you – it’s dying a slow but certain death.) In my experience, your email list is the most accurate predictor of how much money you’ll make.
Here at BBT, we make about three dollars per subscriber per month – an impressive feat, due mostly to our skill with marketing. The number isn’t important, though. The point is that I can accurately predict our sales based on the number of subscribers. So can you.
If you’re new to this, I would strive for one dollar per subscriber per month in sales. In other words, an email list of 1,000 subscribers should result in at least $1,000 per month in sales, 10,000 subscribers would result in $10,000 per month in sales, and so on.
The more subscribers you get, the more money you make. Granted, your relationship with your subscribers and the quality of your products or services and dozens of other factors still matter, but to drive revenue, focus on email list growth. To make money blogging, it’s absolutely essential.
Lesson #16: Start Selling from Day One
How long should you wait before you begin selling? 1,000 subscribers? 10,000 subscribers? More?
Nope. Start selling from day one. Here’s why:
One of the biggest factors affecting the speed of your growth is who you can hire to help you. Because you’re the bottleneck, remember? So you want to hire a virtual assistant and someone to handle all of the technical details as soon as you possibly can, but of course, that requires money. Hence the need to start selling immediately.
Now, a caveat: don’t turn your blog into a gigantic sales pitch. Nobody likes that. You should, however, be offering something your audience wants and needs. Don’t push them on it, but do make it available, and do remind them from time to time that they can purchase it.
Lesson #17: Your Product Ideas Suck
You probably have all kinds of ideas for things you can sell, right? E-books, courses, maybe an iPhone app? Or a service?
Well, here’s the bad news:
More than likely, your ideas for products suck. The good news is you’re not alone in this position. Everyone’s ideas for products suck, including mine. Here’s why:
We all tend to create products we can see people need, but they’re not aware of it yet. We think if we show them the magnitude of their problem we can convince them to buy our product or service to solve it.
If you’re Steve Jobs, you can do that, but I have more bad news for you: you’re not Steve Jobs. You’re a beginning marketer, and as a beginner, you should only be selling products that solve problems your customer already knows they have. If you have to convince them the problem exists, you’ve already lost the battle.
Lesson #18: Surveys Are Dangerous
So, how do you find what problems exist in the mind of your customer? Traditionally, the answer is a survey, but I’ll warn you: surveys are dangerous. Ask the wrong question, and you’ll get an extremely misleading answer. Use that answer to guide your venture, and you can waste years of your life, not to mention possibly going bankrupt.
If you’re a beginner, I recommend asking one and only one question: “what’s your biggest frustration with <topic> right now?” So, in my case, it would be “what’s your biggest frustration with blogging right now?” That’s it. Nothing more. Look for patterns in the answers you receive, and you’ll learn a ton about what products or services you need to create.
Lesson #19: Start with Services, Then Expand into Products
Once you find a common problem, start offering a service where you solve the problem for your audience. The reason is simple: you can start offering the service immediately. You don’t have to create a product first. You’ll also learn more about the problem as you attempt to solve it yourself.
When I started, for example, I worked as a blog traffic specialist. I was contracted with a few different advertising agencies, and every time they wanted to increase the traffic for a client’s blog, they called me. I didn’t just advise them. I did the work myself, redesigning the site, creating the content, everything.
It taught me a ton about what worked and what didn’t. It was also immediate revenue. The first month I offered my services, I made something like $5,000.
After working for more than a year as a traffic specialist, I felt I really understood the problem and how to solve it, so I created my first product: a course located at guestblogging.com. The first month, it generated something like $30,000 in sales, and now it brings in more than $250,000 per year.
It’s a wonderful product, but here’s the thing: I don’t think I could’ve created it if I hadn’t worked as a service provider first. I wouldn’t have had the knowledge or the money. Keep that in mind when you’re deciding what to offer first.
Lesson #20: Teach Others What You Learned
Now, we come to the reason for this post.
Why on earth would the CEO of the company (me) work for hours to write a post like this, sharing all our secrets? It’s closing in on 4,000 words, for God sakes!
Simple:
It’s my responsibility. If people are ever going to respect blogging as a legitimate business model, those of us who are successful have to speak up and share what we’ve learned. None of us works in a vacuum. The only way we can advance our field as a whole is to collectively share what we’ve learned.
And it is a field. There are thousands of people around the world making a living from blogging. The problem is, there’s not a repository, a central community where we can all talk and learn from each other. Over the next few months, that’s something we’re going to change.
In the meantime, could you do me a favor?
Share this post. Not just so it’ll get me traffic, but so other people can see that you really can earn a legitimate income from blogging. Maybe reading this will even help them do it.
After all, isn’t that what we’re here to do? Help people?
In the end, that’s what I love most about blogging: every article we publish, every course we create, every coaching call we do can change somebody’s life. Maybe not always in a big way, but we touch thousands upon thousands of people, and we make their lives just a little bit better. We inform them, we inspire them, we give them the roadmap for achieving their dreams.
And the best part?
We get paid for it. It’s our job.
I just wish more people knew it was a viable career. Let’s change that, shall we?
Source
Wednesday 22 October 2014
Tuesday 21 October 2014
Can You REALLY Make Money Blogging? [7 Things I Know About Making Money from Blogging]
Every now and again I am pulled aside at a conference or am emailed and/or tweeted by someone wanting to get the “real” scoop on whether it is possible to make money blogging.
I completely understand the questions and would probably want to add one more:
I’ve written many times here on ProBlogger about this in the hope of giving a realistic picture of the topic, but I think it is worth touching on again because there is a lot of misinformation out there right now.
On one hand, we see hype on the topic. Periodically someone will claim to be able to make millions from blogging quickly. These claims are usually accompanied with the release of a product or service (i.e. they are marketing spin).
On the other hand, I periodically see people writing about how it is impossible to make money blogging (or that anyone claiming to be full time is either a scammer, a liar, or is selling something on the topic of making money online).
The reality is somewhere between these two extremes.
7 Things I know about making money from blogging
1. It is possible
I’ve been blogging for just under ten years and for nine of those I’ve been making money blogging. It started out as just a few dollars a day but in time it gradually grew to becoming the equivalent of a part-time job, then a full-time job, and more recently into a business that employs others.
I used to talk about the specific levels of my earnings when I started ProBlogger but felt increasingly uncomfortable about doing so (it felt a little voyeuristic and a little like a big-headed boasting exercise and I didn’t really see the point in continuing to do it)— but my income has continued to grow each year since I began.
On some levels I was at the right place at the right time—I got into blogging early (in 2002 … although I felt I was late to it at the time) and have been fortunate enough to have started blogs at opportune times on the topics I write about.
However I know of quite a few other bloggers who make a living from blogging, many of whom have not been blogging anywhere near as long as I have.
For some it is a hobby that keeps them in coffee; for others it is the equivalent of a part time job/supplementing other income from “real jobs” or helping their family out as they attend to other commitments (raising a family). For others it is a full-time thing.
I’ll give you some examples below.
2. There is no single way to monetize blogs
Recently at our Melbourne ProBlogger event I featured numerous Australian bloggers in our speaker lineup who fit somewhere in the part-time to full-time spectrum. They included:
The year before, we had others, including:
Most of these bloggers are full-time (or well on the way to being full-time bloggers). They come from a wide array of niches and all monetize quite differently—doing everything from selling advertising, to having membership areas, to selling ebooks, to running affiliate promotions, to promoting their offline businesses, to selling themselves as speakers, to having book deals, and so on. Many have a combination of different income streams.
They are all also Australian, and are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is happening here in Australia—the same thing is being replicated around the globe.
There are many ways to monetize a blog. To give you a quick sense of the many methods check out this “money map” I created a year or so back, which outlines just some that I brainstormed.
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3. There are no formulas
From time to time, people have released products that claim to be formulas for success when it comes to making money online. They outline steps to follow to “guarantee” you’ll make money.
In my experience there is no formula.
Each full-time blogger I’ve met in the last ten years has forged their own path and has a unique story to tell. They have often acted on hunches and made surprising discoveries along the way.
There are certainly similarities in many of the stories but each blogger has their own personality and style, each one is reaching a different audience, and each niche tends to monetize differently.
The key lesson is to be aware of what others are doing and to learn what you can from each other, but to also be willing to forge your own path as well!
4. Many niches monetize
One common critique of the topic of monetizing of blogs is that the only people making money from blogging are the ones writing about how to make money blogging.
This is simply not true.
In the above list of speakers from our Melbourne event you’ll notice I included topic/niche of each blogger. None sell products teaching others to make money blogging—all are on blogging on “normal,” every-day topics.
My own experience of having a blog about blogging (ProBlogger) and a blog about Photography is that it is my photography blog that is by far the most profitable blog (I’d estimate it’s ten times more profitable).
I’ve interviewed numerous full-time bloggers of late in a webinar series including:
Interestingly, none of them make money by teaching others to make money online. Sarah largely blogs about health and wellbeing, Tsh blogs about simple living, and Ana blogs about woodwork.
5. Most bloggers don’t make a full-time living from blogging
Every time I’ve surveyed readers of ProBlogger about their earnings, we’ve seen that those making money from blogging are in the minority.
In a recent survey of 1500 ProBlogger readers we asked about their monthly earnings. What you’re seeing below is the spread of earnings from readers who are attempting to make money blogging (note: not all ProBlogger readers attempt to make money, so not all are included in these results).
Keep in mind that ProBlogger readers are generally newish bloggers—about half of those who took this survey had been blogging for less than two years.
So of those trying to make money blogging, 10% don’t make anything and 28% are making less than 30 cents per day. A total of 63% make less than $3.50 per day.
Let’s be clear—most bloggers who are attempting to make money are not making a living from blogging.
Having said that, of the 1508 bloggers surveyed 65 (4%) are making over $10,000 per month (over six figures per year) and a further 9% were doing over $1000 per month (which is at least a part-time level of income).
My feeling, having been attending blogging conferences for six or so years now, is that the number of full-time bloggers is on the rise, and there are actually quite a few more people now at least making the equivalent of a couple of days’ work a week in income from their blogs.
However, most bloggers don’t make much.
6. It takes time to build
When I dig down into the stats from the survey on income levels above, and do some analysis of those who are in the top income bracket, it is fascinating to look at how long they’ve been blogging.
85% of those in that top income bracket have been blogging for four years or more. Almost all of the others had been blogging for three or four years.
This certainly was my own experience. I blogged for a year without making money and once I started monetizing it was around two years of gradual increases before I approached a full-time income level. It would have been four years before I joined that top bracket of income (over $10,000 per month).
Blogging for money is not a get-rich-quick thing. It takes time to build an audience, to build a brand, and to build trust and a good reputation.
And of course even with four or five years of blogging behind you, there’s no guarantee of a decent income.
7. It takes a lot of work
Longevity is not the only key to a profitable blog. The other common factor that I’ve noticed in most full-time bloggers is that they are people of action.
Passivity and blogging don’t tend to go hand in hand.
Blogging as “passive income stream” is another theme that we hear in many make-money-blogging products, however it is far from my own experience.
I’ve worked harder on my business over the last ten years than I’ve worked on anything in my life before this. It is often fun and gives me energy, but it takes considerable work to create content on a daily basis, to keep abreast of what’s going on in the community, to monitor the business side of things, to create products to sell, to build an audience, and so on.
The key is to build blogs that matter to people, that are original, interesting, and helpful. But this doesn’t just happen—it takes a lot of work.
Conclusions
Yes, it is possible to make money blogging. There is an ever-increasing number of people making money from blogging at a part-time to full-time level —however they are still in the minority.
Those who do make a living from blogging come from a wide range of niches, however one of the most common factors between them is that they’ve been at it for a long while.
How long have you been blogging? Are you looking to make money from it—and have you already? Share your experiences in the comments.
Source: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/11/28/can-you-really-make-money-blogging-7-things-i-know-about-making-money-from-blogging/
- Is it really possible to make a living from blogging?
- Is it just a small number of people making money from blogging?
- Is it only really possible to make money blogging if you write about the topic of making money blogging?
I completely understand the questions and would probably want to add one more:
- If it is really possible to make money blogging, how likely is it that you’ll succeed?
I’ve written many times here on ProBlogger about this in the hope of giving a realistic picture of the topic, but I think it is worth touching on again because there is a lot of misinformation out there right now.
On one hand, we see hype on the topic. Periodically someone will claim to be able to make millions from blogging quickly. These claims are usually accompanied with the release of a product or service (i.e. they are marketing spin).
On the other hand, I periodically see people writing about how it is impossible to make money blogging (or that anyone claiming to be full time is either a scammer, a liar, or is selling something on the topic of making money online).
The reality is somewhere between these two extremes.
7 Things I know about making money from blogging
1. It is possible
I’ve been blogging for just under ten years and for nine of those I’ve been making money blogging. It started out as just a few dollars a day but in time it gradually grew to becoming the equivalent of a part-time job, then a full-time job, and more recently into a business that employs others.
I used to talk about the specific levels of my earnings when I started ProBlogger but felt increasingly uncomfortable about doing so (it felt a little voyeuristic and a little like a big-headed boasting exercise and I didn’t really see the point in continuing to do it)— but my income has continued to grow each year since I began.
On some levels I was at the right place at the right time—I got into blogging early (in 2002 … although I felt I was late to it at the time) and have been fortunate enough to have started blogs at opportune times on the topics I write about.
However I know of quite a few other bloggers who make a living from blogging, many of whom have not been blogging anywhere near as long as I have.
For some it is a hobby that keeps them in coffee; for others it is the equivalent of a part time job/supplementing other income from “real jobs” or helping their family out as they attend to other commitments (raising a family). For others it is a full-time thing.
I’ll give you some examples below.
2. There is no single way to monetize blogs
Recently at our Melbourne ProBlogger event I featured numerous Australian bloggers in our speaker lineup who fit somewhere in the part-time to full-time spectrum. They included:
- Nicole Avery (Parenting/Organization Blog)
- Jules Clancy (Food Blog)
- Nikki Parkinson (Fashion Blog)
- Mrs Woog (‘Life’ Blog)
- Gavin Aung Than (Cartoon Blog)
- Cintia Gonzalez (Craft Blog)
- Christina Butcher (Hair Blog)
- Caz and Craig Makepeace (Travel Blog)
- Nathalie Brown (Child Behaviour Blog)
The year before, we had others, including:
- Lucy Feagins (Design Blog)
- Emma Merkas (Dating Blog)
- Chris Hunter (Motorbike Blog)
- Phoebe Montague (Fashion Blog)
Most of these bloggers are full-time (or well on the way to being full-time bloggers). They come from a wide array of niches and all monetize quite differently—doing everything from selling advertising, to having membership areas, to selling ebooks, to running affiliate promotions, to promoting their offline businesses, to selling themselves as speakers, to having book deals, and so on. Many have a combination of different income streams.
They are all also Australian, and are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is happening here in Australia—the same thing is being replicated around the globe.
There are many ways to monetize a blog. To give you a quick sense of the many methods check out this “money map” I created a year or so back, which outlines just some that I brainstormed.
.
3. There are no formulas
From time to time, people have released products that claim to be formulas for success when it comes to making money online. They outline steps to follow to “guarantee” you’ll make money.
In my experience there is no formula.
Each full-time blogger I’ve met in the last ten years has forged their own path and has a unique story to tell. They have often acted on hunches and made surprising discoveries along the way.
There are certainly similarities in many of the stories but each blogger has their own personality and style, each one is reaching a different audience, and each niche tends to monetize differently.
The key lesson is to be aware of what others are doing and to learn what you can from each other, but to also be willing to forge your own path as well!
4. Many niches monetize
One common critique of the topic of monetizing of blogs is that the only people making money from blogging are the ones writing about how to make money blogging.
This is simply not true.
In the above list of speakers from our Melbourne event you’ll notice I included topic/niche of each blogger. None sell products teaching others to make money blogging—all are on blogging on “normal,” every-day topics.
My own experience of having a blog about blogging (ProBlogger) and a blog about Photography is that it is my photography blog that is by far the most profitable blog (I’d estimate it’s ten times more profitable).
I’ve interviewed numerous full-time bloggers of late in a webinar series including:
- Sarah Wilson
- Tsh Oxenreider
- Ana White
Interestingly, none of them make money by teaching others to make money online. Sarah largely blogs about health and wellbeing, Tsh blogs about simple living, and Ana blogs about woodwork.
5. Most bloggers don’t make a full-time living from blogging
Every time I’ve surveyed readers of ProBlogger about their earnings, we’ve seen that those making money from blogging are in the minority.
In a recent survey of 1500 ProBlogger readers we asked about their monthly earnings. What you’re seeing below is the spread of earnings from readers who are attempting to make money blogging (note: not all ProBlogger readers attempt to make money, so not all are included in these results).
Keep in mind that ProBlogger readers are generally newish bloggers—about half of those who took this survey had been blogging for less than two years.
So of those trying to make money blogging, 10% don’t make anything and 28% are making less than 30 cents per day. A total of 63% make less than $3.50 per day.
Let’s be clear—most bloggers who are attempting to make money are not making a living from blogging.
Having said that, of the 1508 bloggers surveyed 65 (4%) are making over $10,000 per month (over six figures per year) and a further 9% were doing over $1000 per month (which is at least a part-time level of income).
My feeling, having been attending blogging conferences for six or so years now, is that the number of full-time bloggers is on the rise, and there are actually quite a few more people now at least making the equivalent of a couple of days’ work a week in income from their blogs.
However, most bloggers don’t make much.
6. It takes time to build
When I dig down into the stats from the survey on income levels above, and do some analysis of those who are in the top income bracket, it is fascinating to look at how long they’ve been blogging.
85% of those in that top income bracket have been blogging for four years or more. Almost all of the others had been blogging for three or four years.
This certainly was my own experience. I blogged for a year without making money and once I started monetizing it was around two years of gradual increases before I approached a full-time income level. It would have been four years before I joined that top bracket of income (over $10,000 per month).
Blogging for money is not a get-rich-quick thing. It takes time to build an audience, to build a brand, and to build trust and a good reputation.
And of course even with four or five years of blogging behind you, there’s no guarantee of a decent income.
7. It takes a lot of work
Longevity is not the only key to a profitable blog. The other common factor that I’ve noticed in most full-time bloggers is that they are people of action.
Passivity and blogging don’t tend to go hand in hand.
Blogging as “passive income stream” is another theme that we hear in many make-money-blogging products, however it is far from my own experience.
I’ve worked harder on my business over the last ten years than I’ve worked on anything in my life before this. It is often fun and gives me energy, but it takes considerable work to create content on a daily basis, to keep abreast of what’s going on in the community, to monitor the business side of things, to create products to sell, to build an audience, and so on.
The key is to build blogs that matter to people, that are original, interesting, and helpful. But this doesn’t just happen—it takes a lot of work.
Conclusions
Yes, it is possible to make money blogging. There is an ever-increasing number of people making money from blogging at a part-time to full-time level —however they are still in the minority.
Those who do make a living from blogging come from a wide range of niches, however one of the most common factors between them is that they’ve been at it for a long while.
How long have you been blogging? Are you looking to make money from it—and have you already? Share your experiences in the comments.
Source: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/11/28/can-you-really-make-money-blogging-7-things-i-know-about-making-money-from-blogging/
Thursday 16 October 2014
Golden Rules of Goal Setting
Five Rules to Set Yourself Up for Success
Have you thought about what you want to be doing in five years' time?
Are you clear about what your main objective at work is at the moment?
Do you know what you want to have achieved by the end of today?
If you want to succeed, you need to set goals. Without goals you lack focus and direction.
Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your life's direction; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding. Think about it: Having a million dollars in the bank is only proof of success if one of your goals is to amass riches. If your goal is to practice acts of charity, then keeping the money for yourself is suddenly contrary to how you would define success.
To accomplish your goals, however, you need to know how to set them. You can't simply say, "I want" and expect it to happen. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve, and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it. In between there are some very well defined steps that transcend the specifics of each goal. Knowing these steps will allow you to formulate goals that you can accomplish.
Here are our five golden rules of goal setting:
The Five Golden Rules
1. Set Goals that Motivate You
When you set goals for yourself, it is important that they motivate you: this means making sure that they are important to you, and that there is value in achieving them. If you have little interest in the outcome, or they are irrelevant given the larger picture, then the chances of you putting in the work to make them happen are slim. Motivation is key to achieving goals.
Set goals that relate to the high priorities in your life. Without this type of focus, you can end up with far too many goals, leaving you too little time to devote to each one. Goal achievement requires commitment, so to maximize the likelihood of success, you need to feel a sense of urgency and have an "I must do this" attitude. When you don't have this, you risk putting off what you need to do to make the goal a reality. This in turn leaves you feeling disappointed and frustrated with yourself, both of which are de-motivating. And you can end up in a very destructive "I can't do anything or be successful at anything" frame of mind.
Tip:
To make sure your goal is motivating, write down why it's valuable and important to you. Ask yourself, "If I were to share my goal with others, what would I tell them to convince them it was a worthwhile goal?" You can use this motivating value statement to help you if you start to doubt yourself or lose confidence in your ability to actually make the goal happen.
2. Set SMART Goals
You have probably heard of "SMART goals" already. But do you always apply the rule? The simple fact is that for goals to be powerful, they should be designed to be SMART. There are many variations of what SMART stands for, but the essence is this – goals should be:
Set Specific Goals
Your goal must be clear and well defined. Vague or generalized goals are unhelpful because they don't provide sufficient direction. Remember, you need goals to show you the way. Make it as easy as you can to get where you want to go by defining precisely where you want to end up.
Set Measurable Goals
Include precise amounts, dates, and so on in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. If your goal is simply defined as "To reduce expenses" how will you know when you have been successful? In one month's time if you have a 1 percent reduction or in two years' time when you have a 10 percent reduction? Without a way to measure your success you miss out on the celebration that comes with knowing you have actually achieved something.
Set Attainable Goals
Make sure that it's possible to achieve the goals you set. If you set a goal that you have no hope of achieving, you will only demoralize yourself and erode your confidence.
However, resist the urge to set goals that are too easy. Accomplishing a goal that you didn't have to work hard for can be anticlimactic at best, and can also make you fear setting future goals that carry a risk of non-achievement. By setting realistic yet challenging goals, you hit the balance you need. These are the types of goals that require you to "raise the bar" and they bring the greatest personal satisfaction.
Set Relevant Goals
Goals should be relevant to the direction you want your life and career to take. By keeping goals aligned with this, you'll develop the focus you need to get ahead and do what you want. Set widely scattered and inconsistent goals, and you'll fritter your time – and your life – away.
Set Time-Bound Goals
You goals must have a deadline. Again, this means that you know when you can celebrate success. When you are working on a deadline, your sense of urgency increases and achievement will come that much quicker.
3. Set Goals in Writing
The physical act of writing down a goal makes it real and tangible. You have no excuse for forgetting about it. As you write, use the word "will" instead of "would like to" or "might." For example, "I will reduce my operating expenses by 10 percent this year," not "I would like to reduce my operating expenses by 10 percent this year." The first goal statement has power and you can "see" yourself reducing expenses, the second lacks passion and gives you an excuse if you get sidetracked.
Tip 1:
Frame your goal statement positively. If you want to improve your retention rates say, "I will hold on to all existing employees for the next quarter" rather than "I will reduce employee turnover." The first one is motivating; the second one still has a get-out clause "allowing" you to succeed even if some employees leave.
Tip 2:
If you use a To-Do List , make yourself a To-Do List template that has your goals at the top of it. If you use an Action Program , then your goals should be at the top of your Project Catalog.
Post your goals in visible places to remind yourself every day of what it is you intend to do. Put them on your walls, desk, computer monitor, bathroom mirror or refrigerator as a constant reminder.
4. Make an Action Plan
This step is often missed in the process of goal setting. You get so focused on the outcome that you forget to plan all of the steps that are needed along the way. By writing out the individual steps, and then crossing each one off as you complete it, you'll realize that you are making progress towards your ultimate goal. This is especially important if your goal is big and demanding, or long-term. Read our article on Action Plans for more on how to do this.
5. Stick With It!
Remember, goal setting is an ongoing activity not just a means to an end. Build in reminders to keep yourself on track, and make regular time-slots available to review your goals. Your end destination may remain quite similar over the long term, but the action plan you set for yourself along the way can change significantly. Make sure the relevance, value, and necessity remain high.
Key Points
Goal setting is much more than simply saying you want something to happen. Unless you clearly define exactly what you want and understand why you want it the first place, your odds of success are considerably reduced. By following the Five Golden Rules of Goal Setting you can set goals with confidence and enjoy the satisfaction that comes along with knowing you achieved what you set out to do.
So, what will you decide to accomplish today?
Source: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_90.htm
Source:http://crossfitcphs.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/smart_goals1.jpg
Have you thought about what you want to be doing in five years' time?
Are you clear about what your main objective at work is at the moment?
Do you know what you want to have achieved by the end of today?
If you want to succeed, you need to set goals. Without goals you lack focus and direction.
Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your life's direction; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding. Think about it: Having a million dollars in the bank is only proof of success if one of your goals is to amass riches. If your goal is to practice acts of charity, then keeping the money for yourself is suddenly contrary to how you would define success.
To accomplish your goals, however, you need to know how to set them. You can't simply say, "I want" and expect it to happen. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve, and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it. In between there are some very well defined steps that transcend the specifics of each goal. Knowing these steps will allow you to formulate goals that you can accomplish.
Here are our five golden rules of goal setting:
The Five Golden Rules
1. Set Goals that Motivate You
When you set goals for yourself, it is important that they motivate you: this means making sure that they are important to you, and that there is value in achieving them. If you have little interest in the outcome, or they are irrelevant given the larger picture, then the chances of you putting in the work to make them happen are slim. Motivation is key to achieving goals.
Set goals that relate to the high priorities in your life. Without this type of focus, you can end up with far too many goals, leaving you too little time to devote to each one. Goal achievement requires commitment, so to maximize the likelihood of success, you need to feel a sense of urgency and have an "I must do this" attitude. When you don't have this, you risk putting off what you need to do to make the goal a reality. This in turn leaves you feeling disappointed and frustrated with yourself, both of which are de-motivating. And you can end up in a very destructive "I can't do anything or be successful at anything" frame of mind.
Tip:
To make sure your goal is motivating, write down why it's valuable and important to you. Ask yourself, "If I were to share my goal with others, what would I tell them to convince them it was a worthwhile goal?" You can use this motivating value statement to help you if you start to doubt yourself or lose confidence in your ability to actually make the goal happen.
2. Set SMART Goals
You have probably heard of "SMART goals" already. But do you always apply the rule? The simple fact is that for goals to be powerful, they should be designed to be SMART. There are many variations of what SMART stands for, but the essence is this – goals should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time Bound
Your goal must be clear and well defined. Vague or generalized goals are unhelpful because they don't provide sufficient direction. Remember, you need goals to show you the way. Make it as easy as you can to get where you want to go by defining precisely where you want to end up.
Set Measurable Goals
Include precise amounts, dates, and so on in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. If your goal is simply defined as "To reduce expenses" how will you know when you have been successful? In one month's time if you have a 1 percent reduction or in two years' time when you have a 10 percent reduction? Without a way to measure your success you miss out on the celebration that comes with knowing you have actually achieved something.
Set Attainable Goals
Make sure that it's possible to achieve the goals you set. If you set a goal that you have no hope of achieving, you will only demoralize yourself and erode your confidence.
However, resist the urge to set goals that are too easy. Accomplishing a goal that you didn't have to work hard for can be anticlimactic at best, and can also make you fear setting future goals that carry a risk of non-achievement. By setting realistic yet challenging goals, you hit the balance you need. These are the types of goals that require you to "raise the bar" and they bring the greatest personal satisfaction.
Set Relevant Goals
Goals should be relevant to the direction you want your life and career to take. By keeping goals aligned with this, you'll develop the focus you need to get ahead and do what you want. Set widely scattered and inconsistent goals, and you'll fritter your time – and your life – away.
Set Time-Bound Goals
You goals must have a deadline. Again, this means that you know when you can celebrate success. When you are working on a deadline, your sense of urgency increases and achievement will come that much quicker.
3. Set Goals in Writing
The physical act of writing down a goal makes it real and tangible. You have no excuse for forgetting about it. As you write, use the word "will" instead of "would like to" or "might." For example, "I will reduce my operating expenses by 10 percent this year," not "I would like to reduce my operating expenses by 10 percent this year." The first goal statement has power and you can "see" yourself reducing expenses, the second lacks passion and gives you an excuse if you get sidetracked.
Tip 1:
Frame your goal statement positively. If you want to improve your retention rates say, "I will hold on to all existing employees for the next quarter" rather than "I will reduce employee turnover." The first one is motivating; the second one still has a get-out clause "allowing" you to succeed even if some employees leave.
Tip 2:
If you use a To-Do List , make yourself a To-Do List template that has your goals at the top of it. If you use an Action Program , then your goals should be at the top of your Project Catalog.
Post your goals in visible places to remind yourself every day of what it is you intend to do. Put them on your walls, desk, computer monitor, bathroom mirror or refrigerator as a constant reminder.
4. Make an Action Plan
This step is often missed in the process of goal setting. You get so focused on the outcome that you forget to plan all of the steps that are needed along the way. By writing out the individual steps, and then crossing each one off as you complete it, you'll realize that you are making progress towards your ultimate goal. This is especially important if your goal is big and demanding, or long-term. Read our article on Action Plans for more on how to do this.
5. Stick With It!
Remember, goal setting is an ongoing activity not just a means to an end. Build in reminders to keep yourself on track, and make regular time-slots available to review your goals. Your end destination may remain quite similar over the long term, but the action plan you set for yourself along the way can change significantly. Make sure the relevance, value, and necessity remain high.
Key Points
Goal setting is much more than simply saying you want something to happen. Unless you clearly define exactly what you want and understand why you want it the first place, your odds of success are considerably reduced. By following the Five Golden Rules of Goal Setting you can set goals with confidence and enjoy the satisfaction that comes along with knowing you achieved what you set out to do.
So, what will you decide to accomplish today?
Source: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_90.htm
Source:http://crossfitcphs.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/smart_goals1.jpg
Wednesday 15 October 2014
11 Ways To Stay Motivated While Working From Home
I haven’t had any coworkers in five years now. Well, at least none that I see or hear on a daily basis. I’m a freelance journalist, one of many occupations these days that allows the complete and total freedom to work from home, or really, anywhere with internet access. Many jobs have that flexibility in this day and age of constant, pervasive connectivity. Some are entire careers based from home like mine, others may only do so sporadically.
When I tell people my job is entirely done from home, I generally get the same response, “I could never, ever do that.” They don’t mean that my job sucks (I hope not, at least), rather they’re referring to the problems of motivation and self-discipline that come with working from home.
An office gives you a regimented schedule. Coworkers give you social interaction. A physically present boss gives you accountability. How in the world is anyone supposed to get any proper work done in the absence of all those things?
Over the years, I’ve become something of an expert in the field of home productivity. Not to say I never partake in the temptation to use my freedom to slack off, but I’ve managed to force myself to be accountable not only to my various employers (Forbes included), but more importantly, myself.
Here are eleven ways I do this, and I think you’ll be able to utilize at least a few whether you work from home full time, or just every so often.
1. Wake Up Early
For many, this may be the hardest part of working from home. With no office to go to, and no boss to tap his watch and look irritated if you’re late, there can often be little motivation to get up at a reasonable hour and start work. I fell prey to this early on in my writing career, waking up at 10 or 11 AM and beginning the day from there. But it isn’t worth it.
Training yourself to get up on time like you do have a more traditional job will get you into a routine that encourages productivity. Studies have shown that getting up in the morning turns you into a more proactive person, and personally, I’ve found it makes me much more productive, much more quickly. Waking up at 7:30 AM every day allows me to start work by practically 7:45. It’s not obscenely early like someone with a lengthy morning commute to worry about, yet it’s not 11 AM either, like I’m a hungover college student who just remembered he has a term paper to finish.
By forcing myself into this schedule, I’ve found that over the years, my most productive time during the day has been from 8 AM to 11 AM. After breakfast, my mind is sharper. It’s early in the day so I’m motivated to work harder, faster and more efficiently in the hopes of finishing up the day early. In my business, this before noon time period is when many people are checking the internet for news as they themselves get into work, so for me, getting up early makes me more successful than my competition who is still sleeping. I get the worm, so to speak.
2. Put On Actual Clothes
It’s incredibly tempting when working from home to wear the most comfortable set of clothes you own whenever possible, especially since most of the time you’re rolling out of bed and starting work soon after. Again, with no coworkers, what’s the point of dressing up? Why can’t you wear sweatpants and/or a Snuggie all day until you’re forced to emerge from your cocoon to seek actual human contact?
From a Forbes article earlier this year, Dr. Karen Pine, professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire and fashion psychologist had this to say about dressing up for work (also, I didn’t know there was such a job title as “fashion psychologist”):
“When we put on an item of clothing it is common for the wearer to adopt the characteristics associated with that garment. A lot of clothing has symbolic meaning for us, whether it’s ‘professional work attire’ or ‘relaxing weekend wear,’ so when we put it on we prime the brain to behave in ways consistent with that meaning.”
In other words, if you are content to wear lazy clothing all day when working from home, you are probably more likely to act lazy, and therefore get less done.
Now there’s a limit here. I’m certainly not suggesting you put on a suit and tie and sit at your desk by yourself all day with no one to appreciate your snappy sense of style. But I am suggesting putting on actual pants, if for no other reason than to combat certain stereotypes about your profession (you would be amazed how often I get asked if I wear pants to work). To me, jeans and a t-shirt is enough, and I find myself in a much better mindset than if I simply work in sleepwear for the better part of the day. I haven’t actually tried wearing a tie, so I won’t completely toss that idea out the window, but that’s probably a bridge too far for me.
3. Don’t Work Where You Sleep
This is another lesson I learned early on, though I really didn’t have much of a choice as I began my blogging career sitting on my bed in my Manhattan apartment that was literally almost just that, a bed. If wearing pajamas makes you lazier while working, working in bed triples that effect at the very least. Not only that, but it will stress you out to have the place where you do all your work also be the very spot where you try to relax and fall asleep at night.
This can also apply to even working right next to wear you sleep. Once I upgraded to a room with a few more square feet of floor space, I put a tiny desk literally one foot away from my bed. I’d roll off my mattress and literally start working (in my pajamas) thirty seconds later. Sometimes this may be necessary given living space arrangements, but if you can avoid it, try to do so.
Now that I’m all grown up and married, my wife and I are shopping for two bedroom apartments. It’s not about a failing relationship that requires separate sleeping quarters, it’s about having a dedicated office space to call my own. A work room, for work only. Now that I have my own office, I’ve found I feel more like a person with a more traditional job, as opposed to a guy flopping out of bed and flipping open a laptop to begin the day. And if you work from home full time, you can write off at least part of your rent as a business expense, as it’s technically office space. You can also literally rent office space somewhere outside your home if your budget allows it, and you don’t mind an actual commute longer than the twelve paces it takes you to reach your home office from your bedroom.
4. Make a Schedule
This seems relatively self-explanatory, but most people will not be able to function properly working from home if they don’t have at least some sort of regimented schedule guiding them. This can start with waking up as a set time each day, as I’ve talked about above, but also translates into whatever you need to get done in a certain day.
Obviously this will depend on your job. In my line of work, I write for three different websites. I know what time posts are supposed to go up when (or at least a general window) and base my writing around that. Again, I do most of my work early in the morning, and I’m able to write something in the AM that gets posted in the PM because of the magic of advance scheduling. But it’s always done, and I do not miss deadlines because of the mental schedule permanently etched in my brain which includes not only work, but meals, errands and gym time to boot, all of which can often be accomplished within a given workday, allowing more free time later on.
I don’t physically write down a schedule anymore, as it’s all locked in my head at this point. But when you’re first starting out, it may be helpful to do so. And naturally, there are countless apps for that.
5. Work Out
As I just mentioned, working from home allows you to schedule activities during your workday that you wouldn’t normally be able to do in a traditional office. One of these is working out, and for me, it’s an absolute must when working from home, and plays into both motivation and self-discipline.
Most office jobs these days are relatively sedentary, but none more so than working from home. At that point, you’re not even doing minimal walking around your office building. I joked with my wife when she got her Jawbone Up pedometer band that while she was hitting 10,000 steps a day, I’d be lucky to break a hundred with my trips from my bedroom to my office and a few to the kitchen and bathroom. I might go up and down some stairs on a good day. Once.
But in reality, it’s no joke. Being that sedentary isn’t just harmful for your health, it’s terrible for your motivation and discipline. Working out gives you a boost of energy that’s incredibly helpful for productivity, as every study on planet earth has revealed. It will get you thinking more clearly, and simply make you feel like you did right by yourself for the entire day.
Planning a trip to the gym that’s more than a few miles away can be tough during the workday, and can sometimes take too big a chunk out of your day. This is why I highly suggest trying out home workout programs. They can seem goofy at first, and have a stigma of being aimed at bored housewives, but honestly, these kinds of programs have really turned my personal and professional life around. I’ve completed what I thought was the borderline impossible P90X, and am currently in the middle of a similar program called Les Mills Combat. They take sometimes as little as 20 minutes to do, or an hour at most, and if you stick with them, you’ll be in amazing shape and have a brain that’s firing on all cylinders every day. It helps to do your workouts earlier rather than later, as you can reap the physical and psychological rewards for the entire day.
6. Earn Rewards
Another common refrain I hear from people who think they could never work from home is “If I did that, I’d just sit around and watch TV all day.” I’m here to tell you that you can do this, to a certain extent.
One of the perks of working from home is that you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, but the whole point of this article is to show how you have to balance it with actual productivity and discipline. Rather than simply sit down and binge watch six episodes of House of Cards, putting your actual work off until 8PM, use the show as a reward.
Do two hours of solid work and then watch an episode of something. Get that one important project finished and play some PS4 for a little while. Turn these distractions into rewards, and then have the willpower to use them in moderation. Don’t get carried away and convince yourself an hour of work entitles you to five hours of a Sons of Anarchy marathon. But micro-rewards will go a long way to both making you feel accomplished, and giving you a brief respite to boot.
7. Get Off Gchat
Speaking of distractions, there is no bigger motivation or productivity killer than Gchat. I have literally been invisible on the service for close to five years now, and I’ve probably completed hundreds of more hours of work than I would have had I been chatting with people all day. This applies to actual jobs as well, but many offices ban such services, and there’s a reason for that.
It’s not just the physical time it takes you to read and type messages to your friends that makes Gchat your mortal enemy. It’s the fact that that little “bong” message noise instantly jolts you out of thinking about whatever you’re supposed to be working on. The time lost isn’t just the chatting, it’s the constant mental interruption that will sap your motivation and distract you from doing a proper job on whatever it is you’re working on. For me, it’s almost impossible to write a coherent article with Gchat flashing or chiming in the background every few seconds.
I’m singling out Gchat here, but there are plenty of other “bongs” that can go off and distract you, from Facebook and Snapchat to old-fashioned texting. If you do have to have a conversation, limit it to one other person, and don’t have it continue on all day. That sounds harsh, but it will allow you to finish all your work faster and then have complete, unrestricted free time once you’re done for the day early. Then you can Gchat until your fingers bleed.
8. Go Outside
When working from home, your house or apartment can become your bunker. It’s a safe spot that has everything you need, so why should you ever bother leaving? This generally isn’t a problem for extroverts, as they’ll seek out adventure elsewhere as part of their personality. But extroverts also really can’t handle working from home very often for many of the reason I’m listing.
But us introverts? We can thrive in such an environment. Almost too well. There have been stretches of time where I’ve looked back and said “shoot, I haven’t left the house in three days, have I?” This is not good. In addition to your body needing actual sunlight to live, going outside to do anything, run errands, take a walk, etc. is required for your mental sanity. You don’t want to slowly morph into a recluse and find yourself with drawn blinds and fifty cats in a few year’s time.
Related to this, there’s the famous “can’t you work in a coffee shop?” question I get all the time. The answer is yes, you can, but it depends on your personality. Yes, you’ll be out and about, but it depends on if your job can rely on Starbucks’ crappy Wi-Fi, you don’t mind being constrained to your little table instead of your entire home, and you’re fine with permanently smelling like coffee for most of your adult life. As you may have deduced, despite being “out of the house,” the cons tend to outweigh the pros in my experience.
9. Talk to Other Human Beings
This one kind of goes hand in hand with the previous item. There have also been days where I haven’t seen another human being other than my roommate, or now my wife. And sometimes, I don’t even see them if they’re out of town. Even if it’s just going to the grocery store and making conversation with the clerk, it’s something, and will help your social skills not atrophy. If you live somewhere near a bunch of existing friends, that’s great, but if you’re like me and moved to the middle of nowhere for reasons beyond your control (a smart wife getting a great job), it can be a lot tougher.
Working from home is a far cry from working in an office where you have coworkers you talk to day in and day out. I have coworkers too, but most of the ones I’ve talked to for years online, I’ve never even met before. I worked for Forbes for three full years before I ever met another employee in person. This is the way the world works now in many fields, so you have to adapt and improvise, and make up for the lack of human contact where you can. By interacting with others on a daily basis, in whatever form, you’ll continue to develop social skills that email and Gchat simply won’t give you. Take a class, join a team, or really anything that forces you to have a conversation with another human.
10. Declare War on Distracting Sites
While even normal office drones have the problem of surfing the internet while at work, it’s amplified exponentially by working from home. You’re guaranteed not to have any sort of filter to restrict your browsing, and so you might find yourself swept away by videos of cats jumping into boxes and goats yelling like humans instead of doing your actual work. And you’ve probably just clicked on those links and I’ve lost you…
Most people will have one site that’s simply the bane of their existence. Mine was reddit.com, the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet.” It’s simply an endless collection of links, but most are vaguely interesting enough to warrant an endless string of clicks. The site got so addictive, by muscle memory alone my fingers would simply flick my mouse over to the bookmark if my mind was blank for more than a few seconds. My thought process eventually became “Well, that’s enough reddit (closes tab),” and then promptly “Gee, I wonder what’s on reddit? (opens tab)” within a span of seconds. It was a problem.
This is where the zen-like discipline of working from home must propel you to take drastic action to ensure your continued productivity. I deleted my reddit bookmark from my browser bar, and suddenly, my muscle memory no longer worked. Though I still visit parts of the site for news, my usage of the site was cut by a solid 80% by deleting that bookmark alone. Whether your internet crack is Facebook, Twitter or Instagram you can do the same thing, or actually install plugins that will physically restrict your access if you lack the willpower. But if it’s Forbes? Well, just keep clicking on that bookmark.
11. Have a Side-Project to Fill the Dead Space
When I was younger, I often felt like if there were no teachers and no other students, and I was simply given the assignments I was supposed to do and left alone, I could get a lot more done in a given school day and probably be able to leave by noon. Often times, that fantasy becomes a reality when working from home. Despite the human interaction they provide, bosses, coworkers and the meetings, seminars and other group activities they require often make a workday far longer than it has any right being. Not to mention you will be judged by your superiors for leaving early, even if you’ve finished your work eons ago. Working from home cuts through all that bull, and as such, a 9-5 job might turn into a 9-2 job simply by trimming the fat from your workday.
But what to do with the extra time you might find yourself having after following my first ten steps? Again, there’s the temptation to binge watch Netflix until your eyes fall out, but I highly suggest using it to take up a hobby or a side-project that’s actually productive. It could be working out, like I said, or it could be something else you’ve always wanted to do.
Once I got my schedule down and streamlined the efficiency of my workday over the course of a few years, I found I had such free time. I sat down and decided I’d do something I always wanted, write a book. Using the freedom working at home provides, I use my early-ending workdays to write, and I’ve managed to publish two books in the last two years, and I’m working on a third. People with more traditional jobs may not be able to find the time, but you, working from home, will likely be able to streamline your own schedule so that you have time to take on another challenge. While it was book writing for me, it could be starting your own business for you. It could be learning an instrument, figuring out how to code, or any other number of things that can help bolster your personal or professional life. Use the freedom of working at home to your benefit, and don’t waste the opportunities it provides.
So, is working from home for everyone? Absolutely not. As an only child and something of an introvert, I’m predisposed to adapt to that sort of scenario, and I understand why it would be hard for most. And honestly, it’s hard for me too some times. While I love my job, I miss having coworkers I can see in a way other than bi-annual Skype video chats. Also, I should note I do not have children, and when I do, that will likely add a new level of complexity to all these steps that will require an entirely new article.
That said, I also love the complete and utter freedom to make my own schedule, work at my own pace, and seldom have anyone looking over my shoulder. If I can discipline myself enough to get my work done, and find the motivation to enjoy it, I honestly believe I have one of the best jobs in the world. And so can you.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/01/22/11-ways-to-stay-motivated-while-working-from-home/
When I tell people my job is entirely done from home, I generally get the same response, “I could never, ever do that.” They don’t mean that my job sucks (I hope not, at least), rather they’re referring to the problems of motivation and self-discipline that come with working from home.
An office gives you a regimented schedule. Coworkers give you social interaction. A physically present boss gives you accountability. How in the world is anyone supposed to get any proper work done in the absence of all those things?
Over the years, I’ve become something of an expert in the field of home productivity. Not to say I never partake in the temptation to use my freedom to slack off, but I’ve managed to force myself to be accountable not only to my various employers (Forbes included), but more importantly, myself.
Here are eleven ways I do this, and I think you’ll be able to utilize at least a few whether you work from home full time, or just every so often.
1. Wake Up Early
For many, this may be the hardest part of working from home. With no office to go to, and no boss to tap his watch and look irritated if you’re late, there can often be little motivation to get up at a reasonable hour and start work. I fell prey to this early on in my writing career, waking up at 10 or 11 AM and beginning the day from there. But it isn’t worth it.
Training yourself to get up on time like you do have a more traditional job will get you into a routine that encourages productivity. Studies have shown that getting up in the morning turns you into a more proactive person, and personally, I’ve found it makes me much more productive, much more quickly. Waking up at 7:30 AM every day allows me to start work by practically 7:45. It’s not obscenely early like someone with a lengthy morning commute to worry about, yet it’s not 11 AM either, like I’m a hungover college student who just remembered he has a term paper to finish.
By forcing myself into this schedule, I’ve found that over the years, my most productive time during the day has been from 8 AM to 11 AM. After breakfast, my mind is sharper. It’s early in the day so I’m motivated to work harder, faster and more efficiently in the hopes of finishing up the day early. In my business, this before noon time period is when many people are checking the internet for news as they themselves get into work, so for me, getting up early makes me more successful than my competition who is still sleeping. I get the worm, so to speak.
2. Put On Actual Clothes
It’s incredibly tempting when working from home to wear the most comfortable set of clothes you own whenever possible, especially since most of the time you’re rolling out of bed and starting work soon after. Again, with no coworkers, what’s the point of dressing up? Why can’t you wear sweatpants and/or a Snuggie all day until you’re forced to emerge from your cocoon to seek actual human contact?
From a Forbes article earlier this year, Dr. Karen Pine, professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire and fashion psychologist had this to say about dressing up for work (also, I didn’t know there was such a job title as “fashion psychologist”):
“When we put on an item of clothing it is common for the wearer to adopt the characteristics associated with that garment. A lot of clothing has symbolic meaning for us, whether it’s ‘professional work attire’ or ‘relaxing weekend wear,’ so when we put it on we prime the brain to behave in ways consistent with that meaning.”
In other words, if you are content to wear lazy clothing all day when working from home, you are probably more likely to act lazy, and therefore get less done.
Now there’s a limit here. I’m certainly not suggesting you put on a suit and tie and sit at your desk by yourself all day with no one to appreciate your snappy sense of style. But I am suggesting putting on actual pants, if for no other reason than to combat certain stereotypes about your profession (you would be amazed how often I get asked if I wear pants to work). To me, jeans and a t-shirt is enough, and I find myself in a much better mindset than if I simply work in sleepwear for the better part of the day. I haven’t actually tried wearing a tie, so I won’t completely toss that idea out the window, but that’s probably a bridge too far for me.
3. Don’t Work Where You Sleep
This is another lesson I learned early on, though I really didn’t have much of a choice as I began my blogging career sitting on my bed in my Manhattan apartment that was literally almost just that, a bed. If wearing pajamas makes you lazier while working, working in bed triples that effect at the very least. Not only that, but it will stress you out to have the place where you do all your work also be the very spot where you try to relax and fall asleep at night.
This can also apply to even working right next to wear you sleep. Once I upgraded to a room with a few more square feet of floor space, I put a tiny desk literally one foot away from my bed. I’d roll off my mattress and literally start working (in my pajamas) thirty seconds later. Sometimes this may be necessary given living space arrangements, but if you can avoid it, try to do so.
Now that I’m all grown up and married, my wife and I are shopping for two bedroom apartments. It’s not about a failing relationship that requires separate sleeping quarters, it’s about having a dedicated office space to call my own. A work room, for work only. Now that I have my own office, I’ve found I feel more like a person with a more traditional job, as opposed to a guy flopping out of bed and flipping open a laptop to begin the day. And if you work from home full time, you can write off at least part of your rent as a business expense, as it’s technically office space. You can also literally rent office space somewhere outside your home if your budget allows it, and you don’t mind an actual commute longer than the twelve paces it takes you to reach your home office from your bedroom.
4. Make a Schedule
This seems relatively self-explanatory, but most people will not be able to function properly working from home if they don’t have at least some sort of regimented schedule guiding them. This can start with waking up as a set time each day, as I’ve talked about above, but also translates into whatever you need to get done in a certain day.
Obviously this will depend on your job. In my line of work, I write for three different websites. I know what time posts are supposed to go up when (or at least a general window) and base my writing around that. Again, I do most of my work early in the morning, and I’m able to write something in the AM that gets posted in the PM because of the magic of advance scheduling. But it’s always done, and I do not miss deadlines because of the mental schedule permanently etched in my brain which includes not only work, but meals, errands and gym time to boot, all of which can often be accomplished within a given workday, allowing more free time later on.
I don’t physically write down a schedule anymore, as it’s all locked in my head at this point. But when you’re first starting out, it may be helpful to do so. And naturally, there are countless apps for that.
5. Work Out
As I just mentioned, working from home allows you to schedule activities during your workday that you wouldn’t normally be able to do in a traditional office. One of these is working out, and for me, it’s an absolute must when working from home, and plays into both motivation and self-discipline.
Most office jobs these days are relatively sedentary, but none more so than working from home. At that point, you’re not even doing minimal walking around your office building. I joked with my wife when she got her Jawbone Up pedometer band that while she was hitting 10,000 steps a day, I’d be lucky to break a hundred with my trips from my bedroom to my office and a few to the kitchen and bathroom. I might go up and down some stairs on a good day. Once.
But in reality, it’s no joke. Being that sedentary isn’t just harmful for your health, it’s terrible for your motivation and discipline. Working out gives you a boost of energy that’s incredibly helpful for productivity, as every study on planet earth has revealed. It will get you thinking more clearly, and simply make you feel like you did right by yourself for the entire day.
Planning a trip to the gym that’s more than a few miles away can be tough during the workday, and can sometimes take too big a chunk out of your day. This is why I highly suggest trying out home workout programs. They can seem goofy at first, and have a stigma of being aimed at bored housewives, but honestly, these kinds of programs have really turned my personal and professional life around. I’ve completed what I thought was the borderline impossible P90X, and am currently in the middle of a similar program called Les Mills Combat. They take sometimes as little as 20 minutes to do, or an hour at most, and if you stick with them, you’ll be in amazing shape and have a brain that’s firing on all cylinders every day. It helps to do your workouts earlier rather than later, as you can reap the physical and psychological rewards for the entire day.
6. Earn Rewards
Another common refrain I hear from people who think they could never work from home is “If I did that, I’d just sit around and watch TV all day.” I’m here to tell you that you can do this, to a certain extent.
One of the perks of working from home is that you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, but the whole point of this article is to show how you have to balance it with actual productivity and discipline. Rather than simply sit down and binge watch six episodes of House of Cards, putting your actual work off until 8PM, use the show as a reward.
Do two hours of solid work and then watch an episode of something. Get that one important project finished and play some PS4 for a little while. Turn these distractions into rewards, and then have the willpower to use them in moderation. Don’t get carried away and convince yourself an hour of work entitles you to five hours of a Sons of Anarchy marathon. But micro-rewards will go a long way to both making you feel accomplished, and giving you a brief respite to boot.
7. Get Off Gchat
Speaking of distractions, there is no bigger motivation or productivity killer than Gchat. I have literally been invisible on the service for close to five years now, and I’ve probably completed hundreds of more hours of work than I would have had I been chatting with people all day. This applies to actual jobs as well, but many offices ban such services, and there’s a reason for that.
It’s not just the physical time it takes you to read and type messages to your friends that makes Gchat your mortal enemy. It’s the fact that that little “bong” message noise instantly jolts you out of thinking about whatever you’re supposed to be working on. The time lost isn’t just the chatting, it’s the constant mental interruption that will sap your motivation and distract you from doing a proper job on whatever it is you’re working on. For me, it’s almost impossible to write a coherent article with Gchat flashing or chiming in the background every few seconds.
I’m singling out Gchat here, but there are plenty of other “bongs” that can go off and distract you, from Facebook and Snapchat to old-fashioned texting. If you do have to have a conversation, limit it to one other person, and don’t have it continue on all day. That sounds harsh, but it will allow you to finish all your work faster and then have complete, unrestricted free time once you’re done for the day early. Then you can Gchat until your fingers bleed.
8. Go Outside
When working from home, your house or apartment can become your bunker. It’s a safe spot that has everything you need, so why should you ever bother leaving? This generally isn’t a problem for extroverts, as they’ll seek out adventure elsewhere as part of their personality. But extroverts also really can’t handle working from home very often for many of the reason I’m listing.
But us introverts? We can thrive in such an environment. Almost too well. There have been stretches of time where I’ve looked back and said “shoot, I haven’t left the house in three days, have I?” This is not good. In addition to your body needing actual sunlight to live, going outside to do anything, run errands, take a walk, etc. is required for your mental sanity. You don’t want to slowly morph into a recluse and find yourself with drawn blinds and fifty cats in a few year’s time.
Related to this, there’s the famous “can’t you work in a coffee shop?” question I get all the time. The answer is yes, you can, but it depends on your personality. Yes, you’ll be out and about, but it depends on if your job can rely on Starbucks’ crappy Wi-Fi, you don’t mind being constrained to your little table instead of your entire home, and you’re fine with permanently smelling like coffee for most of your adult life. As you may have deduced, despite being “out of the house,” the cons tend to outweigh the pros in my experience.
9. Talk to Other Human Beings
This one kind of goes hand in hand with the previous item. There have also been days where I haven’t seen another human being other than my roommate, or now my wife. And sometimes, I don’t even see them if they’re out of town. Even if it’s just going to the grocery store and making conversation with the clerk, it’s something, and will help your social skills not atrophy. If you live somewhere near a bunch of existing friends, that’s great, but if you’re like me and moved to the middle of nowhere for reasons beyond your control (a smart wife getting a great job), it can be a lot tougher.
Working from home is a far cry from working in an office where you have coworkers you talk to day in and day out. I have coworkers too, but most of the ones I’ve talked to for years online, I’ve never even met before. I worked for Forbes for three full years before I ever met another employee in person. This is the way the world works now in many fields, so you have to adapt and improvise, and make up for the lack of human contact where you can. By interacting with others on a daily basis, in whatever form, you’ll continue to develop social skills that email and Gchat simply won’t give you. Take a class, join a team, or really anything that forces you to have a conversation with another human.
10. Declare War on Distracting Sites
While even normal office drones have the problem of surfing the internet while at work, it’s amplified exponentially by working from home. You’re guaranteed not to have any sort of filter to restrict your browsing, and so you might find yourself swept away by videos of cats jumping into boxes and goats yelling like humans instead of doing your actual work. And you’ve probably just clicked on those links and I’ve lost you…
Most people will have one site that’s simply the bane of their existence. Mine was reddit.com, the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet.” It’s simply an endless collection of links, but most are vaguely interesting enough to warrant an endless string of clicks. The site got so addictive, by muscle memory alone my fingers would simply flick my mouse over to the bookmark if my mind was blank for more than a few seconds. My thought process eventually became “Well, that’s enough reddit (closes tab),” and then promptly “Gee, I wonder what’s on reddit? (opens tab)” within a span of seconds. It was a problem.
This is where the zen-like discipline of working from home must propel you to take drastic action to ensure your continued productivity. I deleted my reddit bookmark from my browser bar, and suddenly, my muscle memory no longer worked. Though I still visit parts of the site for news, my usage of the site was cut by a solid 80% by deleting that bookmark alone. Whether your internet crack is Facebook, Twitter or Instagram you can do the same thing, or actually install plugins that will physically restrict your access if you lack the willpower. But if it’s Forbes? Well, just keep clicking on that bookmark.
11. Have a Side-Project to Fill the Dead Space
When I was younger, I often felt like if there were no teachers and no other students, and I was simply given the assignments I was supposed to do and left alone, I could get a lot more done in a given school day and probably be able to leave by noon. Often times, that fantasy becomes a reality when working from home. Despite the human interaction they provide, bosses, coworkers and the meetings, seminars and other group activities they require often make a workday far longer than it has any right being. Not to mention you will be judged by your superiors for leaving early, even if you’ve finished your work eons ago. Working from home cuts through all that bull, and as such, a 9-5 job might turn into a 9-2 job simply by trimming the fat from your workday.
But what to do with the extra time you might find yourself having after following my first ten steps? Again, there’s the temptation to binge watch Netflix until your eyes fall out, but I highly suggest using it to take up a hobby or a side-project that’s actually productive. It could be working out, like I said, or it could be something else you’ve always wanted to do.
Once I got my schedule down and streamlined the efficiency of my workday over the course of a few years, I found I had such free time. I sat down and decided I’d do something I always wanted, write a book. Using the freedom working at home provides, I use my early-ending workdays to write, and I’ve managed to publish two books in the last two years, and I’m working on a third. People with more traditional jobs may not be able to find the time, but you, working from home, will likely be able to streamline your own schedule so that you have time to take on another challenge. While it was book writing for me, it could be starting your own business for you. It could be learning an instrument, figuring out how to code, or any other number of things that can help bolster your personal or professional life. Use the freedom of working at home to your benefit, and don’t waste the opportunities it provides.
So, is working from home for everyone? Absolutely not. As an only child and something of an introvert, I’m predisposed to adapt to that sort of scenario, and I understand why it would be hard for most. And honestly, it’s hard for me too some times. While I love my job, I miss having coworkers I can see in a way other than bi-annual Skype video chats. Also, I should note I do not have children, and when I do, that will likely add a new level of complexity to all these steps that will require an entirely new article.
That said, I also love the complete and utter freedom to make my own schedule, work at my own pace, and seldom have anyone looking over my shoulder. If I can discipline myself enough to get my work done, and find the motivation to enjoy it, I honestly believe I have one of the best jobs in the world. And so can you.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/01/22/11-ways-to-stay-motivated-while-working-from-home/
Tuesday 14 October 2014
Three Easy Tips For Effective Social Media Marketing
You’ve heard that social media marketing can lead to more loyal customers, more brand recognition, more repeat business, more… well, everything.
But successes like these aren’t instant or automatic. Effective social media marketing requires a great deal of effort. It isn’t easy for small business owners—or anyone—to come up with a steady stream of pithy statements in 140 characters or less.
That said, there are some simple solutions that can make a difference in reaching and connecting with your audience. Here are three strategies you can add immediately to your social media marketing arsenal.
1. It’s all about timing
Schedule your emails, tweets, status updates and blog posts at the right time—when you have a captive audience. You want to catch your audience not only when they’re checking their messages and news feed, but when they might have a few minutes to click through a link and check something out.
When’s that? It depends, of course. For marketing consultant Jay Baer, the best time to reach his audience of busy professionals tends to be during a “micro-opportunity window.” These may be as short as just a few minutes, but they’re critical for reaching a busy audience. Baer times his messages to hit before or after the top of the hour, when many time-starved professionals are sneaking a peek at their phone on the way back to their desk.
Late in the day is another good time to post. Author and social media expert Dan Zarrella’s Twitter analysis found that tweets in the late afternoon and early evening—during commute hours and around dinner time—led to higher click-through rates than those published in the morning.
Zarrella also found that tweets posted on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays drew more click-throughs.
A report by Buddy Media saw a similar phenomenon on Facebook. Brand interaction rates were 14.5 percent higher on weekends than on weekdays. The report also recommends posting between 8 pm and 7 am, when interaction is 14 percent higher than the rest of the day. The reason is simple: catch your audience during their downtime.
Don’t want to work on the weekends or after hours? Tools like Buffer and HootSuite can help by letting you compose your thoughts in advance and publish them at an appointed time.
2. Issue calls to action
If you want to engage with your customers on social media, you have to ask for it (in moderation, of course).
Facebook posts with questions generate 92 percent higher comment rates than posts without questions, according to the Buddy Media report. Be sure to ask your question at the end of your post—that draws a higher comment rate than if the question is placed higher up.
If you post a cool or amusing picture, don’t just ask your audience to “check it out!” Increase interaction rates by encouraging your audience to caption it, too. Or you can ask your fans to “fill in the blank,” a tactic that leads to four times as many comments as other posts.
If you plan to run a promotion, note that some keywords work better than others. The words that drew the most interactions were “winner,” “win” and “giveaway.” Not so popular? “Sweepstakes,” “coupon,” “clearance,” and discount phrases “% off” or “$ off.”
Twitter looked at about 20,000 random promoted tweets and found four effective ways for businesses to engage their followers. Including a link and asking their audience to download something, its number-one suggestion, drew an average of 13 percent more clicks.
Twitter also recommends that brands ask their followers to retweet a message, keeping it short and simple, and spelling out the word “retweet,” rather than just the abbreviation “RT.”
If you’re looking to build your following, you may simply want to ask people to follow your brand while offering them a compelling reason to do so, such as free prizes or behind-the-scenes access. Twitter found brands that paid for a promoted tweet and asked for a follow increased their audience by an average of 258 percent.
3. Use images often
Research shows that photos perform better than videos, links and text alone on Facebook.
According to digital marketing blog Kissmetrics, photos attract 53 percent more “Likes,” 104 percent more comments and 84 percent more click-throughs.
Here’s the caveat, though: The best pictures are self-explanatory, like infographics and charts. Just posting a stock image doesn’t do much. Social media publishing app Buffer compared the responses to two different photos—one that didn’t need a caption to explain it and one that did. The infographic, which didn’t require a caption, drew 78 “Likes” and 20 comments while the other only attracted 11 “Likes” and three comments.
All in all, social media marketing can help your business win new customers and engage with a broader audience. Making it work requires time, effort and some strategic thinking. By knowing your audience, interacting with them on their terms, and making engagement easy and attractive, you can elevate your brand and even drive revenue. Not bad for 140 characters or less.
Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/sage/2014/03/31/three-easy-tips-for-effective-social-media-marketing/
But successes like these aren’t instant or automatic. Effective social media marketing requires a great deal of effort. It isn’t easy for small business owners—or anyone—to come up with a steady stream of pithy statements in 140 characters or less.
That said, there are some simple solutions that can make a difference in reaching and connecting with your audience. Here are three strategies you can add immediately to your social media marketing arsenal.
1. It’s all about timing
Schedule your emails, tweets, status updates and blog posts at the right time—when you have a captive audience. You want to catch your audience not only when they’re checking their messages and news feed, but when they might have a few minutes to click through a link and check something out.
When’s that? It depends, of course. For marketing consultant Jay Baer, the best time to reach his audience of busy professionals tends to be during a “micro-opportunity window.” These may be as short as just a few minutes, but they’re critical for reaching a busy audience. Baer times his messages to hit before or after the top of the hour, when many time-starved professionals are sneaking a peek at their phone on the way back to their desk.
Late in the day is another good time to post. Author and social media expert Dan Zarrella’s Twitter analysis found that tweets in the late afternoon and early evening—during commute hours and around dinner time—led to higher click-through rates than those published in the morning.
Zarrella also found that tweets posted on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays drew more click-throughs.
A report by Buddy Media saw a similar phenomenon on Facebook. Brand interaction rates were 14.5 percent higher on weekends than on weekdays. The report also recommends posting between 8 pm and 7 am, when interaction is 14 percent higher than the rest of the day. The reason is simple: catch your audience during their downtime.
Don’t want to work on the weekends or after hours? Tools like Buffer and HootSuite can help by letting you compose your thoughts in advance and publish them at an appointed time.
2. Issue calls to action
If you want to engage with your customers on social media, you have to ask for it (in moderation, of course).
Facebook posts with questions generate 92 percent higher comment rates than posts without questions, according to the Buddy Media report. Be sure to ask your question at the end of your post—that draws a higher comment rate than if the question is placed higher up.
If you post a cool or amusing picture, don’t just ask your audience to “check it out!” Increase interaction rates by encouraging your audience to caption it, too. Or you can ask your fans to “fill in the blank,” a tactic that leads to four times as many comments as other posts.
If you plan to run a promotion, note that some keywords work better than others. The words that drew the most interactions were “winner,” “win” and “giveaway.” Not so popular? “Sweepstakes,” “coupon,” “clearance,” and discount phrases “% off” or “$ off.”
Twitter looked at about 20,000 random promoted tweets and found four effective ways for businesses to engage their followers. Including a link and asking their audience to download something, its number-one suggestion, drew an average of 13 percent more clicks.
Twitter also recommends that brands ask their followers to retweet a message, keeping it short and simple, and spelling out the word “retweet,” rather than just the abbreviation “RT.”
If you’re looking to build your following, you may simply want to ask people to follow your brand while offering them a compelling reason to do so, such as free prizes or behind-the-scenes access. Twitter found brands that paid for a promoted tweet and asked for a follow increased their audience by an average of 258 percent.
3. Use images often
Research shows that photos perform better than videos, links and text alone on Facebook.
According to digital marketing blog Kissmetrics, photos attract 53 percent more “Likes,” 104 percent more comments and 84 percent more click-throughs.
Here’s the caveat, though: The best pictures are self-explanatory, like infographics and charts. Just posting a stock image doesn’t do much. Social media publishing app Buffer compared the responses to two different photos—one that didn’t need a caption to explain it and one that did. The infographic, which didn’t require a caption, drew 78 “Likes” and 20 comments while the other only attracted 11 “Likes” and three comments.
All in all, social media marketing can help your business win new customers and engage with a broader audience. Making it work requires time, effort and some strategic thinking. By knowing your audience, interacting with them on their terms, and making engagement easy and attractive, you can elevate your brand and even drive revenue. Not bad for 140 characters or less.
Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/sage/2014/03/31/three-easy-tips-for-effective-social-media-marketing/
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