Better Blog in 4 Steps
4 Steps to a Dramatically Better Blog
How to create a blog like a pro, boost your conversions and get more traffic than most bloggers dream about...
Links
- Content & Conversions Blog Post
- Marcus Sheridan's Content Stategy: They ask, you answer and this interesting rant.
- Excellent conversational (and controversial) writing style in this sales letter.
Design Examples
- Theme of the first good example.
- Second good example is based on a heavily modified Thesis theme.
- Third good example is based on a heavily modified Striking theme.
81 comments
Comments are closed. This discussion is archived from the original site.
Shane, thank you for this excellent advice. It inspired me to re-focus on completing my product.
Love your work!
Jo
Excellent, that's exactly what I hoped to achieve. :)
This is definitely an area that I've struggled with - I recognise that I need to invest a significant amount of time in creating both content and product. Identifying and justifying where I am going to obtain the biggest return for my investment of time has been my challenge.
You've consolidated my thinking though. While blogging is important, its place is more about giving context for the products provided on a site. The products are where the biggest return is.
Thanks Shane.
- Stephen
Yes, that's a good way to put it.
There's just no comparing the return you get from releasing and selling products to the return you get from blogging.
I think with blogging, you have to be in the top 1% to make it pay off. With products, you can happily sit as a small provider in a small niche and make a good living.
Who will buy it if you are a small provider in a small niche without audience/affiliates?
Of course you need an audience.
But here's a scenario:
Think of the IT market.
Now think of the home computers section of the IT market.
Now think of the "people who build their own home computers" section of that section.
Now think of the "people who build their own high-end, high-priced home computers" section of that section.
Now think of the "people who do all that and also use liquid-cooling in their computers" section of that section.
Now think of that section, but only in the German speaking region of Europe, not internationally.
Now think of that section, but only in the German speaking region of Switzerland, one of the smallest countries on the European continent.
Now consider that even as the number two distributor of high-end liquid cooling components in this small part of a small country in a niche so small I bet you've never heard of it before, you can make a living.
Probably also as the number three distributor, come to think of it.
I know this because that's what I did for a living for a while, by the way.
You always need an audience, but there's plenty of audience.
My point is that if you write a blog about liquid cooling etc. etc. in this tiny sector, you'll get a bit of traffic and make zero dollars. But if you sell products in this tiny sector, you'll make money.
PS. I love the Stiking theme - I've been using it on a few sites for some years. :-)
Great info Shane. I've heard all this before, but you put it all in a great info packed video that gets right to the point. I'm redesigning my website right now and this video reminds me of some important points to consider before I finalize my design. Great timing! Thanks.
Thanks, Mitch! That's awesome and I'm happy to have offered some inspiration. :)
Hi Shane,
Thanks for your advice. By the way, what wp plugin you use to hide your bonus url ? (twitter/facebook/google plus share to get this bonus video/link)
Regards,
Leon
Hey Leon - you'll be finding out about that pretty soon! ;)
excellent video with very valid points. I have actually recently had a mind shift from trying to make a living as an affiliate to creating my own products. It really does take a viewpoint shift to consider creating your own products as opposed to "affiliate commissions". Does this mean you are creating a product about "product creation"?
Hi Tom,
I did a Product Bootcamp live training thing in 2011 and I've been wanting to do a new one ever since. You can expect a Product Bootcamp 2013, sometime this year.
Don't hold your breath, though. Get started and make stuff happen and then maybe get on the bootcamp to polish up what you're already doing, once it comes around.
Good points all of them and I'll go trim back my blog too. Dang I got me some work to do. lol
I think you'll get good results from it. Plus, the good news is that getting rid of stuff is usually easier than adding stuff. :)
I know we've spoken about this a lot, but I have to say that I really agree with the fact that making a living from content marketing in today's market is an extremely tough thing to do. It's most certainly possible, but I think for many people the dip is longer then they realise. The focus really need to be on leverage, building relationships and finding a unique angle or gap in the market that you can fill as you talk about in your video.
Just another weight loss blog, or another FOREX blog is just not going to work - in the information age, content is a commodity unless there is a USP to differentiate.
Historically, it was possible to gain traction without worrying too much about marketing principles because the online space was machine and algorithm (search engine) centric rather than people centric. Temporarily it was possible to "game" the system, and many people did to great effect (the good old days of xrumer, Build My Rank etc.), but now with the user engagement feedback loop and social metrics that the search engines are able to tap into, your site has to be valuable to the end user to have any chance of leaving a mark.
Thank you Shane, I think your spot on with the points you talk about in the video.
We have spoke about some of these point on the phone a while back and it was good for me to be reminded again as the focus has gone a little blurry from the distraction I have been bombarded with.
Re focused and back on track, thanks.
Trevor
Always happy to help. :)
Thanks for your comment, Trevor!
Thank you so much, Shane. As always very inspirational. Love your clear statements. As you do I don't like the blogs with most irrelevant content, o lot of bla, bla.
Or short: I'm a Fan, not a Hater....
Now as always after your emails and blogpost: let's get to change our blogs and do some writing....
Have a nice weekend
Daniel (also a Swiss guy - but on a Live Journey in the Land of Dracula)
Haha, next you're going to tell me you're also half Irish.
(I'm a half-Irish Swiss person currently living in Romania)
Whereabouts in Dracula-country are you?
No, I only like your whiskeys and your country... was only once in Ireland....
I live since 8 years in the transilvanien part of Romania. The town nearest my home is called Targu Mures (in german: Neumarkt am Mieresch).
If you ever come to Romania we have to meet in person. Bucarest is such a great and impressive town - you have to see (if you never was until now). The people in western Europe have a totally wrong imagine of Romania.....
Hey Daniel - we're already in Romania but on the other side of the country in Timisoara!
Servus Paul
Vezi cat de mic este lumea... See how small is the world
Hope to hear from you on this blog. I'm quite sure that Shane will give us also in future some good reasons to comment... :-)
Wish all you guys a nice weekend
Bye, Salut, Cu stima, Best regards
Daniel
Hi Sean
Some rrrrreally good points here - "less is more" and "it looks fancy and awesome, but is it functional/effective..."
i need to review and clean up one of our blogs :) remove distractions etc (its not fancy but definitely crammed)
re traffic - hmmmm... the comparison of those 2 traffic methods... they are "incomparable" :) i think
i would really be interested to get your point of view on what is the MINIMAL amount of content (and updates)
one should have to start a blog/establish a "web presence"? what "structure" would you recommend?
thanks
off to check the posts you've linked to :)
talk soon
The minimum amount of content is two pages.
1 sales page.
1 download page (for people who bought your product).
As for blogging: I don't think there's a right way of doing it. Seth Godin writes tiny posts, very frequently. He's doing alright for himself. Derek Halpern has repeated how much traffic he gets at only a couple of updates per month. And there are a million examples in between.
Concerning structure: I think what's most important is to have something recognizable, that ties everything together.
Disparate blog posts with no connection to each other make for a bad structure.
If you have over-arching themes and topics you keep getting back to (via references and internal links), that makes for a better, more coherent structure.
Thanks for replying Shane (sorry for misspelling your name #forehead slap :)
Re "My point is that if you write a blog about liquid cooling etc. etc. in this tiny sector, you’ll get a bit of traffic and make zero dollars. But if you sell products in this tiny sector, you’ll make money"
if i write a blog on that topic and sell the products as an affiliate? won't it be a little more then zero $?
now how much resources/investment would i need to start making and marketing liquid coolers?
my point was when selling a (your own)product you still have to find audience/authorities in the niche
and "pitch" it to them (*after* you've invested time/money/etc in creating that product)
when you are pitching your guest post aren't the investment and risk smaller?
yes the returns *might* be smaller or not as fast as with product launch
btw i'm not saying that developing and launching product is a bad idea, or it is worse then guest blogging
like i said i just think they are somewhat incomparable, serve different purposes or fit better in
different strategies (hope you get what i mean, i always struggled to put my thoughts in writing :)
The example is ecommerce, so you wouldn't be manufacturing the products yourself. Most ecommerce is just re-selling, where you buy from a larger distributor or manufacturer and re-sell through your store.
The investment can be kept at a minimum.
Here's the big difference between selling stuff yourself or selling as an affiliate: when you sell as an affiliate and you successfully make a sale, you are sending a lead away from yourself and towards someone else's business. They will now have that lead's contact details, they will be able to follow up, up-sell, cross-sell etc.
As a customer, you might come back to an affiliate because you like their style or trust their opinion. But you'll always come back to me, because I'm the guy selling the stuff. This is especially true for products you create yourself. If you create it yourself are selling it and no one else is. The buck stops with you.
In some ways, I've still not figured out why exactly this is, but I've found that it's so much easier to get a following and fans when you're selling something than it is when you aren't.
You're right: you can frame the comparison of guest posting vs. product creation as an apples to oranges comparison.
But here's how they are crucially similar: both of them are supposed to grow your business and both of them require an investment of your time (of which you have a very limited and very finite amount).
That's why I made the point at the end: it's about what you want to focus your time and energy in.
Hi Shaun,
For some strange reason, I could not hear any audio while - I saw - the above video.
Just sharing that's all. Perhaps it was meant to be silent.
Regards,
Ivan Bayross
Hi Ivan,
Thanks for the heads-up. No, it is supposed to come with sound.
Did you attempt to view it in a different browser? I've not had any other reports of an issue with the audio, so I'm not sure what the cause might be...
Hi Shaun,
I'm feeling pretty sheepish right now. When I load this page in Chrome Version 35.0.1916.153 (my default Browser) for some unknown reason the speaker icon in the video is muted. When I returned to the Blog post this time noticed it.
Unmuted the speaker and I could hear everything.
I normally just click and listen to your excellent and well thought through / produced videos without doing anything other than clicking the play icon.
Hence when I experienced the lack of sound I checked my audio card settings, my speaker settings and so on
on my laptop, never for a moment thought of looking at the video speaker icon.
When all my laptop / audio settings were Okay I dropped the comment.
BTW, I really enjoy the content and delivery of all your videos.
Regards
Ivan Bayross
PS: I've purchased the Thrive WordPress drag drop editor for multiple sites. Enjoying playing with it. Fascinating.
very eye opening::Thank You.Lol
Hi Shane
As someone who is still trying to get a blog up and running you have just cut my overwhelm factor by 90%. I like most people new to the internet game must have fallen foe the new shiny object, do this, not that, 100 different muppet guru syndrome!
You are a breath of fresh air my friend and one thing that really impressed me about you is that, when I sent you several questions you replied to me and answered them, (gasp!!!) and for that Shane, you have my gratitude and respect.
Thank you
Tony, (UK)
Hi Tony,
Thanks a lot for your comment!
It's a very motivating comment for me and I love it when I can help bring clarity to a subject. :)
Thank-you Shane for the great video. I see so many blogs that are so "cool" and "techie" that I get dizzy. I love the clean straightforward look and yes, "less is more". I hope that more people watch your videos.
Great way to start. Two freebies I can really use. Now I need to actually put them to use.
Shane, it's simple:
you are not the Content King
but the Content Pope!!!!
Olaf
Does that mean I get to wear ridiculous hats?
I really hope it means I get to wear ridiculous hats.
and these shoes
http://www.welt.de/multimedia/archive/00549/Papst_DW_Politik_Wa_549709g.jpg
and celibate :p
Oh
My
Gaaawwwwdddd
Shaaaane! (Aussie Accent)
What a breath of fresh air! I love your teachings and trainings. And I always learn alot.
The icing on the cake is that I showed your videos to my girlfriend and she only had one thing to say:
"ZOOLANDER!"
You are the Blue Steel of Interntet and Video Marketing / Presentations.
I just want to say thank you.
And if you create a zoolander school for kids who can't internet market good - I WILL BE STUDENT #1
(Blues Steel Pose.... nah, Green Steel)
See my blog (revamped cos you insulted me so badly... and cos you were right).
Thumbs Up!
Thanks, Vlad!
I love the idea for a "school for kids who can't internet market good". Just make it a proper school and not a school for ants.
Very useful. Thank you. I'm a real newbie, bought HybridConnect which is how I got here and am finding the clarity of your explanations a relief after so many hyped-up, big promises rants.
Thank you, Peg! Very happy to have you on board. If you don't like the hype and noise, I think you'll like it around here. :)
Appreciate your responding to comments from you earlier question about what we are interested in.
I found your video very interesting but it caused conflicting emotions in me. It seems that there are as many "proven" ideas on the web as there are Mentors. Take me, for instance, one Mentor told me that mini-sites were the right way to go; then another Mentor told me that the magazine style theme was the ideal so for my main blog I paid a fortune (for me) for a new theme and learned how to use it - which was easy once I knew how. :) I know that I have too much in the sidebars and I mean to do something about that, but I am loth to ditch the theme after spending so much time and effort on it.
On my other sites I use simpler WP themes and, to be honest, they were until recently all equally unsuccessful at growing lists. Lately, however, the magazine type has started attracting subscribers, but only since I put an optin form at the end of each post and a bar across the bottom of the page. I've started putting the optin bar at the bottom on the others now. No-one has ever used the optin form at the top! Nor the Lightbox on the Home page! Although, strangely enough, lots of people signed up as Users. Can I put those on my list?
My point is that life gets a bit confusing unless you restrict yourself to only one Mentor, but if I'd done that I'd have missed out on a lot of very useful, interesting, and sometimes fascinating, information.
I'm grateful to you for providing more of that information. I shall certainly get to work on all my sites to see how I can improve them in accordance with your helpful hints, whilst trying not to throw the baby out with the bath water. :)
Thankyou.
Thanks for your comment, Shirley!
Well, the truth is that life is complex and there's rarely just one right way of doing something.
For example, I have never created a magazine style website. I am well aware that there are some big, successful websites in magazine style, but the business model that comes with this was never attractive to me, so I never went in that direction.
As a result, it's not one of the things I write or talk about, either.
You can use what I teach as a guideline and I can guarantee it's something that works, even though I'm sure it's not the only thing that works.
But whatever you do, the most important thing is that you keep testing, so you can discover yourself what works best for you (such as the results you've seen from different opt-in box placements).
And to answer your other question: if people sign up as users, they should go on your list, but this also needs to be clearly communicated and you should create some integration between user signup and your mailing list.
Hi Shane very interesting concept, it makes much more sense to have everything clean and simple for easy reading
Thanks for the info
Pat Brosnan
Nice tips Shane, I guess the obvious question is, well... What did you do to market those products and get 2,000 new customers?
I don't think you have any competition over the subs vs custo's strategy, but the hard part of the thing is getting the customers-when you have to first build a relationship with them before they'll become a customer.
Hi Jamie,
Thanks for your comment!
That's the right question to ask. The long answer is that I'm working on a long series of blog posts and videos that will cover this topic. The first few have already been published and there's more to come.
The short answer is that trust-building isn't always required to get customers. It helps for getting more customers, though. If you have a great product that fills an urgent need for people and you have an affiliate program, you can sell to thousands of strangers.
Shane, well thought through, to the point and informative. You help me to cut through the chase of how to work in this maze of learning required to be successful doing internet marketing. I took lots of nots and will implement in my next blog. BTW check out my latest Blog using the tools I just bought from you. thanks I feel and look more professional now. http://gettingrelationshipright.com/number-two-skill/
So helpful - thank you Shane!!! Your site is a diamond in the rough!
Thank you, Meredith! I'm glad you like the content. :)
Hi Shane,
it is always awesome to get your input. Thank you. Just need to put it into action;-). It is like an acknowlegement of own thinking in a perfect form. Good stuff!
Thank you, Heike! I'm sure you'll see great results when you apply some of these ideas.
Shane, I love your posts, keep up the great work, straight forward good useful content without the fake slime! I went in to a meeting with a mid sized business. They are a well established company successfully sells Low Vision Reading Devices, their target market are primarily elderly people.
The website which already has great authority with search engines, ranks well. They spend a lot on PPC and 'experiment' with other online advertising.
However, they have NO IDEA how many leads (phone calls) they get as a result of the website.
One look at the website it is painfully obvious. It is so convoluted with "stuff", overlays, flashing things and specials. Old dated design.
And get this, tiny font!! They sell to a generation of people that barely use computers that have trouble reading.
The most amazing thing to me was, they acknowledged all of the above, yet still insisted that everything on the sight was necessary. They really did not want to change anything to refine and track their sales funnel.
But they wanted to increase their spend to drive more traffic.
Amazing (oh and sorry for the rant. I guess your post struck a chord :)
Thanks for your comment!
I know exactly the kind of thing you mean. It's like people get sentimentally attached to stuff on their site.
Or they say "I can't possibly remove the image slider, look how many sites have one! We have to have one too!" - even if it's guaranteed to increase their conversions if they make the change...
Hey Shane,
Thanks for the great video, some excellent and painful advice :).
I will be using some of your tips as they make sense. Just bought your Hybrid-Connect plugin looks really great, I still haven't gone through all the training. I really enjoy the excellent training you provide.
What is your advice on comments? Which plugin is best for Wordpress? At the moment I am using Disqus.
Thanks
Warren
Thanks for your comment, Warren!
On this site, I'm using the regular WordPress comments. The only other solution I use is Facebook comments. I like that there's a potential sharing factor and comments can bring some additional traffic to a post. Plus, you don't have to worry about spam, with Facebook comments.
Hello Shane,
en fait il est vrai qu'il est très difficile de réussir son blog et de vendre, souvent on oscille entre deux attitudes. Néanmoins je pense qu'un bon blogueur inspire de la confiance. Je pense que l'argent se fait sur un moyen terme si on veut qu'il dure. Il est peut-être facile de vendre vite mais ça ne dure pas.
Dans la proposition vite, pas cher et bien, il y a une proposition en trop. Soit un blog réussit vite et pour pas cher, mais alors il n'est pas bon, soit il n'est pas cher et bien, mais alors cela ne va pas vite, soit il est vite bien, et en ce cas c'est cher.
On ne peut pas avoir vite, pas cher et bien ;-)
Hi Shane,
Thanks for the information. I am just starting to follow you and it has been a pleasure. Love the stuff you are putting out. I had a question: The functionality where you have to "share" to get this free bonus, is that your WP Sharely plugin? I have been thinking about buying it...
Keep up the good work :)
Cheers,
Mike
Thank you very much, Mike!
Yes, the plugin used for this is indeed WP Sharely. :)
Hi Shane,
This is a great video. I am in the process of building a new blog and the advice came at just the right time. I have been following you for awhile and just bought your latest plugins and will be using them on my new site. Looking forward to your app a week emails and more.
Thanks,
Mary-Ellen
Thank you for your comment, Mary-Ellen! Very happy to know that you can apply the steps from the video and I'm sure you'll see great results from doing so. :)
Shane,
I was on your Webinar last weekend and just watched this video. Great work!
You mentioned that writing a Guest Post yielded far less new subscribers / customers than releasing a new product (30 compared to 2,000). When you say 2,000 -- does that mean 2,000 new subscribers / customers? And if so, did you do anything significantly different to gain traffic between the guest post and new product release?
Thanks so much for your feedback and keep up the great work.
ALLAN
Hello Allan,
The number 2,000 corresponds roughly to how many new customers we got with the Hybrid Connect pre-launch and launch. There are two important factors to this: the firs is that getting those customers requires a lot of promotion from affiliates and the second is that it's only the initial burst of customers from doing the launch. The way we set our products up, they keep selling over time.
For my first product, the launch itself got "only" a few hundred new customers through the door. But a couple thousand more followed over the course of the next two years. With Hybrid Connect, the same is true: we're still getting new customers every day and those obviously get added to the mailing list. The same can't be said for any guest post I've ever written.
My conclusion is that while it's easier to write one guest post than to create and launch one product, I find it far easier to generate 2,000 new customers by creating a product than generating the same amount of leads by writing and posting dozens of guest posts.
solid solid solid stuff
thanks Shane
Thank you, Jak.
Hello Shane,
Very informative and engaging post.
I have one question:
My main site is a magazine style site
based on 'green living', do your recommendations
hold true for this type of site as well?
Regards,
mike
A magazine site is usually 100% dependent on ad revenue and because of that, the same principles don't apply. For a magazine site, you need to focus on publishing frequency and have a strong mix of ads and related posts on every page. Basically you always want to entice visitors to either click on an ad or keep reading stuff on your site (to increase ad impressions).
The reason I personally don't use and don't recommend this model is because the value per visitor is extremely low on a magazine site. I find it a lot easier to sell something directly than to create ad-driven sites.
If you know what you're doing and traffic generation is one of your areas of expertise, then magazine sites can definitely be a good model, though.
Thanks for sharing this very helpful video. I started writing for fun then decided to try and monetize my site and improve overall appeal, probably, to use your phrase "my site sucks"! Looking at my home page I can instantly see mistakes in presentation so its time to make some changes.
I will be looking for your updates in my inbox!
Thanks again.
Thanks for the reply, Clive! I hope you'll find some good points to implement on your site, from these videos.
Thanks for the video, Shane. Very informative! I especially like your delivery style - to the point.
As to your message... I am working on making my site user friendly, content packed, and with one action in mind - get them to sign up for my mailing list.
So your video and advice were spot on!
Thanks again!
Bill
Thanks Shane, especially like the 'product 1st - blog 2nd' model. Makes complete sense to me having tried and failed with the reverse 'traditional' model. I'm presently developing my first product.
Cool stuff, Clive! I wish you the best of success with the new approach.
Maybe this will be helpful as well: Forget Traffic - this is another really important realization I had, that would have made a big difference when I started out.
Great ideas. I wonder what your thoughts are on using SEO plugins to analyze and optimize a site to draw more traffic. Is there value in this, or do you think it is a waste of time?
Hi Patrick,
Here's what I think about using SEO plugins on a CMS ( WordPress / Joomla ) driven website.
Most CMS use a single template to display website content across all site pages. Although, multiple templates can an are used, it would be really surprising to find a separate template used for each page on a CMS driven website.
In the template there are a few (still valuable) Meta tags - for example - Meta Description.
These tags are not exposed in WordPress Blog Posts / Pages.
Hence, its pretty likely that all your Posts and Pages will have the very same - Description - content.
i.e. One that is hard coded into the template itself.
While Google can and often does choose its own description from the Blog post / page content, that said other search engines do not, and there are a hack of a lot of SE's other than Google, whose indexes Google in turn trawls.
In the same way Meta Keywords (although I accept the jury is out on this one) is not exposed, often resulting in
one common set of keywords (i.e. built into the template header section) being applied across all your pages / Blog posts.
SEO Plugins expose these Meta Tags for each Blog Post or Page. Hence, as the Blogger you are in control of what content goes into these HTML Taga for search engines (at least those SE's that want this info anyway).
Long story short, I use an SEO plugin on my Blog and I'm pretty happy with the results.
Hope this helps.
Ivan Bayross
Your last point about creating a product/business is so on target. A blog should be used as a vehicle for your business. But the main goal, unless like you said you blog for fun, should be business growth. It is a far more rewarding use of time.
Hi Shane,
Your advice is like a breath of fresh air and different to alot of stuff out there. Amazing keep it coming
Thank you very much, Alison!
An excellent, and succinct, summary of what makes a good blog/website. I must go and look at mine again. Thanks Shane!
Thank you, Nick!