Did you know that Darren Rowse’s main blog isn’t ProBlogger it is his Digital Photography School that is. The thing is I think it is harder to sell a product to a person who is a marketer or at least knows a bit about marketing.

So if Darren Rowse isn’t making the majority of his money on ProBlogger do you think that you would that? Do you think that you will make more money writing about blogging, or just writing about a passion of your’s? There is so many bloggers writing about blogging, and when they start they literally doesn’t know a sh*t about blogging. They make their experience there.

If you know the stuff about blogging and have earned some(a lot of) money on it, you know how to start off a new blog and how to make money from blogging, but if you haven’t you should keep away from the niche.

So when you just start blogging you should write about something new, or something that is not already being overused. You also need to educate on what you know, not educate on what you learn. You need to know your stuff, to be able to learn other people the stuff.

It is easier to sell stuff to people who doesn’t know why you have a long sales page and stuff like that. So if your niche still is in technical developing, like people aren’t using Twitter, they aren’t using Facebook, you will have to find your readers somewhere else, and while still keep building content.

So when the people comes on all the social networks you are one of the leading experts in your field. Of course what I would do is maybe find a niche that is not overdominated but they also need to know a bit about the Internet, cause that’s a good way to build readers and of course your blog is on the Internet.

You would also like to have a niche where you can sell stuff. If people aren’t used to buy stuff, in your niche, they will probably not buy from you because they are used to get everything in the niche for free.

Of course you can change that, but it takes time to make people wanting to buy your products, you really need a lot of trust.

Though everything takes time. You just need to think hard about what niche you are going into.

Consider niche vs. time vs. passion.

Now, I could end the post at that… but somehow I don’t think Mikkel would publish it, would he?! Haha, nope… I am going to explain what a mentor is, how they can help and possibly even give you some examples of who mentors can be.

What is a Mentor?

“A wise and trusted counsellor or teacher”

Wiktionary.org

“Someone who guides another through a process”

Joe Boyle

“Someone that gives guidance, a teacher.”

Keith Bloemendaal

Right, so a mentor is somebody that you can talk to and learn from… that makes sense!

My personal definition of a mentor is:

“Somebody that you can turn to for advice and who lets you learn from their mistakes and successes”

Shane Hudson

Now we know what a mentor is…

How can I learn from a Mentor?

If you are planning to copy everything they do… STOP! Your mentors will have had a lot of experience in certain areas, learn from their mistakes and successes. Simple as that. If they did something wrong (though I am sure as mentors they would be clever enough to know to learn from their own mistakes!) then you should figure out why they did it, what went wrong and how you can prevent yourself from being in the same boat.

You can also do the same to their successes, what did they do right? How can you replicate, but not copy, their success?

Who can be my Mentor?

Well, in theory… everyone. Of course, some people may not be as good as others at teaching and giving advice but that does not mean their advice is not worth listening to! In fact, I do not believe that the person you think of as a mentor even has to know who you are!

What you may not realise is that you almost certainly already have many mentors! Think: parents, family, friends, teachers, authors, celebrities.

Although I do not recommend doing everything your favourite celebrities are doing (maybe I just don’t like fashion!) there can be things you can learn from them. It is also a good idea to have mentors in completely different areas to you, this way you do not just copy them!

My own mentors include (but are not limited to): my parents, friends, family, teachers, Roland Millward, Paul Sabaj, Lindsay Branscombe, Sir Richard Branson (though he stole my childhood dreams.. but that’s another story, haha!), Gary Vaynerchuk and indeed… every person I have learned a thing from.

The mentors that I have listed I have spoken to the majority of them before (though not met in person!), this does not have to be true. Most people that you are not able to speak to (eg. celebrities and historic people) usually have a lot written about them. Read some (auto)biographies, you can learn a lot from them!

Who are your Mentors?

Now you know mine, who are your mentors?

We are talking about the importance of having your own domain names. As a special bonus video I show how you can register a domain name, at GoDaddy.

Take it easy, hope you enjoy it.

How to Decide Your Domain’s Name

Bonus Video Tutorial

What you want to do here, is to register a “secondary” domain. Let’s say you want the domain “ihaveahorse.com” – then I would recommend you to register “ihaveahorse.net” here. And then buy your primary domain later (instructions later on)

How to Get a Webhost for Your New Domain

When you register a domain name on GoDaddy, you will not instantly be able to blog. You need a host. A host is the place where the blog platform will be, so it is important that you choose a host which is reliable and one you trust.

I use on several domains a host called “Bluehost”, I almost never experienced any downtime with Bluehost. They are perfect for blog hosting.

So if you registered the so called “ihaveahorse.net” domain from GoDaddy, then you should go to Bluehost now.

Click on the “Sign Up Now” button and then type “ihaveahorse”(your primary domain) and then choose .com.

That would be your primary domain. Then fill every field, go to payment. And then you are ready to host your own domain. When you have your host, your primary domain and your secondary domain, you’re ready to start your blog.

We’ll follow up on that in the next video.

Resources

Google Keyword Tool

Buy the primary domain and host: Bluehost

Buy the secondary domain: GoDaddy

We’ll keep in touch!

I want to make you a blog star.

I have created lots of videos on “How to Become a Blog Star.” It teaches just from the beginning of a blog, how to get started and how to keep rocking the blogosphere.

The first video is online. It is all free, and available on DaneBlogger.

The videos will teach so everyone can understand.

What is a Blogstar?

For the best use of the video, I recommend that you press the full-screen button.

Want a Transcript?

When?

The first Become a BlogStar video is already available. You just need to press ‘Play’ to play the video. You can watch every video on this address: http://daneblogger.com/becomeablogstar/

When we start out with Become A Blogstar, it will be basic. Though as the time moves on, it will be more advanced. Hope you like it.

What you need to know is what your passion is. What you really want to write about. What you really want to educate other people on. When you first start doing that you will be a “generalist.”

A generalist is a person who already is tells you what everybody else is telling you. It takes time to define what you really want to write about. It is not only taking time, but also experience.

When you start writing you will get an image of what your focus really should be about. It can be that you start writing about horses, but you can eventually end up to write about something else in the horse niche.

When you start your blog you will release content, and you will see what your real focus is. You will find your true direction.

You will find another direction. When you have published some content, you will find the direction. Without even thinking of it.

When you find your new direction, you will have to analyze the niche and you will see whether you can use the niche for anything, or if it is too narrow.

Of course it can be too narrow now, but what about the future? You have to think about that. You see, if you can spot what’s “going on” in the future you will be a step beyond everybody else.

Be More Specific

When find your refined niche you will have to refine your goals as well. You have to be very specific about that.

You shouldn’t set goals like “I want to earn $1000 each month” – it should be much more specific. It should be more like “I am going to make $1000 each month, by building relationships with people. I am gonna turn those relationships into “sales” and by building relationships I will make money.”

Be very, very specific. That will help you reach your goals.

When Do You Have The Right Focus?

You will see when you have the right focus.

It should be very clear that your traffic is growing. You will maybe only see a growth by 30% each month in the beginning, but if you can continue to have 30% growth, then how much traffic would you have in a year?
Do the math yourself.

To increase your traffic, I can suggest that you start analyzing your traffic. When you get a spike, what did you do to make the spike?

Also when you think you have the right focus, you need to see why people read your blog. Is it because they like your content, do they find your entertaining? By doing that you will be able to see what people eventually would buy from you.

Don’t Be a Generalist

You shouldn’t be a generalist. Because that is what everybody else is doing. You need to narrow down, find your own content through your own mind.

You don’t want to write about, the same stuff that the experts are writing about. You want to find your own stuff to write about. Dig into a sub-niche, become a specialist there.
Come up with your own ideas or maybe redefine other’s ideas, so they get more powerful and gives you a twist.

Lack of Content

Lack of content is something that will occur on every new blog. If you are a blogger you should already know how to fix this.  You just need to keep adding more and more content. When you are just starting out you need to focus on the articles, they need to be very related so you build an audience which can relate to your articles.

This task is quite tedious and it might take a month to fulfill.

Blog Sections is Empty

Bare blog sections is a quite easy thing to fix. ‘Blog sections’ is fifferent parts of your blog, which makes it up, as a whole. It is your header, main post, sidebar and footer section. You need to add some stuff to those sections, some widgets etc. to the sidebar.

I would recommend to add recent posts, archives and maybe an advertise here link.

Incomplete Navigation Bar

This is a very basic thing for every blog. For an example you could currently have home, about and contact. You should add some key posts (eventually) or just try to fill out the space you have got there. Maybe write some pages about some important stuff in your niche.

Incomplete Sticky Pages

Sticky pages is pages like about me, contact etc. It normally needs lots of improvements. It may surprise you that an about me page is one of the most frequent visited pages. This is the best opportunity to showcase yourself.

Things you should add to an about me page should be:

• Blogger introduction
• Profile picture
• Expertise
• Blog description

Those are the most vital and important things to include on your about me page. I think you should look at other about pages, to see which way you want it to be written. How you enjoy them.

Contact Page

A contact page is very important. Future businesses can rely on that one. Have you noticed on blogs like “ProBlogger” etc. have a line which goes somewhat like this “The email you may send will be read, but due hard amount of emails I receive, I may not reply.”

You shouldn’t write a line like that. Whatever someone email you, reply no matter how pointless they may be. It is definitely a great way to be professional.

Incomplete Footer

You see my footer? I have a short bio. I have my profile picture. You can tell a short story, who you are etc. the story doesn’t have to be that long. Just 20-100 words, depends on the space you have in your footer.

Blog Promotion

Be Everywhere

This is vital for every new blog. You have to spread the word about your blog. There is lots of social media sites where you can interact and stuff like that. I recommend Twitter, because it is easy and fast.

Comment Your Way to The Top

You should try to strike up a routine and visit at least 10 blogs related to your niche everyday. It’ll be easier if you have a broad niche, which gets read. Find popular blogs at most, comment on those.

You have to write valuable comments, what you don’t want your brand to be like is “Good post” – you want it to be a kick a** comment that people want to read, and then due the comment’s quality they click the link through to your blog. They discover the good content, and subscribe.

Guest posts

This is hard work, but it definitely pays off. You get traffic, popularity and authority. When you submit guest posts you will meet some standards followed by a certain blog.

Your guest posts has to be great. It should be your best content. You should definitely give out your best content, to other blogs.

Conclusion

It takes time to build a successful blog, it doesn’t happen overnight. Yet you have to provide value, be everywhere. You should work on developing your blog, keep adding good content, improve your writing style (will happen overtime), do heavy promotion.

Check Your Rankings

You can easily check your rankings by searching on a keywords phrase or just a specific keyword in Google. This process can easily be confusing if you have lots of keywords. You can of course get a program to do all this.

Rank Checker

There’s a free plugin made for the browser Firefox (which in my opinion is the best browser ever made). This plugin is called “Rank Checker”. Rank Checker can check your rankings for lots of search phrases and in search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

How to Install Rank Checker

1. 1. Open Firefox, if you don’t use Firefox you need to download it. It can be downloaded from here: http://firefox.com/
2. Go to http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ and click on Download Now
3. An install windows will appear on the screen, when it comes you should click “Install Now” and then restart Firefox.

How to Use Rank Checker

Open Rank Checker’s settings by choosing Functions -> Rank Checker -> Options

Set Rank Checker to check the rankings of all your rankings in Google.com (unless you do not blog in English)

Start Rank Checker by choosing Functions -> Rank Checker -> Run

Google Analytics

To measure the power of your optimization work you have to use a great web-analysis tool to your blog. Der is lots of tools to do this, every single tool has its benefits to measure the power.

Well the most widely tool is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is free, and it is getting improved all the time and it is presenting all the important facts in a great visual way.

Access Google Analytics

1. Go to http://google.com/analytics/
2. Click on the blue button to your right.
3. If you already have a Google account (AdWords, AdSense, GMail or any other) you can use the mail and password from that. If you do not have a Google account you can create one by clicking on the link
4. Log in to Analytics with your Google account informations.
5. Click on the blue button (again).
6. Write your informations, and click the agree check-button.
7. Copy the track-code to your header in you theme (in WordPress it is: Appearance -> Editor -> header.php

Quick View of The Possibilities With Google Analytics

When you opens reports for a webpage profile in Google Analytics you will see the Dashboard. This is just lots of facts for the chosen period.

You can easily get the visitors count showed, you can choose if it should be referral, search traffic or direct traffic. You can also see the bouncerate. These numbers is the percentage of people who are leaving your pages again. Unless the visitors has clicked on something.

The average time usage on a blog is interesting relative to SEO. A high average on a blog is usually a sign that it is great content you provide your readers with.

Increase Sales by Setting up Goals

If you are setting up goals in Google Analytics you will be able to set the converting-rate for actions on specific things. You can see how many choose not to buy in a buying process. If you set up a goal will you be able to check the converting-rate for:

• Newsletter Subscribers
• Sales
• Creations of Accounts
• Downloads

How You Can Set Up Goals

1. When you are on the Dashboard you click on Edit, right under the bounce rate.
2. Click on Edit Goal One
3. Fill out the URL, chosen step, goal value and activate the goal.

You can easily improve your blog, much more with Google’s “Website Optimizer”. You can create split tests, for your landing pages, see which pages that creates the best converting rate. You can go to the Website Optimizer, using this link:

https://www.google.com/accounts/Serv…bsiteoptimizer

Networking is something you really have to do as a blogger. You simply need to connect with other bloggers. So as a blogger (no matter what niche) you should connect with bloggers like you, it’s critical for your outcome as a blogger.

You need to “build” a profile. A profile consists of these things:

1. A brand
2. How you are (sense of humor, negative or positive etc.)
3. Your writing style (should be unique)

You should not write a profile and tell “hey this is me, I’m like this” it should be something people will recognize you from. Let me give you an example. Jordan Cooper. He is a nice guy, he is honest and is extremely funny (though many people doesn’t appreciate the honesty of him.)

That’s his profile, this profile is something that somehow “defines” you. Who you are. It wouldn’t be hard not to change your writing style and how you are, because if you want trust from your readers, you will have to real, so be who you really are, in real life.

I guess if you met me now, you will be surprised how much I talk like I write. I try to make my content to sound as much as if it was me who actually were talking.

Now I don’t think that you are acting in a way online, you would not be able to act if it was offline. Because if so you will find it easy to change your writing style, etc. If you change your style all the time people will not build that trust around you, which is needed in a online business.

If you find it easy to build up a profile around your blog, then you definitely have succeeded.

Remember your profile is also a part of your brand. It is how you act, it’s who you are

I’m not as shy, online as I am in the “real” world. I am more spontaneous and probably also easier to talk with here. Well I’m not shy in “real” life, only if it’s someone who I don’t know – but aren’t we all a bit shy?

It’s just important that you maybe show a personal side of yourself on your blog, it doesn’t have to be in your post. But on your about page, that’s very important. Mostly because that it will build some trust, people would probably (after they read your awesome content) want to know a bit more about you, as a person. How you are on the other side of the screen.

So stick with one style of writing, of course your writing will improve a lot, through your blogging journey. Mine is still, I think everybody’s writing style improves, but there would not be radical changes to your writing style.

As it is now you probably already have a profile, unless you’ve just started blogging, but maybe it’s time to do a bit of changes, here and there. It can be healthy for your blog, maybe go to a person you know (in “real” life) and ask them what they think about your writing styles etc?

The thing while you may have lots of people reading your blog but you aren’t really interacting with anyone of them. If you actually try to interact with people who is commenting or just reading your blog, they will feel much more welcome and probably more likely to stay on your blog for a longer time.

Interaction Through Blogging Alliances

If you read this blog everyday, you would know what a blogging alliance is, to be short it is just a community of bloggers, you connect and stuff like that.

“Everyone thought Batman could beat the Green Hornet, because Batman had all those gadgets. But the Green Hornet won because he had Kato.” – Carrie Bradshaw (from Sex and The City)

If we look at this quote and believe what it says, it generally says “two bloggers working together will be much likelier to succeed, than if you only were one blogger.”

It is easier to build a blogging alliance than it sounds, almost everyone likes to connect and talk with other people. Especially bloggers, they love to connect. While you aren’t just connecting inside these blogging alliances, you are helping each other. Not by commenting, not by guest posting, not by sharing social traffic. Simply by trying to improve each other’s blog, with critique.

You can set up an alliance which do all the stuff mention above, but the only one you will fool is yourself. If you say to yourself: “Wow! I actually have an average of 10 retweets of my post.”

Of course I could do that as well, but if you are 9 people in this alliance and retweeting each other’s stuff then it is easy to get 10 retweets, in average for those posts.

What you really should do is share the link to your latest post. Ask them, what can I do better in this particular post? That would be much better, you get critiqued by the fellow members. They have to tell you, what they think honestly. In that way you will be able to improve your blog.

By the time you will improve and people will actually retweet your stuff because it is great. I don’t say that as a blogging alliance you shouldn’t retweet, comment and all that – but only if you feel inspired to do so.

This is a way to connect with the other bloggers in your niche, you will have something to discuss, really build a friendship that way.

Interaction Through Social Media (Meeting Potential Readers)

If you are in a non-techie industry people will not have other blogs, maybe not on Twitter, maybe not even on Facebook. At least not every single person would be on those sites.

However I am quite sure that some of them are, if you are on Twitter you will be able to interact with them in that way.

You could use TweetDeck (or something similar) do a Twitter search for your niche and whenever they talk about your niche, it will pop up. If they ask a question you could answer it in that way, you could just chat with them about this subject.

You can use Facebook, create a group about your niche and in that way start to interact with people who loves to do the same thing as you do.

Interaction is One Key, But Only One

Interaction with readers and potential readers takes time, but it will pay off, no doubt.

If you are polite and interact with your blog’s potential readers, you certainly have increased the chances of them to read your blog. It can be hard to interact with the people in your niche, if there isn’t many of them on Twitter or Facebook, but I will guarantee that there will be a couple of them on these social media sites.

It isn’t hopeless for you to start communicating with your niche. You can work together in blogging alliances with the other bloggers in your niche. You can interact with many of your  potential and readers on Twitter.

I have truly improved my blog by doing this. I have interacted with other bloggers in my niche and with potential readers and I really think it have helped me a lot, I build my community around interaction and you should do so too.

Interaction will give you one key and you will get closer to success. Unfortunately you need more than just one key to succeed.

Carrie Bradshaw (the main character) is a writer if you didn’t knew. She writes a column called Sex and The City anyway let’s get started.

There is an episode called “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda” – which means “Could Have, Would Have, Should Have.” I think this headline was amazing, and I thought about a way I could implement in on a blog post. Unfortunately Julie Roads did this before me, but I think it is worth for me to comment on.

The blogosphere changes as fast as you can say “blogosphere.” So you can’t expect everybody to keep up with everything in the blogosphere.
You can always look back and say “coulda, woulda, shoulda” – and yeah we do make mistakes. In life and in blogging.

You just have to move on. Okay you have to learn from your mistakes, but don’t think way too much about the past. You should rather go and look into the future. Of course learn from your mistakes, but you need to look into the future. Because it is in the future things happens.

“Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.” -Denis Waitley

Uniqueness

And you are all special, we are all unique. That is also why you should not go to a blog, which has success, and then copy the things they do and then expect that your blog will succeed.

We are all unique and there is no exact formula to success. That’s why you I don’t think you should ask guys like Darren Rowse how they build traffic or stuff like that. If you get the chance talking to these so-called ‘a-listers’ you should ask them questions you just can’t get an answer to anywhere else.

You shouldn’t ask them questions you can find with a simple Google search and thereby get 55.000 relevant answers to those questions. I haven’t told you that I am at the Third Tribe, but I am, and the first live call I was not impressed. The questions which was asked was something like this “Should we have links in the content of our blog to our e-commerce site?”

I just think it is waste of time, of my time, of Brian and Darren’s time. I think we should (everyone) take time to ask some relative good questions to anyone we are talking to. Instead of just asking a question. Okay, we are a bit off track here. You will also get much more noticed if you ask a great question. It doesn’t matter if you are talking to me or Darren, ask questions that is worth asking.