Content is King, Long Live The King!

Alright I admit that that it a rather silly title but for those of you who know me I often include a humorous undertone to my scribblings. However all humor aside if you take a moment and examine the statement “Content is king” you will realize that the statement is unequivocally true. Consider it an axiom of the modern internet driven age, for without content what are these sites you frequently visit? Ask yourself this simple question without good or even decent content would you bother ever visiting a site more than once?

Greetings, my name is Mikel King and I was asked by Mikkel to fill in this week as a guest blogger. I am here not to tell you how to write great or even passable content. There are already numerous posts available on this site to help guide you in that effort. I am going to take slightly different tact and show you two tools that will hopefully help you capture your thoughts and free your mind to produce the best content you are capable of. My feeling is that having the right tools to capture your ideas on paper so to speak, the easier it is to organize them into a content worth publishing.

The first tool I would like to briefly about the iPhone App from WordPress which is great for the blogger on the go. Fortunately this application works equally well on the both the iPhone, iPodTouch and if you are so blessed there is an update already available for the iPad as well. What makes the app useful is that it allows you to quickly capture your ideas and save them to your site for future development. Tru you can actually write and publish an article with this app. However, I personally only use the iPhone app for jotting down notes that I wish to expand on later. I’ve never written a complete post soup
to nuts with the app, because unfortunately for me I only connect with the app from my ipt. The iPodtTouch is somewhat limited in comparison to the iPhone because it lacks the some essentials that the mobile blogger can not live without. These being chiefly a camera and cell service.

Limitations aside the WordPress iPhone app is invaluable for maintaining a direct connection to your blog which allows you to effectively moderate your comment stream. This means that you have the ability to approve, reject and respond to comments left on your blog in a timely fashion from almost anywhere. Being a responsive to your reader base is extremely important to growing your reader base a contributing factor of why so many bloggers are on twitter.

This of course leads me to the second application that I personally find absolutely indispensable and that is the Firefox add-on ScribeFire. As I mentioned it is an add-on to the Firefox web browser that enables you to enter a split screen view of a particular site at the same time as the blog editor. The value of this tool becomes immediately apparent when you have to insert a URL into your blog. With SF you can view the site you are referencing in the top half of the browser ensuring that you have the correct URL. This is extremely handy if you are culling a list of URLs that you wish to comment about. Gone are the days of flipping back and forth between different browser windows or tabs and then returning to your blog page to paste in bits that you need.

In addition ScribeFire makes it trivial to link in rich content from other sources like YouTube, Flickr, Zemanta or other image source repositories like Twitpic. You can even upload images from your hard disk directly into the system if your account has the appropriate permission.

The ScribeFire editor includes all of the standard buttons you are accustom to in the WordPress web gui based editor. For instance if you wished to change the color of the font to emphasize a particular phrase you would just click the font color button.

Suppose you you would like to change the the formatting from left justified to right or centered. Obviously there is is another simple button to access these options. The following figure give you and idea of the options.

While ScribeFire has a multitude of easily accessed features they are not the focus of this article. I really just wanted to impress upon you how easy it is to perform common blogging tasks with these tools. They will help you concentrate on producing higher quality content by enabling you to craft your blog more efficiently. By giving your blog the unfettered creativity it deserves, your content will be king. And don’t you want your kingdom to reign long and true?

You Need A Mentor

Yep, I can promise you that a mentor will be more useful to you than almost anything else.

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?

How to Guest Post the Tactical Way

I have talked a bit about guest posting before, in this post we are going to talk about how you can write guest posts a tactical way. Let’s jump right to the meat.

You are writing guest posts to get known, to get traffic, to get readers. Just to get more popularity. I know that guest posting is a so good tool when you are trying to build your audience. It can build up traffic, credibility.

I think you should try to publish as many guest posts as you can. Just be sure not to burn out, you should always know your limits. If you are comfortable writing 1 blog post each day, then do that. If you like 1 post every second day, then go for that.

The thing is that you shouldn’t write too much, so eventually later on you will burn out. The first priority should be your blog and marketing your blog that is definitely #1. Then you can when you have written today’s blog post, then you can go for the guest post or anything else after that.

Remember content is what drives a blog.

This was a bit of a sidetrack, but I just wanted to make sure you shouldn’t go out and market your blog, without writing the content. So when you have written your blog post then write the guest post.

When Writing a Blog Post

The first thing when writing a guest post is: you should look at the blog you are about to guest post on, look at his content. How long is it, what are the topics (then you know what fits his readers) and then try to “copy” those thing.

When you do that, you should write an article that fits the blog, it should definitely be quality. Give away your best articles, that is what you should do when you write a guest post. Quality, quality and quality.

So the only thing is not the post. You need a bioline. These are important, that is the lines where your blog link is. It should be an appealing and descriptive text of you and your blog. Much like an elevator pitch.

It might be a good idea to talk with the guy, before submitting the post. Talk to him and ask if it is okay if you send him an guest article? And if he says, yeah sure. Cool then you’re in his little club. After some hours when you have written the post, give it to him. Be sure you have proof  read it. It really is important. That everything is good here.

The Day After the Blog Post

Now this is when we start getting more tactical. You already know the kind of stuff he is producing, what kind of content.

The last cause, “what kind of content” is important.

Because after you published the article, people will stream on to your blog and they will read more of your content because they liked it so much.

And you want to satisfy them, they want some good content. Therefore you do need your next blog article to consist of nothing but quality. The same way that your guest post was. Not only the quality way, but also the “kind of content” alike. So they if his content is quite techy, then your next blog post should also be techy.

Then people will subscribe, the days after the blog post you should keep doing this a few days after. Then you will be able to gain some readers from that guest post, instead of just traffic for a couple of days.

Take care, just study the audience you are about to post for, before posting.

This reminds me of, do you want to contribute on DaneBlogger?

Does Article Marketing Work? I Just Increased My Income by 66.69% With Three Articles

Guest post by Britt Malka

Often, it’s not easy to measure how much impact article marketing really has.

You’ve probably seen an increase in your traffic, but did it affect the bottom line of your bank account at the end of the month?

Last year, I decided to participate in the Hundred Articles in Hundred Days event that started January 1st, and I’m only a little behind schedule. Out of the articles I’ve written so far, three of them pointed to a specific page in the resource box.

Allow me to go more into details here, so you really will be able to see, just how powerful article marketing is.

A while ago, I purchased the Mini-Site Formula, and I decided to test it. So I followed the instructions, and build a page which I chose to put only eBay ads on.

What really intrigued me about this product was that there were no hype about it. If you could make about $3 per day, you’ve reached your goal. Then you could make a new site that made $3 per day, and after a while, you would make real good money.

A few videos points to the site, but I haven’t really been advertising for it in any way. Even so, this site made me money each month. Not a lot, but some, and for being a site, I almost never write on, I’m pretty satisfied. Last month I received 28 euro ($39), and it’s been around those numbers every month.

The site is made up as a blog, where I have written 19 short posts.

When I submitted three of my articles to Ezine Articles, I pointed to one specific blog post in three of them, and not only did I see a spike in the traffic. I could also measure an increase in the gains, I’ve made so far (the month’s not finished yet).

I went from 28,01 euro last month to 46,69 this month, and since eBay not shows you gain for the last two days, I can make much more than that, before the end of January.

That’s a huge increase of 66.69%.

Or more than $9 per article, if you like.

Would you think it’s worth your time to write articles, if you knew that each of them would bring in at least $9 already the first month?

One of the advantages with articles is that they stay online. The $9 I gained more per article was just this month’s result. I expect that to be much higher next month.

So, I’m pretty happy that I decided to join the Hundred Articles in Hundred Days challenge, because that was the motivation I needed to get started writing a serious amount of articles. After all – one article a day? How hard can that be?

You’ll see, it’s fun, especially when the money starts pouring in.

Britt Malka is from Denmark, she knows how to write, in a very good and attractive way. She is big in Denmark, really a writing-expert. So take notes, folks.

How to Build Credibility for your Blog

The most important thing which makes a blogger successful and different from others is its credibility. Thousands of blogs are created every day in Blogosphere but the thing which keeps attracting your loyal readers is your credibility. If you are launching an online campaign or promoting an affiliate product, the thing which will influence buy or not to buy decision of your readers would be your credibility. In Short, credibility is an only key to success in online world when web is full of lot of SCAMS. Since for Bloggers like us, Blog is the only medium with which we can interact with our readers, below are the ways which can help you to build credibility for your blog.

Selecting Niche: – You should blog about the things which are related to your personal Interests and your enjoy reading, writing and talking about them. Make sure that you have good level of information about things in your niche. Don’t select a niche under influence of other Successful blogs. Write about the things in which you have some experience and for which you are passionate about so that you can establish yourself as an expert in long term

Be Consistent: – The thing which is common in almost all authority blogs on web is their consistency and focus in providing quality content which make them a credible source of information. Being consistent in providing information and updating blog would help your readers to know more about you, what you do and your opinions about the niche.

Building Relationships in Community: – One of the best ways to build credibility is to build relationships with other bloggers in your niche especially the Industry leaders. Some of the common methods which you can use to build relationships in Blogosphere are doing Guest posts, taking interviews, participating in niche forums or communities.  It may take some time to get noticed by leaders but it would be much easier for you to grow after being noticed.

High Quality Content: – As we all Know that Content is King. Visitors come to your blog for getting information. Establish your blog as a source of High Quality content which is useful for your readers. Providing content which help the readers would help you to win respect from your readers and enhance your credibility in the community.

Level of Interaction: – Another factor which affects  blog credibility is how you interact with your current readers. Don’t be a kind of blogger who just write the post and never participate in comments. Everybody likes his voice to get heard, which is in the form of comments in case of blog. Be Responsive and interact with your readers to improve your credibility.

Transparency: – Don’t try to hide anything from your readers or to fool them. You should be honest while giving you opinions on your blog or when telling about your motivations to the readers. Always add an “About” and “contact-us” page on your blog so that your readers can know more about you and can easily contact you. These pages always help in increasing credibility of a blog

I hope these tips would really help you to make your Blog more credible. Building Credibility in Blogosphere takes a lot of time and it won’t happen overnight. Credibility is not rocket science or a fixed formula which you can implement it is a journey on which you should be always ready for learning from your experiences.

Razz Barr is a Freelance Writer and loves to write on Landing Pages, Affiliate Marketing, SEO, Web 2.0 and Technology.

Implement What You Read, Don’t Just Read On!

So many bloggers are going all round the internet reading blogs, downloading ebooks, buying books, all about blogging and other blogging-related stuff, well, I think that this is so great a thing that they are doing. But are they implementing what they are absorbing into their minds through reading? That is the question here.

Most bloggers complain about not succeeding with their blogs and other unsuccessful things related to their blogging career and I know that this is caused by many factors but I think that not implementing what they read is a big factor of blogs being unsuccessful and I even wrote a post relating to bloggers taking action about what they learn about blogging on their blog which I titled “Stop Roaming From Blog To Blog And Concentrate On Yours“.

And because of most bloggers not implementing what they read, many authors who write ebooks and books related to blogging often emphasize in their ebooks and books that what is required most is that the reader implements or takes action on what they are reading or else all that they’ve read won’t work and would just go to waste.

So I have 3 advices to give to all bloggers on how they can implement what they read and get benefits.

1. Implement What You Read: After reading from a blog, a book, or an ebook implement the tips and techniques that you think your blog will benefit from.
2. Take Notes Of What You Want To Apply: When reading take note of what you would want to apply to your blog from the blog, book, or ebook. You can take note with your mind or take note with a pen and paper or notebook (I recommend the notebook). I recommending taking note with a pen and paper or notebook because with that when you forget about the things you have taken note of, you can still come back to the notebook to refer to it than taking note with your mind where you are highly prone to forget.
3. Remodel The Tips And Techniques To Fit Your Blog: When you apply or are applying the tips and techniques you’ve learnt from the blog, ebook, or book and they don’t fit your blog so well, make sure to remodel or restructure them to fit your blog so as to be of great benefit to your blog.

So this is my advice today for all bloggers about implementing what you read.

Do you implement what you read? If so, how often do you do it? If not, why don’t you do it?

Please share your answers to the questions above and any other thoughts you have about what I’ve talked about today in the comments field below. Thanks .

Hi I’m Shirley and I’m a young Internet entrepeneur. I blog about entrepreneurship, blogging, and make money online at my personal blog, Shirley’s Zone.

10 Qualities a Startup Founder Should Have

From thousands of startups launched each day only 10% of them become successful and remaining 90% die within first two years of their launch. In this article I would be trying to explore the qualities which should be present in the startup founder to make his/her startup successful.

1. Know his stuff: – Startup founder should have the skills which he/she is planning to offer to his clients. If your venture is related to web design services, then as a founder you should know how to design a professional website. The Startups which depends completely on their employees have high probability of Failure as compared to others.

2. Love his work: – Many founders lose their interest and focus after some time and start looking for other options. The main reason behind this is not getting the desired results as expected. Your startup should be related to work which you always love to do so that you can’t lose your Focus easily.

3. Have a Vision: – You should have vision in your mind where you want to take your business after few years. Businesses without any Goal to achieve can’t grow. You have to set both long-term and short-term goals which will motivate you and help you to grow.

4. Ability to Manage Cash Flow: – Cash Flow is like Blood for your Business. You need Funds to keep your startup alive so you should know how to convince investors to generate funds and to manage the available funds in most efficient way.

5. Enjoys meeting with People: – A successful startup founder should know how to develop networks online and offline. He should enjoy doing interaction with his target audience. More relations you are going to develop, the more revenues you will generate.

6.Time Management Skills: – As a founder, you have lot to do in very less time and it could be very difficult because there is nobody to monitor you.  Divide your tasks on basis of their priorities and allocate fix amount of time to them. Remember a minute spent in organizing things means an hour saved.

7. Strong enough to take Risks: – We all know the “No Risk, No Gain” Principle. If you are founder then you have to take risks at various phases of your venture and you have to be strong enough to do this. Always remain ready to learn from your Failures and then try again. Thomas Edison once said “I did not fail I found 2000 ways not to make a light bulb”

8. Ability to Sale and Negotiate: – Selling here does not mean selling product to customer but it means the ability to persuade people and getting them to do what you want them to do. The other skill you should have is skill to negotiate. You have to negotiate with your clients, business partners etc many times to get great deals.

9.Long learner: – When technology is changing every day you should be always ready to learn new things and keep your skills up to date to satisfy your customer requirements.

10. Patience: – Patience is the key to success and we all know that Every Business needs time to attract customers and to generate revenues. Put your ideas in to action and wait to see results. If you are looking for quick overnight success then launching a startup is not good option for you.

Rudo Malequin works as Internet Marketing Executive for Fortepromo which creates customized promotional products for startups that help them to promote their brand in market.

The Most Difficult Comment You Can Write

The most difficult comment you can write on a blog may be received with somewhat mixed feelings. One world-famous blogger only allowed positive comments on his blog. He ended up appearing as though he only liked yes-men around him. I explained what I write in this blog article to him, and today he has changed his moderation policy.

Maybe you should review your policy also.

Be Grateful for Comments
If a reader makes an effort to express valid points, you need to acknowledge this, and move on with better focus and attention towards weaker elements in your writing. You should be grateful for comments, even when you might disagree a bit, because most people just move on. If they don’t like your blog, they simply never come back.

Why lose visitors when you can see the point being made is valid? It’s like leaving money on the table…

Positive Development Over Time
All blog articles have strong points and some weak points. Just go back a year or two in your archive. You can see the difference in your skills straight away. We all can. The positive development over time shows you improve as you write more and more.

Stephen King didn’t just write it all in one go. He reviewed his material and proofreaders did the same. If you go through all his books I am sure you might find one spelling error or a fault in grammar. He had MANY people review his material, so why should it be any wonder if you make a mistake or two when you do all the work on your blog alone.

Realize the elements you already do. You update your blog software, you write articles, you review comments, you delete spam, you announce on Twitter, Facebook etc. All of that takes time, and you should be glad you don’t make even more mistakes.

How You Can Earn From Applying This
Now, the logical question that comes to mind is: “How can I earn anything from applying this?” It’s a good question. Actually, the answer is psychological. When you acknowledge an error, you’re different from all the wannabe-gurus. You’re showing you’re human. People like that, and it will increase your online credibility.

So why not acknowledge you DO make mistakes? Be honest and admit there is a reason why you’re better today than you were a couple of years ago. Be glad you developed in a positive direction. It’s the way to go. Blog comments can help you reach that goal.

Guest blogger Henrik Blunck maintains numerous blogs you can see right here: http://blunckmeister.googlepages.com.

I Forced 10 People To Join My List And This Idea Still Pays My Rent

“If you follow your passion, the money will follow” goes the old saying. While this is not always the truth, it could be, with a twist.

One of my old passions, computers, is still paying my rent and more, every month. But let me start with the beginning…

About eight or nine years ago, I stumbled over a free course in writing news letters. I had no idea about what I could use that for, but I thought the idea sounded intriguing, so I studied the course with great eager.

We ran a mailing list for our former students, we had taught about using computer programs, so that they could continue to ask questions and get answers that way. One day, I started to post tips on this list, and after a while, I got an idea: Why not make a news letter (I didn’t know the word Ezine at that time) with my tips?

So I asked, or rather almost forced, the members of our computer list to join my news letter.

Soon the word spread, and I had one hundred people who received my tips every week. Newcomers would ask me for old news letters, so I put up the tips in a folder on one of my sites.

One day, my husband gave me a great gift: My very first domain, dedicated to my tips.

Little did he know that years later, this would be the domain that payed our rent.

At that time, it was only a hobby, my passion lived out. I spend around 10 hours per week, later on as much as 20 hours per week, finding and writing tips, and I made only very little money from the ads, I had started to put in my ezine.

What I created was a high quality website with unique content, frequently updated, since I wrote five new tips each week.

It was only after discovering AdSense, and especially after learning how to make the ads blend with my content that things changed, and I started to make real money.

Although it is true that I was able to make money with my passion, it also took a lot of work, especially in the beginning, and there was also one other ingredients present: A targeted market.

People were eager to learn tips about creating homepages and adding useful programs to their computers. They actively searched for the subjects, I had written about, and almost every time somebody on our computer mailing list asked a question, I could answer with a URL to my site. I had already answered that question, before they even posed it.

If you have a dream about making a living online, go for that dream. If you have a passion, check if that passion could make you money. You have to have an audience that would be willing to pay to get a solution to their problems, or at least be willing to join your list, and click on the links, you provide them.

My last piece of advice for you: Go for it!

Thank you for taking your time reading this. I am Britt Malka, and I’ve been making a living online since the year 2000, and loving every minute of it – even the early struggles endeavoring to make ends meet.

If you would like a copy of my report about “How to write blog posts in 5 minutes or less”, it’s yours for free at http://FreeContentSystem.com/5minblogs

Guest posting is now possible on DaneBlogger

Personal message to every reader: Thanks for reading this blog, I really appreciate it.

This day I have launched something new on DaneBlogger, the option of guest posts. So every smart reader will be able to fill content onto DaneBlogger. I already have one, guest post here on DaneBlogger.

You will be able to see every blog post written by others than me in the category called Guest posts and the tag guest post.

It is my pleasure to announce this, as I’m going on vacation this week. This doesn’t mean that the blog will be on standby, far from. I’m going to give it some content. I’ll just be offline, a lot.

This also means that this week is going to have our first guest post included (so exciting). I can easily tell you that the guest post will be online Wednesday. So be sure to look at the blog on Wednesday.

If you would like to participate on DaneBlogger as a guest writer, you should go to the page called: Write For DaneBlogger. And follow the instructions on that page.

I will be back from vacation on Friday, I think. It is a quite short, holiday. It’s just to relax.

Have a nice holiday, probably going to see you on Twitter later!