If you’re like me, you get a lot of email newsletters from top bloggers. Many of them are awful pushy, no?

I’m not talking about the bloggers I really like. A few leaders in the blogosphere are honest about what it really takes to earn big money online, and give you practical tools that help you grow your income.

I mean the other ones. You know the type — they send you an email every freakin’ day (or twice or three times even!), and every single post is basically a sales pitch. Usually, for something expensive.

They send you almost no useful advice through their free newsletter. It’s just “buy my stuff and you’ll find out how to be awesome like me.”

I’m pretty skeptical of most of these “I’m jet-setting around the world while my blog earns on autopilot…let me teach you how!” types.

To be frank, I think many of these people are flat-out liars.

They’re really getting rich because thousands of suckers are paying them to explain how they’re getting rich. Which is only happening for them because you just paid for their ‘how-to-get-rich’ course!

Here are the red-flag messages from mega-bloggers that send me running the other way:

1. I’ll show you how I did it, and you can do the same thing and become a huge success. Here’s the thing: Most blogging-success gurus you run across made it big a while back. Many of them came up as blogging was just getting started, and the playing field was a whole lot emptier. Things have changed a lot since then. Back when, one guest blog post on a popular blog might get you 300 new subscribers — but I know few people who’re seeing that now. What worked for them back in ’05 isn’t going to work for you. Their system is out of date.
2. You can be just like me. Really, you can’t. Why? Because we are all unique individuals. You will never be this blogger. You can only be the best blogger you are, by exploiting your own uniqueness and your expertise to the maximum. Mimicking their blog topic, their marketing plan, and the products they sell is not going to work. You’ll have to slog through on your own and figure out your audience, what they need from you, and what they would buy. There is no copycat success in blogging.
3. With my tips, you will make money in your sleep on autopilot. I think a tiny number of people are actually making this happen. Hit blogs usually arise from a confluence of several important factors — a hot niche topic, celebrity-blogger friends who promote it, a killer product or two, relentless promotion, and finally a smattering of sheer luck. Most of the successful bloggers I know work like dogs. They have multiple sites, they constantly develop and launch new courses or ebooks. Sure, as their site gets more subscribers they can earn more with the same amount of effort. But reports that bloggers are lying about in a hammock full-time while earning bazillions are greatly exaggerated.
4. It’s easy to become an online millionaire. If this were really true, we’d all be rich by now, hmm?
5. Just affiliate sell my expensive thing, and you’ll be rich. Not necessarily, if your expensive thing isn’t a fit for my readers. But lots of affiliates helping sell your expensive thing definitely makes the star blogger rich. The reality: You have to be careful what products you affiliate sell, or you risk driving subscribers away.

How can you really attract more business with your site? Find out Wednesday, when I hold a Blog and Writer Site Review Webinar with whip-smart blogger Stanford Smith of Pushing Social. We’ll be using Freelance Writers Den members’ own blogs and writer sites to demonstrate simple changes you can make to get more visitors, subscribers, and buyers. You won’t get rich in your sleep on autopilot, but we’ll give you some proven, practical tools for growing your income. This event includes a report with our 20 best tips for a successful website.

Congrats to Shana, whose questions on Friday’s post about how to make her writer site stand out won her a 1-week free pass to the Den and a chance to get her site reviewed in the Webinar.

About two years ago, I spun off this blog from my writer site. I did it in large part because I thought Make a Living Writing had real money-earning potential.

I was planning to write an e-book…but in the meanwhile, I thought I could sell some other people’s products.

I’d never sold anything to anyone in my life prior to this. But I had a plan.

“I know,” I thought. “I could sell some books about writing on one of those Amazon carts!”

That was about all I knew about affiliate selling…getting an Amazon cart.

So I tried that. To date, I think I still haven’t hit $100 and triggered a payment.

Eventually, I took the Amazon cart down.

Clearly, there was more to being a successful affiliate seller that I hadn’t figured out yet.

I eventually figured out how affiliate selling really works, when I joined A-List Blogger Club. I got some tips in there on how to do affiliate selling that not only works, but doesn’t feel sleazy or obnoxious.

These days, I make a nice side income from affiliate sales. I’ve been told I’m a top seller for more than one of my products.

What turned it around for me? Here’s my guide to affiliate-sales success:

Get 1,000 subscribers. It’s unlikely you’ll have enough traffic to sell much below this level of readership. If you’ve got 20 subscribers and ads plastered all over, take them down. They’re probably driving people away.

Find out what your readers need. The first step on the road to affiliate cash is listening to your readers. What are their problems? Take polls or surveys, ask open questions on your blog posts that drive a lot of comments. I’ve even offered freebies in return for readers’ opinions. Without this knowledge, you’re not going to be able to sell anything, and your sales pitches will annoy people and make them unsubscribe. 

Get closer to readers. If possible, hold live events where you can talk live with readers, either in person or online. At one Webinar I put on, for instance, I made a very interesting discovery: While I thought most freelance writers have their own website up, in fact that’s not true. I’ve found about 75 percent of my readers don’t yet have a website or blog. In general, many had very nascent freelance-writing businesses. I also got that many freelance writers have small budgets for investing in their business — so selling some $800 marketing course wasn’t going to work.

Find out what they plan to buy. When you know readers’ needs, then you sell them things they are likely going to need and will probably buy in any case. My new-writer readers, I realized, need quite a few things to get their business going: Web hosting, accounting software, a payment cart, email marketing help, and a lot of information and support.

Watch out for junk products. The potential pitfall here: A lot of products you find online are stupid, crappy ripoffs. So how do you select the right products to try to sell to you readers? I had a major insight: I didn’t want to just go on ClickBank or somewhere, grab whatever I saw that was vaguely related to freelance writing, and slap it on here. I had a gut instinct that would be a mistake, and could put the credibility of my whole site at risk.

Test out products and services. I started thinking about the products I was using to make my freelance writing business successful — products I already knew were great. I started to recommend them, beginning with A-List. I tried it out, thought the resources and support were amazing, and quickly began making far more than my membership dues in affiliate sales. For me, selling monthly membership products where you get paid every month your referrals stay in is the bomb.

I also discovered that the National Association of Independent Writers & Editors (NAIWE) offered a free, hosted WordPress blog site with their $99 memberships. I joined, checked it out, and thought their offering was a great, one-stop, affordable solution for my readers who don’t yet have a blog and are boggled by how to get started — plus, your blog posts get promoted by NAIWE on its site and on Twitter, so it’s a marketing bargain, too. What a cheap, plug-and-play way to stop wondering how to do blogging, and get your writing portfolio out there, today.

Recommend your favorite products. Once you’ve identified the right items to sell, it’s time to share your enthusiasm for them with readers. My best strategy has been to do blog posts about my experiences with a product or service. That’s what I did with A-List, writing about how the community helped me improve my blog’s design, among other things. Show your readers exactly how you benefited from the product, and they get it right away. Live events are great for discussing products you recommend, too.

How to tell you’re selling the right stuff. I found that when I talked about products I personally use and love, I didn’t feel like I needed to take a shower afterwards. It felt perfectly natural. For instance, I learned many readers are on free blog hosting such as Blogger and will probably want to switch to paid hosting at some point. They’ll need a good web host with great support staff, and I use one — Dreamhost. It’s more like you’re helping readers out with your recommendation, and less like you’re forcing something on them.

Find better-paying programs. While Amazon gives you a pittance on each book you sell (“it’s failtastic,” as one blogger described it to me), reaching out directly to authors and publishing houses can get you commissions of 30 percent or better. Finally, I began making some actual coin on books writers bought through my site.

Find free-to-pay offers. One of the offer types I like best is selling products or services that start out free. One I sell here is email-marketing service Mailchimp (free to the first 2,000 subscribers). I think of these as no-harm-no-foul — your readers can try them out and if they don’t like them, they leave, having spent nothing. If they like it and it helps make their business grow, you end up profiting. Win-win doesn’t getting any more winning than that.

Create a Products I Love page. I soon realized I didn’t want dozens of ads cluttering up my sidebar. Also, blog posts you write about your affiliate products soon disappear in your blogroll. So I grouped my affiliate recommendations on a Products I Love page. I’m happy to have a chance to thank Tammy Strobel of Rowdy Kittens for showing me this approach. Not only does this keep ads from junking up my home page too much, it allows me to link to that page and leave one affiliate-sales disclosure (required by FCC law) over there, which is more elegant than having to mention it in each blog post where you talk about a product you affiliate sell.

Keep updating. As your blog and business evolves, your readers may have different needs. Review your affiliate products and services regularly to see if it’s time to add or drop products. Personally, I recently got more organized about tracking invoices and payments and got Freshbooks, which is affordable and super-easy to use — and which is free for the first few clients you track. I immediately realized this would be useful to lots of other writers who need to get better organized financially, so it got added to my affiliate services list.

What’s your experience with affiliate sales? Leave a comment and tell us what’s worked — or not — for you.

By Brandon Yanofsky

Have you ever picked up a book and started reading just because the cover was interesting?

If you have, you’ve experienced firsthand the power of design. Beautiful books just beg to be picked up and read.

Likewise, your website’s visitors are more likely to read your articles if they are well-designed.

That’s why freelance writers need to learn design — especially writers who have their own blogs.

Below, I’ve laid out five design basics that will improve your blog and attract readers.

1. Whitespace

Readers hate blocks of text. Just look at the following passages:

Über den „toten Bühl“, einen Teil der Hochebene im südlichen Schwarzwald Badens, braust der Herbstwind in langen Stößen; es seufzt der Tann in den niederen Lagen, oben aber auf der kahlen Höhe ächzen die wenigen alten knorrigen Buchen und am einsam ragenden Kruzifix bebt die Holzfigur des Heilandes, nachdem Regen und Wind die Holznägel gelockert und die Befestigung mürbe gemacht haben. Öd und rauh, unwirtlich ist dieser Strich badischen Schwarzwaldlandes, den der Volksmund selbst bezeichnend den „toten Bühl“ nennt, weil die Hügelreihe wahrhaftig an den Tod der Natur gemahnt, heimgesucht von scharfem Westwind und häufigem starken Schneefall, der schon auf die alten Strohdächer der Walddörfer fällt, wenn drüben am glitzernden Rhein, im sonnigen Garten des badischen Unterlandes Wiesen und Matten noch im spätsommerlichen Glanze prangen.

versus

Über den „toten Bühl“, einen Teil der Hochebene im südlichen Schwarzwald Badens, braust der Herbstwind in langen Stößen; es seufzt der Tann in den niederen Lagen, oben aber auf der kahlen Höhe ächzen die wenigen alten knorrigen Buchen und am einsam ragenden Kruzifix bebt die Holzfigur des Heilandes,

Nachdem Regen und Wind die Holznägel gelockert

und die Befestigung mürbe gemacht haben. Öd und rauh, unwirtlich ist dieser Strich badischen Schwarzwaldlandes,

Dden der Volksmund selbst bezeichnend den „toten Bühl“ nennt, weil die Hügelreihe wahrhaftig an den Tod der Natur gemahnt, heimgesucht von scharfem Westwind und häufigem starken Schneefall, der schon auf die alten Strohdächer der Walddörfer fällt, wenn drüben am glitzernden Rhein, im sonnigen Garten des badischen Unterlandes Wiesen und Matten noch im spätsommerlichen Glanze prangen.

Both are the exact same paragraphs, in German. The only difference is one has whitespace, and the other doesn’t.

Whitespace is basically parts of a page that have nothing there (like the white of a blank piece of paper).

An article that’s one giant block of text isn’t attractive to the eye. Your visitors are less likely to read these articles.

2. Visuals

Just as you can use whitespace to break up blocks of text, you can also use visuals. A well placed visual will make your text more appealing and inviting to readers.

However, don’t limit yourself to images. Lists, italicized text, and checkmarks are other ways to add visual appeal. As well as blockquotes, such as the one below:

This is a blockquote.

3. Headers

In addition to whitespace and visuals, consider using headers so your articles have sections.

I’m using headers in this article. Each design point is divided into a section with a bolded, large header.

By sectioning your post with headers, you make your post easier to digest, and therefore more inviting.

4. Font

There are two basic “families” of fonts: serif and sans-serif (there are more, but the others are for decorative purposes).

There is one difference: serif has the little tails on the ends of strokes for each letter. Sans-serif does not. (Click here to see examples.)

When deciding which to use, you need to balance readability and design.

Serif is much easier to read, especially for long form writing. That’s why novels use serif fonts.

However, sans-serif has a more modern look. That’s why many websites (including this one) use sans-serif.

When deciding which to use, consider your reader. While the sans-serif fonts may be more appealing, if you write long posts, it may be beneficial to use serif fonts.

5. Color

Colors are a challenge. But here are some tips when choosing colors for your blog.

Generally, pick only two or three colors for your blog (a great tip from Pamela Wilson). If you have more, it can get chaotic and distracting.

Also check out Colour Lovers for some great color tips and palettes.

One important thing to keep in mind with colors is readability. The reason black text on a white background is used so often is because it contrasts and makes it much easier to read.

Black text on a dark red background, on the other hand, doesn’t offer much contrast and is very hard to read.

When choosing your text and background colors, find something that contrasts.

Two Words of Caution

Design is about balance.

Too much whitespace is just as bad as no whitespace. Too many visuals can distract from your writing.

Let your intuition guide you. If you think it might be overboard, it probably is.

Rules Are Meant to Be Broken

These rules are, like all rules, meant to be broken. There will come a time when a block of text may be appropriate, or your blog may need 10 colors. Again, use your intuition.

Remember: design matters. People do judge books by their covers.

You can use your blog posts to attract paid blogging gigs.

Good-paying ones, too — not $20 a post.

Ever wonder what company marketing managers and publication editors look for in a personal blog, when they’re checking you out and thinking about hiring you?

I’ve done a lot of paid blogging… for companies, publications…even a TV network.

In my experience, there are some basic elements prospective clients want to see on your blog that make them go “Aha! This person is a pro blogger who could help me build my audience.”

Many blogs have some of these features, but most blogs don’t have them all.

How does your blog stack up? Here are seven features that in my experience really help you get hired off your blog:

1. You physically know how to do it. Most of you will have this one nailed, but to take it from the top, they want to see you know how to put up a post. It looks nice and clean, in a big readable font that’s consistent through your blog. They see you’re posting regularly — at least a couple times a month.
2. Your design is uncluttered. There aren’t a bunch of goofy widgets, flashing ads, mutiple sidebars, or dark backgrounds with white letters. Clean design also means not having .blogger or .wordpress or something in your URL. Pay the tiny fee and get hosting — it really makes you look a lot more pro.
3. You understand blog style. Your posts are short and scannable, with numbered or bulleted points, or useful subheads that guide the reader through your post. Paragraphs are short, too. Each post has several links to other useful information that are anchored to appropriate key words. Let your links be neither dead (non-working) nor naked (typed out in full as in http://www….whatever… rather than linked to anchored words).
4. You stick to a niche. In my experience, it doesn’t really matter what your niche topic is (as long as it’s not your love of porn or something). I’ve gotten gigs writing about surety bonds, unsecured credit lines, and other business-dorky topics off this writing blog. What matters is that you show you understand niche blogging and the prospect can see you know how to develop a lot of post ideas on a single topic. You’re not blogging about what your cat ate or whatever comes to mind that day or weird YouTube videos…just about your chosen subject. Every paying client will want you to stick strictly to their niche, so it’s really important to show you get this.
5. You know how to find, add and properly attribute images. They should be simple, clean images installed at the top of each post, nice and big, half-column width (not taking up the entire top of the post so that the first paragraph is pushed down below it). If you’re really slick, you understand sightlines, and eyes in faces or diagonal lines in photos point readers toward your copy, not away from it. If they’re not paid photos, you have a citation and link to where they came from.
6. You use social sharing buttons appropriately and are active in social media. Most paying clients are hoping you’ll know how to retweet your posts and help promote your content. Buttons on your site (that are hopefully getting used by your readers) show you get social-media marketing, while a lack of buttons leave them wondering.
7. You get and respond to reader comments. Prospects want to see you know how to write the kind of posts that can draw in readers and engage them enough to leave comments. If people do leave comments, they can see you respond appropriately.

You might also want to add a “hire me” tab to your blog to make it plain that you are interested in paying work. I’m hearing from some writers that helped them start getting nibbles from prospects, though it can work even without one. I had clients contacting me before I put one up.

Are you using your blog to get paying gigs? Leave a comment and tell us your approach.

By Brandon Yanofsky

I began blogging just as a way to keep a journal. But after one of my first blog posts received a comment from Chris Brogan, one of my long time idols, I knew I was on to something.

I then started a small business marketing blog, which got me many business consulting gigs. And lately, I’ve been helping startups launch and manage their own blogs.

All in all, my blogging has grown into quite a business.

If you want all this, you need to set yourself up for success. Here are the five lessons I’ve learned as I built my successful blogging business:

1. Write first, design later

While your blog’s design is important, it’s not nearly as important as your writing. Think about it: A horribly designed yet well written blog will always have more readers than a gorgeously designed yet poorly written blog.

So in the initial stages of beginning your blog, concentrate on writing articles. Once you have a healthy inventory of articles, you can begin concentrating on the design.

2. Read…all the time

Whenever you’re not writing, you should be reading. Read magazines, books, blogs, newspapers, newspaper ads, the backs of cereal boxes.

Not only will reading expand your knowledge, but it will improve your writing skills.

3. The only rule is: There are no rules

I get many questions along these lines:

“How long should my posts be?”
“How many images should I include?”
“Should I write in first or third person?”

There really is no answer. Some experts will say that a 500-word article is optimal, while others say it’s 750 words. To be honest, I’ve seen great posts as short as only three words and others as long as 5,000 words.

In blogging, there are no solid rules.

4. Perfection will kill your blog

Perfection is a myth. You could spend your entire life writing one blog post and it still won’t be perfect.

So don’t try and make every one of your posts perfect. Set a limit to the number of drafts you do. For me, I limit myself to three drafts. After that, I publish.

5. Know who you’re writing for

Keep your reader in mind as you write. Most writers will create an imaginary person they envision reading their work. As they write, they think, “How will she react to this?” Doing so helps writers write much better.

Do the same with your blog. Create your own imaginary reader.

Got any questions about how to get started blogging? Leave them in the comments below.

Learn more about blogging with Brandon Yanofsky’s FREE blogging course, available through B-List Marketing.

Photo: Stock.xchng – creactions

I can remember when all I needed to know as a writer was how to write — and maybe find the ‘start’ button on my computer and launch Microsoft Word.

Life as a 21st Century writer is different, hmmm?

Among the programs I’ve learned to use — or tried to figure out — in the past couple years as I started blogging are WordPress, Moveable Type, Blogger, about three other custom-made corporate blog platforms, DreamHost, Audacity, TextWrangler, Camtasia, Scribe, Screenflow, PowerPoint, Freshbooks, Freebinar, GoToWebinar, GVO Conference, Picnik, CyberDuck…not to mention countless plug-ins for WordPress I needed to figure out how to configure, and of course basic HTML coding.

Did I mention technology makes me cry?

I’m not speaking figuratively here. My pathetic wails can be heard throughout the house as I desperately try to, say, get Mailchimp to hook up to e-junkie. Or get an mpeg-4 to embed on a WordPress page.

You name it in technology, and I’m not very good at it. It doesn’t come naturally to me. At all.

But I just keep on slogging my way through technology. Next up: Wishlist Member and iDev, so I can run a functional affiliate program and a membership community.

I know many other writers are frustrated with the technology we have to use. Some day I’m sure some brilliant technologist will make it all effortlessly talk to each other and make it easy to understand for lay people, but until then we just have to keep wrestling with it.

My rules for dealing with technology:

• Don’t let it stop you. If you need a technology to enable your writing career, make up your mind that nothing is going to keep you from figuring out how it works. Attitude is important here.
• Don’t spend a lot. Any time you’re thinking about paying for an expensive technology, keeping looking. There’s probably a free or moderately priced one available that’ll do the job.
• Hire a teen. They’re cheap and know a lot. I got one from my high school’s digital design class who worked out for about 18 months, and I spent a big $120 or so in all.
• Take a class. If you’ve been holding back on blogging because you feel overwhelmed by WordPress, classes seem pretty plentiful — find one through a networking group or your local community college.
• Hire a pro if you really need to. I just did a $100 consulting hour with a video specialist to figure out the best solution for recording, storing, and managing my Webinar files. Sometimes, if it’ll save days of agony, it’s worth it to get some expert advice to cut to the chase. I currently use my webmaster David Hogg for the tricky stuff I haven’t mastered yet such as hiding landing pages from WordPress’s navigation, and giving my writer site a complete overhaul.
• Learn to do as much of it yourself as you can. It really saves a bundle. When you hire someone to do something, make them teach you what they did at the end.
• Be prepared for setbacks. I personally had one yesterday, and it really sucked. But we’ll get it sorted.
• Know that for writers today, technology is power. The more types of technology you understand, the more types of online writing gigs you can go after. Also, it’s a real high when you finally get it. Recently, I gained the ability to pop an audio recording or screencast onto a web page and make it show up in a little recording-player thingy, with a “play” button and everything. Win! It’s a terrific feeling when you can press a button or enter a string of text and make something amazing happen on your blog, instantly.
• Join a community where you can get low-cost, ongoing help. I wouldn’t have been able to figure out half this stuff — or it would have taken years longer — without picking myself up, drying my tears, and heading off to the forums on A-List Blogger Club to ask for advice. There are also video trainings inside the club on some of the technologies that are lifesavers. I was really lost on the best way to work with audio and video files, until I checked out the A-List materials in their “Create Courses That Sell” module. What do you know — step-by-step instructions from Mary Jaksch on how to export out of Audacity, and how to use Camtasia. The technical advice I’ve been able to get inside A-List has been a lifesaver for me, over and over.

What technology do you rely on as a writer, and how easy did you find it to learn? Leave a comment and tell us about your technology challenges.

A-List Alert: I just discovered the A-List Blogger Club is raising its rates Sunday night! If you’ve ever wanted to join a community with vast resources and terrific support for your blogging journey, now’s the time. A-List Blogger Club is going to be $27 a month, but everyone who joins before Sunday stays at $20 a month, forever.

I’ll even make the deal sweeter — join through my site before the rates go up, and I’ll send you a free, one-hour recording I recently made: The Top 10 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Making Money, which features Pushing Social’s Stanford Smith.

Photo: Stock.xchng – mokra

Less than a year ago, this blog had fewer than 300 subscribers. Now, it’s headed toward 2,000.

This is the story of how I skyrocketed my blog subscribers — and how you can, too.

I tried a lot of strategies — and some of them worked. The good news is, the things that worked for me are things any blogger can do to grow their audience. You’re pretty much guaranteed you will add subscribers.

How many subscribers you add depends on how well you execute your plan — and definitely on a little bit of luck! — but your numbers will definitely go up.

Before I start, I just want to say that growing an email subscriber list should be the first goal for any blogger with dreams of earning from their blog. A lot of new bloggers are unaware of this — I know I was! But without a list, you cannot easily market and sell things to your readers.

I agree with Naomi Dunford of ittybiz — when you don’t have a list, you’ve got nothing. You can be doing a lot of awesome stuff, but at the end of the day if that stuff doesn’t build your list, it’s a waste of time.

Here are the 10 most important things I did to grow my subscriber base:

1. Make celebrity friends. A few years back, this wasn’t so important, as it was easier to get noticed in the blogosphere. Now, as Jon Morrow of Copyblogger tells in a great video on his GuestBlogging site, it’s mandatory. You can do all of the other steps below, but it’ll be slow going if you can’t get a link or mention from an influential blogger. Just like a Hollywood starlet, you can spend years touring in dinner theater and eking out a living, or you can sit at the drugstore counter on Hollywood Boulevard and get noticed by a big movie-studio producer right away.

When top bloggers notice your work, they can spread the word to everyone else and send a flock of readers over to your blog. Some will subscribe. You’ve also then made a great connection you can ask about guest-blogging opportunities on their blog, to gain even more exposure.

There are lots of ways to connect with top bloggers. The first way I did it was just by putting my blog post links on Twitter. One was spotted by Jon and he asked me to guest post on Copyblogger. A lot of good stuff rolled from there.

2. Listen to your readers and meet their needs. You may think you know why readers visit your blog and what they want to read about, but take a poll and ask them. The answers will probably surprise you. If you only have a few readers now, email them individually and get their thoughts. When you write more extremely useful posts on exactly the topics readers want, more readers will subscribe.

3. Post frequently and consistently. Initially, I posted sporadically, then progressed to once a week. I gradually upped that to twice a week, and then three times, which seems to be a good level for this blog. More posts mean more visits — it’s just that simple.

I also set my posts to all go up at the same time of day, and on the same days of the week (holidays excepted). I found readers like to be able to rely on you for a fresh post at particular times in their week. People are creatures of habit, and regular posting will make your blog habit-forming.

4. Write amazing headlines with key words. Regular readers are probably sick of hearing this from me, but most blog-post headlines aren’t drawing readers the way they could. If you improve only one thing about the posts on your blog, let it be the headlines. When I learned more about headlines and wrote stronger headlines, I got noticed by a lot more influential people.

5. Give away great free stuff. So many bloggers complain they can’t get people to subscribe, but they don’t offer any incentive to do so. Put together a short, useful free report and you’ll be amazed at how many more subscribers you get. People love free stuff! When I did my first guest-post on Copyblogger, I was so excited — I thought I would rack up hundreds of new subscribers right away. But I didn’t have a free-giveaway offer, and I really didn’t get many subscribers. So you can drive a crowd to your blog, but if you don’t make them an enticing offer, you still won’t gain many subscribers. I definitely learned this one the hard way.

6. Ask for the subscription. Back when I had about 250 subscribers, I did a consulting call with Jon Morrow. I complained about my low subscriber rate, and he said, “Well — do you ask readers to subscribe?” I countered that I had a signup box.

“No,” he said. “Ask them. On the bottom of your posts write, ‘If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing,’ and give a link to sign up.” Sure enough, making that “ask” got a steady trickle of signups going, right away.

7. Make it easy to subscribe by email. I’ve looked at more than 100 startup blogs in the past couple of months, and a common problem new bloggers have is not making it easy to subscribe by email. Often, there’s only an RSS signup, or the email signup is buried inside the RSS signup sheet.

I used to have a similar problem — I had a small text-link you clicked to subscribe, which took you another place where you filled out the subscription form. In other words, it was a 2-step process. When I fixed that and made it a one-step process, subscriptions rose. Lesson: You can never underestimate how lazy people are when they’re reading websites. Every step they have to take gives them a chance to lose interest and wander away without subscribing.

8. Remove the clutter. Last summer, I got approached by Derek Halpern of DIYThemes and Social Triggers to do a guest post for DIY. He told me my site was too cluttered and I should delete many sidebar widgets. When I did, I got more subscribers. It’s because my site became less confusing and it’s more obvious to readers what I want them to do — subscribe.

10. Market the #%(@*! out of your blog. When you write a blog post, you have created a marketing tool. Next, you have to get out there and use that tool to help people discover your blog. Retweet your content, post links on Facebook, LinkedIn, or wherever else your crowd hangs out. Comment on other blogs. Invite readers and experts to come guest-post on  your blog — it’ll make them into big fans and promoters of your blog.

Learn more about how to grow your subscribers and make your blog earn money! Early registration opens today for my next Webinar, Secrets of a Money-Making Blog. I like to reward people who sign up early, so the first 20 15 people who register can use the code SECRETS and get 20% off the $36 Webinar price.

Growth chart image: stock.xchng – guitargoa

You’ve all heard the expression that when it comes to websites and blogging, “content is king.” For a while, it was true.

Sites stuffed their pages with junk content — much of it almost unreadable, robot-generated SEO garbage — and were rewarded with better rankings in Google searches, and more traffic and sales.

Lots of bloggers went nuts, throwing up any old error-filled, half-baked, two-paragraph post, just to have a post every day of the week. Having boatloads of content was important!

This ushered in the era about 2-3 years back when it seemed like every job ad you saw was to write three posts a day for $5 each, accompanied by threats of employing Copyscape for plagiarism checking. A lot of content was really about content-stuffing, not creating anything useful for readers.

Or as I liked to say, “You want someone to write posts for robots to read. I only write pieces for people to read.”

People warned me that this was the new reality, and in the future it would be all cheap junk and low rates. But I never believed it. I knew the pendulum would swing back.

It’s already happening. Many sites I know have raised their rates and changed their standards because they’ve tried the low-rent approach and it didn’t work.

Eventually, so many sites did the junk-content thing, website readers got hip to it and stopped visiting these sites. The sites quickly lost their credibility. Rankings for junk-post sites went down.

The days when blogs could be sloppy, half-thought-out pieces written in 10 minutes and still succeed are over.

Which brings us to the new era. Know what the watchword is now?

Great content is king.

That’s right — it’s not about quantity any more. It’s all about quality.

Over time, readers ignored the junk-stuffed sites and became enthusiastic, loyal fans of sites with terrific content. I know some of the ones I read may only post once a week. Those sites still became the real money-makers.

That’s because what they post is amazing, enlightening, terrifically useful information.

As my Webinar partner Judy Dunn said earlier this week, bloggers who want to succeed today should write like they already have 1,000 subscribers. Or take the attitude I always did — that each blog post I wrote was as important to me as a $1-a-word article I would write for a national magazine or major corporation.

I always thought of the time spent on posts as an investment in my future earnings.That turned out to be a good approach.

There’s two ways to play it in freelance writing today — you can pitch companies and publications and get assignments like always. Or you can create your own blog, which in essence is like your own rolling magazine, and use it as a tool for earning. If you build a successful blog, you can use it to get gigs, sell ebooks, get consulting work, or sell products for others. This is the unique, new opportunity of the 21st Century for writers.

But it’s not easy, or we’d all already be millionaires.

It’s about really thinking about what readers want to know, and delivering it every single time.  Sharing generously from your own experiences, while offering concrete tips on what others can learn from them. It’s about writing irresistible headlines that draw readers to come visit.

The days when just great content alone could make the blog-success magic happen are also gone.

The new era of blogging is also about great design and usability — making your site look inviting and uncluttered, and easy for readers to navigate and find what they want. It’s about committing to constantly learning more about this emerging, evolving art of blogging, and making your blog better and better. If you have no natural aptitude for design (which I certainly don’t!), you still can’t ignore this critical element.

In other words, your great blog posts are like pretty pictures. Put them in a hideous frame, and people won’t want to look. You have to bring it all together — the great content and smart design — to have all the ingredients for blogging success. That’s why, on March 15, Judy and I will be talking about both design and content strategies to help your blog find its audience.

Did you see a special, limited-time offer today for my upcoming Webinar, 30 Design & Content Secrets to Skyrocket Your Blog? I sent one to all my subscribers. If not, subscribe now to get the inside line on more good stuff coming up.

Photo via stock.xchng user brokenarts

I’m getting a lot more questions about blogging since winning the Top 10 Blogs for Writers last month. Everybody wants to know how they can take their personal blog and turn it into a full-time living. It’s a dream, right — write short, quick posts about stuff you love, and the money just rolls in on autopilot.

Or that’s what new bloggers think. The reality, I’ve learned, is usually different.

What are the top bloggers doing that you’re not? Having built my blog to where it is earning its keep, and having spent some time now hanging out with — and guest-posting for — some very successful bloggers, here are three things I find top bloggers have in common, that most wannabe bloggers aren’t doing:

1. Invest time. Every big-earning blogger I’ve spoken to speaks wearily of the huge amount of time they invested in their blog in the first couple years. Watch some of Leo Babauta’s training videos in A-List Blogger Club, and you’ll see him sigh deeply just to recall how he guest-posted often five times a week as he struggled to get exposure for his blog, Zen Habits. Many top bloggers continue to work long hours, even when they’re outsourcing coding and moderating and everything under the sun. Maybe you’ll eventually work that short week we all hear about, but for most it won’t happen right away.

Copyblogger associate editor Jon Morrow, for instance, told me he often spends 8-10 hours on a single post. Then sometimes, he links it to a paid product on one of his websites and makes like $30,000. I find most bloggers aren’t willing to put in the time it takes to craft something that compelling.

By contrast, I find plenty of bloggers bragging about how they only spend 10 minutes on each post. Yeah, and readers only spend one second clicking away from your site forever, because what you’re delivering isn’t highly useful and well-written.

2. Build relationships. Big bloggers made a lot of effort to meet influential people who could help them, whether that meant going to SOBCon or BlogWorld to meet folks in person, or reaching out on Twitter.

Remember, the next wave of hot bloggers isn’t made, they’re appointed — by the current crop of top bloggers. Start circulating and getting connected to people with the power to point tens of thousands of readers to your blog.

3. Focus on their readers’ needs. Most bloggers I meet or read on writer-chat forums seem to have similar stories. They tend to go like this: “Oh, I like to blog about gluten-free recipes…and yoga…and being an expatriate living in Italy…and anything else I find interesting.” This is blog-cum-diary.

Blogs like this are very difficult to make money from, either by monetizing your audience or by using the blog as an audition piece to get paying gigs. Read any successful blog, and it’s entirely about one thing. You’ll also see the author frequently soliciting feedback from readers about what they want to know, so that they can keep making their content ever more useful to their audience.

If your blog is all about you, and it bounces all over the place, readers are confused. Yoga devotees are bored by your expat posts, and vice versa. You can’t pull an audience together that likes the same stuff, so you can’t sell them stuff. Businesses looking for a blogger are also turned off by your blog, because they will want you to blog about their specific niche, and you’re not showing you know how to do that. In general, many bloggers seem to be blogging without a clear objective in mind of what they hope to accomplish with their blog.

What are your goals for your blog? Tell us about what you’re trying, and how it’s going, in the comments.

Notice: Free teleclass on blogging! Want to know more about how to succeed with blogging? I’m giving a free, one-hour teleclass for NAIWE members only at 3:30 pm EST/12:30 pm PST on Wednesday, June 26. Our topic: 20 Secrets of Blogging Success. If you’ve been thinking about joining NAIWE — maybe for the free, instant blog you get? — join now, and you’ll get to participate in this call. If you can’t tune in at that time, you’ll be able to listen to the recording later.

Update! I just learned nonmembers CAN attend this call for $27 (click on “member teleclasses) — and then if you like, apply that fee toward membership later.

Photo via stock.xchng user svilen001