More from Your Blog

RESOURCES FOR BLOGGERS

  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • CHOOSE YOUR BLOGGING LEVEL
    • I DON’T HAVE A BLOG YET
    • I AM A NEW BLOGGER
    • BLOGGING IS MY BUSINESS
  • HOW TO START A WORDPRESS BLOG
  • BLOGGING TOOLS
  • OUR MAIN BLOG — KATIE DID WHAT
  • READ THE OLD BLOG

Featured Affiliate — StudioPress — Make Money Promoting Premium Blog Themes

Leave a Comment

studiopress affiliate program
Each week, I am going to be featuring an affiliate which could present you with a money-making opportunity on your blog. I know for me, I don’t always think about the various companies and products out there that would be a great fit for my readers. Well, hopefully you’ll find some affiliates that you can work with via this weekly post.

I’ll introduce you to the featured affiliate and suggest a couple of blog niches that might be good for promoting this affiliate. Please keep in mind that these posts are only suggestions and if you don’t think the product/company is right for you blog’s content, don’t promote it.

This week’s featured affiliate is StudioPress. StudioPress is the company behind the Genesis Framework and premium WordPress themes. In my opinion, Genesis is the best WordPress framework out there. As a matter of fact, this and all of my sites run on Genesis.

[Tweet “Genesis is simply the best and easiest to use WordPress theme framework.”]

You can join the StudioPress affiliate program here. It’s through the ShareASale affiliate network, so if you’re not a member of that, you’ll be able to join the network, and then the StudioPress program.

The easiest way to promote StudioPress and Genesis is to use it yourself and talk about how much you like it. It’s also becoming popular for bloggers of all niches to produce content about how to blog. If you have content like that, promoting Genesis in that post is simple.

The nice thing about the StudioPress program is that the payout is very high per conversion. To get set up with the Genesis Framework and a theme, it’s $120 or so. 35% of that will net you around $40! For ONE conversion!

Join the StudioPress affiliate program here

Filed Under: Blog, Make Money Blogging Tagged With: featured affiliate

Blogging Etiquette Series ~ Blog Conferences

2 Comments

blog conference etiquette



I thought it might be good to refresh and re-surface my Blogging Etiquette series from early 2013. This one is especially pertinent with BlogHer 2014 less than 2 weeks away.

The world of blogging can open the door to wonderful opportunities and can create real and lasting friendships. Bloggers make up a society of sorts. Like any society, bloggers have “classes”, with some doing it for a hobby, some as a business and a ton in between. The world of blogging also has a lot of unspoken rules, aside from the spoken ones provided by the FTC. In this Blogger Etiquette Series, we’ll learn many of the unspoken rules of blogging and how to NOT break those rules.

Blogging conferences can be wonderful events. They’re great for networking, meeting new people and building your blog. They do, however, invite many situations that can be quite awkward. Knowing how to act in certain situations can be tough for first-timers. Many times, people don’t mean to break unwritten rules, it just happens. Let’s jump right in and lay down some etiquette for blog conferences.

When it comes to swag…
Boy could I go on for a long time here. Let me just say that when it comes to swag, be gracious, not greedy. Nobody owes you a dang thing. Take what they give you, but don’t bring Mrs. Grabby Hands to the conference. If a business wants you to have something, you’ll know it. They will offer it to you. Nothing makes you look worse than being greedy about swag. Would you rather have that new set of baby bottles or a lasting relationship with an awesome brand?

conference behavior
You could wind up looking like this guy if you get too excited about swag.

How to walk away…
This one can be tricky. You’ve just met a really cool blogger, or an awesome brand representative and they love to talk, but you’re here to meet hundreds of people, not to make one new friend or to connect with one company. So what do you do? Find a point of interest around that you can gesture toward and say something to the effect of “I’m going to go check out that Clorox booth”. In a real pinch? Simply just excuse yourself to the restroom – they’re not going to follow you there! It’s a tricky situation, but you can gracefully get out of it.

When it comes to speakers…
Listen. You know how in grade school, it was cool to whisper and chat when the teacher was teaching? Maybe in high school too, but the fun wore off. The in college, it was just annoying. You are trying (and paying) to learn and it is distracting. Well, at a conference, it is the most annoying thing ever. Plain and simple: shut up and listen. You’re paying to be there, more importantly, those around you are paying to be there, and paying to hear what this person has to say. So the last thing anyone wants to hear is you whispering or chatting with your buddy next to you.
Keep your questions on task and don’t ask weird questions. There isn’t much worse than one person asking a million pointless questions during a limited time Q&A session. The moral of the story here is to respect the time and money others (and you) are sacrificing to be there.

When it comes to brands…
Have your information ready. Be honest with your stats, your reach and what you can do for the company. Be sure and listen and express interest in a brand’s goals when it comes to working with bloggers. Also be honest about your expectations. If talks progress to you two working together, keep the communications two-way and honest. The point here is forming long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships, not trying to get as many sponsored post opportunities as possible in a weekend.

blogger conference partyWhen it comes to parties…
That first drink? Good idea. It’ll loosen you up a bit. That 2nd one? Might be okay. The 3rd one? Pushing it. The 4th one? Bad idea. Every one after that? Very bad idea! Unless you’re promoting an alcoholic beverage review site, a hangover cure blog or a party company, you probably don’t want to be slurring words out of your whiskey-breath ridden mouth.

There are two words that you should strive to get people to use when describing you and your conference self. Class and grace. If you leave with those two things in tact, you’ve done a fine job.

See this post for Tips for Making the Most of Blog Conferences.

Filed Under: Blog, Blogging Etiquette

Featured Affiliate — ModCloth — Make Money Promoting a Popular Clothing Company

Leave a Comment

modcloth affiliate program
Each week, I am going to be featuring an affiliate which could present you with a money-making opportunity on your blog. I know for me, I don’t always think about the various companies and products out there that would be a great fit for my readers. Well, hopefully you’ll find some affiliates that you can work with via this weekly post.

I’ll introduce you to the featured affiliate and suggest a couple of blog niches that might be good for promoting this affiliate. Please keep in mind that these posts are only suggestions and if you don’t think the product/company is right for you blog’s content, don’t promote it.

This week’s featured affiliate is ModCloth. ModCloth is one of the most popular online clothing stores among bloggers and blog readers. Their site is very well maintained and makes you feel good about sending your readers there to shop around.

You can join the ModCloth affiliate program here. It’s through the ShareASale affiliate network, so if you’re not a member of that, you’ll be able to join the network, and then the ModCloth program. Once approved, you’ll have access to over 200 banner ads that will help you promote ModCloth and make some money!

Promoting ModCloth is easy for just about any lifestyle blogger. You could include outfits of products in a wishlist post or a roundup post. Want to make it even easier? Shop their store and buy something from it. Then, anytime you include a post where you are wearing that item, use your affiliate link either to the store’s homepage or that item’s page.

One great thing about ModCloth is that their affiliate managers send emails whenever there is something going on worth mentioning, such as a sale, coupon code or new merchandise. This makes it very easy to promote them, as the noteworthy stuff is being emailed right to you!

Join the ModCloth affiliate program here.

Filed Under: Blog, Make Money Blogging Tagged With: featured affiliate

Blog Conference Checklist

Leave a Comment

Blog-Conference-Checklist
Having a checklist is a good idea if you’ll be heading to a blog conference. There are a lot of very important things that you simply don’t want to forget. You’re investing a lot of time and money into going to a conference, so you don’t want to forget essentials.

This printable will serve as a rough guide (which, obviously, you should add to and customize) and a list of things NOT to forget to bring to your next blog conference.

I kept in general, a different people have different needs. You could add things like headphones, a pillow, extra suitcase or anything else you don’t want to forget. The point is to have a list where you continue to add to until you get ready to leave for the conference. Then refer to the list to make sure you have everything. The last thing you want to do is rely on yourself to remember everything last-minute.

Click here to print the checklist.

Filed Under: Blog, Blogging Tools

Everything You Need to Know About Doing Giveaways on Your Blog

14 Comments

everything you need to know about doing giveaways on your blog


Blog giveaways can be a fun way to boost interaction and readership on your blog. There is a lot that goes in to having giveaways on your blog though. This post covers the logistics, rules, laws and best practices when it comes to running giveaways on your blog.

If you’re here for the update – as of Facebook’s update in early August of 2014, you may not ask for “likes” on a page as a method of entry for a giveaway.

First up, we’ll talk about the frequency of giveaways.

There’s nothing wrong with a fun giveaway every now and then. Everyone loves to try and win a prize, especially when it’s hand-picked by a blogger they like! However, you should know that there’s a fine line when it comes to running giveaways. You don’t ever, ever want your readers to come to your blog and expect a giveaway. People will no longer read your content. What they’ll do is go to your blog, scan the latest post for a giveaway and if there isn’t one, they’ll leave. That means they spend hardly any time on your site (bad) and leave without doing anything (terrible) on your site. What you want to accomplish with your giveaways is to engage your readers, create a bit of buzz about your site and get more people to read your non-giveaway content.

I know, I know, it’s fun (almost addicting) to see your Facebook numbers go up, or your Twitter followers increasing, but it’s all about the quality of those followers. If you’ve run a couple of giveaways, you’ve probably seen people enter your giveaways who don’t really have a blog and don’t use their Twitter account. It may look like this:
twitter giveaway profile

Unfortunately, since they entered your giveaway in a way that followed the rules, you have to honor their entry. Again, having an account like that following you is of absolutely no use to you.

Being known as a blog that does a ton of giveaways will attract people who are only there to win stuff, which isn’t what you’re looking for.

Potential Ramifications of Boosting Followers with Giveaways

If someone follows you on Facebook or Twitter and you can’t find any posts or normal Tweets (not about giveaways), they are most likely using a giveaway profile and you will get nothing from their “follows”. What’s the point of gaining a Twitter follower who has NO other followers and never uses their profile for anything except for entering giveaways?

Every person that enters your giveaway that way is a total waste.

Yes, it increases your numbers, which may make them sexier to present to advertisers, but when they work with you and find out that a low percentage of your followers are actually reading your content, they will not be inclined to work with you again. You don’t want to become known as the blogger who gets no results. It’s better to try and harvest good, quality followers from the get-go.

Boosting followers in an unnatural manner, such as through numerous giveaways presents a huge problem with Facebook, specifically. The Facebook algorithm is set up so that the higher a page’s interaction percentage is, the more of that page’s fans will actually see their status updates. In other words, more interaction = more eyes on your page’s updates. So, if the majority of your fan base is artificial and loaded with giveaway profiles, the fans who actually did genuinely like your page have a much lower chance of actually seeing your content. So by boosting your social numbers, you are alienating your true fans and readers and decreasing the chances of their eyes landing on your content. Again, this is specific to Facebook, but it should not be ignored as a ramification of social profile boosting.

Many PR firms and marketers are starting to recognize these giveaway-heavy blogs for what they are. They’ll question why a Facebook page has 5,000 followers and never gets even one person to “like” an update or why someone has 20,000 Instagram followers yet their engagement is worse than that of accounts having only 1,000 followers. If you’re seen (by a savvy PR person or marketer) as a follower boosting blog (via giveaways, etc), your blog may be discredited and you’ll lose out on potential paid opportunities.

I’ll say it again – there is nothing wrong with giveaways. The key here is moderation.

[Tweet “Doing giveaways is a great to way increase followers and interaction, but moderation is key!”]

How to Optimize Giveaways

It’s nice to reward the people who do follow you with a fun giveaway. There are ways that you can make them feel excited about the giveaway and at the same time, try and wrangle in some new followers.

Easy Entry
First up, make one mandatory entry and make it very easy. My favorite mandatory entry is asking readers to leave a blog comment. This way, you’re not forcing people who might love to read your blog to sign up for a specific social media account just to enter your giveaway. They can simply leave a comment to play along. Additionally, doing it this way cuts down on the amount of inactive, “fake” accounts that will follow you.

Encourage Sharing
Offering a bonus entry for a social share is a great way to get more exposure to your blog and pick up some legitimate new followers. Chances are, your true readers are connected socially to similar people. Perhaps even to people who don’t follow you already, but might if given a link to your blog.

Encourage Another Type of Action
Are you partnering with a company on this giveaway? Make yourself look good by sending that company traffic. Make an entry option something like this: “Head to Nike.com and tell me what your favorite pair of shoes is.” You’ve just sent them to the company’s site (via an affiliate link if you have one!) and have encouraged conversation about that brand on your website. That will equate to one happy brand!

More Giveaway Tips for Bloggers

– Make sure brands are not requiring YOU to ship prizes. If this happens, you will most likely have to eat the shipping costs.

– Try to limit the amount of entries one person can earn. Seeing a giveaway where each person can earn 240 entries is just strange. Keep it under 5 so it feels attainable even if you only have one entry.

– Use random.org to choose winners in situations where you are picking numbers. It works great. You can even screenshot your results and post them when you announce your winner.

– A week is an optimal length for a giveaway.

– Try to publicly announce your winners. It gives you credibility and adds to the fun. People like to see that others won!

– When pitching companies for giveaways, offer up a social share or another action as a method of entry to try and get them on board.

– Rafflecopter and Giveaway Tools are great free options to run giveaways. They will collect entries and even handle the Facebook “likes”, Twitter follows and more as methods of entry for you. Rafflecopter also has a premium upgrade option as well.

Group Giveaways

Here are some things to keep in mind for group giveaways:

– Many of these become collection spots for giveaway hunters, so you’re bound to get quite a few “giveaway followers” who will never view your blog again.

– Other blogs are sending followers your way, but at the same time, you are sending your followers to other blogs. Because of this, I recommend doing very few group giveaways. They’re nice for a boost every now and then, but you don’t want to build your following solely from this type of giveaway.

– You’re best served doing these giveaways with blogs whose content is very closely related to your own. This way, the followers that other blogs are sending your way are more likely to relate to you and your content.

– Also, try and work with blogs of a similar size as far as readership and social following is concerned. It’s a business, and while sending 10,000 of your readers to a brand new blog might be a nice thing to do, you’re getting the short end of that deal. Be sure the number of people coming to your blog is similar to the number of people going from your blog. If everyone is around the same size, it’s much more fair.

– Be sure everyone is playing fair. Do the organizers also have to put in the same amount of money? Do they get extra links? Just be sure you know everything up front.

The Legalities of Giveaways

If you run giveaways or sweepstakes on your blog, you should know that there are many giveaway rules for bloggers that you have to follow. The FTC and other organizations have set forth many laws and rules with regard to giving things away. I know, it should be waaaay easier than this, but you really should know this stuff before running a giveaway. I am by no means a lawyer or legal expert, but this is accurate to the best of my knowledge.

Here’s a quick read from the Small Business Administration about giveaways:
How to Use Contests, Sweepstakes, and Giveaways as Marketing Tools – While Staying Within the Law.

First up, some really basic things to keep in mind:
• be clear about what you are giving away and how many people will win
• keep your giveaway open to those 18 and older
• if in the U.S., keep the giveaway open to U.S. residents only. Same goes for the UK and other countries. Every country has its own weird giveaway rules. Did you know that in Canada, you cannot run a giveaway purely based on luck? I used to collect baseball cards and they would have contests and they would always require Canadian residents to answer a simple mathematics question as part of their entry. I thought it was a joke, but nope. Like I said, weird laws are everywhere and you’ll keep yourself sane by keeping your giveaway within your own nation.
• state how you will choose your winner and how you will contact them
• state how long that winner has to respond
• state what will be done if the first (and possibly subsequent) winner(s) don’t respond within the given time frame

Some other things to note:
– If your giveaway contains a product review, make sure to disclose that fact and clearly state who will be providing the prize (you, the company, a PR agency, etc).

– If you’re keeping your giveaways to a small prize (specifically under $600), then things will be a lot easier. When you go over $600, you have to send the winner a 1099 tax document at the end of the year and they are required to pay taxes on that. You are required to let them know that. So try and keep it under $600! This also includes if you’re involved in a group giveaway and the prize is over $600. You can usually claim giveaway prizes as a tax write-off if you are providing them, so keep track of what you pay for.

– Each social network has their own set of giveaway rules. See the full rules for each network here: Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram
See the basics for each network below.
Note: it is advised that you click the links above and read the full terms for each social network.

Remember, with every network, disclose that the network is NOT a part of your website or the giveaway and is not responsible for the prize fulfillment.

Facebook (Updated) – you may collect entries via comments and “likes” on the page updates. You may also use “liking” as a voting mechanism. You may NOT collect “likes” on a page for entries (as clarified here: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2014/08/07/Graph-API-v2.1/).

Twitter – They are much more loose on their terms. They want you to discourage the creation of multiple accounts and to discourage people from repeatedly tweeting the same thing. They also want you to keep hashtags relevant.

Pinterest – Pins, creating boards or “liking” pins cannot be an entry. Do not use the terminology “Pin it to win it” and do not require multiple pins from the same person.

Instagram – These are simple: Make and follow your own rules and Instagram’s basic rules for usage. Do not encourage inaccurate tagging or hashtag use.

Wrap up

So as you can see, a lot goes into running giveaways on a blog. To make a long story short, be sure you are following all of the rules for giveaways put forth by the FTC and by the social networks that you are including in your giveaways. Additionally, be sure to consider the frequency with which you run giveaways. Think about how you want your blog to be viewed when it comes to giveaways. Giveaways can be a nice way of boosting followers and gaining interaction, but it’s a fine line. You don’t want to be know as the blog who runs the most giveaways. You want to be the blog with the great content, right?

Filed Under: Blog, Grow Your Blog's Audience

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • …
  • 33
  • Next Page »

Disclosure Policy

As of December 2009, the FTC requires all Blogs generating any source of income to have an official … Read More

  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Popular on KatieDidWhat.com

---> Registry Must Haves
---> How to Start a Lifestyle Blog
---> What's in My Hospital Bag

How to Start a WordPress Blog

There are many reasons why you might want to know how to start a blog. Maybe you have a business and want to supplement your online activity with a blog. Good idea! Maybe you want to start an online diary of your life. That's fun too! Maybe you want to start a fashion blog, or a … Read More

Copyright 2016 More from Your Blog | Start a Blog Today! | Enterprise Pro theme running on Genesis