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10 New Year’s Resolutions You Should Make as a Blogger

new years resolutions for bloggers

Well, 2015 is already creeping up (or is here, depending on when you are reading this) and it’s time to make some blogging resolutions. Several of these, I am making for my own sites. New Year’s is such a great time to re-evaluate and try to start fresh in a few areas. I plan on doing this and recommend you do the same! 2015 will be the year that we take our business to the next level and I hope that’s the case for you as well!

Explore YouTube
If you have been ignoring YouTube, it’s time to face the music. Get over your shyness and start making some videos. Whether they are tutorials, daily vlogs, weekly recaps or whatever, start building your YouTube channel ASAP. It’s pretty clear that YouTube is becoming very popular with advertisers and is a widely underutilized business tool for bloggers.

Perfect your consistency.
If you’ve been blogging twice one week and 5 times the next, then following that up with a post-less 3rd week, it’s time to get consistent. In general, people like to know what to expect when it comes to how often you post. Feel free to keep people on their toes about the actual content, but maintain consistency when it comes to releasing your content.

Start disclosing!
I still see tons of bloggers doing sponsored posts without disclosing the fact that the content is paid for. This is against the terms set forth by the FTC and the penalties are only going to increase in 2015. Plus, why try to hide the fact that your content is paid. Shouldn’t your readers know something is sponsored on your blog?

Consume other content – but do so very particularly.
Read, watch or listen to content from the leading bloggers and entrepreneurs related to your industry. It’s easy to get caught up in the feel-good content that is full of fluff that we all like hearing. The fact is, you’re taking time to consume this content, so try and make it actually meaningful. Some of my favorites are Gary Vaynerchuck’s #AskGaryVee show, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income, and John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire, who has a ton of podcasts that you can sort through to listen to people relevant to you industry. I also regularly find helpful relevant content on ProBlogger.net.

Engage with your readers.
Respond to comments more often. Visit other blogs and leave comments. Share content from people in your network. Ask questions and acknowledge responses. Reach out to followers on social media for advice.

Commit to the direction of your blog.
Is it going to be a business? Treat it like one. Make investments where necessary. (ie: Premium PicMonkey, Email service, hire a VA, etc.) Are you a fashion blog? Be sure you have a plan to product consistent fashion-related content. Want to incorporate more food on your blog? Have a plan so the content doesn’t run out after a month.

Stay on your toes.
The internet is changing every single day. SEO, social networks and everything else is changing all of the time, and it’s up to you do adapt. Look into Snapchat. Don’t ignore up and coming networks like Ello, Medium and whatever else will pop up in 2015. Commit to maintaining an open mind and exploring the many options that pop up seemingly every other week.

Analyze your blog’s design and performance.
Take a step back and look at your blog as a reader. Better yet, ask a few of your friends to look at your blog and give you an honest view of what they think is going on with every single thing they see there. Do they recognize ads as ads? Do they know the banner in your sidebar highlighting a segment on your blog is actually content produced by you and not an ad?

As far as performance goes: analyze every banner and ad on your blog for performance. If any ad is not making more than $50/month for you, it’s time to re-think it. That’s not to say you should delete it, just think about maybe an alternative ad, or consider moving the ad somewhere else. I completely pulled that $50 number out of the air – you have to decide what your magic number is.

Get back to basics.
If your content has suffered because you are spending too much time focusing on Instagram or Pinterest, it’s time to re-evaluate and get back to basics. Focus on great blog content. After all, you’re most likely building your social networks to push traffic to your blog. Don’t forget to keep your blog interesting and fresh. I am guilty of this one on my own site, and will look to correct this in 2015.

Be more selective.
I mostly mean with your time. Does every email you receive really warrant a reply? Hint: any email that starts with “Dear Sir/Madam” does not need a reply. Additionally, is that sponsored post that requires original photos, social promotion across 4 networks and links back really worth $40? Think about everything that you are putting effort into right now and re-evaluate.

That’s all I’ve got! What do you think?
Will you be making any blogging New Year’s resolutions?

7 Frustrating Things About Blogging (and solutions for each one)

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frustrating things about blogging
Blogging is a great thing. Blogging for a living (or for a partial income) is really great! however, it does come with frustrations. Here are some of the more common frustrations that happen while blogging. I’ve provided solutions for each frustration in an effort to make blogging less stressful for you!

Problem: explaining to your friends and family what it is that you do.
It can be tough sometimes explaining the fact that you earn an income from a blog. A lot of people simply don’t understand how that is possible and many don’t even know what a blog is. It really is tough to explain anything about the blogging world to anyone who is not in it themselves.
Solution: I like to keep it simple and just say that we own and operate a few websites. Usually people just nod and say something like, “cool”. If they start asking questions, I just say we make money via online advertising. That usually satisfies their curiosity.

Problem: websites that are down.

Doesn't this picture make you cringe?? — Doesn’t this picture make you cringe??

Whether it is your own blog, or a social network that you frequent, websites being down can feel crippling to your blog and your business. The good news is that they tend to get back up quickly, although it certainly doesn’t feel quick at the time.
Solution: stay calm and try and find something else productive to do. If your blog is down, go to other blogs and leave comments, or interact on social media. If a social network is down, go to a different one for the time being or again, go blog commenting. Also, check DownforEveryoneOrJustMe to make sure it’s not something on your end that is causing the site to be down.

Problem: high resolution product photos
I used to hear several bloggers complain about this happening and didn’t think much of it. Then it started happening to us. PR companies send a great pitch and by the end of the email, we’re all excited to work with them only to find out the sole source of “compensation” being offered are hi-res photos of their products. Not only is this a ridiculous offer, but we like to take our own high-quality photos to use on our blogs to have a more personal feel. I truly hope these pitches don’t work very often.
Solution: we respond to the ones that interest us telling them that we’d love to work with them, followed by our rates. We usually don’t hear back, but there have been a few cases where we have turned it into a nice business relationship.

drop by
Problem: surprise visits
Just because we work from home, doesn’t mean that we are available 24/7. I’ve talked with a lot of bloggers who say that this is their biggest frustration. It takes a TON of discipline to be self-employed and when your income relies on hard work, you can’t just go do this and that at the drop of a hat. Bloggers who earn a full-time income spend upwards of 60 hours a week working and it’s frustrating when others don’t realize this.
Solution: I feel like this is the toughest one, but you just have to keep reminding whoever needs it that even though you work from home, you give yourself a strict work schedule and you have to stick to it or your business will suffer.

Problem: bad lighting
A huge part of many blogs are high-quality photos. It’s tough to make that happen with bad lighting and photos in perfect daylight are not always possible.
Solution: if you can’t do everything during the daytime try and at least stock up on photos at that time. Now, when you go to write your post at night, you’ll have nice, well-lit photos to go with it. You could also invest in lighting systems, but that might not be in your budget. We have “daylight” light bulbs in many rooms in our house which provide a nice, natural-looking light.

Problem: changing affiliates
Companies have their own agendas, which is fine. That doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly frustrating getting an email saying “our company is moving from x affiliate network to y affiliate network”. For a blogger who uses their links, this means applying for their program with the new network, getting links and going back and changing out all of their old links. You see, the old links will no longer generate income once a company has moved on from the network, so it has to be addressed.
Solution: WordPress has a nice Find and Replace plugin to handle the changing of the links, but the rest doesn’t really come with a solution – it’s just annoying.

Problem: writer’s block
This one kinda speaks for itself. When your business is based on writing and you can’t think of things to write, it sucks.
Solution: don’t force the issue. Make sure to stick to your quality standards when it comes to content. This list of 101 blog post ideas should jog your brain a bit.

What is your biggest frustration when it comes to blogging?

How to Make a Blog Header

If you decide to make a blog header yourself, here’s an easy way to do it:

1. Assuming you’re in WordPress and have a header function, simply hover over “appearance” in you dashboard and click “header”. Your header’s dimensions will be listed on the next screen. In Blogger, the easiest way to find your header’s dimensions is to visit your blog and save your current header as an image on your computer. Then open the image with a photo editing program (I use Paint) and look at the dimensions.

2. Create a blank jpeg file of your exact header dimensions. Note: if you want to change the size of your header, you’ll need limited php knowledge.

3. Go to PicMonkey and open the blank file that you created.

4. From there, you’re on your own as far as creating the header. Use the tips above, familiarize yourself with the tools that PicMonkey has to offer and play around with it until you come up with something you like. Note: now would be a good time to “spring” for the paid subscription (something like $3/month) so you can use the premium fonts and graphics. Don’t skimp on your header!

5. Once you have a header created, it’s time to upload it. WordPress users will simply upload it under the “header” section and you’re good to go. In Blogger, head to the layout section of your dashboard and click edit in the header scetion. (see below)
blogger header

6. If you have an existing header image, click “remove image” and you’ll see an option to upload your new header.

7. Find the file on your computer and upload it.

8. For “placement” choose “Instead of title and description” if all you want to show in your header is your image (this is usually the case).

9. Check your blog!

That should be it! The tough part about this whole process is coming up with a header that you are happy with.

Again, get creative and keep it clean! Find out what works for you. Look around at other blog’s headers and get inspiration. Don’t copy though. Experiment with real images and text, graphics and text, or text only. Shift things around and ask the opinions of others. This is a very serious task in terms of setting up your blog, so give it the time (or investment) needed to produce a nice-looking header.

How to Lower Your Bounce Rate from 85% to 10% with One Easy Fix

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how to lower your bounce rate

Want to know how to lower your bounce rate? First, we should talk about why you would want to lower it. Some advertisers care about bounce rate, so providing them with a more accurate number is a big deal. There is a good chance that your bounce rate is currently an inaccurate measure of how engaging your content is.

How? Well, let’s look at what Google says about bounce rate.

“Bounce rate” in Google Analytics is one of the key metrics that helps to evaluate the quality of your traffic. “Bounce” happens when the visitor exited the website right from the landing page, without going to any other page. This is a great indication on how relevant the content was for the user and how engaged they were with your website.

Ok, to me that is not right. Let’s say you have a blog and you write one lengthy post every day, every other day or even weekly. People know that when they come to your site, they’re going to get a nice, 5000 word blog post that they love to read. Just because they leave after they read that entire post doesn’t mean they are not engaged. They should definitely not be considered a bounce! That was someone who spent 10 minutes or more on your blog, consuming your content. I’d say the content was pretty relevant!

So now that we an agree that a “bounce” is not necessarily someone who only visits on page, how do we fix what Google thinks about “bounce rate”? I mean, “this is a great indication on how relative the content was” is total crap! They are saying that if someone spends 10-15 minutes or more reading my blog post and then they leave, Google thinks the content was not relevant! So obviously, this needs to be fixed.

Well, the funny thing is that this is not really new news. As a matter of fact, Google put an article on its own blog 2 years ago about this.

Ok, so what exactly do you do?

You’ll be adding this snippet of code into your Analytics code:
setTimeout(“_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ’15_seconds’, ‘read’])”,15000);
The 15000 means 15 seconds. Customize that to whatever you think is correct. I kept mine at 15 seconds. This code creates an “event” after 15 seconds. Once the “event” is created, the user is not counted as a “bounce” no matter what they do after that point.

Where do you put it? Well, below is a picture of what your code will look like. Place it where you see the red box.
lower your bounce rate Using the new Universal Analytics? No problem! Use the example below:
code That will do it! Now, when someone stays on your site for at least 15 seconds (or whatever time amount you choose), they will be registered as a “non-bounce” user.

I should also mention the caution that Google says we should take when using this function:

We hope this small fix will allow you to track and understand the users’ behavior and quality of the traffic coming to your website more accurately, and make more informed decisions. One thing website owners should be vary of, though, that not only the function may slow down the users’ experience, even insignificantly, but will also increase the volume of hits your site sends to Google Analytics, which might bring your usage over the limit (currently set at 10 mln hits per month). As such, this fix should only be applied when necessary and justified by the concept of the website and the landing pages.

I have not run into a problem and I have not heard of anyone who has, but I feel better having told you about the warning. 🙂

Note: Please use this featured responsibly. If you have an advertiser that you really want to work with, it is not in good ethical practice to lower your “event” to one second to drop your bounce rate.

6 Free Blogging Tools That I Use Every Day

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6 free blogging tools that i use every day

Today I want to talk about some free blogging tools. Now, I am a firm believer in the fact that it takes money to make money. (i.e. – you have to invest in your business at some point) However, there are still a plethora of free tools out there that are very helpful to bloggers.

My favorite tools are below.

First up, PicMonkey. There is a free and paid option, but you can get a TON of use out of the free option. PicMonkey provides basic photo editing, collage creating and graphic design tools that are easy to use and very helpful. Need to add some text to a photo? Need to brighten a photo or create a nice-looking border for it? PicMonkey can help you with all of this and more. The graphic at the top of this post was created using PicMonkey in about 3 minutes.

Hootsuite also has a free and paid option. With the free option, you can add social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and post to each account with one click. You can also schedule status updates through Hootsuite. The features of the free option are very complete. It’s definitely worth checking out! I can schedule a day’s worth of Tweets and Facebook updates in less than 5 minutes with HootSuite. I happily use the free option every day and it does what I need.

Google Analytics is the most powerful free tool bloggers can get their hands on. GA provides complete tracking of pageviews, visitor activity and other very important metrics such as how long people stay on your site, which page they land on and which site referred them to you. If you’re blogging without Analytics, you are missing out on a ton of useful information about your traffic. For some tips on using Google Analytics, see my posts here and here.

LastPass is a huge time saver for me. With LastPass, you’ll never have to fill out those “forgot password” forms again. LastPass securely stores all of your passwords (it’ll even create ones for you) and can automatically enter your login credentials when you arrive at a website that you have stored. Let me give you an example: you’ve signed up for 2 separate Yahoo Mail accounts. If you have stored both sets of login credentials with LastPass, when you go to login to Yahoo Mail, you can click the login box and both of your login names will pop up. Click whichever one you want and the login and password will be automatically entered and you’ll be logged in! It sounds simple, but you’ll be amazed at how much you love it once you get it set up. I mean, think about how many logins you have! If you take advantage of the tools in this post, you’ll have a few more just like that. You need to try LastPass!

dropbox
Dropbox is a great free cloud storage tool. What I love is that you can sync it up to your cell phone and any computer. With the free Dropbox app, I can take a picture with my phone and quickly shoot over to my Dropbox. From there, on my computer, I can edit the photo using tools like PicMonkey very quickly and send it over to Instagram looking much better than the original. I also work at home with my wife. When doing projects together, Dropbox is so great. I can send her a few photos to edit via Dropbox and she can shoot them right back when she’s done.

IFFT, or If This Then That, is an automating tool that can save you a ton of time. Above, I mentioned the process of sending an image to Dropbox once taken. Well, with If This Then That, you can automate many tasks like that. Basically, with IFTTT, you are setting up processes that basically say “if this happens, then do that“. Some examples of IFTTT scenarios that you can set up are: Instagram to Facebook Album, Tweet Facebook Status Updates, Update Facebook Page After New WordPress Post, Post YouTube Upload to Facebook Page and much more!
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So there you have it! 6 free tools that can help you and your blogging venture!
What are some free tools that you use?