Start a Blog – How to Pick a Topic for Your Blog

December 29, 2009 by

This is the first post in what I hope will be a very helpful series for anyone who is interested in starting their own blog, or, for that matter, improve an already existing blog.

I’ve been blogging for over four years now, and over that time I’ve learned a lot of things, had a lot of fun, and made some pretty good supplemental income. Hopefully my experience and advice can help get your blog off the ground faster, keep you from getting frustrated, and help you build up your rainy day fund.

On that note, here’s the first post: How to Select A Topic For Your Blog

Whether you just want a platform to express yourself or a way to make some extra money (or both), blogging is, without a doubt, the best place to start. It’s easy, cheap, and if you play your cards right, can be extremely profitable.

However, many people stop before they get started because the first decision you have to make for your blog is often the most difficult: what do you blog about?

There tend to be two schools of thought when it comes to this:

  • Pick a topic based on what has the potential to be the most profitable
  • Pick a topic based on your interests

Obviously, the best answer for you depends on what you’re trying to get out of your blog.

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Tweets That Get You Clicks

December 20, 2009 by

I’ve been experimenting with Twitter over the past few months, and have come to find that if you know what you’re doing, it can be a fantastic way to get tons of targeted traffic to your websites.

Obviously, the key phrase from what I just wrote is “if you know what you’re doing.”  During the first month I used Twitter, I wasted countless hours and got very little traffic to my websites.  It was an incredibly frustrating situation.

Then, I came up with the following three Twitter rules, which I’ve since shared in previous posts:

  1. Tweet in blocks of 10 to 12
  2. Hide your links among your other Tweets
  3. Tweet during actionable times

These rules helped to increase my Twitter traffic exponentially, which has helped to bump up my Adsense, affiliate and marketing revenue.  Needless to say, I was pretty pleased with the above rules.

However, I still felt like I could get more out of Twitter, so I started to experiment the actual words in my Tweets.  After playing around for the past month or so, I’ve come up with the following headlines as the most likely to get your links clicked:

  • Who else…
  • How to…
  • Top (insert number here)…

Who else tends to promote a sense of community, and also can promote you as an authority source.  For example, I recently promoted a link to Life Lock on one of my Twitter accounts using the Tweet: “Who else wants to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft?”

In one day I had over 100 clicks, which is much better than the 10 clicks I got from using the “Visit Life Lock to learn about staying safe from identity theft.”

Obviously, everyone would like to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft, but by posing the question using a “who else,” I was able to get a ton more clicks.

How to is great because you’re basically telling anyone reading your Tweet, “If you have this problem, I can solve it.”  This promotes you as an authority, and will get almost anyone looking for your solution to click on your link.

Top (insert number) is great because everybody loves lists.  Really, it’s true.

So, if you’re interested in generating more traffic from Twitter, follow the three rules I posted previously, and follow my headline advice.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with how much your traffic increases.

Filed Under: Social Traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,