Sometimes we do have constraints that bump right up against our lack of skills. Common for many in this business is lack of technical skills. And this is often coupled with the habit of comparing yourself to others where you see other good looking blogs and you try like hell to make your own look that good despite not having the skillset to do it. You have two options here:  Do it by yourself. Hire somebody to do it.  Now, going the “do it yourself” route is a viable option for some, but I see some people basically grinding their entire progress to a halt over it. In the “real world”, you hire people all the time. You probably hire somebody to fix your car, or to do major repair work around the house. You hire them because they’re the expert and you want the result quickly. So, WHY is it that we lose this perspective when it comes to the Internet?

Lack of Tech Skills?

In our last issue, we met Bob. Bob set out to start up his own online business, but ended up drowning in information and left himself overwhelmed and confused on what to do next. And when we left Bob last time, I talked about how Bob needed structure and order… and he needed to implement “just in time learning”. He needed self-imposed tunnel vision in order to weed out any incoming information that took him off his goal or simply was talking about something which isn’t yet relevant to Bob. Let me give you a classic example… Let’s say our friend Bob here has a niche in mind. He’s even started his site up for it. He’s written a few blog posts, perhaps. But, his email list is still practically non-existent and he has yet to make his first buck online. So, Bob is still in the early phases here. But, Bob is subscribed to some “guru” who is pretty big into podcasting. Bob listens to that podcast. Loves it, in fact. The host of that podcast even publishes income reports and Bob finds it motivational. So, the “guru” launches a course all about podcasting. And it sounds freakin’ awesome to Bob. But, let’s back up here. And let’s talk a little sense into Bob, shall we?

Shiny Objects

Information overload and overwhelm are two of the biggest constraints to people looking to build their online business. But, here’s the rub… Most people are doing it to themselves voluntarily! Let’s look at a typical person who is trying to start and grow an online business. Let’s call him Bob. So, Bob wants this. He has visions of making enough money online so that he can walk out of his day job. He is under no illusions that it will be an overnight thing. He knows it will take a lot of work. But, Bob needs to figure out what to do. So, he goes out and starts searching for and reading various articles and “gurus” in the world of online business. He subscribes to several email lists. He puts a bunch of RSS feeds into his phone so he can keep track of different sites. He registers for some webinars. But, Bob is confused. He feels like he is understanding the theory behind things. He can start to use some of the terminology from the world of online marketing. But, he’s still personally confused on what HE should be doing. He tries to solve it by buying a few courses. Being on all these peoples’ lists, he sees things for sale. They look awesome. Certainly, the ad copy on those pages makes each of those things seem like the best thing ever. So, he picks up a few. He also picks up some tools. He picks up a couple WordPress plug-ins and some online services. Every time he buys one of those things, he feels like he did something concrete to grow his business. But, there’s still this nagging feeling… He’s still confused. He’s still feeling overwhelmed.

Information Overload & Confusion

For #ASKBMA this week, I'm talking about what to do when you've been blogging for awhile, but it isn't working. Carl is in the personal development niche and is having a problem figuring out his unique selling proposition (USP). Also on the agenda... - Black Friday 2018 - The latest on The Daily - An update on the Coffee Break Blogging podcast. - What's new inside THE LAB Quick Links: - BLACK FRIDAY - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/blackfriday/ - THE DAILY - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/daily/ - PODCAST - http://www.coffeebreakblogging.com - THE LAB - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/lab/ - ASK BMA - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/ask/ That's our weekly update for 11/21/2018. See ya next week! And Happy Thanksgiving!

Weekly Update - Thanksgiving Edition!

When we focus on what we don’t have, it will often lead to more of that. See… You get what you validate. And, when you validate your shortcomings by focusing on them, you’ll just magnify them. I’m about to get a little “woo woo” on you here, but I personally believe this… As beings, we imbue the world around us with energy. It is like we’re literally painting our environment with energy. That energy can either be positive or negative. And that “painting” is driven by our attention. Not only that, when we give something our attention, we’re also giving it power. We’re validating it. We’re imbuing energy into it, merely by focusing our spiritual energy on it. That energy has a quality to it, however. It can either be positive or negative. There are those people who, when they put their attention on things, things tend to go right. There are also some people who tend to screw up anything they get involved with. There are lot of different scenarios here, but all of it is summarized by simply saying that we imbue things with energy and that the nature of that energy has a lot to do with the effects. Positivity or negativity toward things is a learned skill. You might have a natural tendency toward one or the other, but you have control over it. You can train yourself to be more of an optimist by taking time each day to list one or more things you are grateful for.  Being grateful is literally injecting beauty into the world. One might not think of gratitude as imbuing their world with positive energy. Many think of it as merely “being thankful for” something. But, it is so much more than that. It is something to strive for. And something to be aware of the next time you find yourself being rather negative about your own situation. When you’re doing that, ask yourself… What reality are you postulating for yourself right then?

The Painter Of Your Own Life

Man, they appear to be doing so well. What’s wrong with me?” This is a pretty common thought to a lot of people. You may see somebody in a bigger house than you have… then look at your own and wonder what went wrong. You may see somebody else with a nicer car and wonder why you’re driving around such an average vehicle. Or, let’s make this even more common… You’re scrolling through Facebook and seeing pictures of people’s parties, their vacations, their fancy meals. They seem to be living the high life. What’s wrong with YOU? It has actually been proven through experiment that such use of social media actually helps further depression. People are unhappier due to social media, in a lot of cases. On top of the comparisons, it doesn’t help one bit that social media is being used these days to divide people and stir them up. But, that’s another discussion… But, if you’re the kind who makes a habit of comparing yourself to others, then you’re more likely to find unhappiness breeding in you when you are active on social media. But, let’s bring this back into the world of online business… When you want to make money online, one of the first things you often do is search the internet for how to make money online, or how to make money blogging. And you come across people who are talking about it. And often they talk about how much money they make. Pat Flynn, from Smart Passive Income, publicly posts his monthly income reports. It is a popular feature of his site, and many others have done the same. I actually used to do the same thing, but have long since stopped. Why is that? … because I believe it leads people into making comparisons between themselves and me, or themselves and Pat – or whoever. You get inspired by the money, then the next move is to try to do what they have done instead of charting your own path. Instead of doing what you need to do, you’re instead left trying to copy somebody else. And if you don’t get the forward movement, it is pretty deflating. Plus, income reports put the emphasis on the income and not what actually creates that income… which is delivering value to others. Comparing yourself to others will almost naturally lead to an attitude of “lack”. Your attention and your focus is on what you DON’T have. And you will inevitably get more of what you focus on. The ironic thing is that, most of the time, these comparisons are based on an outright LIE.

Comparing Yourself to Others, The Folly Of Selfies

You ever seen the movie Shawshank Redemption? FANTASTIC movie. Hard to believe it was made 24 years ago now. Anyway… If you recall, Morgan Freeman’s character was in prison and he was afraid to leave prison. He saw what happened to some of his fellow prison mates when they were released. Free from the structure of the prison, they lost themselves and committed suicide in many cases. There’s that sad scene where the old man was released from prison, felt completely lost in the regular world without the prison rules, and ended up hanging himself. But, I thought about that. And I saw some parallels to people who are trying (or simply want to) gain freedom from a traditional 9-to-5 job. While there are negatives to having a 9-5 job, the truth is that it is actually easier than trying to build a business. With a job, you live within the confines laid out by somebody else. You play by their rules. You do what you’re told. You do it well enough and out pops a paycheck. There’s a kind of order to it. It is an order laid out by somebody else, so there isn’t that responsibility of having to drive the ship. Once you go into the uncharted territory of your own business, then you’re on your own. You’re like a pioneer. All of a sudden, the rulebook is gone and you’re the creator of your own rules. You have nobody to impose discipline on you but yourself.

Prison Rules And The Ease Of Having A Job

One thing I know from all my time in the business is that there are a lot of things that people just do. Almost out of habit. Because it is considered normal and they see everybody else do it. They might not ever question whether it makes much sense, but they will just do it in another case of “follow the leader”. After all, if the “big guys” do it, it must be right. You see a lot of it in the world of podcasting. I got to thinking about the intros. Everybody seems to want to get some intro for their podcasts that sounds like a radio show. They hire somebody to record it, or maybe they cheap out and go to Fiverr. Either way, it is considered normal that you have to get an intro to make your show official. But, why?

Re-thinking Podcast Norms

The other day, I was reviewing somebody’s front-end offer. The central portion of the landing page for it was a video of him talking. And I noticed something… He was not portraying any confidence in his offer. In fact, he was practically apologizing for making it. He started off by saying he wasn’t trying to make a quick buck, saying it wasn’t a scam, etc. I mean, who puts forth a good offer by leading off with the fact that it isn’t a scam? I call this “selling from your heels”. It is delivering a sales message while leaning back, almost propitiating to your prospect for even making the offer. What do you do when you're seriously nervous about trying to make a sale?

Selling From Your Heels And The Fear Of Selling

My relationship with Twitter has changed a few times. Like a lot of bloggers, I used it. Built up a following, and used it to interact with others in my marketplace. But, like a lot of people, I felt Twitter got to be super noisy. And my enthusiasm for the platform dropped. To be honest, I slowly shifted away from actually using Twitter. I barely ever used it… and almost all the posts that I made were automated. Essentially, I was link-dropping my latest stuff to Twitter and otherwise forgetting my profile exists. And even though I was dropping those links out to over 14,000 followers, the results were a reflection of exactly the energy I was giving it. In other words… damn near zero. Twitter was almost zilch as a traffic source to the Blog Marketing Academy. It seemed as if Twitter shifted. It seems like it has gotten really political. It seems as if Twitter is more of a platform for people in the media, politicians, celebs, etc. A place for them to vent off over things which, frankly, they should probably just shut up about.  And then, those tweets end up becoming the basis for entire “news” stories. It works for reporters. Trump likes it.  But, for the rest of us, not so much. But, recently, I decided to give Twitter another “go”. Only this time, quite differently.

Using Twitter in 2018

A quiz is a unique type of lead magnet to grow your list. Typically, creating an online quiz has been a real technical challenge. But, one of the more recent tools offered from Thrive Themes is the Thrive Quiz Builder. With Quiz Builder, you can create different kinds of quizzes. And here’s the best part… You can use them to create segmented email lists, offer them different lead magnets depending on their answers, and more. One of the biggest challenges can simply be coming up with an idea for a quiz. From a marketing perspective, the aim is to have a quiz which gets them to look at the problem that you solve with your business. It can help raise them on the customer awareness scale from being unaware to problem aware. Quizzes which give them a score on something they can improve can work well for this. The fact that you can build a simple assessment or quiz using a drag-and-drop interface like this is just amazing to me. Thrive Quiz Builder really is an amazing tool for that.

List Building Challenge #10 – Building a Quiz

Mobile traffic is a really big deal these days. So many people are browsing our sites on mobile devices so it is VERY important that your site is mobile responsive to work on smaller screens. When I look at my own stats as of this writing, about 38% of my traffic over the last 30 days was on a mobile device. And, almost all of that was on a phone of some kind – not a tablet. We’re talking small screens. So, the question is… do your opt-in forms adjust properly and work well on such small screens?  A sidebar opt-in will usually be pushed way to the bottom of the screen on a mobile device, since sidebars usually just get kicked to the bottom. Your opt-in rate will be garbage. If you use an exit pop or some other popup, the trigger settings might not work right on mobile. Plus, there’s little that’s more annoying than having an opt-in completely takeover my iPhone screen when I’m on a site. It is interruption marketing at it’s finest.  So, you may want to change up your opt-in strategy for mobile devices. Display different forms that are more likely to work correctly on small screens.

List Building Challenge #9 – Mobile opt-in forms

Today, let’s talk about placement of your opt-in forms. We’ve already talked about running split tests on your opt-in forms. But, one of the things you definitely should be testing is placement of your opt-in forms. Most blogs have a primary lead magnet placed right in their sidebar. However, the sidebar is usually one of the worst performing locations for your opt-in.​ Typical conversion rates for this location are like 1%-2%. And frankly, that sucks. Most bloggers put that thing in the sidebar simply because they see everybody else doing it. So, it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind. Definitely experiment with opt-in form placement. Don’t just fall back on your sidebar because that’s what everybody else does. To grow your list effectively, you can’t just do the bare minimum. Your action item for today is… Set up a different form of opt-in placement than you are running right now and test it out.

List Building Challenge #8 – Opt-in form placement

For #ASKBMA this week, I'm answering: - Using other people's Youtube videos in your content. Is it OK? - Her email list isn't growing. What's she missing? - Offering private discounts to people who ask? Also on the agenda... - The latest on The Daily - An update on the Coffee Break Blogging podcast. - What's new inside THE LAB Quick Links: - THE DAILY - PODCAST - THE LAB - ASK BMA That's our weekly update for 11/1/2018. See ya next week!

Blog Marketing Academy Weekly Update - 11/1/2018

All of us – and yes, you – have people who come to our blog who end up leaving without opting into our list. Sometimes it is because they’re not interested. Sometimes they just never saw your lead magnet. Sometimes, they’ve got such short attention spans that they could have the most awesome, relevant free download staring them in the face and they don’t see it. But, once they back away and leave, is that it? You’ll never see them again? Not necessarily. Bring in retargeting (sometimes called remarketing). You know it, even if you don’t think you do. Because we’ve all experienced going to some website to check it out. Then, we just happen to see their ads all over the place. It is like they’re FOLLOWING us! You might see an ad for them in your Facebook news feed. You might even see banner ads showing up on other websites you visit. That’s retargeting. And it is usually much cheaper to do this kind of paid advertising than going out to new people. Usually. In effect, you’re capturing traffic that bounces off your site and your circling back to give them another opportunity to connect with you.

List Building Challenge #7 - Reaching people who left your blog

Today, I’m going to share another strategy to build your list much more effectively. In fact, it works very, VERY well. It will, however, cost you a bit of money. But, the way I see it, if you’re one that is seeking to avoid any form of spending, you’ve already cut yourself off at the knees. My list growth trend was rather flat while I was out traveling in the RV all summer. I didn’t really have any major list building campaigns in effect. The business was just… coasting. But, as you can see, when I got back, I started things up again and you can clearly see the spike. Now, there’s a few things I did, but most of that spike is due to a single ad campaign that I re-started on Facebook. Specifically, it is an ad for one of my more popular lead magnets: The 90 Day Online Business Startup Plan. This episode covers how this worked, and what the specs of my campaign were.

List Building Challenge #6: Giving your list a big boost

A lead magnet squeeze page is like an island unto itself. It won’t have any top nav menu. No sidebar. No links to social media profiles. At most, it will have the typical boring links to your privacy policy and terms of service in the footer. At the top, it might have your logo. Also, most of the time, you would hide this squeeze page from your top blog navigation menu. You don’t HAVE to. You may want to try including it there. But, often these squeeze pages will just sit there and the only traffic it will get will be when you specifically link to it. So, where might you use this thing? Well, I could give you a bunch of ideas today. However, this whole list building challenge is about specificity. I don’t want to give you a ton to do all at once… otherwise it is more likely you won’t do it. So, today, let’s just talk one simple strategy. This strategy isn't so much about building your list... as it is about keeping your existing subscribers engaged.

List Building Challenge #5: A Strategy For Using Your Squeeze Pages

In case you’re wondering, here’s some fairly typical opt-in rates for various types of forms:  Typical blog sidebar opt-in form will typically not convert much better than 1%-2%. A contextual opt-in form inside a blog post (aka content upgrade) can convert anywhere from around 5% up to 12%. I’ve had them go as high as 30%, but usually that’s a temporary fluke. But, it happens. A dedicated landing page can convert anywhere from 30% up to 50%. Sometimes even higher. I’ve got one right now which seems to be converting at about 88%, but again, it might even out. I have found 50% to be a good, rough average.  So, in this case, a squeeze page is the equivalent of using the electric drill compared to a screwdriver. It is simply FAR more efficient and converts far better than you’ll almost EVER see on a blog, regardless of location. Why is this? Well, the answer is pretty simple...

List Building Challenge #4: 10X Better Opt-in Conversions

Here's our weekly update for 10/25/2018. For #ASKBMA this week, I'm answering:  Transitioning from single products to a membership Daily blogging and building up to 25k subscribers BEFORE you monetize? Whuh?! How many blog posts do you need to launch?  Also on the agenda...  The latest on The Daily An update on the Coffee Break Blogging podcast. What's new inside THE LAB Sneak peak at what's coming up with the next training course  Quick Links:  THE DAILY PODCAST THE LAB ASK BMA MEMBERMOUSE  New Blog Post: Pricing Strategy: The Non-Marketer’s Guide To Figuring Out What To Charge For Your Digital Products

Blog Marketing Academy Weekly Update - 10/25/2018

Building your email list is always a marathon, not a race. It is a constant effort and something that you’re always doing. And, if all you do it throw up an opt-in form with a single lead magnet and then waiting it out, you’re just not doing it right. We’ve already talked about how you can magnify your list building power by creating additional lead magnets and/or content upgrades. But, what about the actual opt-in forms? How do you improve those and make them work better? Split testing. Now, decent chance you already know about split-testing. Thing is… Do you actually do it?

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