Other earning money

Dot Com Pho – The iPhone 4 Edition

Posted in Other earning money on July 31st, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

The Apple iPhone 4 has invaded Dot Com Pho! After lining up for over 12 hours, Gary Ng of iPhone in Canada managed to secure himself the holy grail of cellphones. We had a great time playing around with Apple’s newest magic device and even used it to make an iMovie in real time! It’s very possible that future episodes of Dot Com Pho will be filmed, produced and uploaded from an iPhone!

In addition to the iPhone 4, this edition of Dot Com Pho featured an $8 million open house, how they sing the ABC’s in Asia and Stephen Fung trying, and failing, to apply the iPhone death grip. Anyone is welcome to join us for Dot Com Pho (we had a full house of ten people today). Follow me on Twitter to find the time and location of the next one.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!


Why It’s a Good Idea to Quit College and Start a Business

Posted in Other earning money on July 31st, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

The value of a college degree is decreasing every year, but the head master of the university won’t tell you that. And my complaints is if the value kept on dropping and jobs that requires a bachelor degree is getting scarcer and scarcer every year, why are the tuition fee going up every year?

University’s Outrageous Cost

The average tuition fee for most universities is approximately $30,000 to $50,000 for four years for instate students. If you choose to go to private or elite universities, it can easily cost you $30,000 to $50,000 per year. Did I mention this is the cost before buying books and food?

These universities need to base their tuition fee on the earning potential of the students once he/she graduate. If the earning potential of an average student with a bachelor degree is weakening, should these universities’ lower their fees?

I mean, universities’ graduates with a bachelor degree today are being laid off in more parts of the United States than ever before. And with new students graduating every year, can you really compete?

3 Reasons to Quit College

Unless, you’re getting a 3.5 to 4.0 at elite universities such as Harvard or Yale, it’s a good idea to quit college and start a business. It’s not hard to figure out why college is a waste of your time even if all your tuition fees are paid for:

#1) Are You Learning About Something That You’re Passionate About?

Most college students are not passionate about what they’re learning about. If you’re going to college, you know this. In most case, you’ll have to take general class that you don’t necessary need for your major. It seems to me that college has become nothing but a business that overcharges you for little value of education.

If you’re passion is to become a doctor, I’m not saying that you’re going the wrong path. The mistake that many people make is to go to college, study a certain subject and then graduate just to work in a Wal-Mart. Nearly all the managers of Wal-Mart doesn’t have a college degree, so what’s the point of going to college in the first place.

#2) Will You Make More Money With Less Stress After Graduation?

College for me is just training you to be someone else’s employee; this is true even for business school. And the big question is what will happen after graduation?

Even if you land a job, you’re probably working hard to make more money for someone without a college degree. That’s if you can find a job.

But the real depression will hit you once you find out that you have to pay off those loans that you took out to pay for your tuition fees, books, and food during the four years. And all you got for those hardships is a degree and knowledge that you won’t be able to use for a long time. Did you know that most college graduates work in a field unrelated to their degree?

#3) Will You Get Your Time Back?

If you’ve been to college, you know that it’s not easy. Professors will give you a boat load of homework that needs to be done within a short amount of time, plus a test. Students are always thinking of ways to get away and actually drop out.

In my opinion, a motivated person who wants to succeed will succeed no matter what. There’s always a better path that the ones that our teachers and parent gave us. And only the true leaders will sought that path.

Most college students don’t have a life because they’re taking too many classes hoping to graduate soon and start their life. But trying to hard will make people tired and stressed out. But the real question is you using your time wisely and making every minute worth something? Make sure you are, for those times are gone forever.

Mindsets Are Difficult to Change

Since a child our mind were conditioned by our teachers and parents that a college degree is necessary to succeed. When you’re thinking a certain way for too long it’s hard to change that mindset.

But understand that the majority of the men/women who can afford to live during the past few decades don’t have a college degree.

More often than not, with a college degree you can afford to survive and out food on the table, but you can’t afford to live.

Deep down inside, you know this is true, but your teachers and parents have conditioned your mind, that if you don’t have a college degree, you’ll be flipping burger at McDonald the rest of your life. But I’m happy to let you know that a lot of people working at McDonald are making more than a college graduate because they actually have income and less debt.

3 Reasons to Start a Business in 2010

#1) We’re Living in America

The United States of America is viewed by most country across the globe as “The Beautiful Country” or The Land of Opportunity”. It wouldn’t have been viewed this way by so many countries and people in the world if it didn’t deserve it.

In fact, if you can’t get rich in America, you can’t get rich anywhere in the world.

#2) Procrastination Leads to Failure

If you want to do something you have to do it now and not some other day. This is because some other day never comes. If you decided not to do it now, chances are you’ll never do it.

2010 is a good year to start a business because the economy is still recovering, which is creating opportunities. Did you know that more people get rich during an economic depression than any other time?

#3) You’re Already Failing

Everybody’s afraid to fail, but you shouldn’t be afraid to fail because you’re already failing. You won’t understand this until you really think of your current situation.

If you’re going to a non-elite university majoring in something that won’t land you a job with the government, you’re failing. On second thought, if you can manage to graduate in the top 10 rank of your class, you’ll have a chance. This means studying from dawn to dust and not having a life for at least four years.

Lucky for you, there’s no dead end (not if you’re living in America). Whenever I think I’m at a dead end, there’s always that light that shows me a path to leave that dead end behind.

Final Words

I understand that this is a daring topic and will get me some negative comments, but I have to let the truth be told.

And I’m not encouraging anyone to start a business without doing any research (that’s stupid), but I do encourage people going to college to consider a different path. There’s nothing you can do with a degree in biology or history besides teaching at a school. 2 to 3 months of summer vacation, I would go for it.

If you’re a student majoring in literature, make sure you start writing your own books to sale. Being an author and selling your own creation is a good business you can start. But if you just want to go online and ramble like me, you don’t need a college degree. On second thought, you don’t need a degree in literature to become a bestselling author.

No matter what you do, make sure your passion comes first. You can make money anywhere, so why waste your precious time working towards a job that you have no passion for.

About Nathan Lee: Nathan Lee is a 21 years old entrepreneur who enjoys blogging about making money online and women. Visit his websites http://networkmarketinglearningtools.com and http://modernseduction.com to learn more and download his eBooks completely free.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!


I’ll Be Speaking At Blog World 2010

Posted in Other earning money on July 30th, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

blog world 2010A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was definitely going to Blog World Expo this year. At that time I was only planning to attend the conference.

Then I heard they were welcoming speaking proposals, so I decided to send one. Long story short I got approved, and I’ll be speaking at the “New Media 101″ module. The title of my presentation is “Google AdSense Optimization.”

I am really looking to flying to Vegas in October. First of all the keynotes, presentations and panels are looking great. Here are some topics that will be covered:

  • How to Get Media Coverage for Your Blog
  • How to Keep Your Blog from Being Hacked, Stolen or Otherwise Violated
  • 5 Strategies Bloggers Should Learn from Online Marketers
  • How to Sell Your Blog
  • How to Run a Successful Webinar Business from Your Blog

Second, I’ll finally be able to meet many friends and business contacts I only talked with online so far. People like Darren Rowse, John Chow, David Risley, Leo Babauta, Jonathan Fields, Yaro Starak and so on.

Many blog readers already emailed me saying they’ll be going too, so I’ll try to organize a DBT meet-up or something like that. If you are going, I hope you manage to attend my presentation too!

As we get closer to the event I’ll post more updates, so stay tuned.


Original Post: I’ll Be Speaking At Blog World 2010
Join Online Profits Today

Blog Content Strategy 101

Posted in Other earning money on July 30th, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

Content strategy might seem like the domain of giant content sites and big-brand online publishers. But if you run a blog, you’re a content publisher. And a solid content strategy can help you to more clearly define your goals, and identify how you’ll achieve them.

For those for whom content is a business, a content strategy can help support, and achieve, the goals set out in your business strategy.

What is Content Strategy?

A content strategy is a plan that helps your users achieve their goals, and helps you to achieve your own goals, through your web site’s content.

Content strategy treats content as an asset that can be used, or combined with other informational or interactive tools, to help users achieve their aims on your site. Content strategy prevents you from seeing your content as mere tactical executions that — hopefully — support some distant business goal. Content strategy frames content as a tool.

Kristina Halvorsen, content strategy guru and founder of content strategy consultancy Brain Traffic, defines content strategy as including editorial strategy, web writing, metadata strategy, search engine optimization, content management strategy, and content channel distribution strategy.

Stepping Toward Strategy

I see the creation of a content strategy as involving these steps.

  1. Set content goals.
  2. Conduct content inventory and identify content gaps.
  3. Review and amend, where appropriate, site taxonomy or labeling, content tagging, and categorisation so that your current treatment of content reflects the goals you’ve set.
  4. Identify content-related tasks and responsibilities.
  5. Set a plan for:
    - filling content gaps
    - the direction of future content
    - recycling or reusing evergreen content to achieve the greatest possible ROI

    Let’s look at each step in turn.

    1. Setting Content Goals

    Every good blog meets a particular need for a given audience. Your content goals are the place where, on paper, your audience members’ needs can be aligned with your business needs.

    For example, imagine I run a blog on chicken keeping, and my audience is backyard poultry keepers — families and others who aren’t exactly poultry enthusiasts or breeders, but want to have a few hens scratching in the backyard. And let’s say I want to generate an income of $1000 per month from my blog six months from now.

    The only way I’m going to achieve my goal is through content: by providing my audience with the information they need. Whether I join affiliate programs, conduct paid product reviews, sell ad space or sell ebooks about chicken keeping, if I don’t publish the content, I won’t have an audience, and I won’t generate an income.

    Content translates to pageviews, audience growth, engagement and loyalty — all the things that bloggers need to monetise their blogs. So my content goals might cover:

    • publishing frequency
    • per-post, per-month, or per-category traffic objectives
    • topic emphasis, post type, or media used
    • the quantity and quality of comments, discussions and feedback

    Even if your blog isn’t a financial concern, content goals will help you stay focused on your blog’s unique advantage — its point of difference — and make the most of that with every post you publish.

    2. Conducting a Content Inventory

    A thorough content inventory involves listing each piece of content on your blog, and noting its publish date categorisation, tags, and any other metadata associated with it.

    Through this process, you’ll find outdated posts, incorrectly categorised or tagged posts, broken links, spam comments, typos — all kinds of issues! Once you’re finished, you’ll also have a clear idea of the strengths of your existing content assets, as well as the weaknesses. And by considering your content inventory in light of your content goals, you’ll quickly be able to find content gaps: areas in which you lack the content that will be required to achieve your goals.

    If one of my goals is for my chicken keeping site to be the recognised authority for backyard hobby poultry keepers, I’ll need the content to back that up. My content inventory will undoubtedly reveal some areas in which my content is lacking, incomplete, amateurish, or fails to represent best-practice approaches. They’re my content gaps for this goal.

    3. Reviewing and Amending Content Treatment

    The information you collected on your content’s metadata during the content inventory also needs to be analysed in light of your goals. This might reveal other gaps — perhaps you’ve overlooked some important tags, or the tags you’ve used don’t reflect the terms audience members usually search for. You’ll want to identify those issues and address them, creating additional tags, making sure your content is categorised as logically and intuitively as possible, and ensuring that the mechanics of your content are closely aligned with your content goals.

    One of my chicken keeping blog goals was income, and I’ve decided I’ll use good organic search placement as one technique to build my readership. My content inventory shows that I’ve tagged all my content about poultry housing with the tag “hen houses”, but my research shows that searchers most commonly search for the term “coops”. I might add that tag to my site — and all related posts — to boost my position in those search results. I might also change the navigation label on my blog that leads to specliaised content about hen houses from “Housing” to “Coops” so that when the users I’ve attracted reach my blog, they see exactly the thing they’re looking for.

    This step is really about looking at the ancillary information that allows users to find and contextualise the information you present, and making sure it’s optimised for your user and blog goals.

    4. Identifying Content Tasks and Responsibilities

    If you’re a solo blogger, the second part of this step will be easy: you’ll be responsible for everything! But just what is “everything”?

    How often will you publish new content? What tools will you use to publish it? Where will you source it and what requirements will you place on every item published on your blog? Who will follow up on any copyright issues and check the factual accuracy of each post? Who will run the spell check? Who will schedule the posts and who will hit the “publish” button? How will you work out, or know, when you need to add a category or tag to the site? And how will you populate that new category with content?

    If your blog is time-relevant, you might need a plan for retiring old content, but every blog contains some content that will become outdated in time. How will you manage that? Where will you redirect users who try to access retired content?

    These are just some of the questions about tasks and responsibilities that you’ll want to answer through your content strategy. The guidelines you’ll want to set at this point will depend on the nature of your blog, and where you want to take it in future. For example, in developing my authoritative chicken keeping blog, I might decide to request guest posts from well-known breeders. This decision has implications for copyright, publishing schedules, consistency of style and voice, and so on. I’ll need to try to anticipate and answer those questions in my strategy.

    5. Setting Your Plan

    The work you’ve done so far forms the basis for your content strategy. You’ve defined a focus, audience and goals, and reshaped your blog (and its underlying process and management) so that it’s in the best possible position to achieve your goals as you move forward.

    The final step involves setting out action plans to implement strategies and tactics that will help you achieve those goals over time.

    That might involve tasks like:

    • filling large-scale content gaps
    • trying new content-sourcing tactics, post types, and media
    • recycling, reusing or repackaging evergreen content to achieve the greatest possible return on your investment in it

    When you work with content all the time, it can be difficult to step back and see your blog as a whole. That’s why comparatively few bloggers have developed content strategies for their blogs. But a good content strategy can help you to focus, and build your offering strategically using content assets that appreciate, rather than devalue, over time.

    Do you have a content strategy for your blog, or are you winging it?

    About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

    Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
    468x60.jpg

    Blog Content Strategy 101

    Make Money Online in Record Time by Building Your List!

    Posted in Other earning money on July 30th, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment
    Guest Post by Paul McCarthy

    If you're new to making money online then I have three words that will hopefully transform the way you look at your new business. This article will help you make money online in record time and I only wish I had this information when I started out!

    Build Your List

    All the top internet marketers out there have the ability to generate wealth on demand and the reason they can do this is because they have spent time to get people onto their mailing list.

    This means that when they release new information products, they instantly have a list of prospects to sell items to. This usually means an instant pay off every time a product is launched and is extremely powerful.

    How do you Build a Sizable list?

    Building a list is actually pretty easy. Here are the steps that you need to follow:-

    1. Create a one page web site where you offer a free gift in exchange for the name and email address of your visitors

    2. Create the gift that you are going to give away to your visitors – often this simply needs to be a short report. There's no need to create a whole book to give away. Generally speaking, less is more, because people are always after quick fixes to their problems.

    3. Drive traffic to your one page web site

    And that's really all there is to it.

    So, let's assume that we were in the male dating niche. We might have a one page web site that offered a free e-book that people could download. The e-book might tell them how to approach any woman confidently and successfully.

    Of course, a male who's having dating problems would visit the page, see the free e-book and feel enticed to enter his name and email address into the opt-in box.

    How do you Make Money from your List?

    Here's the clever part. You can use software services called autoresponders that allow you to add emails in advance of them being sent. This means that you can set up a year's worth of emails to be sent out, sit back and let the whole thing work on autopilot.

    So, firstly, you should focus on providing top quality information to your prospects on your list. Make sure that they enjoy receiving emails from you and that you're providing real value and helping them to solve their problems.

    After the initial relationship building stage, you can then start make soft and hard sells of products. You can either sell your own products or you can be an affiliate for products that other people have created.

    So continuing our example from earlier: Once the prospect is on your list, he'd received some really helpful dating tips from you that he could go out in the “field” and try out on women. After a week or so, you'd then recommend a product, or mention your own product, that is specifically aimed at helping men have more success with women.

    Of course you'd mention this product in each of the further emails that you send out.

    The Money Making Machine....

    And that's really all there is to making money online – it's not rocket science – but learning the skills to get everything set up the first time round takes a little learning.

    If you want a rock-star lifestyle then I truly believe that internet marketing is your quickest ticket. If you just take the time to learn the skills you can really create a desirable lifestyle for yourself.

    If you'd like to learn step by step how to create an online business that I've just described here then enter your name and email address here: http://www.fromzerotowebsite.com and I'll teach you personally myself for free.

    How To Be A Networking Ninja

    Posted in Other earning money on July 30th, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

    When we last left the most connected person on the Internet, Dr. David Klein (DK) was asking you to submit your questions on networking and how to connect with people who can help you achieve your business goals. You sent him hundreds of questions and he’s come back with the answer in 40+ minutes of videos.

    The videos are free to watch and very entertaining as well. There’s even a bonus bloopers footage featuring Jenny and Cait acting like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. All you guys will like it, I’m sure. Silliness aside, the information DK and Jenny puts out in the video is extremely valuable. Let’s face it, we live in a world where it’s really who you know and not what you know that is important. Life is just so much easier when you’re connected to the right people. Watch the video to find out how to be a networking ninja and get connected.

    Networking Video

    Click Here To Watch DK and Jenny on How To Be A Networking Ninja

    Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!


    How to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog Exponentially

    Posted in Other earning money on July 29th, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

    Screen shot 2010-07-30 at 10.27.42 AM.pngOne of the biggest challenges for a new bloggers starting out in an established niche is to find a way to stand out from the crowd and find their first readers. Without existing profile and/or credibility – getting those first readers can be very tough.

    To combat this a few years back a number of bloggers started to use ‘Guest Blogging’ as a technique to launch their blogs and grow their brands to new audiences. This technique launched many bloggers to prominence – including Leo Babauta, Brian Clark, Chris Garrett, Skellie, Jon Morrow (all of whom have guest posted on ProBlogger) and many many more.

    Much has been written on the topic of how to use guest posting but one of the best resources that I’ve seen lately has been produced by Jon Morrow. He’s just released the first in a series of videos (#aff) on the topic and they are well worth watching.

    I’ve seen the complete set of videos for myself and they are easy to watch, actionable and inspiring.

    Jon himself has used guest blogging with great success – including this fantastic post on speech recognition for bloggers here on ProBlogger which helped many.

    Jon’s first video is completely free (no opt in required) and is well worth watching. His future videos require an opt in but you’ll get a feel for whether they’re right for you from the first one. I watched them all and they’re excellent.

    Do yourself a favour and set aside some time today to watch these videos.

    Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
    468x60.jpg

    How to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog Exponentially

    Review: MaxBlogPress Subscribers Magnet (It Rocks)

    Posted in Other earning money on July 29th, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

    A couple of weeks ago Pawan from MaxBlogPress.com contacted me, saying he had developed a new plugin that would significantly boost the number of sign-ups I was getting to my email newsletter.

    I have known Pawan for a while, and I use many of his plugins, so I said “Sure.” He sent me the files, and I installed it on Daily Blog Tips. The plugin is called Subscribers Magnet, and the idea is to create multiple “hit” points (i.e., methods and places your visitors can use to sign-up) to increase the number of new email subscribers you get per day.

    The idea sounded cool, but only when I started playing with the plugin I realized it was a really neat piece of software, and here is why.

    First of all it integrates with most email marketing applications (e.g., Aweber, iContact, ConstantContact), so getting the plugin to work is straight forward. Second, some of the features the plugin has are really innovative.

    The first feature is called “Form Auto Filler.” It will automatically grab the name and email from your visitors and fill your subscription forms for them. This means that when see the subscription form their details will be there already, so they will just need to click on “Subscribe.” How cool is that?

    The second feature is the “Optin Form Adder.” This will basically allow you to insert a subscription form in the sidebar or/and below your posts. The form is completely customizable, and you once you activate it through the plugin interface it will start appearing on your site. Here is how it looks like:

    maxblogpress-subscribers-magnet

    The third feature is called “Subscribers from Comment.” This one allows you to capture subscribers from people who will leave a comment on your blog. You have several options regarding how you’ll do it. You can put a checkbox that commenters must tick, you can include a subscription form that will appear right below their comment, and you can also subscribe them automatically (they’ll still need to confirm it on the email they will receive, so this is compliant with the terms of Aweber and other email solutions).

    The fourth feature is the “Popin” one. As the name suggests, it allows you to create a subscription form that will be displayed as a pop-up. You can customize the style, as well as the frequency of the pop-up and what visitors should see it. For instance, you could show it only after the second visit, only once every five visits, once every couple of days and so on.

    The fifth feature is called “Footer Bar.” It allows you to create a dynamic footer bar on your website containing a subscription form. Just like with the pop-up, you can customize how often the bar will appear.

    If you combine all these features and options you can add up to 17 hit points to your blog, and this is likely to boost the number of sign-ups significantly.

    But facts speak louder than words right? Here is what the plugin did for me. I already had a decent structure to capture email subscribers, so I decided to use only three features: the “form auto filler”, the “checkbox in comment section” and the “footer bar.” Before installing the plugin I was getting around 67 new email subscribers per day. After installing it the number jumped to around 90, which is a 35% increase as you can see in the screenshot below:

    subscribers-gain

    These days I am actually getting closer to 100 sign-ups per day, so it is working even better.

    Pawan told me he beta-tested the plugin with other friends too, and some of them got boosts of 100% in the number of sign-ups.

    As I said before, it is a really neat piece of software. Most of the time when people give me free plugins or software to test I usually try them for a couple of weeks and then stop using them. This one I’ll probably stick with.

    The plugin was officially launched this week. It is going to cost $147, but until tomorrow Pawan is offering a discount of 30%, so you can buy it for $97. I am not an affiliate, so I won’t earn anything whether you buy it or not. I just decided to review it because it worked really well for me, and because I think other bloggers will find it useful, too.


    Original Post: Review: MaxBlogPress Subscribers Magnet (It Rocks)
    Join Online Profits Today

    How To Get Shoemoney System for FREE!

    Posted in Other earning money on July 29th, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

    OK, here’s the deal. Shoemoney System 2.0 cost $497. If you purchase it through my link, I’ll give you a $500 review on John Chow dot Com for FREE! Buy Shoemoney System for $497, get a $500 review. Net effect: you’re ahead of the game by $3! If you’re thinking of buying a review on here in the future, then this is a no brainer and you should take advantage of it right now.

    This offer is open to the first 50 customers who order through my link. If you’ve already bought Shoemoney System before I made this offer, don’t worry about it, you’ll be getting the $500 review. You can claim your review after the 60 day refund period has expired. I expect to sell out these 50 spots really quick so order now if you don’t want to miss out!

    Shoemoney System 2.0

    Buy Shoemoney System 2.0 and Get a $500 Review on John Chow dot Com

    Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!


    Source Quality Content … Continuously

    Posted in Other earning money on July 29th, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

    What does every blogger need more of? Quality content!

    This is the first of a series of six posts that tackle key content questions. Today, we’re looking specifically at content sources: places where you can get ideas and information that, with a little work, you can turn into quality blog posts.

    Your posts may be text, images or video; they could deal with any topic. But every blogger needs post ideas, and all of us hit uninspired patches through which we still need to produce compelling content to a regular schedule.

    Thinking strategically about the content sources you use can deliver several benefits:

    • It provides its own inspiration: can’t think of a personal story to share today? No problem — use one of the many other content sources at your disposal.
    • It can make your life easier: instead of scrounging around one or two sources of ideas, you can find and track great sources through which you’ll gain access to a constant flow of post ideas.
    • It helps ensure you don’t omit important information: if your blog covers a growing market space, there are probably news items and events that you’ll want to make sure you cover. Monitoring key content sources will help you deliver the essential stories to your readers at the right time.
    • It can help you to think intelligently about how you pitch each post: a greater choice of content sources offers you more opportunities to creatively reach specific reader segments in ways that resonate specifically with them.
    • It can give you a wider range of tools with which to achieve your blogging objectives: try different content sources, and over time you may well find that different types of information produce posts that serve particular objectives. We all know, for example, that a review post can provide affiliate opportunities that can translate directly into revenue. Work out which post types help achieve specific audience, promotion or revenue goals, and identify content sources for those posts, and you’ll be able to focus on making the content resonate with your audience, rather than spending your time searching for basic post ideas.

    I usually see content sources as falling into two categories: internal and external sources.

    Internal Content Sources

    Internal content sources are those that exist within my operation, myself, and my audience. They include:

    1. feedback and audience discussion around past posts
    2. the audience itself
    3. my experiences, perspective, and opinion
    4. my network of colleagues and contacts

    It’s essential that you stay abreast of what’s happening on your site. Existing discussions can help you identify topics that unite your audience in sharing, learning, or debate — all of which helps build community.

    It’ll also provide one means for engaging with your audience (along with social media and other sources of direct audience contact). Sure, your site stats are helpful as a frame of reference, but nothing beats actual user engagement for getting ideas about what your blog’s readers want to know, what makes them laugh, and what motivates them.

    Thinking objectively about your own experiences in the field, as well as those of your contacts, can unearth some intriguing ideas and information that can immediately help you to develop posts. But beyond that, your passion for your field should see you investigating ideas with colleagues, and forming your own opinions about industry developments. Those unique perspectives can provide a wealth of post ideas — from interviews and news-style reports to the kinds of opinion and analysis posts that stick in  readers’ minds, and keep them coming back to check the comments long after they’ve read your post.

    External Content Sources

    External content sources lie beyond my immediate sphere of operation. They include:

    • other media focused on the same topic, including offline media, such as interest magazines and industry publications, forums, user groups, social network trends and discussions, and more.
    • other people focused on the same topic, including thought leaders, commentators, reviewers, passionate hobbyists, and organisational heads.

    I like to subscribe to media that focus on the same topic as my blog, so I’m constantly fed content ideas through story alerts, media releases, and news updates. The same goes for tracking people who lead opinion or have expertise in my area — by subscribing to their blogs, regularly visiting their sites, and following them on social networks, I can keep a grip not just on the news, but on the discussions and thinking that occur in the broader arena in which I operate.

    The posts that arise from these sources might be as pragmatic as a product or service review, daily reports from an industry conference, or ongoing commentary on a major development in your area of interest. Or they can be as theoretical as an essay taking in various industry-leading opinions, advice, and responses on a particular topic. The posts may be yours, or those of a guest blogger you’ve sourced through your offsite research. In any case, your blog won’t be short of content.

    Continuous Content

    Sourcing regular, quality content is every blogger’s challenge. But with that challenge comes the hurdles of variety, insight, exclusivity and personality. At the heart of it all, you’ll need a continuous content sourcing approach.

    To source content continually, you’ll need to build content sourcing into your schedule, and into your brain. Yes, you’ll need to dedicate time to content-sourcing tasks, like flicking through RSS feeds, reading, researching, interviewing, networking, and so on. But all that becomes easy if you treat everything you do around your blog topic as a potential content sourcing opportunity.

    Soon, you’ll no longer sit down to write a blog post and start by wracking your brains for ideas. Instead, you’ll find content ideas pop up everywhere. You’ll stop asking yourself, “What will I write about?” and find yourself picking and choosing from a plethora of ideas that “just come to you”.

    What’s your favourite source of quality content ideas?

    About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

    Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
    468x60.jpg

    Source Quality Content … Continuously