Here’s what happened AND what we can learn from it!

Blogs, bandwidth and the iPad launch

Every technology blog knew that Wednesday was going to be a monumental day for traffic, with the Apple iPad about to be announced to the world.  However, many of the world’s leading technology blogs literally ground to a halt, having not provided enough bandwidth for their iPad coverage.  Many top tech sites were impacted to some degree.  Worst was ZDNet, which they admit was down for several hours.

However, some tech sites planned ahead effectively and will have gained tens of thousands of new readers as a result.  That’s because when a reader in unable access a reliable service from a site, they go and find a working alternative!

This is a great example of what happens when a blog is either down or too slow to use.

What does this mean for bloggers like us?

Sure, that $5 a month hosting package might seem like great value in the short term, but if it’s so slow and unreliable that it’s stopping people from being able to actually read your blog, it’s a waste of $5!  It will also slow down your progress in developing the blog.  It’s hard to build a readership, when your content is hard to access.  And it doesn’t stop there.  Putting your blog on an unreliable host can also impact your search engine performance; if the blog is consistently down, when search engines try to crawl it!

If you are serious about developing your blog, I very strongly suggest you invest in the most reliable host you can afford.  Forget wasting your time and money on having kick-ass SEO and wonderful content – none of this has any value, if your site is down or too slow / unreliable for people to bother with.

This does not have to cost a fortune either!  Some of the less expensive providers are hundreds of percent more reliable than equally priced competitors.

Quick Tip for finding a great blog host

The best way I know for finding a reliable host, is to email the owner of a site, which you visit regularly and which tends to load quickly and reliably.  Ask who they use and what their experience has been.  For those of you that are interested, I use CSNewmedia (affiliate link) for hosting this blog and they provide me with exceptional value for money.  A fast, reliable and surprisingly inexpensive service.

Photo: Gizmodo

However, if you are working hard and not getting the results you deserve, read on!

Here’s one of the secrets behind every successful, commercial blog I have ever studied:

You can’t do everything yourself!

Every successful business has key people, who’s expertise can be called upon whenever they are needed.  Your blog-based business is just the same.

If you try and do everything yourself, the success of your blog will be limited to your expertise in a wide range of specialist areas.  So, you may know all about design, but have just average marketing abilities.  You may know how to get a ton of ‘traffic’ to your blog, but no idea how to turn that traffic into a community, which you can then monetise.  You may even know how to generate income through your blog, but not fully understand how profitable your blog-based business is or how to increase the profitability of it.

The bottom line here, is that your overall success will be limited by your performance in your weakest area.

Think of a relay race team

Think of an Olympic quality relay team, which has one of its four runners replaced my someone that’s never been to a gym, smokes cigarettes and is 30lb over weight.  That team would now finish last every time.  No matter how great the other runners are, that area of weakness will ruin their chances of success.

Yesterday, while I was writing 3 blog posts, my server guy was debugging a problem for me.  It took him 30 minutes.  It would have taken me a full day to locate and resolve that same issue, because I’m an amateur in that area.  Had I fumbled around and tried to fix it myself, you would not be reading this post – I would not have had time to write it.

My specialist areas are marketing and copy writing, so I hire in experts to cover the other areas of running a successful blog.  For example, I use AccountancyExtra for any financial questions or planning issues I have.  Stuart and the team there get a call from me whenever I’m thinking of making a significant financial decision.  End result, I make great decisions and avoid losing money.

I use the Headway wordpress theme on all my blogs and I’m an affiliate.  This one’s also no brainer.  Headway has already saved me a ton of money, because I am able to do 100% of my own blog design, with zero need to touch any code.  Just dragging and dropping – perfect.  Its paid for itself many times over.  In fact, just 2 weeks after placing an affiliate link to Headway on my blogs, I had generated hundreds of dollars in affiliate income.

But Jim, I can’t afford expert help!

I hear that excuse more than any other, whenever I speak with people about developing their business.  It’s as if they really believe that every new business is rolling in money, except theirs.

Here’s the thing: I have worked with well over a thousand small businesses and most of them started off with little or nothing.  However, the businesses that were serious, realised they would need to get expert help if they wanted to succeed, so they found a way to get the help they needed.

Found a way?

Yes!

They cut their spending in other areas and invested that money in developing their businesses.  Some started off with nothing at all, then slowly, as they started to develop their businesses, they invested in the most urgent areas, based on their need.

For example, many bloggers start off with a blog hosted for free at wordpress.com or blogger/blogspot, then realise they need the additional functionality, that comes from a self hosted blog.

So, they invest in a host that offers the best value they can find.  It’s a start!  Now, the added of functionality their self hosted blog opens a ton of valuable, new opportunities.  For instance, they can use plugins that will collect email addresses for a marketing list.  They can also offer java based advertisements.  In short, the only limitation now is their imagination!

But some people just don’t “get it!”

I once spoke with a business owner that spent around £700 a year on Starbucks coffee, but who said she couldn’t afford to invest $80 on a theme for her blog!  She was unaware that there’s a difference between not being prepared to invest in a business and not being able to.

There are trillions of webpages and billions of websites out there.  For your blog to stand out, generate an income and a healthy profit, it needs all the help it can get.  There are a lot of serious people out there, competing hard for the same readers, customers or clients as you.

To be in with a chance, you need to be just as dedicated and invest just as wisely as they do.  That’s how I developed a top 10 blog.

What do you think?

Have you come across people that want the rewards, without the investment required?  What have your experiences been? Please share them with a comment.

Photo: John Spooner

Firstly, if you want to succeed with any business, you need to make sure you using the correct strategy for what you want to achieve.  In my experience, most bloggers are doing the exact opposite!  They are copying an ineffective blog model.

For example, they see the top social media and business bloggers and copy their approach; unaware that most of those guys make their money from speaking at events, consulting and offering training etc – NOT online.  Or, they copy the get rich quick guys, with the photoshopped bank statements and promises of instant wealth.

The answer?

The answer is to look at the people that DO MAKE MONEY online and study their business model!  Here’s a great place to start; based on someone, who’s building (literally) an empire online.

Check out what Leo Laporte does

For those of you who don’t already know, Leo Laporte is the founder of perhaps the leading provider of niche podcasts and video casts in the world – These all come under his TWiT network.  Leo Laporte makes the vast majority of his income online and he does so using a model that’s there for all to see (and learn from).

Leo’s online income comes from sponsors that include blue chip organizations like Visa and Ford.  He also has a ton of advertisers, people that tend to keep on advertising with him – eager to stay part of Leo’s TWiT network.  The top people in technology queue up to be guests on his shows, knowing that a mention from Leo is enough to help THEIR business / brand grow.

So, what’s Leo Laporte’s secret?

Simple: He works REALLY hard producing valuable content, in an area of business that he knows extremely well.  Because of this, he has a huge (and growing) audience.  Not only that, it’s a highly targeted audience of people who trust what Leo says.  It’s a community. (this is an important distinction, which I will explain in moment.)

That is pure gold dust for advertisers!

I’ve been in marketing for over 20 years and in my experience, the people that do well financially in ANY area of business, including blogging, are not those who waste their time looking for silver bullets – the one killer idea that will make them a million overnight.  The people who thrive are those who get rich S-L-O-W-L-Y!

Here’s what I see the guys at the top of their game (including Leo) doing time and time again:

• They build a robust business on a strong foundation – not a series of failed get rich quick attempts.  This gives them longevity and credibility.
• They focus on value, so they produce non-generic content (or posts), that people will want to read and share.  This helps them grow a targeted audience.
• They guard their reputation and earn the trust of their audience.
• They then turn their audience into a community.
• Finally, they market to that community.

This is not the kind of get rich quick post that will go viral, because it’s message is not one of instant wealth or money for nothing.  And in honesty, that’s my point.  The reality is that it takes time, intelligence and work in order to genuinely earn a significant, predictable income online.

I would love to hear what you have to say, so please take a moment to share your feedback with a comment below.

Photo: Jeff Belmonte

Try a narrower content column

The wider a blogs content column is, the harder it is to read.  [The content column is the area that contains the actual wording of your blog post.]  At least, once the width goes beyond a certain point.  Various studies suggest that if a content column (like the one you are reading now) has more than 85 characters (including spaces), it becomes harder for people to focus on.

Some suggest there’s a sweet-spot of around 60/65 characters, though my experience suggests otherwise.

Here’s what I found: I did some tests on my marketing blog; which is listed by Technorati as one of the top 10 small business blogs in the world and is ranked in the AdAge Power 150.  That blog uses an Ariel font, with a maximum column length of approximately 80 characters (I’m using around 85 characters here, by the way).

I noticed no improvement in any of the stats when I reduced it for 4 weeks to 65 characters.

However, the stats (including time on site and ‘bounce rate’), deteriorated so fast when I increased the column width to 95 characters wide, that I had to stop the experiment after just 7 days!

Experiment a little, but start off around the 70 character mark and, in my experience, you will be pretty-close to optimizing your layout for readability.

What about optimizing font sizes?

One of the reasons I have been able to use slightly more characters per line on my blogs, with no drop in readability, is that I opt for a slightly larger font that some blogs.  When it comes to font sizes in general, there seems to be no hard and fast rule.

For example, mashable use a very small font size, with great success. Techcrunch use a slightly bigger font size, as do The BBC – Whereas Yahoo opt for a larger font, for the main content areas of their news section.

If you have any readability tips?  If you do, please let us know!

Photo: Cliff1066

I just wrote a post over at my marketing blog, about the CommentLuv wordpress plugin and why I have installed it.

In essence, now, whenever you leave a comment here or on the marketing blog, you will get the chance to share YOUR blog with MY readers. Each comment you leave will automatically display a link to your last blog post or Tweet, digg etc.

You can check out my CommentLuv post, for more information.

As a blogger, we need to constantly look for ways to make your blogs as attractive as possible.  That not only means providing good quality content, but making our blogs somewhere that people actually WANT to visit and take part in.  Tools like CommentLuv give a very clear and valuable reason for readers to comment.  It’s a way for the blogger to reward the commenters for their contribution.

Within minutes of blogging about CommentLuv, I had a comment (ironically) from someone who said that it ‘can’ lead to an increase in comment spam.  This is worth considering, but in honesty, blogs will always attract spammers and link baiters, regardless.

I will take a look at the stats over the coming weeks and let you know what the results have been, after adding the plugin – so you can get an idea of what to expect.  If you want to grab a copy right now, head on over to the CommentLuv install page.

What’s your experience?

If you have used comment love, either as a commenter or as someone with it installed on your own blog, I would love to hear from you.  Please take a moment to share your feedback.

Photo: Suchitra Prints

As the years go by, some things never change; like the annual claims that “blogging is dead!”

Blogging is dead! Who says so?

In my experience, these reports tend to be written by people, who either don’t currently have a blog OR people who have a blog, which no one reads.  If you check the numbers over at my marketing blog, techcrunch, mashable, scobleizer or any popular blog – you will see a very different picture to the doom and gloom some ill-informed experts claim.

You see, it’s easy to believe blogging’s dead if your blog has very few readers.  However, if the problem was with the blogging platform, why would wordpress be kicking Twitter’s ass right now when it comes to growth?

Numbers please!

Certainly.  Wordpress.com is growing faster than Twitter.  Did you know that? Well, if you did, you are clearly a very well-informed reader.  That’s because you won’t have heard this anywhere in the mainstream media.  The regular news outlets continue to shout about the amazing success of Twitter, but few if any mentioned that Twitter’s growth rate slowed significantly in recent months.

Even fewer reported that Mat Mullenweg’s amazing blogging platform grew like crazy! (Matt, you’re a genius!)  With such biased reporting, it’s easy for bloggers to think that it’s the blogging platform that’s on it’s ass, when in fact, the exact opposite is true.

Blogging and Twitter

I guess my main point here is that fellow bloggers need only focus on developing a blog they love, that’s worth reading and then market it correctly, if they want to succeed with whatever their goals are.  This not not easy – but it is achievable with a ton of work and the right kind of help.

Twitter, (which I LOVE) compliments blogging – it’s not an either or situation.  The growth of twitter REALLY helped me develop my blogs.  In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a successful blogger, who doesn’t use Twitter a great deal. (Including all those I mentioned earlier)

Bottom line: The success of YOUR blog is down to YOU.  The blogging platform is alive and in VERY good health!

What do you think?

Photo: BennyLin0724

I decided to share this with you, after one of the readers of my marketing blog emailed me earlier with the following question.  Here’s what she asked;
“apart from all the obvious stuff, what’s the best piece of advice you can give to fellow bloggers that want to improve their blog in 2010?”

Here’s my answer: Don’t wait for a post to be perfect before you publish it!

I think of a blog as being pretty-much organic.  Your blog is constantly changing, as new posts are added, new comments are added and (if required) whenever you update a blog post.  Now, back in the old days, we published things on paper and once they were sent, that was it. You lost control over what you had written. It was in someone else’s hands.  So, when we published information on paper, it had to be as close as possible to perfect, before we distributed it.

However, when publishing content via a blog, it’s super easy to update and amend your work “on the fly.”  In other words my friend, you have no need to wait for everything to be perfect before you publish a post.  If the worst comes to the worst, you can always amend an error later (if it really needs it.)  In my experience, you will seldom need to do this.

Here’s the thing though: The REAL magic of not waiting for everything to be perfect, is that it will encourage you to write more naturally, in your own unique voice AND it will allow you to write more often too.  This makes your blog more human and individual.

I blog almost every day on Jims Marketing Blog, but if I was waiting for every post to be perfect, that would be impossible for me to do.  Apart from anything else, if I can’t finish a blog post in 30 minutes, I would not have the time to post most days!  So many people only blog occasionally, because it can take them several hours (or more) to get a post perfect. As Hemingway famously said; the best way to remove writers block, is to write for the waste paper bin.  In other words, remove the barrier of perfectionism and let your imagination come alive!

So, why not give it a try?

Why not try a few posts, where you give yourself a time limit of 30 or 45 minutes and if the blog makes sense to you, publish it! Take a look at the feedback (your analytics as well as comments) and I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Here’s quick question for you

How long do you usually spend writing a blog post?  Please take a moment to share your feedback.

Photo credit: ChanChan222

This makes a lot of sense. Ebooks are easy to produce, they can be distributed with ease and there are no issues regarding stock levels etc.  Equally, if your readers value what you have to say, and they believe there will be something uniquely valuable in the ebook, you have a ready audience to market your ebook to.

However, as best-selling author and social media expert Chris Brogan has just discovered, there are some genuine issues regarding the ebook format and perceived value. This is an important subject for anyone wondering what price they can realistically charge for an ebook, if they want to maximise their profits from it.

Ebooks are rare, in that it costs around the same to produce and deliver 1,000,000 as it does for 10.  Once the initial design costs etc have been met, the actual digital ebook costs almost nothing.  In other words, you have the opportunity to make a million, by making a million sales at around $1 – or making 10,000 sales at $100.  So, setting the price correctly is essential – so that you get the balance right, to leverage the maximum number of sales.

Ebook pricing and value

Chris Brogan is one of over a dozen A-List bloggers, who have jointly authored an ebook, which promises to tell readers how to make money through their blogs.  When Chris wrote a blog post to promote the ebook, which he and the other authors are all affiliates of (called Beyond Blogging), a heated debate ensued in the comments section, regarding the ebook’s $47 price tag (which increases to almost $100 after the introductory period has expired!)

Reading through the comments, it seems the primary issues people have are related to the fact that the book is available in electronic format, rather than paper.  Some think that the price is simply unjustifiable for an ebook.

Common sense dictates that if an ebook contains $1,000 of value and costs $100, it represents good value.  The format should not become part of the value equation.  But it does.  And this is why I wanted to mention it here.  It’s something that budding ebook authors need to be aware of, so they can plan for value objections.

If an ebook that’s written and marketed by A-List bloggers has this kind of perceived value problem, just imagine the kind of problem it would create for mere mortals like us.

Those guys have fans.

We have readers.

Fans might pay $100 for an ebook from one of these A-Listers.  Some will even buy the book, just to get a mention or a “thank you” Tweet from them.  Readers will be a lot harder to convince.

What may happen as a result of this ebook and the debate its pricing has caused, is that there will be a shift in how people value ebook content.  I would really like to know what you think about that.

What do you think?

Would the ebook format stop you from paying $100 for some information?

Might the debate around this ebook and its price, increase the cost of ebooks generally?

What’s the most you have paid for an ebook?

Please share your thoughts on ebooks, with a comment.

Photo: Photos8.com

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Chris Cree TV

Whilst Chris Cree TV’s strapline is “guiding businesses to increased influence and income through new media systems,” there’s currently a heavy slant toward business blogging and plenty of great business blog related content.

For example, there’s an excellent video on the key differences between having a self-hosted Wordpress blog or a Wordpress.com hosted blog. This is the first video I’ve seen on this subject, that mentions the ‘hidden’ ad’s inserted onto Wordpress.com blogs.  As wordpress.com bloggers are unable to see these ads on their own blogs, many are unaware of them. (I ranted about this last year, and it was picked up on CNET’s Buzz out Loud podcast.)

Equally, those of you, who found my recent post on blog comments interesting, might want to take a look at Chris’ video on negative comments on business blogs.  I could go on, but the easiest way to find out what Chris is doing, is to get your rear end over to his blog.

Oh yeah – You can also catch up with Chris on Twitter, @chriscree

Image credit: Chris Cree

In other words, as a casual reader of her blog, I was now in possession of two of the most commonly requested security questions for accessing online accounts and resetting passwords.

I emailed her to let her know. She emailed me back within the hour thanking me and said she had just changed her security questions on several important accounts, which any one of her readers could have accessed with ease.

There’s been a debate among bloggers for years, regarding how much personal data we should publish on our blogs.  I think it’s a personal decision, but one that needs to be made in the knowledge that we never really know who’s reading our material or what their intentions are.

Image Credit: Cavell L. Blood