YOUR COMPLETE BLUEPRINT FOR MAKING MONEY WITH GUEST BLOGGING

Like any other moneymaking platform, with guest blogging you need to start with a plan.

Mapping out how you are going to build your guest blogging business – and make no mistake, using guest blogging to make money is a business – will help you maximize your revenues, minimize your labor, and help keep you on track to long-term success.

Developing an Area of Expertise

The first thing to consider with blogging is what niches you should focus on. If you have written a blog in the past, your blog’s niche probably is a good starting point.

That’s because you already have some knowledge about your subject matter and probably some passion as well, or at least you did at one time. This will help make your guest blogs more entertaining and allow readers to connect with your material more easily.

In order to be able to write as many guest blogs as possible, you should have several niches that you regularly write about. These should be topics that you are familiar with and can write enthusiastically about. Think about hobbies you have or had in the past, or subjects that you are passionately interested in.

Multiple Specialties Offers Greater Flexibility

Having a few areas of expertise will make it easier later when it’s time to approach bloggers with your guest blogging offer.

It will also make it simpler to research and identify successful blogs related to your niche subjects that you can focus on.

Driving Traffic to Your Sales Funnel

The ultimate purpose of guest blogging is to drive prospective customers to sales funnels you set up so that you can promote your products or services. But when you approach established bloggers with your offer to submit a guest blog, you have to walk a fine line between entertaining and promoting.

If somebody allows you to write a guest blog on their blog and you submit content that blatantly promotes products, they probably won’t publish it or, if they do, they won’t allow you to write any more guest blogs in the future.

Don’t Obviously Promote

Instead, you need to use subtlety and even a little guile when you write your guest blogs. If you are going to promote a product, it should come in the form of a product review or a recommendation rather than a blatant advertisement or promotional blog.

A more effective plan is to simply have the objective of getting your target audience to want more from you. Provide them with high-value information related to your niche that they can use in their everyday lives but always leave them wanting more.

Make it clear that the way to get more of this high value content is by following you back to your own web page, whether it is your own blog, a sales page, or some other website.

While the ultimate objective remains the same – to get people to click through to your sales pages – because you are a guest blogger who is posting on somebody else’s blog, you have to treat their readers with tact and grace.

Establishing Your Expertise

When you post a guest blog on somebody else’s blog page, odds are their readers are not going to know who you are. That’s why it’s important that you establish yourself as an expert on your niche topic.

Portraying yourself as a trustworthy expert on your niche subjects has two main benefits:

Bloggers will be more likely to allow you to contribute guests posts on their blog

Readers will put more faith in what you have to say and will be more willing to follow your recommendations, believe your reviews and click through to your sales pages

Pointing to Your Accomplishments

One great way to establish yourself as an expert is by emphasizing your education. If you have an advanced degree in a particular area, most people would be willing to acknowledge your expertise in that field.

While you don’t want to fabricate phony academic degrees, you should certainly emphasize your academic credentials in order to reinforce your readers’ perception of you as an expert.

To learn more about guest blogging and other techniques for improving the profitability of your business, check out our lead generation system by clicking on this link now.

DON’T OVERSPEND ON YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS SOFTWARE

Most software you will find that can help your online marketing business requires the purchase of software and/or licensing fees. Others are – such as pre-created email lists or sales leads – may be based on pay-per-use, but in general most charge a set-up and a monthly.

At first, this may seem excessive because you have the pay the set-up fee as well as being charged every month to use the service. But actually this kind of arrangement is to your advantage.

That’s because technology changes very rapidly and, as a result, there are usually many different versions and upgrades of the same software available.

Paying Unnecessary Fees

If you were to pay just a one-time fee to purchase a piece of software, it could be obsolete in a year or even sooner because Google’s Internet search engine algorithms have changed or some other technological upgrade. That would mean having to buy the software all over again.

But when you pay the start-up fee and a monthly subscription, you usually get any updated versions of the same software as they come out at no additional cost, which allows you to keep using the same software program seamlessly.

Google’s Free Tools

Google also offers a lot of free business tools that can be used for document sharing, creating and managing spreadsheets, email, website marketing, project management and even phone service.

Schedule a few hours to spend looking at the wide variety of tools you can use for free to build your business. Why should you spend money if you don’t have to?

Ask your industry friends or network partners about the kind of software they are using and if they are satisfied with it. Most people are more than willing to share their experiences and this can save you a lot of time and money because you can skip the trial and error step of finding effective software.

Finally, beware of companies that offer “push button” or “business in a box” Internet marketing programs that will build your business without your having to do a thing.

Google recently announced that it would be cracking down on companies that auto-generated content and used “spam” building tools to try to manipulate the company’s search engine algorithms.

Be Google Compliant

Before you invest in any software, make sure it is compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines. Otherwise you may be spending money on a program that the world’s largest search engine has already blocked or banned.

Like any other business, if you want to succeed in online marketing, you need to be prepared to put in a lot of hard work, regardless of the efficiencies created by good software programs. There’s usually no magic wand you can wave. Be wary of anybody who tells you there is.

Software as a Tool

Software tools can make your business run more efficiently. But they aren’t business solutions any more than a typewriter or a copy machine is a business solution. When you purchase software, don’t look at it as something that is going to build your business. Only you can build your business. But software can help you achieve this goal.

Software tools can help you organize your day, manage data, and speed up some processes of marketing. But at the end of the day it’s up to you to guide your business. You can’t put your business on auto-pilot and expect it to succeed. This is a great way to squander your money and your time.

Software that is the “deal of the day” may or may not be the right tool for you. It’s like you mother may have used to say: “If all of your friends were leaping off a cliff, would you leap off after them?”

Don’t be fooled by the bandwagon approach to marketing software. As a successful online marketer, you are wise enough to make up your own mind and come to your own conclusions.

If you’d like to learn more about making money online, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

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