7 Key Points For Niche Blogging By Chris Jenkins & Rob Maggs Top Dog IM Software Table of Contents Introduction......................................................................................................... 2 Picking a Good Niche Blogging Topic................................................................. 3 How Big Should Your Niche Be?........................................................................ 3 Finding The Right Niche for You........................................................................ 4 Getting the Right Domain for Your Blog.............................................................. 5 Two Ways to Choose the Right Domain Name................................................... 5 Domain Names To Avoid.................................................................................... 6 What Kind of Hosting Is Best for a Blog?............................................................ 7 The Right Way to Host Your New Blog............................................................... 8 Setting Up Your Blog Using WordPress............................................................... 9 Setting Up Your Blog......................................................................................... 9 Installing Plugins to Add Extra Site Functions................................................. 10 Changing the Appearance of Your Blog........................................................... 11 Other Settings to Be Aware Of......................................................................... 12 Choose the Best Theme for Your Blog............................................................... 13 Where To Look For WordPress Themes........................................................... 14 The Best Kinds of Blog Content You Can Provide............................................. 15 What Kind of Promotion Should You Do for Your Blog Posts?..........................17 Conclusion........................................................................................................ 18 Resources.......................................................................................................... 19 Namecheap.com.............................................................................................. 19 Hostgator.com................................................................................................. 19 Aweber.com..................................................................................................... 19 OptimizePress ................................................................................................. 19 Top Notch Plugins............................................................................................ 19 Killer PLR......................................................................................................... 19 Software Of The Week...................................................................................... 19 Freebie Of The Week........................................................................................ 19 FileZilla............................................................................................................ 20 Zamzar.com..................................................................................................... 20 Social Master................................................................................................... 20 Niche Generator............................................................................................... 20 Profits Theme................................................................................................... 20 Wordtracker (Keyword Tool)............................................................................ 20 Special Product Of The Week............................................................................ 21 Forum Renegade.............................................................................................. 21 Meet: Chris Jenkins & Rob Maggs..................................................................... 22 Visit us at our website: http://topdogimsoftware.com...................................... 22 Introduction If you’re new to Internet Marketing, it doesn’t matter which niche you want to be in, you’ll need to understand the 7 Key Points For Niche Blogging to help further your branding and exposure online. A blog gives you a home base for your message. Your blog is a place where you can frequently discuss relevant topics and pull in traffic that will form a basis of trust with your customers and leads. To get started with niche blogging the right way, we want to educate you about these important lessons to learn. Our key points run from picking your niche topic to promoting the finished product. We’ll walk you through these critical steps you need to know and speed you along to a great success story! Back To TOC Page 2 of 22 Go To Last Page Picking a Good Niche Blogging Topic When you want to start blogging online, it’s important that you decide what your niche topic will be. A successful blog is not where you pick a random “catch-all” domain and blog about everything that crosses your mind each day. Your business blog as a marketer can certainly pull in personality and off-topic commentary once in awhile, but it shouldn’t be a scattered array of niche topics in general. For example, it’s okay to have a blog about dog training and to mention off-topic things in passing, like how you were so full after dinner that you didn’t feel like taking the dog for a walk. You should always relate the topic to your niche blog topic – by saying something about the fact that because you didn’t take the dog for a walk, he got revenge by chewing up your shoes. How Big Should Your Niche Be? There’s no niche too big for your blog. You can go as broad as you want, like “fitness,” “health,” or “finances.” You can also narrow down your topic for your blog by choosing things like, “fitness for moms,” “dealing with tinnitus,” and “getting rid of debt.” Just because you pick a focused topic, that doesn’t mean your site will suffer with low traffic. In fact, it’s going to be easier to rank and get traffic for a narrower topic than it will to try to go too broad. Back To TOC Page 3 of 22 Go To Last Page Finding The Right Niche for You You want to choose a niche that you’ll have plenty to blog about. There should be ample resources for you to research the niche, if you don’t already know about it. Think long-term and make sure you could write about it on a regular basis. Don’t choose a topic you know you’ll get tired of or bored with easily. And if the goal is to make money with your blog, then make sure your niche has profit opportunities. For example, with the fitness niche, you can profit by promoting the following things on your blog: • Online courses • Fitness equipment • Workout clothes • Diet supplements • Food scales • Print books • Membership sites… etc. If there’s an audience plus money making options, and you know you will wake up excited to blog about it each day, then it’s a good niche for you to go into. ACTION STEP Make a list of all the things you already know, or are in the process of learning. Then, from that list, choose all the topics you think you’ll enjoy writing about for a long time. Next, make a list (like the one above) of possible products you can promote in that niche. When you find one you’ll enjoy, that has plenty of promotional opportunities, you’ve found a good niche! Watch for “Action Steps” at the end of most of our chapters. Then DO THEM! These steps will help you meet your goals to get you on the road to success with your niche blogging experience. Back To TOC Page 4 of 22 Go To Last Page Getting the Right Domain for Your Blog People usually have anxiety about their domain name choices. It seems like such a major decision – and it is, but you can also relax a bit. If you make a mistake and realize it later, you can always move your site to a new domain later. Two Ways to Choose the Right Domain Name There are a few ways to choose your domain name. Do you want to brand your own name in the niche? Do you understand how people often relate Caesar Milan to dog training or Tony Robbins to Self Help? You can do that! Or, you can pick a keyword-based domain, like “dogtrainingtips.com” if you want to. That’s okay too. You can still brand your name on a domain if that's what you'd prefer to do. Back To TOC Page 5 of 22 Go To Last Page Domain Names To Avoid The only things you shouldn’t do are be vague or cute with your domain, and choose domains that aren’t easy to spell, or ones that are too long. A vague domain name that doesn’t tell a visitor what the site is about can confuse your audience. For example, “takeithigher.com” could mean anything from being about spirituality to learning how to make a jump shot in basketball – the consumer just won’t know by simply looking at your domain name. Spelling is crucial – keep it simple! You don’t want other site owners benefiting from your audience’s typos or their inability to spell your domain name properly. The same with the length of the domain name – the longer your domain name is the higher the chance is for a mistake, and the bigger the traffic loss you’ll suffer. ACTION STEP If you’re happy with using your name, go see if it’s available. A good site for checking if a domain name is available is NameCheap.com. If the domain name you want is available, you should register it NOW to secure it, before someone else decides to purchase it. Believe us when we tell you that it's surprising how fast potentially profitable domain names can disappear. If you want to use keywords, think about what will best describe your site and what people are searching for (the Google Adwords Keyword Tool will come in handy for this: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool. Next, check that any potential domain names you’ve come up with are easy to spell, aren’t too long, and aren’t too vague about your site topic. Now you’re ready to register them on a domain registrar website like NameCheap.com. Back To TOC Page 6 of 22 Go To Last Page What Kind of Hosting Is Best for a Blog? Some ill-informed marketers will advise you to go with a free hosting platform when you start your blog. This is completely unnecessary and dangerous to your blog’s longevity. When you use a free platform like Blogger, you don’t have control over your content. It could be wiped out without warning any day – and you don’t even have to be doing anything unethical for this to happen. Why would you put your business at risk like that? You might be thinking, “Well I don’t have a big business built up there yet, so it’s okay.” But consider your plans – you hope to grow the business online, surely. Do you really want to have to start a new domain halfway in when traffic’s starting to grow and profits begin to build? If that happens, then you’re at ground zero in Google again. And if you stay on the free platform, you could wake up any day and see a “site not found” message – which would knock you off your feet in a panic. Back To TOC Page 7 of 22 Go To Last Page The Right Way to Host Your New Blog It’s better to own your domain (it’s now mostly $11 or less per year) and get a reasonable quality, inexpensive hosting through a company like Hostgator. You can get a baby or hatchling plan for between $6 and $10 a month. You might worry that a hosting account is too confusing to use, but there are wonderful tutorials (for free) and it’s simple once you know which buttons to push to upload files. Many people like Hostgator because they’re the closest thing to a household name you can get. They’re widespread and they offer 24/7 Live Chat 365 days a year with their team who can help you if anything happens. If your site gets hacked with Malware, a simple alert to the team will get them looking into it and they’ll email you when it’s all cleaned up. And the hosting CPanel is easy to navigate and work with as you build your blog. If you go with Hostgator, you can install a blog easily by using the Fantastico button (it’s a little smiley face inside your CPanel). Click that and fill in the items it asks you for. You have to decide if you want your blog to reside right on the home page of your site, like this: yourdomain.com – or if you want it to have a separate blog area, like this: yourdomain.com/blog or on a subdomain like: blog.yourdomain.com. ACTION STEP Sign up to an affordable hosting plan from a well-known and reliable hosting provider like Hostgator. Warning: Don’t purchase hosting from the same place you purchased your domain name from. Having the two from separate providers is simply a good way to protect yourself by not “having all your eggs in one basket”. Back To TOC Page 8 of 22 Go To Last Page Setting Up Your Blog Using WordPress As mentioned in the hosting section, you can usually install WordPress through your hosting cpanel using Fantastico. If this isn’t available to you, then you can download and install WordPress by following their instructions here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress. Before installing WordPress on your domain, you must first create an SQL database and SQL admin. You do this through the MySQL® Database Wizard in your CPanel. Setting Up Your Blog There are a few different areas you want to go through and set up when you first install your blog using WordPress. Let’s go over the basics so that you can get started loading content up for your niche audience! On the left sidebar, you’ll want to start with the bottom option called Settings. Here’s how to fill out those sections: • With the General setting, you’ll enter the name of your site and a tagline or motto. Make sure it’s something that tells the visitor what your site is about. Set the date and time zone if you wish – this is important if you plan to schedule blog posts ahead of time. • In the Writing setting, under Update Services, you can paste a link of Ping sites that will notify them whenever you have a new blog post. You can Google this or ask someone you trust for a recommended list. • In the Reading setting, decide if you want your blog readers to land on your latest blog post or a static page (like a welcome page that you create). Also determine how many blog posts you want to show on each page – maybe four or five. • In the Discussion setting, you’ll set your personal preferences for how you want to be notified about comments, and how comments are approved or held for analysis by you, which helps to prevent spam. • In the Permalinks setting, make sure you choose the option that turns your URL into a keyword domain. You don’t want your blog post to end in a random number or code, you want it to have the blog post title in it. So pick the option that says “Post Name.” Back To TOC Page 9 of 22 Go To Last Page Installing Plugins to Add Extra Site Functions Further up in your sidebar, you want to click on the Plugins link. Every marketer has different preferences for their plugin list. Here are a few things you can start with: • Akismet – activate it so that it will help catch spam comments for you. • Contact Form 7 – lets people use a contact form on your site to reach you. • Google XML Sitemaps – gives Google a sitemap to your domain so they can easily index it. • WPTouch – turns your site into a mobile friendly blog instantly. • WP Socializer – puts social network sharing icons on your blog posts to help them go viral. There are many other options you can use for plugins. You can find free and paid plugins to help cater to the needs of your audience better. This is something you can research as you go, so gets the basics set up and then work on it from there. Back To TOC Page 10 of 22 Go To Last Page Changing the Appearance of Your Blog Moving up the sidebar again, you’ll see a section called Appearance. This is where you’ll choose your theme (see step 5 of this guide). But there are also other things you can do here. The Widgets section lets you choose what types of things you’ll show in your blog’s sidebar (not the one in your dashboard, but the one visible to the public). You can choose things like: • Search Box – this is a convenience for your visitors to help them find things on your blog. It’s usually placed at the very top of your sidebar. • Categories – don’t overload the categories, but keep your blog nicely organized from the beginning so that your readers can find blog posts on the topics they need. • Recent Posts – for your regular readers, this is a nice touch because it lets them quickly glance and see what’s new since they last landed on your blog. • Recent Comments – participation and socializing on your blog will be important. People like to see what the community is talking about and respond to the conversation when applicable. • RSS – give your readers the ability to subscribe to your blog via RSS and put it somewhere they can easily notice it. • Text Box – the most versatile widget in your blog’s dashboard, this enables you to paste HTML code to showcase things like an autoresponder opt in box, banner ads, links and more! There are other widgets you can find online to add to your sidebar arsenal. And there are more free ones already there (such as pages, archives, tag clouds, and more). You just need to see which ones you find functional and add them if you like what they can do for your visitors. Back To TOC Page 11 of 22 Go To Last Page Other Settings to Be Aware Of As you make your way up your dashboard sidebar, you’ll see Comments, Pages and Posts. You want to go in and delete their samples so that you can start your site from scratch. For the Pages, you’ll want to create an About page that tells your visitor what you are all about. You can include a headshot of yourself as the blog owner if you want to, and add commentary about what insights and topics you provide on your blog. If you’re marketing, then you’ll probably want to include a page about your earning disclaimer. This is helpful if you’re promoting as an affiliate and want to avoid any legal hassles down the road. In addition you will probably want to add a Privacy Policy page to inform visitors about what information you gather about them, and what steps you take to protect the privacy of your guests, and customers. This is an important step in establishing a basis of trusts for potential leads and customers. If you plan to sell products on your blog site you will mostly likely also need something life a Refund Policy page or Product Warranty page, to inform your buyers about what your policies and rules are regarding product refunds, guarantees, etc. Create your first Post after that – it can be a simple “Welcome to my blog” post that greets your audience and then explains a bit about your excitement for the niche, what you hope to help them with, etc. When you create a post, you can publish it right then, save it as a draft if you haven’t finished it yet, or schedule it to go live at a later date and time. You can use all text or include images, audio and video files. ACTION STEP If you’re completely new to WordPress then this step may take you some time. Remember, it’s OK to start with the absolute basics. Just go through the key settings listed above, and don’t get overwhelmed with everything else you see when you login to WordPress. Back To TOC Page 12 of 22 Go To Last Page Choose the Best Theme for Your Blog When it comes to themes, some people spend way too much time trying to get the perfect fit, when the focus should really be on your content. A layout is important for aesthetic reasons and site navigation, but you shouldn’t put off blogging until you find the right theme. A theme can be changed any day of the year and it doesn’t interrupt your content at all. So feel free (in your spare time) to play around with it until you find one you like. In fact, you can even stick with the default theme you’re given when you install WordPress. It won’t help your site stand out against all the rest, but it’s a good place to start if you’re not sure about things yet. For Internet Marketers, Rob and I highly recommend the OptimizePress theme to our marketing enthusiasts. It comes with many various built-in Sales Page, Squeeze Page, and Membership templates as well as being able to handle onpage vidoes and optin forms, not mention handling page redirects with ease. Back To TOC Page 13 of 22 Go To Last Page Where To Look For WordPress Themes To find a theme, you can start by looking at what’s already included in your WordPress account. Do you want a clean theme with less clutter, or is the image more important to you? Should your theme showcase many pictures or more text? There’s something for everyone. If you’re not happy with anything there, then you can go online and look for free or paid themes that you can use. Be careful about using free themes because they’re often embedded with links back to other sites – sometimes unsavory sites you may not want your blog linking to! If you go with a paid site, make sure it’s not so complex that you’ll have trouble understanding how to use it. If you’re brand new to blogging, it might help to get your feet wet before jumping in with a customizable paid theme right off the bat. ACTION STEP If you’re completely new to WordPress, use something simple. Don’t get too caught up in the little details when you’re just getting started. Remember that a theme is something you can tweak and change in the future as you get more used to blogging. When updating, upgrading, or simply changing WordPress themes, it's important to backup your website, and the associated WordPress SQL database before proceeding with this process. A good WordPress backup plugin to use is UpdraftPlus (a free plugin), which allows for using local or cloud backups. Get into the habit of backing up your blog website, and it's databases, regularly! Back To TOC Page 14 of 22 Go To Last Page The Best Kinds of Blog Content You Can Provide Before you get too caught up in keywords and density levels, remember who this blog is for – your target audience. It’s not for Googlebots or other search engine spiders. It’s to help the people who are coming to you for advice. The content that you create should cater to them, while at the same time being mindful of basic, good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices. It’s good to use a keyword phrase in the blog, especially when your blog is new and hasn’t developed an audience yet, because it helps your blog posts to get found in search engines. But don’t make it boring. Cater to your readers, too. So for example, let’s say your blog post is about “dog training.” Don’t title the post “Dog Training.” That’s too broad, and it’s boring! Here’s an example you could use instead: “Dog Training for Pups Who Get Revenge By Chewing Up Shoes!” Now with that title we know a bit more about what’s happening. Something happened to make a dog get even by chewing up shoes. Google still gets their scraps with keyword phrases and your readers get catered to with an interesting and catchy blog post title that narrows down the topic for them. Personalized blogging is more important than almost any other factor (aside from relevancy). If your blog is sterile and you slap “articles” up there, it won’t help you develop a repeat audience. You’re not creating an article directory – you’re creating a blog – and blogs have humans behind them. So make sure you weave personal stories or insights or opinions into the mix. Back To TOC Page 15 of 22 Go To Last Page Honest blogging is a necessity now. Not just because of the legal ramifications, but you just don’t want the competition exposing you as a fraud. Plus, it helps to sleep well at night knowing you did the right thing. If you’re reviewing a product, for example, don’t gloss over the fact that it’s not 100% up to par. Give the details about the pros AND cons to the reader. They can make up their own mind, and they’ll appreciate knowing you were transparent with the truth. Thorough blogging is more important than a specific word length. Many new bloggers ask the question: “How long should my blog post be?” Just make sure it’s thorough and says everything you want it to say and you’ll be fine. Multimedia helps bloggers develop a loyal audience. Don’t rely on text alone. Use a podcast where they can hear your voice. Use a video blog where they can see you and feel like they’re sitting across from you chatting as they sip a cup of coffee. These little touches will set you apart from the millions of bloggers who are still trying to game the system with high keyword density, phony, hyped up articles, and short, low value content. ACTION STEP Start by brainstorming all the topics you can think to blog about right off the top of your head. Don’t worry if you can’t think of too many at first – it all comes with practice. Then, choose around 4-5 of these topics and write up some blog posts to go on your new blog. You can start by posting a couple right away, then save the others to post over the next few days/ weeks. Posting regular, fresh content is one of the most important things about running a successful blog. Back To TOC Page 16 of 22 Go To Last Page What Kind of Promotion Should You Do for Your Blog Posts? The best thing you can do for your blog to get traffic is…blog! The continual content flowing through your site will attract search engine spiders and human visitors alike. Wasting too much time on driving traffic to your blog will cut down on the time you have to post new content. Pull traffic in instead – with useful content that you pull together for your visitors. The basics should be done for promoting your blog post and then focus on writing more great content. Here’s what you should be doing: • As soon as your blog post goes live, Tweet it so that others can help you by Re-Tweeting it for you. Even if you’re not normally a Twitter user, do it anyway because many people are. • Put the blog post link on Google Plus. Google’s own social network is a great place to house the links to your blog! People can view it, comment on it and share it with others. (Also look into Google authorship to help draw peoples’ eyes in to your post, too). • Send the link out to your list. You should have an email autoresponder account set up so that you start building a list right from your blog. Not everyone uses RSS feeds – some people prefer an email straight to their inbox. Whenever a new post is ready, send them an email with the link and a little commentary added to it. • Share the blog link on your Facebook fan page. Don’t have one yet? Get one so that your blog followers can see your links on Facebook and share it with their friends (who might be in the same niche). Back To TOC Page 17 of 22 Go To Last Page Conclusion The best thing you can remember about blogging is that you’ll get better! Everything can be changed – the theme, the way you create content – so just get started so that the growth can take place. Blog as often as you can, while making sure you’re contributing something useful to your readers - and have fun with it! our Success To your success, Chris Jenkins & Rob Maggs Back To TOC Page 18 of 22 Go To Last Page Resources Namecheap.com Cheap domain registration with an excellent control panel for managing all of your domains. Hostgator.com Best hosting company in the business. Aweber.com Hands-down one of the best services online for managing your email newsletter. OptimizePress A WordPress Theme, and yet so much more to Build High Converting Squeeze Pages, fast. Create Powerful Product Launches. Use it to Build Awesome Membership Sites. Build Your blog or website. Build Sales Letters, Bonus Pages, One-Time Offer Pages & More. Simple Autoresponder Integration. Add Video To Your Pages In Seconds. Secure Your Membership Areas. Gateway Launch System. Create Perpetual Launches. Easy to Follow Training & Tutorials. Facebook Comments & Sharing. Social Sharing Built-in. Add Your Headlines, Text and Bullets in Seconds. Integrated SEO Features. Cross Browser Compatible. Award-Winning Support. Top Notch Plugins Plugins tested and proven to work. Killer PLR Unique Done-For-You Business In A Box. Software Of The Week Our best software recommendations for each week. Freebie Of The Week A new super freebie package every week. Back To TOC Page 19 of 22 Go To Last Page FileZilla Free FTP software (I use this on a weekly basis to upload new files and pages to my website.) Zamzar.com A Free online conversion tool that allows you to convert nearly unlimited types of media file formats, including documents, images, audio, videos, etc… Convert your files to different formats quickly and easily. Social Master Social Media is on fire right now and there are a ton of people just raking in the cash, but doing it right will eat up your time and leave you empty handed if not done properly. “Take control of your social networks and manage your Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ activities through one simple interface.” Niche Generator Niche Generator – Next Generation is one powerful tool which will enable you to research a niche, weigh the competion, quickly find products to promote, and have your blog created, all in under 5 minutes. “Discover profitable niche's and research products efficiently to create or promote with this powerful research tool.” Profits Theme Leverage your time and make profitable WordPress Sites in minutes.Payspree (Merchant Account) Instant commission affiliate network. Wordtracker (Keyword Tool) Keyword research made easy. Back To TOC Page 20 of 22 Go To Last Page Special Product Of The Week Forum Renegade Be The Bonnie & Clyde Of Your Forum, And Stand Out From The Crowd! Click Here For More Information On How To Dominate Niches Back To TOC Page 21 of 22 Go To Last Page Meet: Chris Jenkins & Rob Maggs Known by some as The IM Helper, Chris has over 2 years of online experience, initially specializing in Internet Marketing. Chris, among other things, has a good deal of experience with SEO. To give you a taste of his abilities, Chris takes a mere 2.5 minutes, to get any website on Google Page Rank 1, unbelievable, but true. Products like Chris' Massive Traffic Profit System, WSO Quick Funnels, List Building Super Nova, are just a few examples of his product ideas. While some products, like RSS Link Wheel Sage, PingFM Poster, Stealth Backlink Sniper, Redirect Buddy, Optin-Wiz, and many others are products that Chris helped develop with partners. Chris is always open to new ideas from potential partners on products. CJ Success Team LLC, Chris' company, has been and remains, an eBay PowerSeller, often with his wife Camille at the helm of these endeavors. Chris' wife and family are all integral parts of his company and his Internet businesses. Most recently, Chris has been launching WSO's (Warrior Special Offers) on the Warrior Forum. Chris also participates in a great many smaller projects, such as enormous Giveaway and Mini-Giveaway events, where he consistently dominates the leader boards. Quoted from a private source, Chris managed to add 40,000 subscribers in only 7 months. In 2011, software created by Rob, generated over $150,000 in sales and in 2012 Rob launched his first WSO which was a huge success, with advice and help received from Chris Jenkins, Monika Morley and Chad Nicely,to name a few. Rob enjoyed working with Chris and asked if the two could launch some more software together. Chris agreed and both men went on to have several successful WSOs. Rob runs a successful membership site and Skype group where Internet marketers of all levels converge and help each other towards a common goal, of being successful and financially independent. Rob is consistently working on new innovative products and making them a reality, not to mention enjoying life to the fullest! Visit us at our website: http://topdogimsoftware.com Chris Jenkins Back To TOC Rob Maggs Page 22 of 22 Go To Last Page
© Copyright 2024 Paperzz
