Bounce rate is one of those numbers which always shows up in your site stats… and you can’t help but wonder what you should do. Is your bounce rate bad or good? What should you do about it? In this installment of our ongoing series, David discusses the bounce rate, how to decipher the causes of the bounce rate, and then what to do to improve it.
Your blog’s design is about a hell of a lot more than just what looks pretty. When you’re setting up your blog in a strategic way to accomplish your business goals, it needs to be designed to CONVERT. To do that, you need to understand how a reader’s attention lands and FLOWS across the site – and then design your blog to work with that. In this installment, David discussed how all this works, and how to make your blog’s design work FOR you – in terms of conversions and sales.
The blog sidebar. Its that piece of real estate that is on every blog – and every blogger had to make the decision on what should and shouldn’t go in that space. Thing is, most bloggers end up cluttering it up unnecessarily. In this installment of our series, David discusses the perfect contents of a strategic blog sidebar. It can be boiled down to 3 components.
SEO and the topic of how to rank you blog posts in search engines has always been a pretty big topic for bloggers. Organic search rankings sometimes seems like the meal ticket to traffic. So, in this installment in our series, David talks about how to SEO your blog posts. He gives a step-by-step list of actions to take on your next blog post – and also puts it all into relative importance for you.
The About page on your blog is one of the important core pages of your site. Most everybody has one – yet a majority of bloggers set it up in the completely wrong way. In this installment of CBB, David talks about the most important mission of the About Page, as well as shares the exact layout that will make your about page truly convert and grow your business – and essentially do what it was made to do.
As we move along in phase 2 of our series about setting up the blog platform, we need to focus on getting the blog design set up well for conversions. In this episode, David talks about the 5 most common design mistakes he sees bloggers making – and these mistakes all serve to clutter up the site and hence lowers conversions. Are you making these mistakes?
Many people use the phrase “personal brand” without any real idea of what a brand actually is. In this installment, David talks about what a BRAND actually is – and the 4 essential elements you must build into your blog in order to create your brand. Once those 4 elements are in place, they should also follow over into Twitter, Facebook – and essentially everywhere you appear.
The domain name for your blog is obviously a pretty important decision that has to be made at the beginning. In this episode, David talks about several important factors to keep in mind as you shop for a new domain name for your blog.
Selecting a Wordpress theme can be a pretty frustrating experience because there are SO many options out there. In this episode of CBB, David gives his take on what to consider – as well as his specific recommendation for the best option which will give a professional design now, and a great foundation to build from later.
The first decision that has to be made when setting up the ideal platform to build your business with… is web hosting. In this episode of CBB, David talks about how to select the best web hosting for your blog. What’s the problem with free web hosting? Should you use shared, VPS, dedicated, or managed Wordpress hosting? And what are David’s specific recommendations? Listen and find out.
Marketers often talk about this concept of the avatar, but very often people new to the business are confused by what it is, how to use it, and how to make it up. In this episode, we discuss the reader avatar and how to actually develop it. Doing so will allow you to create much more effective content as well as products your audience will actually want down the road.
Marketers often talk about this concept of the avatar, but very often people new to the business are confused by what it is, how to use it, and how to make it up. In this episode, we discuss the reader avatar and how to actually develop it. Doing so will allow you to create much more effective content as well as products your audience will actually want down the road.
We wrap up the year with a different kind of episode than usual. This episode contains 101 different productivity tips to help you make the most of the upcoming year of 2015. This episode is longer than usual – but we want to make 2015 the best year we’ve ever had. You with me?
What transformation are you in the business of delivering with your blog and online business? You better figure it out if you want to make money. In this episode, we talk about the “transformation map”, a tool to help you define the transformation. This tool will help you map out blog content – and products you will sell.
The only true test of a business idea is whether anybody will buy. In this episode, I give a powerful strategy for testing out a niche and business idea… even when you don’t have an existing audience in place yet. If you execute this strategy, you’ll either save yourself a lot of time and money down the road… or (if successful) you’ll give yourself a REAL foundation from which to build a very profitable blog-based business.
It is always best to, early on, move from the “niche” right into the actual business model. If you want to create a REAL online business based around your blog, then we definitely need to think of it as a business and not a topic. In this episode, we make that bridge into business. I introduce a one-page business plan idea and begin taking about how to TEST your business idea before investing a bunch of time into it.
Also, there’s a blooper in here that I left in. 🙂
In order to be able to go into a market with your blog and make a dent (and make money), you need to be pretty in-tune with what they need and want. In this episode, we talk about how to learn what they want. We talk about how to use surveys to find out, and ways to get people to answer your survey – even when you don’t have a blog yet.
Part of evaluating a blogging niche isn’t just looking at the demand and size of the audience, but also looking at the potential for monetization. In this episode, David talks about 4 important things to look at when judging the amount of money which is flowing in a particular market.
Continuing in on our niche selection process, we move into evaluating the market itself and whether it has legs. What is the most important thing to consider when it comes to competition? What is the #1 most important rule when it comes to selecting a money-making niche? We also discuss 5 indicators to look for.
This episode is for those aspiring blog owners who don’t come into this with a pretty solid idea already. In this lesson, we begin the process is deciding on our target market.
As we continue with our ongoing step-by-step series to building up a blog-based business, we’re now going to launch into the first step. What MOST people do is get a bright idea then immediately go out and buy a domain and hosting. But, let’s slow down. Because, if you want your blog to be PROFITABLE, there’s a wrong way to start, and a right way to start.
In this episode, David talks about the “new” blog monetization. He compares the mindset of the typical blogger to the mindset of a typical business owner, then draws conclusions. 🙂
Many bloggers are trying to grow their blogs effectively while holding down a full-time job. In this episode, David talks about 7 tips to leverage your time effectively so you can make the most of your available time. Put these 7 tips to use – some of them are looking forward into things we will discuss in upcoming episodes – and get started on the right footing.
From a listener question, (Karen from kipkitchen.com)… Like many blog owners, she is faced with certain technical tasks on her blog which she doesn’t have the experience to handle. And she asks, “Many internet marketeers’ advice is to outsource the work but we have concerns as we’re not making money yet. What would you recommend?”
The Morning WP is a weekly newsletter for solopreneurs building on the WordPress platform. Become a smarter, more self-sufficient WordPress site owner… in just 5 minutes per week. So you can grow your business effectively.
The Founder’s Memo is more personal. More about things I’m trying out. Things I want to share. Strategies and insights and things I’m excited about. There aren’t multiple sections. No “latest posts”. None of the fancy newsletter-y things. Just… an email that I write and send to you and I hope you find it useful.