Five Different "Kinds" of Blog Posts

Five Different “Kinds” Of Blog Posts

Blog posts come in many different forms and lengths. If you want to keep your blog fresh and interesting, you should post often. Creating different types of blog posts will help to keep your audience interested. It will also keep you from getting bored with your blog. Whether you are blogging to make money directly from the blog or blogging to drive traffic to an affiliate program, you should know about these five kinds of blog posts.

1. The INSPECTION Blog Post.

Review blog posts can help you monetize your blog. You “inspect” – take a closer look at – a product. When you review a product and include an affiliate link, you’ll make a commission off of each sale generated with your affiliate link. Review blog posts should go over some of the major plusses and minuses of the product. Even if you loved the product, you should keep your review balanced by mentioning a few things that could have been improved. Your audience will appreciate your honesty and be more likely to trust your recommendation.

2. The INSIGHTS Blog Post.

Quick tips are great “in between” posts since they are so short. They are normally between 100 and 250 words. If there’s a great bit of information that you want to share with your niche but it doesn’t really warrant a full blog post, you can post a quick tip. The tip should be focused on one key area of the niche. For example, “How to Grease a Muffin Pan” is a perfect quick tip article for a cooking blog.

3. The INDEX Blog Post.

Blog readers love lists! If you’ll look at the most popular blogs you’ll see that they make good use out of this type of blog posts. You can make lists fit any niche topic imaginable. They are great ways to convey information online because they can easily be scanned by web readers who like to skim over information. You can create resource lists that will help your readers find information on your niche. You can also create lists of different ways to accomplish a goal in a niche, like “5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Sales Letter.” The possibilities are endless.

4. The INTERVIEW Blog Post.

Although these require a bit of preparation, they can be very valuable to your blog. You can interview someone in your niche and share the results of the interview with your blog readers. This will not only help provide valuable content for your blog, but you can also get more traffic to your blog. Likely, the person who you are interviewing will publicize the event on their blog and around the ‘net which will bring more traffic back to you.

5. The INSTRUCTION Blog Post.

Like quick tips, how to posts help you provide valuable information to your readers. However, unlike quick tips, these posts go into detail on a certain topic. Some how to posts are even separated out into two or three part courses. For ideas on what to create how to posts about, look at the most frequently asked questions in your niche and develop posts around those topics.

B is for Blogging

Blogging is a powerful web platform that can be used in a wide variety of ways online. It can help you build a reputation in your niche, build your relationship with your customers and drive traffic to your own product or your affiliate links.

In other words, it can help ya make money!

What is it?

Blogs are websites where the freshest content is posted first. Normally, posts are listed in chronological order. There may be some static content in the sidebars or on other pages of the blog, but the homepage is updated when there is a new post. Visitors can post comments on your articles and you have the opportunity to create a real community in your niche.

Blogs are popular because they are very accessible. You don’t have to know much about setting up a website in order to use one. That makes them VERY “beginner friendly”. Once the initial set up is complete, they are as easy to use as a word processing program. To top it off, visitors love blogs because they can interact with the content. With a few smart posts and some traffic generation strategy you can quickly have an authority site in your niche.

What are three keys to doing it successfully?

1.CHOOSING THE RIGHT BLOGGING PLATFORM.

There are several different blogging platforms available to get you started with blogging. Wordpress has a bit of a learning curve but it is by far the best in terms of usability. You can completely customize your Wordpress blog so that it looks totally unique. You can also install several different plugins to make your blog more user friendly. For example, one Wordpress plugin automatically suggests related posts on your blog underneath each post to encourage visitors to explore your website. Here's a great Word Press tutorial that covers everything from getting started to optimizing your blog for the search engines.

2.CREATING FRESH CONTENT POSTS.

A successful blog has to be updated at least once a week, at the very minimum. Many successful bloggers add new posts every weekday. You should plan to have new content on your blog at least once every seven days. This can be accomplished easily if you create an editorial calendar. Write down a variety of different topics and plan when you will post them to your blog. With Wordpress you can even write them ahead of time and schedule them to be automatically added to your blog at a certain date and time.

3.CULTIVATING YOUR BLOG FOR PROFIT.

It’s very easy to make money with blogs and you have a few different options to choose from. With your blog, you can make money through contextual advertising with ads that are displayed on your blog. You get paid when someone clicks on the advertising. You can also link to affiliate products or sell your own product from your blog.

Can you give me an example?

You’ve discovered that there is a demand for knowledge on cooking gluten free meals, something you have a lot of experience with. You start a blog about gluten free cooking and post your favorite recipes each week. After several months, you decide to write your own online cookbook and sell it from your blog.

Not sure what to right? Here are 5 different kinds of blog posts to get you started.

The ABCs of Affiliate Marketing

A Is For Affiliate

Affiliates are an important part of the Internet marketing world. If you don’t already know by now, they not only help drive traffic if you have your own products, but becoming an affiliate can be one of the easiest ways to get started making money by promoting other people’s products.


What is it?

An affiliate is an individual who sends traffic to a product creator’s website. They are given a special website URL, called an affiliate link, which tracks how much traffic they send to the product website. They receive a commission for each sale that is made for their affiliate link.

There are many types of affiliate programs available. As an affiliate you can find programs for physical products, digital information products and even for services and membership sites. Affiliate programs are listed in affiliate networks like Clickbank, Commission Junction, and Paydotcom, among many others.


What are three keys to being a successful affiliate?

Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable ways to make money online. You don’t have to worry about creating a product, paying for graphics, developing a sales letter or following up with buyers. You’re only in charge of driving traffic. Here are three keys to being a successful affiliate.


1. Product.

Choosing the right product to promote as an affiliate is your first key step. You have a wide range of products to choose from as an affiliate, but that doesn’t mean that all of them will make you money. Before you put your time and energy into creating a marketing campaign for affiliate program, you should do some niche research. Is the niche popular? Is there a lot of competition in the niche or will you be able to establish yourself pretty quickly? How does the sales page for the product look? Would you buy from the site? Carefully evaluating the niche and the product will help you find a product that will actually sell.


2. Prospects.

Building YOUR own list of potential customers is an often overlooked part of affiliate marketing. Yet is is of paramount significance. Product creators will build lists from the people who buy from their sales letter. As an affiliate, you should be building a list as well. Before you direct your visitor to the sales page for the product, you should offer them something free in exchange for opting into your list. You can create a short report on the niche and give it away on a squeeze page before forwarding the visitor on to the sales page. By building a list, you can create a long term relationship with the visitor and offer them additional value and product offers.


3. Promotion.

Setting up your own blog is one of the best ways to promote affiliate programs due to the variety of ways you can use a blog. Smart affiliates know that their long term income comes from sales of multiple products in the same niche. One of the best ways to sell multiple products is to start a niche blog. Your blog can link to several different affiliate products so you have many opportunities to make money.


Can you give me an example?

After doing some research, you discover that solar energy is a hot (pardon the pun) topic. You start a blog on do it yourself solar energy. On the blog, you can write articles related to solar energy and link to the several solar energy products available on Clickbank. You can also give away a “5 Tips to Smart Solar Energy” report on your blog to build your list.

Next week we'll look further at step one and explore ways to determine profitable niches and products using keyword research.

Getting out of Debt

One of the most important steps in becoming financially free is getting out of debt.

First and foremost: stop using your credit cards.

Think of it this way - if the pipes in your house spring a leak and your basement is flooding, the first thing you want to do is plug the leak. Not get a mop, not even call the plumber. The first thing you do is stop the water from gushing into your house.

Same concept with the cards. Every time you swipe your card, you are punching a hole in your wealth pipe. So: If you want to get out of debt, stop using the cards.

Next step is to organize and take inventory of your debt. Gather the most recent statement from each of your creditors - credit cards, school loans, consumer loans (for example, car loans), and your mortgage. Create a list of each creditor, and include the minimum monthly payment, the total amount you owe, the interest rate, and the customer support number. Total both the minimum monthly payments and total amount owed for all debts. This is your starting place.

Next you want to call each of your creditors and ask if they can reduce your interest rate. Don't let this step scare you, people do it all the time, and the bank will never reduce your interest rate if you don't ask, even if you've had perfect credit and payed early for years. You have to ask in order to receive. Just call and ask. Mention that you're considering transferring your balance to another card that offers a lower rate. The worse they can say is no.

Caveat: It's harder to get this approved now in the current economy - in fact banks have been raising rates out of the blue for even their best customers. Keep an eye out for these letters - they usually come in a plain envelope designed to look like junk mail so you won't look at it. There is always an opt-out clause. Generally you just have to send in your name and account number with a statement saying you aren't accepting the new terms. As long as you don't use that credit card, they'll let you pay off the balance with your original interest rate. And you aren't using your credit cards anymore anyway, right? ;)

The next step is to start paying off your debts using the snowball method. Organize your bills from the smallest amount owed to the largest. You're going to start with the smallest amount first, even if you have other bills with higher interest rates. The reason for this is psychological - in order to stay motivated on your debt reduction plan, you need to see results. Tackling the smallest debt first is going to give you faster results, and actually paying a debt all the way down is going to be hugely motivating for you.

So you're going to start with the smallest debt first, and you're going to add a certain amount above the minimum every month. If your current minimum payment is $125, and you add $25 to your snowball payment, you're going to pay $150 every month to that debt, even as the minimum payments go down. Once that debt is payed off, you're going to take that $150 you were paying and start applying it to the payment of the second smallest debt until that's paid off, and so on until all the debts are paid off.

So to sum up - here's what you're going to do next:

1. Stop using credit cards.
2. Make a list of all your debtors, the minimum payments, the total amount owed, and the interest rates.
3. Call your creditors and ask them if they can reduce your interest rates.
4. Start snowballing your payments, starting with your smallest total amount first.

Next week I'll start posting ways to earn extra income, which you will add to your snowball payments. Once you start seeing results - and how quickly your balance goes down - you're going to start loving this system. It will give you a feeling of control in an area of your life that has been controlling you instead and you will get out of debt that much quicker.

To your freedom,

Juli Johnson

Taking Ownership of Your Life

The first step in achieving personal freedom is taking ownership of your life. Own your choices and the results of those choices. Own your current situation. Own your life as it is right now as an example of the law of Cause and Effect in action. Take ownership of the fact that your past actions have created your current circumstances.

This may be difficult to do at first, but what follows is the realization that the choices you make right now will have a direct impact on your future circumstances. What follows is the knowledge that YOU have control over your future.

Yes, bad things happen to good people - people get laid off, their spouses cheat, our babies grow up and leave us, and we get menopause. And that's just normal bad stuff, the kind of stuff that feels like a slap in the face because it's such a damned cliche. The kind of bad stuff you can sum up in one sentence because it's so common.

Stuff happens. It's how we react to the stuff that matters. In other words:

Events + Response = Outcome

If you don't like your outcomes, you need to change your responses. This principle is expanded on in Jack Canfield's book The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, which I highly recommend.

When bad stuff happens, yes, you need to acknowledge it and feel the pain - I'm not advocating denial. But at a certain point you need to get back in the saddle - decide who, what, and where you want to be - and take action. Do not let the bad stuff define you.

If you need more inspiration, take a look at this video from Tim Ferris' blog:

Introduction

Welcome to Bid4Freedom.

Freedom means not being owned. Not by a bank, not by a business, not by the medical industry, or by any other institution.

In this blog we're going to be concentrating on financial freedom. The goal isn't about making a six-figure income or retiring to Tahiti in six months. It's about finding a way to meet your basic financial needs online through multiple recurring sources so that you have choices.

We will explore a variety of ways to make money online, concentrating on methods that, though initially will require a bit of effort, will eventually be low maintenance, allowing us to build multiple streams of income online.

If you then choose to use your freedom to build a better mousetrap so you can retire in Tahiti in 6 months, that's great. Others of you may just want to be able to stay home with your kids, go back to school, or take a year off to read.

Whatever your ultimate goals, freeing yourself from the indentured servitude that most of our lives have become will help you get there.