Blog

How to Increase Click-Throughs on Instagram

June 28, 2016 by Katie Clark Leave a Comment

Instagram is one of those social networks I didn’t really take seriously until recently.

Awhile back, I made a personal account and occasionally tried to grow my professional one for Clarks Condensed, but it just got back put on the backburner.

However, I kept hearing about the power of Instagram and how companies are really looking for influencers there, so I decided to up my game a little bit!

I’ve been working hard to grow my following lately, and I’ll share a few of those ideas in a minute. But right now, I wanted to share a quick way to increase click throughs AND track it in Google Analytics. I have to give a shoutout to my friend, Jessica, over at Savory Experiments!

First off, you need to download the plugin Visual Recipe Index. I use this to generate recipe indexes (duh), but it works awesome for creating this Instagram index.

So once you download this plugin, you should go and create a new page. You should name it something like “Instagram Index” or whatever you want.

Then, go to your category page in WordPress and create a new category. I created one called Instagram, but you can really do whatever you want!

After that, go to Settings – Visual Recipe Index. This is where you can generate the code for your Instagram index. It’s pretty easy to do – just select the category you want, and it will generate a code. You can change it to display according to date, name, etc. This is the code I use (just remove the space after the first bracket and before the last.) This makes it so my most recent post in the Instagram category shows up.

[ riview id=1287 num=2000 orderby=date order=desc size=200×200 showtitle=always lightbox=0 ]

Then press save and viola, every time you create a new post and add your Instagram category tag to it, it will be added to the index.

You will then put the web address to your index in your Instagram profile. Mine looks like this:

Now whenever you post a new post on Instagram, direct people to your profile. They can then click on the link and see which post is there. I like this as opposed to putting the direct link to a post in your profile, because that has to be changed so frequently! If someone is looking at a post from a week ago, they might get frustrated when they go to the link in profile, and it’s not for the recipe they were searching for.

With the Index, people can quickly scroll to get to the post they saw on Instagram, and you never know, they might find something else they like, too! I’ve seen a lot of traction to this page, and it’s been nice to be able to kind of track my click throughs on Instagram easier!

You can create an index like this where you manually add the posts as you go. This can be helpful if you post a lot of “from the archive” posts on Instagram. I don’t do that frequently, so I have opted to just put a search box at the top of the page so people can easily find it. I put a message at the top of the page so people know what the page is about when they get there.

And there you have it – a simple way to make it easier for your Instagram followers to see the posts you have shared!

As promised, here are a few tools I’ve been using to grow my Instagram as of late:

CrowdFire – I used this one until they took away the ability to copy followers from other users. I loved it! I still use it to do that on Twitter though, as well as to unfollow!

MassPlanner – this is a tool that I sent up recently that helps you to increase your followers. know people who have gotten over 2000 new Instagram followers in just one month of using it. I’m pretty excited to see the results. In just two weeks, I’ve almost gotten 1000 new followers. You can get five days free!

Instagress – This tool is so cool! It automatically follows people (based on parameters that you set up), likes posts from your account for certain hashtags, etc. It’s niceb ecause it’s not a subscription – you just buy time for when you want it to run. You can get 2 days for free to see if you like it.

I was really inspired by the InstaRevealed group I joined on Facebook. InstaRevealed is a series of Instagram guides to help you become even better on Instagram. They just made it so you can’t buy them individually, which is a bummer, but for $120, you can get all the guides. I think they are worth the money. I’ve tried to increase my strategy for how and when I post, and it seems to be working. While my feed isn’t as beautiful as others, I try and post similar content. Can you figure out the pattern I’ve come up with on my instagram page?

Something else I’ve found to help is joining some Instagram Pods. The first one I joined was through InstaRevealed, and anyone can sign up for these. Since then, I’ve joined a few that people have created in groups I’m in on Facebook. Basically, you are added to a group direct message on Instagram, and every time you post, you let the group know. Then everyone in the group goes and likes and comments on your post. With the new Instagram algorithm, the faster you get engagement on your posts, the better it will do!

I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing to help with your Insta-game!

Three Simple Tips to Maximize Affiliate Marketing

April 21, 2016 by Katie Clark 4 Comments

Affiliate marketing has been kind of my jam lately.

I shied away from it for so long, and I’m kicking myself for that. It’s quickly becoming my favorite monetization method.

If you aren’t a fan of ads or doing outright sponsored posts, affiliate marketing is an awesome option for you.

But even if you do like ads and sponsored posts (which I do!), then you should still be doing it. It’s an amazing passive way to make money.

My friend Kristina are going to be writing an affiliate marketing class soon, and I’m SO excited about it. Because of that, I don’t want to give away too many secrets. However, today I thought I’d share three simple tips that can help improve your affiliate marketing efforts!

and if you like them, be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you can find out as soon as we release the course!

1. Look at outgoing links

This is HUGE, and I’ve increased my affiliate revenue quite a bit by doing this. Every month, go and look at your outbound links. While many of these will probably be to other sites that aren’t selling something, you can occasionally find links to products or services.

When I first did this, I realized a lot of people were clicking to survey sites I had recommended in a post about my favorite survey sites. I wasn’t sure if any of these survey sites had a referral program, but a few quick Google searches revealed that they did! I quickly signed up for their affiliate programs, put the links into the post, and BAM. I was making more money instantly. Just today, I realized a bunch of people were clicking over to Happy Baby Wraps – I found out they had an affiliate program, so I signed up!

If you are on WordPress and use the plugin JetPack, it’s very easy to see outbound links. This is honestly one of the only reasons I still use that plugin. Otherwise, you can follow this tutorial to track outbound links in Google Analytics.

2. Optimize Top 10 Posts

I think a lot of people get intimidated by affiliate marketing when they have a lot of posts – where do you even start?!

I recommend going into Google Analytics, setting the time frame for the past six months, and then optimize your top 10 posts. First, go through them and see if there’s anything obvious that could be an affiliate link (so if you are writing about your favorite cooking products, it would be pretty obvious to link to those!) Then go through with a separate set of eyes and think “are there any products/services that would make sense to put in this post?”

For instance, in my post “Third Trimester Checklist“, I had no affiliate links for the longest time. So dumb, because it’s one of my more popular posts. So I went through, linked up all the obvious links, and then I tried to find ways to put in other links. For example, at first glance, you wouldn’t think that there wouldn’t really be an affiliate program for a prenatal class. However, my friend, Hilary, actually offers an online prenatal course, so I was able to sign up for her affiliate program and use it in that post. You just have to be creative!

I also recommend swapping posts with a friend – I’ve done this a few times with Hilary, and it always helps to get input from another!

3. Change Font Color

Finally, this one is really simple. Change the color of your links to really stand out! I’ve been on sites before where the link color is the same color as the plain text, and it’s very difficult (if impossible) to even realize it’s a link. You want your links to stand out – make people want to click them!

You can either change your link color in your CSS – look for something that says a { and there should be a place to change your font color. If you can’t figure that out, you can easily change your links colors manually within a post!

BONUS:
Not sure where to start? Here are a few of my favorite affiliate programs (they have tons of different companies they work with. And as you might expect, this are my affiliate links!)

Share-a-Sale – My main sales here are from Grammarly, Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleep Suit, VitaFive, and occasionally VidAngel
Escalate – I use this mainly for survey sites
Dating Divas – if you post about any parenting, marriage, or relationship type content, this is one of the BEST programs out there! They pay a nice 50% referral fee, and their cookie is crazy long!
FlexOffers – I use this to promote SwagBucks (which, if you aren’t a part of, you should definitely sign up now!), Swap.com, and U-Pack
AffiliateWindow – this is how you can become an affiliate with Etsy. You pay $5 to get started, but you’ll get that back 🙂 Being able to be an affiliate for Etsy is an awesome revenue opportunity.

I hope that this was helpful – please make sure to sign up below for our newsletter – especially if you want updates on our upcoming affiliate course!

Two Apps Every Blogger Must Have (That Will Save You Money and Sanity)

March 27, 2016 by Katie Clark Leave a Comment

We just finished doing our taxes for the year.

I really miss the days of when it took about 10 minutes to do (you know, back when I was in college.)

I was pretty thrilled to find out that not only had I saved an extra $10,000 for taxes that I didn’t need to pay, but we got over $1000 back in a refund.

Thankfully, I have a dad for an accountant, so it made life a little bit easier (you can read some of tax tips for bloggers he shared awhile back). But I’m pretty relieved to be done.

As we were doing our taxes, I realized I needed to be a little bit better about keeping track of certain things. While I have a great income tracker (which you can find at the end of the tax tips post), I wasn’t so good about keeping track of mileage, or of all my receipts. I kept all my receipts, but they were scattered around the house. With mileage, I kept track of our big trips for conferences, but not for all the little drives to the store for posts, blogger events, etc.

And those miles add up.

Fortunately, I found two apps recently that I think will make taxes MUCH easier next year, so I thought I’d share them with all of you. I’m all about doing things that make life easier, especially when it comes to blogging. These will make things a bit easier!

MileIQ

I actually downloaded this app last year, but then the free version was limited, so I ended up deleting it. I just didn’t want to pay the extra money.

I wish I had, because it probably would have saved me more than the $59 I had to spend to buy it! When we went to do our taxes and my dad brought up mileage, we both felt that I was missing out on a lot of extra miles because I hadn’t kept better track. So, I decided to get the “pro” version of MileIQ, and I’m so glad I did.

Now every time I get in the car, it automatically detects that we are driving. After we are done driving, you can go into the app and classify the drive as either business or personal, put notes with it, etc.

You can go online to the MileIQ website, login to your account, and see a dashboard with all your information, as well as the option to download a monthly or yearly report. Being able to do this will make doing your taxes so much easier – just hand your tax accountant your yearly report! Just make sure you put notes so you remember why a trip was classified as business. Here’s a screenshot of the dashboard:

My dad highly recommended I do something like this, and so far, I’m glad I did. The yearly membership is $59, but if you use this link, you can get 20%! This isn’t sponsored by them or anything. I just feel it is making my life easier!

OneReceipt

When you are self-employed and making as many purchases as we do throughout the year, it’s crucial to keep track of your receipts.

My dad always has had a box where he neatly keeps his receipts throughout the year. I’m not as organized as that, and my receipts are in the car, a folder in our basement, in my cell phone case (yes, weird.) For awhile I tried to take pictures of them on my phone, but even then, they got so disorganized!

I saw an advertisement on Facebook for an app called OneReceipt. It intrigued me, so I downloaded it. That was a great impulse download. It’s free, and it makes it really easy to keep track of your receipts. Whenever I buy anything, I take a picture of it in the app, and then I can add notes, the location, and if it was a personal or business expense. You can also sync it with your email address, and it will pull any receipts that come to your email into the app. I love it, and my receipt situation is more under control. In addition, it tells you tracking and return details for products you purchased!

I know these apps won’t help make your page views grow, but I believe they can help save you time and money in the long run. If you want to be a serious blogger, you need to know how to run a business. And taxes are definitely part of running a business!

Let me know about any apps you can’t live without!

affiliate links are used in this post.

The Blog Post Checklist

March 18, 2016 by Katie Clark 3 Comments

STOP.

Don’t press publish.

Well, until you have read this post.

There are certain things every blogger should do before they release their latest masterpiece to their readers – regardless of the niche.

I’ve read a lot of blog posts, and I’ve written a lot as well. I’ve certainly made many mistakes – sometimes because I’m just lazy and sometimes because I just forget. However, I feel like I’ve gotten a pretty good idea of things you should always try to do before you press publish.

And lucky for you, I’m going to share those with you today. So next time you go to write your post, make sure you mentally check off each of these items.

Grammar and Spelling

I’ll admit that I’m not the best at this. Despite being two credits short of an editing minor and being very good about editing other people’s stuff, I’m not so good about proofreading my own things. I have this issue where I actually don’t like to reread what I wrote, because I always think I sound dumb. Ha! But don’t follow my example – proofread your stuff.

My life was made a little bit easier when I download Grammarly. It’s a free extension for your browser that tells you when you’ve made a spelling or grammatical error. I LOVE it. You can get the paid version for more features, but the free version has been great for me.

There are some really intense grammar and spelling sticklers out there, so that’s really why you should do it – so you don’t get angry comments about how you did something wrong. I’ve found that they are the meanest commenters! Okay, you should proofread to make sure your content is professional looking and sounding…but the mean commenters really motivates me!

Facts

Don’t just make things up – research your posts and make sure the information you are putting is factual. Many of my most popular posts have to do with pregnancy, so I try to make sure I am putting in good, reputable information. However, even if you are writing posts that are mainly opinion pieces or recipes, make sure what you put in there is accurate. If you are writing a recipe post, for instance, and you decide to put the conversions for the metric system, make sure it’s accurate!

In addition, if you are quoting something else or you were inspired to make a recipe based on someone else’s site, I also think it’s important to link to the original source.

Social links

Make it so people can share your post! Most of the time, you can use a plugin or widget that automatically adds these. Personally, I love using Social Warfare. I have worked with a lot of plugins, and this is my favorite, by far. It’s very customizable, allows you select exactly which people gets pinned, and it doesn’t slow your site down.

It’s around $30 a year, but I think it’s worth it. If you’ve ever changed your permalink structure and lost your social share counts, it will also recover it. So many features – I’m just barely tipping the iceberg with my usage of it! I have been using it on Clarks Condensed and hope to install it here soon. On The Blog Help, I use SumoMe currnetly.

In addition to social sharing links, it’s a great idea to include ways to interact with your social networks IN the post. For instance, you can create a Pinterest widget for a board you own that is relevant to the post’s topic (example here) or you could create a “click to tweet” Twitter widget in the post with an awesome quote in it. Social Warfare gives you the option to create one of those, and I think it’s an easy way to increase engagement!

This is a seriously awesome post from Neil Patel (one of the best resources EVER) about what it takes to get massive social shares on a post. I highly recommend reading it.

Backlinks to posts on your site

Backlinks to other posts on your site not only increases your site’s authority, but it also helps keep people on your site. I think it’s important to reference your past posts throughout new posts if they are related. You want to make your site as “sticky” as possible! You should also make sure there are related posts at the end of the post. You can use a plugin, such as Zemanta, to generate these, or you can create your own to put at the end of your posts.

I recently learned that it’s best to make it so links to other posts on your site DO NOT open in a new window. Apparently it counts as a new session if you do this, and it can affect your pages per sesssion negatively. That’s something to keep in mind.

Affiliate links

I’ve been really excited about affiliate marketing the past six months or so. I’ve started seeing a lot of success – especially since I can use Amazon now. I much prefer affiliate marketing over ads or even sponsored posts because it’s passive and easier to incorporate into posts!

You are doing yourself a great disservice by not putting affiliate links into posts. I know some people are concerned that it might spammy to put them in, but honestly, as long as you are providing good content to your readers and you can organically put them in, it’s a mistake not to.

I recently learned about a plugin called Pretty Link. It’s a great way to make your affiliate links look less spammy. It “cloaks” the link with your site’s name, so the links look more legitimate. I haven’t had time to get it setup yet, but I’ve seen it work on other sites, and I think it’s an essential for affiliate marketing.

Pinnable image

Images are a necessity for every post. It’s what draws people in, and it makes it easier to share. There have been times that I’ve gone to share a post, and there was no image to pin in sight, so I ended up not sharing it.

Pinnable images are not hard to make. I use PicMonkey or Canva to make mine, and they literally take less than five minutes to do. Here is what one of my typical food pins look like:

And here is one that I just did for a more lifestyle post:

For Pinterest, you really need to do vertical pins. I have found success doing them really long, like the examples above (typically 650×1600), but if you don’t like that look, I think 600×900 is a pretty safe bet. If you don’t want the long pin to show in your post (which is understandable), if you are using Social Warfare, you can easily set the pin to just show up with a pre-set description when someone press the pin button. It makes life easier!

I also recommend doing a square image for Facebook. Lately I’ve been doing those and putting it at the top of my post so I can easily grab it when I go to share on Facebook.

PicMonkey and Canva both have free versions (and free trials) that are a good place to start. However, I recommend buying the full version of PicMonkey – it just has more features, and it’s not very expensive. Very user-friendly as well. I only use the non-paid version of Canva, but if you do that, be aware that you can’t resize your images after you start them without signing up for a business account.

CALL TO ACTION

So, your write this awesome post, everyone loves it…and then the second the exit out, they never come back. This is not how it should go! You need to have some kind of call-to-action in your post – either to sign up for your subscription list or to follow you on some sort of social network. I absolutely LOVE OptinMonster for creating call to action popups and subscription boxes. I have tons of different ones I’ve created for different posts and scenarios. I always have one set to go off when a person goes to leave the page (called exit-enabled), and I’ve been very successful with that as well. You can add “like” buttons to your post to remind people to like you on Facebook or a Pinterest follow widget so people can follow you there. Just make sure there is something there to make sure your readers come back.

BONUS

Sticky Blogging

A big part of blogging is writing engaging content. Before you press publish, always read your post and think to yourself, “Would I want to keep reading if I found this on Pinterest?”

I don’t recommend a lot of blogging courses. I think most of them are a waste of money and time. However, I came across a course called Sticky Blogging a while back, and I LOVE it. I truly feel that it helped improve my writing, and it’s something I think every blogger should consider taking. It may not be open for registration right now, but I recommend signing up for the waiting list (for either the free class or the complete class.)

One Way to Make Facebook Scheduling Easier

March 8, 2016 by Katie Clark 4 Comments

I’m all about simplifying and streamlining, especially when it comes to blogging!

When I started using BoardBooster awhile back, I felt like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I loved not being a slave to Pinterest anymore.

For a lot of my blogging career, I just hadn’t paid much attention to Facebook. I would share all my articles and occasionally share something else funny I found. Needless to say, my page really only grew when I did some kind of giveaway, and I was lucky if I got one like.

About August of last year, I saw that a lot of people were having success with Facebook. I knew that I wanted to drive a little bit more traffic from there, so I decided to try a few things out. While my page isn’t the hugest yet (because I’m not perfect at always scheduling), I have seen it grow – not only in page views and likes but in engagement.

I’ve found that the best thing to do is share content that is already doing well on Facebook. Then, in between those posts, I share one of my posts. I feel like when I share in between a post that is already floating around Facebook, it drives a little more traffic to my own posts.

You might be wondering – how on earth do you find good content to post? Well, my friends, just scroll through your Facebook page. You’ll find a plethora of videos, articles, recipes, etc. that are being shared across Facebook. I follow a lot of other bloggers’ Facebook pages, and since many of them follow this same idea of sharing viral content, I get a lot of great content that way.

So, when I first started, I would go and schedule something whenever I saw a link or video that I liked. This was not very fun, and I ended up not scheduling things as much as I would have otherwise.

But then, Facebook introduced the “save” feature. This seriously changed the Facebook game for me. In the top right corner of every post that is shared on Facebook, you’ll see a little triangle. Click on that and you’ll see a “Save Link/Photo/Video” option, typically near the top. Press that option, and it will save it to your account.

You can access all of your saved posts by going to http://facebook.com/saved. When you do that, you’ll run into a page like this:

And from there, you’ll find all your links, videos, and pictures. Whenever I go to schedule things, I just come to my saved page, and I pick out content that I think will be good for that day. As you can see above, there is a place that say “Saved from . . . ” with a page’s name. I will click on that, and it will take me to that page. I will then look at the post and see if that page shared it from somewhere else. If they did, I will click to the original post and share directly from there. Whenever I get to the post I want, I copy the URL, like below.

Then I will go into my Facebook page, and in the post composer, I post the link from above. It will generate a post with a link and who it was shared from. Then I will delete the link I put in the box, share my own thoughts, and press schedule!

And there you have it! I’ve found this to be the simplest way to find great content to share with my readers. I no longer spend hours searching out great content – I just follow pages that I know share good stuff, and then I pass that on to my readers, thanks to the saved feature!

How to Get Started With Amazon’s Affiliate Program

February 1, 2016 by Katie Clark Leave a Comment

modern laptop with cup and diary on table

Well, if you are a blogger in Colorado you have may heard the news – we can officially use the Amazon Associates Program for affiliate marketing.

This is HUGE news. While Amazon doesn’t offer the highest commission rate, the fact of the matter is this – people LOVE Amazon and do a lot of shopping on there. I was making a good amount of money from the program when we moved to Colorado and were banned from participating. I tried to swap out links to Walmart, Target, etc., but they just did not convert as well.

I mean, I may .30 cents from Walmart in December. It was bad.

Amazon can be a great program to participate in, so I thought I’d share a brief tutorial on how to best use it and get started!

First off, go to Amazon Associates and sign up!

After doing that, you’ll just have to login. On the homepage, you will see this:

This is pretty much where you’ll spend most of your time. If you have a specific product you want to link to, just type that in to the “Search for a product” section that is in orange above. If you aren’t sure exactly what you want, switch over to the “Browse for a Product” and use that.

Once you have the product you want, click on the arrow to the right of the product. At this point, you can choose to copy the full link there, or a shortened version.

Alternatively, you can click on “Get Link” and you will be given a bunch of different options. You can get an image/link widget, just an image of the product, or just a link. I know a lot of people like the image/link widget because it will sometimes convert more people to buying the product.

And that’s really all you need to go started. You can start an Azon store where you can basically make a store to put on your site with your favorite Amazon products. Here is a basic one I started for The Food Nanny. I’ve also heard great things about the Amazon Native Ads if you are looking to monetize a little more through display advertising.

If you want to skip even logging into the affiliate website and just grabbing links directly from Amazon, once you become an affiliate, there is an affiliate dashboard that will show up at the top of your page. You can grab links from there.

You also must disclose on your site when you are using Amazon links. Here is a great post on how to properly do so, so you don’t get shut down!

Tips for Using Amazon Affiliate’s Program

Here are just a few ways to jump right in. I do find that it takes a little while to get traction, and you have to experiment with what your audience responds best to. Some of these tips are good for affiliate marketing, regardless of if you are using Amazon for those efforts.

Find your top postsI think the best thing you can do right now is figure out what your best posts are, and then see if you can incorporate Amazon links into it. For instance, one of my most popular posts is this post about alternatives to crying it out. I will go in and put Amazon links to the book I reference, essential oils, the Wubbanub, and more. Don’t try and force the links in – try and be organic. My friend, Hilary, has a great post about what to pack in a hospital bag where she’s put in helpful Amazon links that I recommend checking out.
Look at outgoing clicksNot everyone will easily be able to tell what people are clicking on to leave their site. If you like Jetpack in WordPress, you can see this information, and you can also set Google Analytics up to help you figure this out as well. Once you can see where people are clicking, you can find places to put links in.
For instance, say you linked to a set of pots and pans that you enjoy using in a post and people are ALWAYS clicking on it! Well, go find that same set on Amazon, replace the link, and
I find this to be super effective, because you know that people are clicking on that link, and chances are, someone is going to buy from it. I do this every month or so, just because some links start performing well out of nowhere.
Make links open in new windowThis is just a good technique for any outgoing link – but make sure your links open in a new window so they aren’t taken away from your site!
Keep your eye open for salesThis is really helpful especially during the holidays. People are always up for a good deal, and Amazon is so easy to buy from. If you see something that looks like a killer deal, don’t be afraid to share with your readers. Just make sure you put #affiliate in that post!
Make a “Best of” or “Recommended Products” section on your siteMake it easy for your readers to know what products you recommend they use! You can put this at the end of posts (I’ve seen people put the image widgets at the end saying “these products were used in this post). Or you can do something like Tried and Tasty did at the bottom of her home page, where she has niche specific guides to different products.
Put links in Every postDo this organically, but if you aren’t putting affiliate links in every post, you are missing out. You never know when a post will go crazy, or when people will just really be interested in a product you have to mention.
And the thing is, even if they don’t buy that specific product, they may buy something else. So many of my former Amazon sales were from products people bought after they initially went to Amazon through my link.
Share interesting productsThere are a couple Facebook pages I follow that are always posting the most interesting (or hilarious) products from Amazon. Ask a question or people’s thoughts on them – even if they don’t buy that product, there will be a 24-hour cookie to your Affiliate account so you’ll get credit for anything they do end up buying!
Don’t Rely On ItI know first hand how frustrating it is when all of the sudden you can’t use Amazon. I had to really learn a lot about affiliate marketing and experiment with different companies and methods to even make the amount I’m making right now from other venues. There’s no guarantees that you’ll always be able to use Amazon links. Affiliate marketing can be incredibly powerful, but as with most things when it comes to monetization, diversify. I definitely recommend using Amazon’s program, but I also recommend finding other programs that work well with your readers. I’ll be sharing a post soon on how I’ve been successful with affiliate marketing with Amazon soon, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss that post!
Be AuthenticAs with most things in blogging, be authentic. Don’t just shove affiliate links in your readers faces. I’ve seen many posts people have written that are obviously written just to make a sale, and I don’t like it. You want your readers to trust you and your recommendations. I’ve found that when they do, they are far more likely to buy something from your links anyways!

One Thing All Bloggers Need to Do

January 23, 2016 by Katie Clark Leave a Comment

Okay, there’s a lot of things that bloggers should do. But today, I’m focusing on one that I sometimes forget, and it can really affect your traffic!

Most of us probably just use one browser – and perhaps have a backup browser, just in case. Because of this, you may not see how your site displays in a different browser. As nice as it would be to have our sites look and function exactly the same across all browsers, it’s just not that simple. For me, I rarely leave my Google Chrome browser (because, well, most others pale in comparison.)

Any time you make ANY kind of change to your blog – check it in every browser you can on both mobile and desktop/laptop computers.

This is important with design changes but also just with adding a piece of code to your site.

For example, a few months ago, I started a new partnership with a company. They sent me a simple piece of code that would add a recipe/shopping list to my recipe posts. It seemed simple enough, and when nothing seemed to break on my site in Google Chrome, I went on my merry way.

Well, a few weeks later, I was helping someone on their computer, and the only browser they had was Internet Explorer. I was trying to to show them something on Clarks Condensed, when I got to the site and realized two glaring issues:

My header was completely cut off
Even worse, the scroll bar on the browser would not scroll.

Considering the fact that one of the top used browsers by my readers was Internet Explorer, I realized this was a big issue. When I looked at my traffic, I noticed a decrease over the past few weeks, but I had initially attributed that to Pinterest being weird and changing their algorithm. I wasn’t totally sure if this was a browser issue, or a computer issue, so when I went home, I checked on our PC. Just as I feared, you couldn’t scroll. I then asked around in some different blogging Facebook groups, and everyone who checked in Internet Explorer had the same issue. Not good news!

How to Make Blogging Goals You’ll Keep

January 4, 2016 by Katie Clark Leave a Comment

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here – hopefully we still have a few followers left. It’s been a crazy few months since my son, Oliver, was born. Unfortunately, this website has gone on the back burner!

But with the New Year here, I’m hoping to jump back in and write here more often. I feel like I’m always answering questions for people on an individual basis, so I might as well post those answers here. In my experience, if one person has a question…a lot of others have the same one!

Since it’s the first day of the year, I thought I’d focus on a topic that is important to any blog’s growth – goals. For me, setting goals has helped me succeed and pushes me outside my comfort zone. I’ll share my goals for 2016 at the end of this post, but I thought I would share three keys to meeting your blogging goals.

Set Short-Term Goals

It’s great to have an end goal in site. Maybe you want to write a cookbook, support your family on your blogging income, etc. Always have that in the back of your mind!

However, if all you have is that end goal, you might find yourself frustrated as you try and grow your blog. While there are some overnight successes in the blogging world, most people don’t make a significant income overnight. You have to build on all those small goals to reach your large goal.

Some short-term goals can be:

Increasing pageviews each month by 5%
Growing social media accounts by a certain number each month
Increasing email newsletter open/click rates
Getting one new sponsored post a month

In order to get these short-term goals, just think about your end game and determine how to get to that point with smaller goals. I highly recommend tracking everything you do – social media followers, page views, income, etc. My friend, Hilary, has this excellent blogging spreadsheet that I think every blogger should have. It is $20, but I promise, it’s well-worth the cost. I’ll write more about next week, but I highly recommend it.

Find a Tribe

Finding other bloggers that I can talk to for support, ideas, and about frustrations has been so invaluable. I have met some of my closest friends through blogging. Blogging is such a unique field, and there’s not a lot of people to go to for advice. This is why finding your “tribe” is essential.

You may wonder where to find tribes. You can start by finding a blogging Facebook group for your area. I know there are ones for all over the country available. You could also try finding a blogging group in your niche. For instance, the Kid Blogger Network is a great group to join up with. I’ve met some wonderful people there.

I’ve met a lot of great people through conferences as well. I know conferences cost money

Track your Success

I already mentioned this briefly above, but it’s so important to track your success regularly. I think it’s important to track on a monthly basis what growths you have had so you know where you need to focus your efforts the next month.

And, on the same subject, CELEBRATE those successes – no matter how small they are. After professionally blogging for three years, let me tell you – sometimes, the small successes are the only things that keep me going. It’s easy to get discouraged when your site is growing as fast as you want, but when you start seeing small successes, it makes it easier to keep going.

My Blogging Goals for This Year

Now, it’s time for me to share what my goals are for this year. These are mainly pertaining to Clarks Condensed, since that’s where most of my efforts are expended. Hopefully these will help you brainstorm a little bit, too. I’d love to hear what your goals are in the comments, and if there’s anything I can do to help you reach those!

Post LessI don’t believe there is any magic number for how many times a week or month you should post. There are bloggers who post every day (even multiple times a day) and make a lot of money. And there are other bloggers who post once a month and are very successful. It really comes down to your audience and where your traffic comes from.For me, most of my traffic is from social media. I don’t have people coming to my home page every day to see if I’ve posted. I think it’s important to have fresh content, but unless people are camped out on your homepage every day, you might not need something all the time.
I got a little burnt out in December. I had a lot of posts to get up, and it was exhausting. I kind of lost my zeal for writing at that point. After talking to Forrest, we both decided that I should post less this year – but focus more on writing the best posts possible. My posts that do the best are those ones – the ones that really are about things I’m passionate about. They take longer to write, but they do so much better. I plan to post about three times a week. I hope that this helps me focus a little more on writing awesome posts – not just great posts (because I do try to make sure all my posts are in that “great” category.)
Promote MoreI have TONS of posts. As of today, there are 1,084 published. Many of those are currently circulating the Internet, but a lot of them are not!Instead of focusing on getting content out, I want to focus on promoting the content I already have. There are some great posts on Clarks Condensed that just don’t get much traction – and I think that’s really unfortunate. I need to go back and promote some of these posts everywhere I can!
I also want to promote my new posts more effectively. I’m currently searching for different ways to get my content out there, and instead of just scheduling it to Pinterest and Twitter a few times the first day I publish it, I hope to promote it heavily for at least a week after publication.
I have a lot of different ways to promote – from using social media schedulers like Crowdfire (which I also love for growing my Instagram and Twitter following), PostPlanner (I mainly like this for finding hot and trending content), along with sharing my posts in groups where others will share it!
Finish two eBooksI have several eBooks I have been working on since I started blogging. It’s kind of pathetic. However, this is the year that they get published. After last year’s ad revenue was disappointing to say the least, I’ve realized that I have to diversify my revenue streams even further – and one of the best ways to do that is to sell a product.I’ve decided to do one book for bloggers and one for Clarks Condensed. I always have people asking me questions about WordPress, so I hope to release my WordPress for Beginners eBook soon. On Clarks Condensed, pregnancy posts are always popular – especially my surviving pregnancy series. So, I plan to release my “Surviving Pregnancy: A Mom’s Guide” in the coming months as well.
Improve affiliate marketingWe moved to Colorado last year, and because of that, we are no longer eligible to use Amazon Affiliate marketing. It really is unfortunate, because we were starting to get a rather large revenue stream from them. I’ve had to get somewhat creative with my affiliate marketing since then. I was pretty unsuccessful for most of the year, but in the last few minutes, I’ve found a few programs that work really well for me.For me, it’s more advantageous to become an affiliate for a product I really believe in – rather than putting links to sites like Walmart or Target. I’ve started making a significant income working directly with a couple companies (such as Owlet Baby Care), so this year, I hope to do more of this.
Work on my NewsletterNewsletters are always being talked about in blogging groups I’m in. I have a fairly large subscriber list, but I really am not taking advantage of this. I want to work toward sending out a weekly newsletter – not just an RSS feed of our latest posts. Hilary, who I mentioned above, does a great job on hers. I honestly look forward to opening it (and I don’t really look forward to opening most emails!)
Plan aheadMost of my blogging is done on the fly. I’ve never been someone that is very good at planning ahead and scheduling posts ahead of time. It’s just not my style – even when I was in high school, I never seemed to be able to write essays well until the deadline was a day ahead.With that said, I do want to be more strategic and not find myself scrambling for a post idea every day. I just set up a Google Calendar where I have written out the names of all the posts I hope to write in the month of January. Most of these aren’t written yet, but I hope that it will make it easier to at least get bits and pieces of them written beforehand.
I have also been using Asana to coordinate posts easier!