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How to Update Old Blog Posts and Increase Traffic

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How to Update a Blog Post for Better Traffic, Money, and Email Subscribers

How to Update Old Blog Posts

Do you have hundreds of posts on your site that don't get any traffic? Don't delete old blog posts – update them for even better traffic!

On Clarks Condensed, we have nearly 2000 published posts.

However, the majority of our traffic definitely is driven to probably about 20 posts.

I mean, I get traffic to a lot of my other posts, but sometimes I think, "It would be nice if I got this same traffic to even 20 more posts!"

Over the past few months, I've spent a of time updating my older posts.

Some of them are posts that are already doing well, while others are ones that I think have potential to do well.

I've come up with a strategy that I feel really does help these old posts perform better, so I thought I'd share how to update old blog posts to (hopefully) increase traffic).

Affiliate links are used in this post, and I receive a small commission for purchases made from them. They are provided for your convenience. 

Editing Old Blog Posts: What to Do

Deciding Which Post

How I decided to update a post depends on a few different factors:

  • Season
  • Post topics that have historically done well on my site
  • Search Engine Potential

Lately, I've been going back and finding posts that have the potential to do well in the next few months based on the seasons/holidays coming up.

I also go back to my more popular topics (such as pregnancy) and update those posts. I have a lot of luck with this topic on my blog, so it's one that I find worthwhile to update.

Lately I have been going back a year in my archives and look for posts that didn't get the traffic I expected.

It's also important to find posts that you could potentially rank better for. I learned a great strategy for doing this through the #Jeff SEO course I mention below (but you'll have to sign up for the class to find that out!).

SEO Updates

Updating a post to be better received by search engines is one of the most impactful things you can do for updating a blog post…in my opinion.

I've focused a lot on SEO over the past year. I've seen a huge increase in the traffic I get from search engines, and I tend to prefer it over social media traffic (it's a little more reliable than social media…Pinterest, I'm looking at you).

I've done a lot of reading and watching. One of my favorite websites is Neil Patel's website. He is a genius Internet marketer, and he shares really informative and helpful articles and videos. Whenever I read one post, it's like going down a rabbit hole – I can't stop.

Beyond that, I've lately purchased two resources that have been very enlightening as well:

Sprinting the Blogger Marathon – This book was written by a fellow blogger – Sabrina, from Dinner, then Dessert. Sabrina is the perfect example of someone who threw her whole heart and soul into growing her blog, and she has been extremely successful. Although her book isn't just about SEO, I found her tips for SEO and Pinterest to be particularly helpful. She is a food blogger, and much of the book is focused on that, but I've applied her principals to different niches.

#Jeff SEO Course – I finally signed up for this course after several blogger friends recommended it. I'm so glad I did! I'll admit that a lot of the information has been a refresher for me, but there have been some very helpful tips and tricks – especially for when it comes to finding which content I should update for search engines. You also get access to the private Facebook group, and Jeff is always willing to answer questions. It is available for a monthly subscription, as new content is always being added.

I have found that updating old blog posts for SEO seem to help them rank higher more quickly than when I'm trying to rank with a new post. Not gonna lie – it's nice to be able to just update an old post rather than create a whole new one (though I do that plenty, too!).

Anyways, for SEO updates. I've been using these methods for about a year now, though I've tweaked it a bit overtime:

First, I do keyword research using Serpstat, which is my preferred keyword research tool. They have a free version, but I took advantage of this deal, which makes it around $30 for a lifetime membership (this is still available through mid-October 2017). It isn't their top tier, but I haven't found anything I don't like about it. I will do a more indepth tutorial on how I use this tool at a later date.

I start keyword research by putting a pretty generic term in. For instance, when I was updating my caramel buttercream frosting post, I typed in "caramel frosting", and I went from there.

I typically find a main keyword with a competition level under 20-25, and then 2-4 supporting keywords as well. I also like to see what other websites are currently ranking for that term – if they are mainly other bloggers, I usually feel I have a good chance of making my way to the front page.

After I add these to my post, I track the keywords in Serpstat (go to Projects, Rank tracker, Positions to add keywords you want to monitor) so I can see the improvements. It's a bit addicting! I LOVE seeing my rankings go up.

I typically will update the title of my post, add some H2 and H3 tags, and try and naturally incorporate the keywords throughout the entire post. You only want one H1 tag in your post (and that, by default, is typically your post title). If you are unsure how to use Header Tags, I highly recommend reading this post. I also update the alt tag of my images to be my main keyword or variations if I have a lot of pictures.

I also try to use numbered lists and bullet points where possible. If you go to Google, you will often see that the first thing that shows up for a search term is a highlighted website excerpt with bullets or numbers.

You may also consider increasing the word count of the post. An average post I write is over 1000 words – typically more, especially my posts that rank well on Google.

I updated my meta information (what shows up in Google search). I use the Yoast SEO plugin, which puts an SEO box below my post composer. Here, I make sure I included my main keyword in the title and in the description. I keep these concise by interesting so they stand out to other people.

After doing this, I republish the post (more on that in a second), and I submit the post through Google Webmaster tools.

I do not typically update my permalinks for a post. If you do this, make sure you set up a 301 redirect. There are many WordPress plugins that do this. 

Link Updates

When I go through old posts to update them, I try and update links.

First off all, I make sure all of the links I currently have are still working. With Amazon links, I check to make sure that product is still available. I also update the Amazon links to be to a product search page, as opposed to a specific product.

I then see if there are any new opportunities for  affiliate links – especially if it is something that is something not available on Amazon. I love Amazon affiliates, but sometimes, other programs can be more lucrative.

I will update old sponsored content (if my contract permits it) with new links (often affiliate), and perhaps more relevant information.

I also check to see if there are any external links that I can change to new posts I've written on my blog. I have been trying to limit the number of external links I have in a post, simply because I want Google to see my site as the authority. If I link a lot to other sites, it may seem that I'm less of an authority. With that said, I do try and incorporate high quality backlinks to other sites when appropriate.

Finally, I incorporate backlinks to my own content. I don't try and spam the post with it – but if there's a relevant place, I put them in with the keywords for that post. I also add related posts at the end of the post (or sometimes, after a section if the content is set up like that).

Social Media Updates

I try and do a few things to update my social media for the posts.

Mainly, I update my Pinterest image if I don't feel it's clear – the image, the text, etc. I've been trying to redo any Pinterest images that have the text going over the picture, because I just don't feel that this looks very good, and I used to do it a lot. I make sure my Pinterest image has lots of good keywords and even a few hashtags (since those are now relevant on Pinterest again!).

I use the paid plugin called Social Warfare. This is my preferred social media plugin for various reasons, but I like that it makes it easy to put images and descriptions for Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. I just make sure these are showing what I want them to.

Photos

I don't update the photos for every post, but if it's a really old recipe post, I try and update the pictures to something more appealing. I also typically make a new Pinterest image that goes more with  my "theme" that I usually go with for Pinterest images. I've found that 750×1800 works best (I know that's not what the "experts" say, but it works for me!)

I try to have 3-5 images in recipe posts. My more informational posts tend to have less, but sometimes I do try and add some stock photography in to break up the text. I have been using Stencil lately for this, because they have a great library of stock photography that you can use with no attribution. My brother and sister-in-law put together this great post on free stock photography websites, if you like to use stock photography.

Just for your reference, I currently use a Nikon D750 with an 50mm portrait lens. They work well for me!

Newsletter 

I've been working a lot on my growing my email list this past year, so I will often look at the post I'm updating and see if there's anything I can do to make people sign up for my list.

For instance, with this Birthday Poster, I used to offer it for free. However, when I was updating it a few months ago, I made it so people had to signup for my newsletter in order to get the freebie. I've gotten many new subscribers from doing this. I've done this with a lot of posts, and the result is always similar. I cringe to think about all the email subscribers I missed out on!

I use MailerLite as my newsletter/email delivery system. I really like them, and I feel they have great features for a very affordable price. It's free for the first 1000 subscribers.

I also use Thrive Themes lead generation plugin to get new subscribers. It has it's quirks, but it's a one time fee and works great – especially for creating so many different optin forms.

Republishing Old Blog Posts

After the entire post has been updated, I republish it. Please note that you SHOULD NOT do this if you have dates in your permalink structure. If you don't, go right ahead and republish your post.

This signals to Google that the post is still relevant. If the last time a post was updated was five years ago, Google may not find that as helpful as one that was updated today.

Promoting 

Finally, I promote the post! I do my typical promotion strategy – Pinterest, Twitter, sometimes Instagram or an Instagram story, Flipboard, and Facebook.

If it's a recipe, it will automatically be sent out to my recipe newsletter the next day; for other posts, I just make note to promote it in an upcoming newsletter.

 

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

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Two Apps

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. 

Two AppsEVERYBlogger Needs

Awesome Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger Should Know About

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Awesome free blogging tools that EVERY blogger should know about!

While there are some definite expenses that come with blogging, they are something I try to keep to a minimum. Blogging is a relatively low-cost career (at least in my case), and there are so many awesome free blogging tools out there to help you accomplish your goals.

I’ve tried a lot of tools – and not all of them are that great. For me, the tool has actually to increase productivity or the effectiveness of a blog post. If I’m going to pay for a tool, it has to do that about 10-fold! I thought I’d share a few free blogging tools that I’ve found to be rather useful. I’d love to hear if there’s a tool that I missed! hjhk

Grammarly

If you’ve been blogging for long, you know that people love to call out grammatical and spelling mistakes. I notice other people’s mistakes super easily but my own? Not so much. There’s just something about editing my own posts that make me miss common errors – and some readers won’t let you forget it!

I learned about Grammarly recently, and I have to say, I LOVE it. It’s a tool that you install in Google Chrome, and it helps identify common spelling and grammar mistakes in your writing. I’ve found it to be a lot more accurate than WordPress editor plugins. As an added plus, it also alerts me to mistakes in social media posts, emails, etc. I can’t recommend it highly enough!

If you ever have anyone submit a guest post to your site, you can also use Grammarly to ensure that it wasn’t plagiarized or that it’s not already somewhere else on the Internet.  Grammarly is free, but there is also a paid version that has more futures!

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

In my post about ways to improve your blog, I mentioned the importance of good headlines. However, if you are like me, headlines might be hard to write. CoSchedule is a plugin I use for planning posts and social media scheduling (it’s not free, but I think it’s a reasonable price.) They do offer a free headline analyzer tool that I feel is very helpful. You just type in the headline you want to use, and it gives you a lot of insight – an overall score, what keywords are being used, how it will show up in an email, Google Search, whether or not the length is appropriate, etc.

BuzzSumo

This is a simple tool that can help not only with coming up with ideas but figure out your top competition! All you do is type in a keyword, and it will tell you what kind of content has already been created and been successful on that topic.

SumoMe

I LOVE SumoMe, and I use it on both of my sites. They keep releasing more tools, and I end up using all of them. You just add a bit of code to the <head> of your site, and then you can install different tools that they offer. I use their smart bar – a static bar at the top of the page. On Clarks Condensed and The Blog Help, it’s there to prompt people to “like” me on Facebook. It converts very well, and you can also use it for email subscriptions and Twitter. I also use their popup, which integrates with different email subscription services, their sharing tools – for the share buttons above my posts, as well as my image sharer), and I also use their heat maps. Heat maps are an awesome way to see what people are clicking on and reading on your site.

Google Products – Analytics, Drive, Hangouts

Google has a whole host of products that are great for bloggers. I use many of them on a regular basis. Google Analytics is the industry standard for tracking your stats, and it’s also free. If you don’t have it installed, I recommend doing that ASAP. I use Google Drive for storing photos (and sharing them with others) as well as all of the document creators – it’s much more convenient than using Microsoft Word, and it makes it easy to collaborate with other bloggers on projects! I especially love using Google Forms to collect information. For instance, I recently decided to ask for blanket permission to use people’s posts in roundups, so I just made a simple Google form for people to fill out. Easy!

HARO – Help a Reporter Out

This is a website I occasionally used as an undergraduate studying journalism, but it’s a great tool for bloggers. Reporters come here to find sources for their stories. If you feel like you have a certain expertise in a query sent out, you can submit a response. There’s no guarantee it will be used in a story, but if it is, it’s great free publicity. Major news organizations use this website, and I know a lot of bloggers who have gotten some great press because of it.

AllTop

On this website, you can type in a topic or niche and see which websites are doing well writing about it. You can find ideas for content by doing this, as well as high-quality links to share in related posts.

Uptime Robot

I LOVE this tool. It alerts me to any time that my site is down. It’s really helpful, because sometimes I wouldn’t realize my blog was down until an hour (or more) afterwards. In my experience, the sooner you can discover your site is down, the faster you can get it back up. Uptime Robot sends you an email the moment your site goes down, and it also notifies you when it is available again – along with stats on how long it was down. This is something I recommend EVERYONE signs up for. There’s nothing worse than realizing your site is down, especially if it’s due to increased traffic.

PicMonkey and Canva

As a blogger, you probably recognize the importance of visual images in promoting your content. With Pinterest being a huge driver of traffic for many, ensuring that there is a “pinnable” image with every post is crucial!

While you can easily invest in software like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop (which I do have for photo editing), I love free programs like PicMonkey and Canva. These are web-based photo editing and creation programs.

PicMonkey has lots of templates set-up for social media sharing, which I find easy to use. I use their collage templates quite often for recipe roundups that I do. I’ve been using PicMonkey for about two years, and I find it to be very easy to use. The only downside is that you can’t save your creations to the website. So, once you exit out of it, all the changes you’ve made are gone (obviously you save it to your computer, so you have the final product. But if you are using it to create design elements – which it is great for – it can be difficult to go back and make edits.) There is a PicMonkey Royale version, which is what I use. It costs $33 a year, and I feel it’s well-worth the cost. However, the free version has tons of features as well that a

Canva is great for creating collages, media kits, pinnable and shareable images, etc. I’ve helped created eBooks and eBook covers in it as well. They have a variety of templates available. While many of them are free, they also have premium elements that you can use that cost $1 a piece.

HTMLSig

My friend, Hilary, from Pulling Curls mentioned this service in her July 2015 income report. It’s a simple tool to make a clickable and professional signature for your email. I just created mine, and I love how it turned out. I had to tweak it a little bit once I put it in my signature (such as adding the logo for The Blog Help, because it only let me add one logo from the site), but I think that having a professional signature in your email is important. Here’s how mine looks:

Screen Shot 2015-08-08 at 11.32.56 AM

IFTTT

This isn’t actually a tool I currently use, but many of my blogging friends do. IFTTT stands for “if this, then that.” You can connect different web apps (for instance, Facebook and WordPress) with different triggers, so if something happens on one website, it triggers an event on another. One of the most basic ones is having it share a post from WordPress to Facebook or Twitter as soon as it’s been published. There’s a lot more complicated (and cool) recipes, but it’s really a pretty nifty tool.

Here are different “recipes” you can use with IFTTT that are great for bloggers, in case you are confused or need ideas! They list all of the different options here as well.

Hootsuite

There are so many scheduling tools out there for different social networks – I’ll have to discuss all the different ones another time. One that I have consistently used since I started blogging is HootSuite. Like just about everything else, there is a premium version, but I’ve never seen any reason to update.

The reason I like Hootsuite is because it works with quite a few different platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and the most exciting of all – their recent announcement to integrate with Instagram!) It makes it easy to share others things, monitor different hashtags and topics, and just stay organized. I have set it up to auto tweet out feeds from my favorite blogs, which is nice.

Inspect Element

I could write a whole blog post about inspect element…and maybe some day I will. If you are someone who makes changes to the CSS of their blog very often, inspect element is your best friend. I know it comes integrated with Google Chrome, and I’ve been able to use it in FireFox (though Firebug is recommended for FireFox), as well as Safari on my Mac. Basically, it allows you to edit the CSS on your site and see how the changes would look on your site, without actually editing the files. Here is a brief tutorial, and below is a video of me using it to see what it would look like to change a few sidebar items, just so you can see it in action.

Meme Generator

Unless you are never on the Internet, you probably know that memes are popular and highly shareable. If you have a good idea for one, this site can help you make one!

Google Trends

This is a quick way to figure out what topics are currently trending in your area or country, which can help generate content. I also like using the search feature where you can search for certain keywords and see how popular they’ve been in recent months, as well as compare them to other terms. When I’m feeling lazy with my search engine research, this is the first site I pop over to.

 

 

Target Readers and Increase Revenue with Custom Sidebars

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Custom sidebars is a smart way to increase pages per visit, decrease bounce rate, and increase revenue for your blog!

The first hurdle when building your website traffic is getting people to come to your site. The second? To stay on your site and come back again and again. In my post on how to increase blog traffic, I mention several different ways to make your site more sticky. One of the things I addressed was creating custom sidebars, which I think are great for keeping people engaged and clicking around more on your website.

Basically, by creating a custom sidebar, you can make sure people are seeing more content and even ads/affiliate links that are relevant to the post they are reading. I’ve recently started setting them up on Clarks Condensed, and I’ve already seen an immediate increase in pages per visit on desktop (the custom sidebars don’t show up on my mobile device since I use PadSquad), as well as a lowering in bounce rate.

First off all, I installed the Custom Sidebars plugin. There are other plugins out there, but this is the one that I think works the best. It’s simple and straight forward…which I think is essential. Now when you go to Appearance – Widgets in your WordPress dashboard, you’ll see the option to add new sidebars at the top of the page. You can see in the image below the ones that I have created for my site:

Screen Shot 2015-06-25 at 2.02.05 PM

 

After you’ve installed it, I would take a look at your site. Do you have different categories of posts that people read? On my site, I talk about a wide variety of topics (as you can see above), so I want to make sure the college students reading my posts are being targeted with posts that are relevant to them, and the people that are there for pregnancy advice or recipes see relevant content as well.

If you don’t have a lot of different main topics, try and divide your main category (or categories) into sub categories. For instance, if I were to setup custom sidebars for this website, although my website is all about blogging, I could create a custom sidebar for Blogging Monetization, Beginning Blog, and Growing Your Blog.

Once you’ve determined your categories, make sure you actually have your posts categorized according to those categories. If you have been on top of things from the beginning, hopefully most things are categorized already. If not, take some time to go through your posts and re-categorize them to work with your custom sidebars. If you don’t have categories setup, your custom sidebars will be useless, as they work off of categories.

**Categorizing Tip – instead of going into each post individually, just go to “Posts” in your dashboard. Underneath each post title is something that will say “quick edit.” If you click on this, a small menu will appear around that post and you can quickly add categories. This makes it easier to fly through re-categorizing all your posts, since you don’t have to open each post individually!**

At this point, you can start creating your custom sidebar. Just create one for each category in your widgets dashboard, and you can build them like you would normally build your sidebar with widgets.

What to Put in a Custom Sidebar

Each of my sidebars have a basic set up that is on all of them – Welcome Image, a search bar, social media icons, and my ads that are run through AdThrive. I think with the pro version of Custom Sidebars, you can copy sidebars so you don’t have to recreate each item for each sidebar…but I’m cheap budget conscious, and it doesn’t take much time to recreate these elements.

Then, I think about that category. I pick my top three posts in that category and using the Image Widget, I put the main image for that post and a direct link (that opens in a new window) to that post. I also use the Genesis Featured Post widget (this only works with those who use a StudioPress theme – another great perk for using their themes..they have great plugins!), and I set it to pull the three most recent posts from that category. I typically have the popular posts first, then I have an ad or affiliate banner, then I place the recent posts widget.

I also put a custom email subscription signup form in each sidebar. I have several different subscription lists, so I create one that features that specific category as the default, a weekly subscription option, and sometimes I will add lists that may also be relevant to that category (so in parenting and pregnancy, I still have the recipes category listed.)

Finally, I decide on affiliate banners. I think this is where you can really increase your earning potential. You can sign up with different affiliate companies that have products or services that are geared toward your target audience. For instance, in my “parenting and pregnancy” category, I have a KidsSteals.com widget, which shows their Deal of the Day each day, a slow cooker recipe book from the Six Sisters, and a baby journal from the Dating Divas.

As you can see, this can be a great way to market toward your readers and make sure they are getting the best relevant content to the topic they are reading about. Let me know if you have any questions or need help setting these up (I set up custom sidebars at $10-20 per sidebar for anyone interested!)

5 Ways to Improve Your Blog to Increase Blog Traffic

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7 Tactics for improving your blog to increase blog traffic

It’s been over two and a half years since I started Clarks Condensed. I seriously can’t believe it. When I started out blogging (at least on Clarks Condensed – I have blogged on a variety of different sites since 2008), I knew that I wanted to make something of it, but I had NO idea that it would come to support our family completely. There’s been a lot of ups and downs, but in the end, it’s a journey and experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.

While I am constantly trying to come up with new strategies to help our blog and income grow, at the beginning of a New Year, I really try and evaluate the past year and see how to best increase blog traffic. I go through my social networks, top blog posts, and my different monetization methods, and I determine what is giving me the best return on interest.

Here are a few ways to improve your blog this year. Most of these probably aren’t earth shattering or particularly clever, but they are things that I’ve done that have helped my blog continue to grow. I’ve found that making small, measurable goals makes a big difference. So take a look at some of these ideas,

Analyze your Top Posts

First things first – go to Google Analytics and find out what your top posts from the year are. All you have to do is set the date from January 1st through December 31st, then go to to Behavior — Site Content — All Pages.

Screen Shot 2014-12-29 at 9.28.16 AM

From here, you can view your most popular posts from the year. By doing this, you can really see what your readers like and what brings in the most traffic. For instance, I can see that my posts related to pregnancy do pretty well, and that my most popular recipe are easy casseroles.

It’s essential to see what does well on your site. If you spend all your time developing tons of recipes, and people only come to see your desserts – you probably want to consider writing more about desserts. While you shouldn’t feel like you have to limit yourself to those exact same posts that are in your top 10, it can be a great way to brainstorm new ideas. I’ve found that when a post is already popular, when I write something that’s a similar topic, it almost instantly does well.

1) Better Headlines

This is something I really struggle with – I always have! When I was working on the student newspaper during my undergraduate, I always had the hardest time coming up with captivating titles. In fact, I’m pretty sure whatever I submitted was almost always changed. However, it’s something I’ve really been working on lately, because headlines are what draw people in.

There’s a balance that has to be played when coming up with a headline – you want it to have good keywords in it but you also want to make sure it isn’t too dry or keyword heavy. Here are a few guidelines:

  • Don’t date it too much: As I was writing this post, I initially titled it “10 Important Ways to Improve your Blog in 2015.” However, I changed it to “this year” because really, these will probably still be helpful for improving your blog in 2016. While some content needs to be dated, if you want it to be timeless, make the headline reflect that.
  • Use a long tail keyword (long tail keywords are better for SEO – they include more search phrases than just words.) Just choose one – don’t load your headline up with a bunch of keywords.
  • Call to action – make people want to click on the link. Solve a problem, answer a question, or insight inspiration!

2) Take a Survey

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t love criticism. I avoid threads in blogging groups I’m in where people offer to critique one another’s blogs. I do what I do for a reason! However, I do believe it’s important to know what kind of content will appeal to your readers.

So, create a survey for your readers to take – it can be something as simple as posting on Facebook, “Which of these recipes would you rather me post this week” and give them a couple options. During the holidays, you can see if they prefer pumpkin or apple recipes more. Or, you can do a more in-depth survey using Google Docs or Survey Monkey.

Doing these surveys can really help you determine what your readers like and don’t like. For instance, I randomly did a little survey on Facebook about if people would rather a recipe be at the beginning or end of a post, and the responses really surprised me! However, implementing the suggestions helped improve my blog, my bounce rate, and my reader’s response to those types of posts.

3) Pinterest Strategy

Even though Pinterest has had some pretty significant changes in the recent months, it’s still one of the best places to get traffic. I’d say about 60-65% of my traffic comes from Pinterest, and it’s been a reliable source for me. However, it’s important to make sure you know what you are doing so you don’t get marked as a spammer and that you are using your time wisely. There are tons of posts out there that talk about Pinterest strategy, so I won’t go too much into that right now, but here’s one piece of advice – it takes a lot of trial and error. What may work for one blogger could be a disaster or another. It really takes time to perfect your strategy.

I personally employ the use of Pinterest schedulers, so I’m not a slave to pinning! This has worked very well for me, and I highly recommend finding a scheduler that best fits your strategy. I currently use BoardBooster, which basically auto-pins all of my pins to boards that I want at a specific time interval. I. Love. It. I also use ViralTag (if you use my link, you get $15!) and TailWind to scheduler others content – because any good Pinterest strategy involves pinning others content (You can get a free month using that link!)  TailWind has some amazing analytics that I recommend checking out some time to determine the best times and boards to pin to. They also have a new interval scheduler that I really like.

4) Speed Your Site Up

The speed of your site is essential. If you are on WordPress, I highly recommend installing WP Super Cache. It’s a great, easy-to-use plugin that will greatly impact the speed of your site. A faster site means more people will visit your site, more people will buy things (if you sell things or use affiliate links), and they will be more likely to click around to different articles.

I do a little bit of site sped optimization, but recently I hired Kan Web Speed to work on some issues I couldn’t resolve, and I was very pleased with the results. He was affordable, and he worked fast. If you let him know I sent you, he’ll take 5% off the price!

5) Build Your Email List

This is one of the most important things you can do for your site in my opinion. Why? Because the emails will always be yours (unless, of course, someone unsubscribes.) Social networks are constantly changing and are kind of flaky – you never know when they might change their algorithm and totally mess with your traffic. However, with email lists, you are in control of when they send out, what you put in them, and how many people will see them. Yes, not everyone opens them. But it can be one of the best ways to get information out to your readers when you need to.

I’m working on a post about building your email list later but here are a few ideas.

  • Offer an incentive – people love getting stuff for free, and from everything I’ve reader and heard, people will sign up for email lists in exchange for something awesome. I don’t subscribe to a lot of email lists, but most of the time when I do, it’s because they offer some kind of incentive.
  • Make it easy to sign up – don’t make people hunt around for your sign up form. Chances are, if they can’t see it in plain sight, they aren’t going to look too hard for it. In addition, if you have it in easily accessible areas, people who wouldn’t have signed up otherwise probably will
  • Give them options – whenever I set up a newsletter, I always give the option to sign up for a weekly or daily digest. Because Clarks Condensed has a wide variety of topics, I also like people to be able to choose
  • Use a pop up – I know, everyone hates popups. But guess what – they work. In July of 2013, I had a grand total of 400 subscribers to show from over 1.5 years of blogging. At that time, I installed PopupAlly – a plugin for WordPress. I know have over 2500 subscribers.
  • Another option is a subscription bar at the top of your page. I know a lot of bloggers have had great success with this. I personally use the SumoMe smart bar, but the HelloBar is very popular as well.

Many people use the free service from Google called Feedburner to send out their emails. The upside to it is that it’s free. However, I’d highly recommend looking into different companies. I personally use Feedblitz, and I absolutely love them. They have great customer support and you can monetize your email with ads and affiliate links. There are lots of companies out there, but I’ve been the most impressed with this company.

6) Have Sharing Tools

One of the most powerful tools a blogger has are his or her readers. Readers are the ones that cause content to go viral. If a post is really good, people will find a way to share it. But why not make it a little bit easier for them?

Make sure your site has plenty of ways to share. On both my sites, I use SumoMe. This is an awesome tool I’ll talk more about in another post sometime, but it has some great content sharing tools. I use their “Share” tool and their “Image Sharer” tool. By doing this, I have a static bar on the left side of my page with prompts to share, sharing options at the beginning and end of my posts, and finally, image hover buttons that show up when a person scrolls over a picture. With SumoMe, it tells me how many peop

7) Make your Site More Sticky

Getting people on your site is the first battle – getting them to stay (and eventually come back). Once someone is on your site,  you want it to be easy for them to find more relevant content. There are a lot of ways you can do this. Here are a few of my favorite methods.

  • Related Posts Plugin – There are many related posts plugins that you can install that will automatically populate posts related to the post that person is currently on. Chances are, if someone likes what they are reading, they wouldn’t mind seeing another article similar to it. I know when I’m researching a particular topic, I want to know everything I can! Many of the related posts plugins I’ve used have been subpar at pulling actually related posts, but the one that hasn’t let me down is Zemanta. I use that both Clarks Condensed and The Blog Help, and it always shows very relevant posts.
  • Custom Sidebars – This is something I’ve been slowly setting up on Clarks Condensed, but I’m excited to see the results when I’m done. Basically, you can set up a different sidebar for different categories of posts. So on Clarks Condensed, we have several different categories. Someone coming for advice on college may not be interested in labor and delivery, so for the category “college”, I put other popular college related posts in it, a link to a college resources page, etc. You can also use custom sidebars to put more relevant affiliate links in your sidebar, as well. Here is the plugin I use. Here is more information on how to set up custom sidebars!
  • Popular Posts Widget – This is just another way to show your readers what posts are on your site. People are drawn to the words “popular” or “most read” or “trending now”, so featuring those posts that your readers love the most may bring more readers to them. You can create your own popular posts section in your sidebar, or you can use a plugin that will create this. On Blogger, they have a popular post widget you can easily configure and add. With WordPress, I typically use Top 10 Popular Post, or for people who have JetPack installed, I recommend the JetPack Popular Posts plugin – I like the layout of it, and it shows popular posts within a certain time frame, most commented, etc. However, I recently discovered Popular Widget, which essentially does the same thing, but doesn’t come with the bulkiness that comes with installing JetPack.
  • AddThis Smart Layers – This is a pretty cool plugin I heard about sometime last year. Basically, when a person gets about half way down the page on your website, a small box will pop up in the lower right hand corner with a post that is somewhat related to the one they are on (or trending on your site at that time.) This can help lower your bounce rate and up the amount of pages per visit. I uninstalled it when I was trying to limit the number of plugins I had, but it’s something I consider using again every so often. It isn’t annoying, and I think that it does help with pageviews.

Why Your Traffic May Have Dropped After Moving from Blogger to WordPress

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Did you recently switch from Blogger to WordPress and see a huge drop in stats? Here’s a few reasons why that may have happened (and how to remedy it.)

Did you recently switch from Blogger to WordPress and see a huge drop in stats? Here's a few reasons why that may have happened (and how to remedy it.)

Not a day goes by that I don’t see someone on Facebook talking about how their traffic plummeted after they were moved from Blogger to WordPress. This can be incredibly frustrating, especially when you are trying to grow your blog and make money!

When I moved from Blogger to WordPress, my traffic increased. I didn’t see the big drop others had warned me about. I think I may have given up if I had. While I’m sure some of that was luck, I also believe it’s because I spent time making sure I did everything right. Since then, I’ve transferred tons of other blogs to WordPress, and fixed botched migrations. So, I thought I’d share a few reasons why your traffic may have dropped when you transferred from Blogger to WordPress

1) Mobile error

Did you have the blogger mobile site enabled? Then this is definitely an error you need to be aware of. It’s something that only started happening recently (as far as I can tell), but it can have a major impact on your traffic! Redirect plugins, such as Blogger 301 Redirect, are supposed to prevent this error from happening, but they haven’t. Basically, if a link ends with the =m?, it won’t redirect to the correct page. Instead, it will result in a 404 error. Fortunately, it’s an easy fix that I describe over here. You will need to access your .htaccess file via cpanel, but it’s not too hard. If you need help with this, I charge $10 to do it!

2) Redirection not set up correctly (or at all)

This is almost always the first thing I look for. Many times, people haven’t set up the redirect correctly, and in several instances, even at all. If you are moving from Blogger to WordPress, you need to make sure you are redirecting your old traffic. There are quite a few different plugins out there, and they aren’t all great. The one that I always use is called Blogger 301 Redirect. It works the best, in my opinion, and seamlessly redirects the traffic. A lot of redirects I’ve seen set up show up with a message on blogger saying, “This site has been redirected, click here to see the new site,” which probably will lose you a lot of pageviews, or it just redirects to the home page.

So, I recommend using Blogger 301 for your redirect. All you have to do is install it, go into the settings, select all the boxes except for the top two, and then copy the code. Then, go to Blogger, select “Template”, scroll to the bottom of the page, and then click on “Revert to Classic Template.” At that point, you’ll remove all the code in the template that is there, and paste the code from the plugin. Press save, and viola!

3) RSS Feed not redirected

This is a big one if you have a lot of subscribers to your email list or just subscribed via a feed reader like BlogLovin’. When you move to WordPress, you MUST go to feeds.feedburner.com, click on the site you are working on, then edit feed details, and make sure the original feed address is http://yoursite.com/feeds. If it is not, it will not pull new posts. This is essential, even if you don’t have any subscribers via Feedburner, because it will help update the many different feed readers that are out there.

If you are sending out your emails through something like MailChimp, you will need to manually go into the newsletter you have setup, and change the feed address. This will ensure there is no drop in your readers via emails!

4) Permalinks not the same

The default Blogger permalink structure and the default WordPress permalink structure is not the same. If you don’t change the WordPress permalink structure to match Blogger, it will cause a lot of 404 errors for your site. So, when you are logged into WordPress, go to Settings — Permalinks, and make sure you have this custom permalink structure:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

Then, you’ll need to download Maintain Blogger Permalinks. Go to that site, download the plugin, and then install it on your WordPress site. Then go to “tools” and and “maintain blogger permalinks.” You just have to run this once, and it will change the post name in your permalink to what it was on Blogger. Just delete the plugin once you’re done, because you won’t need it again!

5) GA Double Installed on Blogger

This is usually one of the saddest situations I encounter when it comes to a drop in traffic, but it’s very common. For some reason, people often have Google Analytics double installed on Blogger. Typically, they have it installed in their layout (via a widget) as well as under settings where you can paste the code, or in their template files. This will cause an inflation in your page views.

6) Relied on Blogger Stats

If you only ever used Blogger Stats, you’ll be in for a big surprise when you start using Google Analytics or even WordPress stats via JetPack. Blogger stats are infamously inflated – I’d say close to 3x what your actual stats are. The reason for this is because it tracks bots, crawlers, etc., which really shouldn’t be considered traffic. I always recommend having Google Analytics set up

7) Temporary URL

When you switched to WordPress, did you set it up using a temporary URL, so your site could remain live in Blogger? While this isn’t the best method to switch, it is often the most preferred (editing your host file is the best, but that requires a little more technical knowledge.) If you did use a temporary URL, it is very important that you update all the URLs after your site is live in your domain name. I always recommend using the Velvet Blue Update URL Plugin to do this.

8) Bad Luck

I hate to say this, but it’s true – sometimes, you just get some bad luck. I switched a few people right after the holidays, and while it may have looked like their traffic dropped due to the WordPress migration, it was actually more likely because most everyone sees a drop in traffic. Other people just have a drop in traffic for no apparent reason – and honestly, it may have happened if they had stayed on Blogger! All in all, I think that most people do not regret switching to WordPress (after the initial “ah, what did I do!” period), and I think it’s an important move to make.

What you can do:

If you’ve checked all the above, and everything still seems to check out, here are a few things you can do:

  • Submit sitemap to webmaster tools – this will help index your site faster.
  • Install WordPress SEO plugin and follow these instructions to set it up
  • Promote your content like crazy – social networks, blog directories, link parties!

Blogging 101: Everything You Need to Know to Start a Blog

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the framework for starting a blog
Be sure to check out our Blogging Resources page on The Blog Help for our favorite products and services to get your blog off on the right foot!
We’ve been blogging professionally since 2013, and in that time, we’ve made a successful business that has allowed us to work from home and have a fabulously flexible life. We are constantly being asked how we did it, and if others can do it as well.
Yes, yes they can. Does it require a lot of work? You better believe it. But if you truly have a passion for sharing your thoughts with others and you are willing to do what it takes to make it, you can be successful, too. I’ve seen a lot of people start blogs and fail…but I’ve also seen a lot of people who were truly motivated to be successful to do just that. It is not for the weak of heart.Writing about everything we’ve done to get to the point we are at would take for longer than one blog post. However, I thought we would share some of the basic framework to launching a successful blog:

1) Pick a Niche

Parenting? Foodie? Tech? There are so many different blogging niches out there, and one for just about everyone. Pick something you are a passionate about, not what you think will be most popular. If you feel like you would run out of topics quickly, then don’t go with that one! We write about everything here on Clarks Condensed. Some people suggest that you don’t do that, but for us, it’s worked pretty well.

I’d also avoid picking a topic that is too narrow, as it can make it hard to get a good readership. However, that doesn’t mean you should avoid something that isn’t so popular. If there is a topic you are super passionate about, chances are, there is a community of people equally passionate.

2) Get a Domain Name

You can buy a domain for about $10 a year. Personally, I went with GoDaddy, because you can get them for fairly inexpensive (I would avoid them for hosting though.) However, you can often get a free domain name with your hosting (such as with BlueHost.) Brands will take your blog more seriously if you have your own domain, plus, it just looks more professional.

Be sure to put some thought into your domain name. You don’t want to have to go back and rebrand everything someday. Using something that is SEO friendly, catchy, and interesting will draw people in. When choosing a domain name, I highly recommend checking out Namechk.com. This allows you to see if just about any social network out there has your name still available. It would really be unfortunate to go and get all excited about your domain name, only to realize that it isn’t available on your social networks!

3) Purchase Hosting

Before you really can do anything, you have to pick a place for your blog to “live.” There are several different options, but I would say that the majority of people go with one of the three options – Blogger, WordPress.com, or WordPress.org.

If you absolutely cannot pay for hosting right now, start with Blogger. I cannot stand WordPress.com – it’s so hard to customize anything.

However, if you are serious about blogging, I highly recommend going with WordPress.org. This is a platform that you download – not a website you sign up at. In order to use it, you must buy hosting. You can buy hosting for anywhere from 99 cents a month to thousands.

When I first started blogging, I signed up with BlueHost. While I eventually outgrew them, they were a good starting point – 24/7 tech support, lots of guides on how to set things up, and very inexpensive. All you have to do sign up is click here…

Select your hosting account (for the $3.95 a month plan, you have to sign up for two years. Don’t worry, if you decide to leave, you get a pro-rated refund!)

2-Plans-1

At this point you can decide if you want to get a free domain name with them or use an existing domain:

3-Domain Registartion

And when you login, you can install WordPress. They have an install guide if you get stuck!

I currently am with Big Scoots, and I’ve been very pleased with them. They are a bit expensive though, so if you aren’t sure if blogging is your thing, definitely start with BlueHost and go from there!

4) Design

Many will say that beyond the content of your blog, the design is the most important aspect of your blog. If your site doesn’t have any real design to it, or it’s messy looking, littered with ads, or just is hard to navigate, readers won’t want to come back.
You will need to purchase a theme if you are blogging on WordPress.org – we highly recommend Restored 316 themes or StudioPress child themes (both require Genesis framework). There are lots of tutorials for them, and they are highly customizable.
There are tons of designers out there – you can even turn to Fiverr.com if you are on a budget. I’ve seen some excellent designs come from there. Either way, pick a color palette, decide on the general look you want, and get something pretty up!

5) Install Analytics

In order to track how many visits your site gets, top posts, where your main visitors are from, and lots of other interesting (and important) information, you will need to install some sort of analytics. Doing this before your even launch your blog is important, because you want to track everything from the beginning. This makes it easy to track your progress, and provide details to brands and companies that may want to work with you.
The most popular analytics tracker is Google Analytics. Typically, this is the one that most companies will ask for, and I think it’s the most comprehensive. It provides SO much information — more than you will probably even need! It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but there’s plenty of tutorials out there to help you get started.

6) Sign up for social networks

Simply said, being active on social networks can be the key to being a successful blogger. It’s a great way to interact with readers and promote content, connect with brands, and just create an overall presence on the Internet.
There are a ton of networks out there, but the ones that I would suggest getting involved in right away are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+. These are, by far, the most used social networks, and in between using them, you should be able to create a good following. It does take work (and a lot of it) but it’s worth it to be involved. Always keep your ears open for new social networks that open, so you can claim your brand’s name. You never know what might take off next!
Learn all you can about the best practices for these sites. I’ll tell you now – it’s always changing. Facebook constantly changes what it wants to show people (right now, it hates the word “giveaway”…at least on my page!)
For Pinterest, I highly recommend signing up with BoardBooster from the get-go. You can get your first 100 pins free!)

7) Install Ads and Sign up for Amazon Affiliates

I’m not going to discuss the details of monetizing a blog in this post, but from the start, you NEED to put ads on your site and sign up for Amazon affiliate (unless your state doesn’t allow it.) You never know when you will have a post go wild.

I recommend just putting up three ads from Google Adsense, and then start putting affiliate links in every post you do! Affiliate programs can be one of the best ways to make money, and Amazon is a great place to start.

8) Connect With Others

One of the best ways to get your content out there is by having it shared by others in your industry. As soon as you know what you are going to write about, find a group of bloggers in that niche. If you are a parenting blogger, the Kid Blogger Network is an excellent resource. A foodie? Check out Food Blogger Pro. Whatever your niche is, get to know others in it. Make an effort to attend a conference – this is where I’ve met a lot of blogging friends and colleagues.

Don’t be annoying and spam other’s Facebook pages asking for them to like your page, or leave meaningless comments like “Looks great, check out my site!” Build genuine relationships with people. Share their content and tag them in it. If you feature another blogger in a post, let them know – chances are, they might just share it.

Blogging is not an individual sport. Yes, you have to do your own hard work to make it, but by getting to know others, getting your content out there will be so much easier.As an added bonus, you might meet some of your closest friends. I’ve met some incredible people through blogging.

9) Read All You Can

When I started blogging, I read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on. I learned how to run a WordPress site, do tech support for myself, and tons of about monetizing, social media, and how to be successful. I think that reading all the information you can about blogging is one of the smartest moves you can make. Here are two GREAT books to start with:

How to Blog for Profit: Without Selling Your Soul

How I made $40k My First Year of Blogging

9) Create great content

Anyone can make a blog. However, not everyone can make a successful good blog. Having good content is the number one key to being successful. If your content isn’t interesting, people won’t probably come back! And content can mean many different things — amazing photography, delicious recipes, writing…it’s up to you. Just create something that you think others will find interesting.Don’t let this intimidate you though. Just write in your own voice! No one else has the same story that you do, and even if you are posting the one millionth chocolate chip cookie recipe out there, if you post it in your voice and with your story, it’s different. People want authenticity. Don’t be something you are not — be real and honest, and readers will want to come back.
Pictures are SO important – no matter what niche you are. I highly recommend getting a good camera and lens (I have a Nikon D7100 along with a 50mm and 24-70mm lens), at least PicMonkey for editing (though I love Lightroom.) If you need stock photography, my sister-in-law has this great resource for free stock photography websites.
Other Posts You may Enjoy: 
Let me know if you have any questions. I can’t answer everything, and if you want in-depth help, I do have a fee for that. But if you are just getting started and have a question or two, let me know, and I’d be happy to help. Be sure to sign up below for our newsletter from The Blog Help so you can get up-to-date tips for running a successful blog!

How to Make Money Blogging

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make-money-blogging

 

A few months ago, my friend Katelyn from What’s Up, Fagans?  mentioned on Facebook how she was grateful for the income she was able to bring in from blogging. A few people quickly asked her to tell them what she did to make money blogging. While I’m sure people are generally interested a lot, a lot of people seem to think it’s a get rich quick scheme.

Well, let me dispel the rumor right now – blogging is not a get rich quick scheme.

Developing a blog, a following, and promoting your posts takes time. The money does come, if you go about it the right way, but if you start blogging and think you’ll start making a lot of money quickly…that probably isn’t going to happen. Of course, there’s a few people that will somehow have their posts go viral right away, thus causing them to bring in money right away, but this is the exception, not the rule. Blogging takes time, effort, and probably some tears. It’s definitely not for the weak of heart! While it’s possible to make a lot of money, even if your first year of blogging, it takes a lot of hard work.

However, if I haven’t ran you off with my discouraging dose of reality, let me tell you – you can make money blogging.

We started our blog, Clarks Condensed, in January of 2013. Within a few months, some money started coming in. It wasn’t until September of 2013 that we actually started making more than just a little bit of extra money. And since September, our income has increased each month. We currently make enough to comfortably support our family (combined with money from our tech support business), and we hope that trend continues. I’m not making millions, but I do believe I know what it takes to make money blogging. I jumped in head first, and since blogging, I have never looked back. I’m constantly learning more, trying to help others, and teaching myself along the way.

There’s unfortunately no formula that works for everyone, but if you read these tips, and apply them to your individual circumstances, hopefully you’ll be able to come up with a marketing plan that will help bring in money.

But, before I get into making money blogging, remember this – don’t blog because you want to make money. If your only purpose in blogging is to make money, you will most likely fail. You have to have a passion for sharing your life, experiences, and tips with others. Blogging is not for everyone. With that said, I feel very strongly about bloggers being compensated for the work they do, without having to justify that to anyone else. If you love blogging, but you want to make money doing it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just make sure you are authentic and you enjoy doing it. When you do that, you’ll find followers come much faster, and with it, so does the money.

How to Make Money Blogging

Before I get into the nitty gritty, I should note to make money blogging, you have to have a blog! Be sure to check out our blogging resources page for more information. Now, on to the good stuff!

1. Write Killer Content

Let’s get one thing straight – if you write bad material, you probably won’t get very far. Not everyone can be a blogger — just like not everyone can be an engineer, or a teacher, or a rocket scientist. You need to be a good writer who can not only draw readers in but keep them coming back.

I think the best advice I can give is write in your own voice and be yourself. Don’t try to be someone else, or mimic how another blogger writes. I believe some bloggers don’t give their readers enough credit — they can tell when you aren’t being authentic! I honestly don’t read a lot of blogs, beyond ones written by my family and friends, but the blogs that I keep going back to are the ones that really wow me with what they write. You know they are passionate about what they are doing and you can tell there’s a real person behind the screen.

So if you write great content, you’ll have a lot easier time making money. It still takes promotion (very few people just start writing a blog, and with no promotion, become a sensation over night), but it makes it a lot easier to bring in loyal readers.

2. Know your Niche

I thought about saying pick a niche, but honestly, sometimes that takes a little bit of trial and error. You might start out writing about dessert recipes, and then realize that you don’t want to spend the rest of your life making desserts (I truly admire those that can.) Write about something you could go on and on forever about. For Clarks Condensed, I started it with the desire to help people find positive information on the Internet on how to be a better spouse, parent, and friend. I love writing about pregnancy, good food, and saving money. I started The Blog Help for two reasons — one, to provide a place for people to get help blogging, and two, so I could write about blogging. It’s truly one of my passions.

Once you’ve decided what niche you want to be in, you have to understand it. You have to know it’s audience, stay up to date on current trends, and know successful marketing techniques for it.

Not all niches draw in tons of traffic — however, if you know who wants the content and what they are looking for, you can be successful. There are so many niches out there, and if you know how to write toward that audience, then go for it. I used to write for the website SmartPhoneHC.com, which was a part of a larger website called Healthcarescene.com. Basically, this website is all about healthcare IT, specifically EMRs and EHRs. Most people probably have NO idea what those two things are. However, the man behind this blog/website is successful with what he does. It may not be the most exciting topic, but there is a market for it — a profitable one at that.

Once you’ve decided one your niche, take sometime to read some of the top blogs that are in that niche. Look at what they’ve done with their sites and try and see how they’ve managed to become successful. While you shouldn’t copy exactly what someone is doing (so, don’t go write the exact same posts verbatim on your site), I think one of the best ways to learn is from others. I personally have found great success by not only studying others sharing techniques, how they set up their posts, etc., but from getting to know other bloggers. The sooner you believe that other bloggers aren’t your competition, but your support group, the better. I learn so much every day from bloggers I’ve become friends with! Don’t be a link dropper (so, going to a post and saying, Hey check out my blog,) but genuinely try and become friends.

3. Be Smart and have a Plan

I think with blogging, you do have to just kind of jump in and get started, but eventually, you do need a plan. You can’t do everything — I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes I see bloggers making. There are just too many social networks, Google algorithms, and weird trends to keep up with everything. So, make a plan!

Making this plan might come from a little bit of trial-and-error (you’ll find that a lot of blogging comes down to that.) Figure out what social networks work best for your niche, how to best get your content out there, and where your time actually makes a difference. For me, there was a time when I really wanted to manage my own ads — it ended up being a huge time suck, and other parts of my blog suffered, so I handed that off to someone else. And with that, if you can — delegate the tasks you don’t like (hint, hint — that’s why The Blog Help is here.) That can be hard, if you don’t have money to pay other people to do certain things, but when you can, I think it is worth it.

Set a schedule, and stick to it. I found myself getting incredibly overwhelmed when I tried to be a super mom and wife, as well as a super blogger. So, I decided to put the most important things first (my husband and son), but also set specific times where I was dedicated to working. And guess what — it’s made a world of difference. I’m so much more productive, and we are all so much happier!

4. Talk with Other Bloggers

I’ve found that a lot of bloggers don’t like to share their tips for success with others — and I hate it! It’s like they don’t want to share their secrets in fear of others stealing their ideas and all their traffic. The Internet is a big place, and I think there’s room for everyone and the fastest way to grow is learn from others. While it may be discouraging sometimes, when you discover someone is making more money or getting more pageviews than you, if you learn to not compare yourself to others, and just work on growing your own brand, brainstorming with other bloggers is one of the best things you can do.

I started blogging because of the Online Blog Con, and the wonderful support group of bloggers that came with attending that conference. Seriously — this group is full of some of the most talented bloggers I’ve ever known, and they are all so willing to share their tips for success. And guess what — none of those bloggers who share their ideas and tips have suddenly had their success go down the drain. To be honest, the opposite has happened. The Online Blog Con just finished it’s third year (I was able to help plan it this year, actually), and it was better than ever before. If you can sign up next year, definitely do!)

And I’ll be upfront — I am always more than willing to share how much money I make, my traffic, and my ideas with others. So, if you want to talk that type of thing, feel free to send me an email (katie @ thebloghelp (dot) com.)

Okay, okay, so now you’re probably wondering where the money comes from. 

Even if you do all the things above, money doesn’t just fall out of the air. You’ve got to do a few things to get the money rolling in. Not all money bloggers will make money in the same way, and while one method may make one blogger a millionaire, it may leave another blogger making pennies. It takes a little bit of trial and error to figure out what works best for you. I once heard that you should try and monetize from at least three different sources, and I think that’s good advice. Here are the most common methods.

1) Advertising:

There’s various forms of advertising you can do on your site. These include:

  • Banner ads from ad networks (such as Google Adsense, Burst Media, Riot Ads, etc.) These are typically the easiest to set up and can be rather profitable
  • Textual Ads (You can do these with Google AdSense and Media.net. I’ll talk a little more in another post about how I use Media.net to make about $200 extra a month by putting them in just two posts.)
  • Text Links (I don’t love these — they are kind of spammy and you cannot always control what links show up. You’ll also have a lot of companies reaching out to you, asking for a text link…proceed with caution. Doing these the wrong way can cause your site to be dinged seriously by Google.)
  • Direct Ad Sales (this is when you work with a specific brand or company and come up with a set price for a certain period of time, CPM (price per million), or CPC (cost per click.)

Advertisements are a balancing act. I strongly believe that bloggers should be compensated for their work and that is 100% okay to have ads on your site. However, be sure to keep in mind the user experience. While I think sidebar, in text, and header ads are great, auto-playing video ads, huge pop ups, or ads that you can’t exit out of, may make you lose readers. Just experiment with your ads though and see what works best.

I personally have hired someone to manage my ads, simply because it took too much of my time. However, if you aren’t to that point yet, a great way to increase your ad revenue is setting up backfill.

There are tons of advertisement companies out there and a lot of them aren’t that great. I get offers from different companies every day, and I would never work with probably 90% of them. In general, if a company offers a very large CPM, I would be suspicious. Never sign a contract without seeing what the ads look like, how often you get paid, and if you get paid if you break that contract.

Here are a few ad companies that I recommend:

  • Riot Ads
  • Gourmet Ads
  • Media.net (especially for your popular posts)
  • AdSense
  • PadSquad (if you sign up, be sure to say Katie Clark sent you! This company will create a mobile site for you and optimize it with ads. Our income increased a lot when we started with them!)
  • The Blogger Network: If you are over 80,000 pageviews and don’t want to worry about managing your ads, then definitely check out this company. They manage my ads and do a great job with it. AdThrive is another company that you could look into, but they do require more pageviews. Either way, it’s a relief not to have to stress about ads!

2) Affiliate Links

I love using affiliate links in my posts and earn a nice, passive income. However, I know that I”m definitely not using them as much as I could be. I mainly use Amazon Associates, but there are plenty of other companies out there like Commission Junction, Share-a-sale, Escalate, SkimLinks, or Avantlink. Basically, whenever someone clicks on a link from your site for a product or service that you are an affiliate for, you get some kind of commission. Some companies will have a cookie, that will allow you to make money off of anything that person buys in the near future.

Pretty much every company I can think of has some kind of affiliate program. While this is definitely not my forte, there are plenty of guides out there to get you started with affiliate marketing. I recently started using affiliate links a lot more, and I’ve had a significant increase in my income.

One thing I recommend doing when you are starting out using affiliate links, is looking at your outbound links. If you have Jetpack installed, this is really easy to do. However, if you don’t have Jetpack, you can set Google Analytics up to track this for you. Either way, you need to see what links people are clicking on from your site. I recently audited this on my site, and I discovered about 10-15 links that were clicked quite often, that could have had an affiliate link attached to it. These ranged from an audio book subscription site, to Amazon Student, to survey sites, to products on Amazon. You can quickly find out if a company, product, or service has an affiliate program by Googling it. Believe me, doing this occasionally is worth the effort.

3) Sponsored Posts

A good bulk of our income comes from sponsored posts. We get many offers to do sponsored posts each month, but we definitely don’t accept them all. We work hard to make our blog authentic, and to gain our readers trust, and because of that, we don’t promote topics or products we don’t believe in. However, the sponsored posts we do accept help support our family and make our blog keep going. There’s a lot of sponsored post companies out there (not all of which are worth signing up for) but you can read more about that in this post about the best sponsored post companies.

There are a lot of bloggers who hate on those who choose to do sponsored posts, and I think that is messed up. For me, sponsored content gives me an opportunity to think outside the box and come up with a creative, engaging post on a topic I may not have thought of before. Some of my most popular posts have been sponsored, and I’ve never got one complaint. I’m not perfect, but I think if you do your best to be honest and upfront, your readers will appreciate it. There’s definitely a balance (doing only sponsored posts and having no organic posts is a big no-no), but sponsored posts can be a great way to really increase your income.

4) Products

Whenever I look at successful bloggers, there’s one thing I notice most of them have in common — they sell some kind of product. While some of them sell physical products, many of them have some kind of digital product as well. The most common product for a blogger to sell is an eBook, simply because you can create it and market it yourself. eBooks are a great way to get your name out there.

Other products I see being sold are printables (everything from sweet quotes, to customized printables for birthdays, to holidays, and more) and meal plans. Whatever your niche is, think about what you feel you have a lot of knowledge in and figure out a way to market it.

What is your favorite method for making money blogging?