Archive | October, 2024

Whatever it is that you want to do – just begin. Don’t think about doing the whole thing, because you don’t have to do the whole thing… You only need to take the first step.

Most people don’t start because they’re thinking about the whole thing. It’s too big. There’s too many obstacles. They don’t know how they’ll do it all.

The thought of the whole project is overwhelming and paralyzing. It’s easier to put it off…

“I’ll start it later when I have time. When I finish this and that. When the kids are gone. When I’m retired. When life isn’t so hectic.”

Life is always hectic. It’s busy. It’s a whirlwind. But we decide what we do with each moment. So just start. Just begin.

You want to exercise but you don’t have time? Just do 10 minutes a day, everyday. Just start. Don’t worry about running marathons, just do 10 minutes today. Then tomorrow, do 10 minutes more.

You want to write a book? No one can write an entire book. But anyone can start. Just write for 10 minutes, that’s all. Easy, right? Look at the clock. An hour has passed and you’re still writing.

Challenge is good. Little challenges. Lots of them. Just begin. Don’t climb Everest, climb the jungle gym. You can do that. Tomorrow climb the hill behind your house. Lots of little challenges add up.

Do you want to learn to play the piano? Just begin. Imagine if you had started when you were a kid and played 10 minutes everyday. By now you would impress almost anyone. Now imagine you start today – in 5 years, who knows? You might be entertaining your family and friends during the holidays, but not if you don’t begin.

You want to start a business. Ooooh, scary. So many things you’ll have to learn. Better to wait, right? No. Just begin. Just start.

Everything conspires to keep you from beginning. But there is power and magic in taking that first step, because it’s the first step that leads to the second, and the second to the third.

If you never begin, you will have only regret. By starting, you can create your own future.

All you need to do is begin.

Wouldn’t it be terrific if you could go from being Mr./Ms. Marketing Nobody to immediate “guru” status overnight? You’d enjoy instant authority in your niche and a high level of credibility with your potential customers as well as your potential JV partners. People would trust your opinion. You’d be quoted in blog posts and asked to do guest posts…

You could get interviewed. You could join lucrative joint ventures and mastermind groups. Your social media accounts would become magnets to followers and fans. Customers’ sales resistance would go down and your sales would go up, and so forth.

Becoming an ‘overnight’ authority in your niche shaves a few years off of your online marketing career path. You’re taking a quantum leap from being an unknown to being – well, KNOWN in your niche. And you receive all the benefits a known expert in your field gets, only without the years of work.

Sounds pretty good, don’t you think? Yeah, it’s cheating, but it’s not. Who ever said you have to take years and years to accomplish what can be done in a few days or weeks?

Here are 5 ways to do it:

1. Interview others. Oprah wasn’t an expert, she interviewed experts. And by doing so, she became associated with every expert she interviewed. In your case, you’ll want to go much more narrow and deep than Oprah, choosing your targeted niche carefully and then interviewing anyone and everyone in that single niche.

2. Buy named rights products and sell them. These are products sold by big name marketers that allow you to keep their name on the product when you sell it. You’re basically co-featuring with an established expert. At the bottom of the salesletter you can write something like, “From the desk of ‘your name’ and ‘guru’s name.’ Buyers will assume you have partnered with the guru in putting this product out. These types of resale rights generally aren’t cheap, but that plays in your favor as well, since it greatly limits any competition.

3. Create a product yourself, then let a big name marketer be the co-author and co-owner. This heightens your profile and generally brings in a lot of sales from that marketer’s list, as well as from affiliates who promote for that marketer.

4. Write/edit a book full of other people’s articles. Choose a topic and then find articles written by the experts on this topic. Ask their permission to place their articles in your book, giving them full credit and links back to their website. You do the editing, write the introduction, and also add notes at the beginning and end of each article if you choose. But the experts are still doing all the heavy lifting, while you get to associate your name with theirs. In fact, it looks like a collaboration between you and all these big names, with YOUR name on the front cover.

5. Do all 4, along with guest blogging and being active in social media. All of a sudden people will say that they see and hear you everywhere.

Some people take a lifetime to go from the mailroom to the boardroom of a company. But this is your business, and YOU make the rules. Don’t wait years to become an expert in your niche – decide to become one today.

Getting traffic isn’t rocket science – it’s actually pretty easy when you know a few of the best tricks pro-bloggers are using every day to get more traffic to their blogs.

Create an not-so-secret inner circle of your best buddies.

Put together a list of your very best and most influential readers. These are the ones who regularly interact with you or post replies to your posts, share your posts with their followers, send you articles, buy your products and so forth.

Put these folks on your special inner circle list, and email them to let them know of their newly attained status. Let them know the benefits – they’ll get to see your posts before the general public and they’ll be apprised of any new offerings, updates and ideas before anyone else.

Solicit their feedback on your posts. This creates a sense of ownership for them and increases the odds they will go out of their way to share your content with their followers. Give them special benefits to thank them for their help, and offer to help them in return.

Make it brain dead easy to share your content.

If content is too difficult to share, your readers and inner circle are less likely to share it. So add the appropriate social sharing buttons for sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Write in-depth content that makes your readers look sexy-smart.

Here’s a little secret: People like to look super smart to their readers and friends. Okay, so maybe it’s not a secret. But the fact is, in-depth articles tend to get shared more because the people sharing them want their friends to think they read in-depth articles. Plus, when someone new lands on your in-depth article, they are more likely to subscribe to get even more info than if they land on a simple fluff piece.

Another secret: Posts with images, lists and videos will attract over 5 times more links than posts containing only plain text. So don’t stop at just the words – add things like images and graphs to make it share-worthy.

Cheat. Just a little.

This isn’t really cheating, but it sure feels like it. Look at your old content and find the pieces that are still relevant, whether they were written 3 months ago or a year ago. Now share them again via social media. This way you get new traffic without having to write new content – how awesome is that?

Write a mini-sales letter to promote each blog post.

Traditionally, when a blogger writes a new post she sends out the title and first paragraph to her list with an invite to click the link and read the rest. But the real meat of a blog post isn’t in that intro paragraph, which is why this method isn’t worth beans.

Instead, write a mini sales letter that gets the email reader curious and excited to know more. This doesn’t have to be long; 50 -100 of the right words is perfect. Build curiosity and show them what the big benefits / takeaways of reading your article will be, and your click-through rates could double if not triple.

That’s it – 5 simple tips to increase your blog traffic. Pick out your favorite and try it right now, then make a note to use the other 4 within the next 7 days and you’ll begin to see a real boost in your traffic within the month.