ProBlogger Podcast: Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging

UPDATE: Because our free March Content Sprint was so popular we are now running a series of paid 7-Day Content Sprints running Live: 13-19 July 2020 17-23 August 2020 14-20 September More information and sign-up here: https://problogger.com/contentsprint/ A Free 7-Day Course to Create New Content Does your blog need a momentum boost? We’ve decided to run a LIVE 7-day Content Sprint to help support you create a plan and 6 new pieces of content for your blog in just 7 days. Starting next week (Monday 23rd March at 5pm PDT/8pm EDT / Tuesday 24th March at 11AM AEDT) Darren will be teaching live daily on FB in our ProBlogger Community Facebook Group (join here). Each day for 7 days we’ll roll out supporting resources here in the course and add the video in case you can’t make it live. Join us here: https://problogger.com/freecontentsprint/ Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, friends. It’s Darren here from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 281 of the ProBlogger Podcast. I’ve also got a live audience watching us today. They’ve been chiming in and saying good day. We’ve got people watching from Singapore, California, Adelaide, and all around Australia. It seems to be quite a few Aussies on due to the time of day that we’re going at the moment. I will explain to you I have my son playing trumpet in the background today and this is not to give you ambient music but because he’s got an online trumpet lesson today as part of his schooling. Today, I want to give you a fun little opportunity. We have been hearing from a lot of ProBlogger readers, podcast listeners about their current situation and how they’re feeling about the Coronavirus, what’s been going on in their world, and how that’s impacting their blogging. We talked a little bit about that in the last episode, episode 280. I gave some suggestions on moving through it and blogging through this crisis. We also wanted to do something for you, and this is something that we want to offer to you for free, which will hopefully keep some momentum going in on your blog, and I hope this will help you.  As I just said on the live video, we have created this on-the-fly, so it’s not polished by any means, but we think there’s some value in it. I’m going to share my screen for the live video viewers and I’ll pop this same graphic up in the show notes for those of you who will be listening to this on the ProBlogger Podcast. This all comes out of us observing one of the big problems that a lot of our listeners have at the moment. That problem is that many people are really struggling right now with motivation for their blog, particularly with content at the moment. They have this big problem, that they’re feeling a lack of motivation, they’re feeling distracted by all the information that’s coming out at the moment about Coronavirus, and many are feeling fear and uncertainty about their businesses.  Someone just in the live stream said that they’ve lost their job out of this and that has brought fear and uncertainty for many of our readers. We’re certainly hearing that increasingly, or at least people feeling like their work, their employment might be coming to an end. They’re looking to their blog for some income but not really knowing how to do that and feeling paralyzed by it.  One of the results of this is a lack of content on many of our reader’s blogs or at least some blockages when it comes to creating content. If that’s you, then you’re not alone. If you’re watching the live video, let us know if that’s something that you do feel. If you’ve got a reason for that, if it’s fear, uncertainty, or it’s just distraction, let us know about that. I have felt that myself even over the last week. A week ago, I remember sitting for almost a full day, just consuming the news about coronavirus, and I realized that I really wasn’t any more informed at the end of the day than I was at the start. The next I got up and I decided I was going to do something positive instead of just consuming uncertainty around us. What we want to do on ProBlogger is to help you through the challenge of creating content at this time. The solution that we’ve come up with—again, this is on the fly, it’s not overly polished—is we want to do a seven-day content sprint. A seven-day sprint where, as bloggers, podcasters, YouTube creators, and whatever content creator you are, together, we’re going to move through seven days of creating content together. We want to call it a sprint because we’re going to do it for a defined period of time. We want to invite you to participate in it and to participate to the level that you feel comfortable in doing that. We’re calling it ProBlogger seven-day content sprint, and it’s going to happen next week. We’re going to start it on Tuesday Australian time, which is Monday US time, so this is the 23rd of March. I’ve said April on the screenshot there, but it’s actually the 23rd of March. That’s US time and the 24th of March is Australian time, Tuesday the 24th. It’s going to start that day, run for a week. Now, I know some of you right up-front are going to say, “Well, that’s not a good week for me.” I still want to encourage you to sign up for it, and then you can do it at your own pace if you choose to do that as well. It’s the type of thing that you can have, you continue to have access to after because the sprint is over and you can run it at your own pace as well. You might want to take two weeks to do it, that’s totally fine. What do you need to know about this sprint? Firstly, the cost is free. This is something we want to give you as bloggers, as readers of ProBlogger. It’s going to take a little bit of time for us but it’s something that we want to give because it’s definitely a need that we see in our community at the moment, one of the needs. You can sign up to be a part of the sprint at problogger.com/contentsprint, and if you’re watching live, you can go there right now pop in your email address and your details. We will let you know when things are kicking off and how they’re kicking off. At the moment there’s not a lot there once you’ve signed up to look at, but you’ll see there a bit of the format for the time that we want to go through as well. “Who is it for and what is it?” is one of the questions, actually, I got on my screen here. “What is it?” is another question. Basically, over the seven days, I don’t want to overwhelm you with content. I don’t want to overwhelm you with things that you need to do, listen to, or watch. I want to provide you with a short video every day, five or ten minutes. In that video, we’ll deliver it to our Facebook group in the ProBlogger community area. We’ll give you a little bit of further viewing or further teaching on that particular topic if you want it, but the main thing each day is that we’re going to give you a challenge to create a piece of content on that day. The content may not be a big one. I’ve mixed up the types of content that I’m going to challenge you to create. Some of them are quite easy to do, some of them are a little bit more involved. As I said before, you may choose to do this over seven days, or you may want to spread it out a little bit more. On day one, I’m going to take you through a bit of a planning exercise, and by the end of day one, you should know what your next six pieces of content are going to be on your blog, and then over the next six days, I want you to create those pieces of content. It’s going to be as simple as possible. I’m going to give you a new type of content for each day. I’ve tried to choose types of content that I think you could do on a blog, a podcast. You could do these on Instagram, you could do these on YouTube, you could do them on live video. I think all of these types of content could be done in lots of different formats. You might choose to do this in any of those formats. Day one, we’ll be planning to come up with six pieces of content for the rest of the week, and then over the next six days, you’ll create that content. You will need a little bit of time every day or as much as you’ve got on your hands to create content. For some of you, that’s going to be easy because you’re in lockdown or you’re in self-isolation at the moment; you’ve got lots of extra time on your hands. For some of you, you might need to put aside a little extra time before or after the rest of your day. Again, you can sign up for the sprint at problogger.com/contentsprint, pop in your email addresses there. The last thing I already had a couple of people asking is who’s this for. It’s anyone who’s struggling to create content right now, either because of the Coronavirus and feeling fear, uncertainty, and paralysis, or for anyone whose blogs just been dormant for a while.  So, whether you are a blogger, podcaster, YouTuber, Instagramer, live streamer, or influencer, you are welcome to join. We’re going to have a daily piece of content for you to watch just to give you some ideas, and then the challenge is for you to go away and create that content. Then we’re going to have an opportunity for you to come back and share that content with the rest of the group. We want to encourage each of you to also visit a few other participant’s contents as well, maybe even share that. My hope is that you’ll come out of this seven days with six new pieces of content, that you will have interacted with some other bloggers, had some fun along the way, and hopefully even has some extra traffic along with that. Again, you can go at problogger.com/contentsprint and hopefully, we’ll see you next Monday/Tuesday, depending on where you are in the world. If you’re watching the live video, if you’ve got any questions, please pop them into the comments now, I will answer as many of them as I can. Keep in mind we are creating this on the fly. We decided to do this about an hour ago, two hours ago at the most, and my team has done an amazing job to get a landing page up and to start setting up the course content behind the scenes as well. Grove, Lainey, Mario, thank you so much for responding so quickly. If you want to join us, please do that. I might be in the podcast there, but if you’re on the live video, ask any questions. Those of you on the podcast, we’ve gone from having no episodes for a long time to two in a week. There you go. I know many of you have been waiting for something more. We’re going to be getting into more content over the coming weeks. We’ve actually decided on the podcast to see what we’re doing at the moment as a bit of a series. We might call it the Coronavirus series on ProBlogger Podcast, but we want to create a series of content that’s particularly targeted to helping us all navigate through this tricky time, so tune in to the podcast on that. Thanks for listening. Before I go, I want to give a big shout out and say thank you to Craig Hewitt and the team at Podcast Motor who’ve been editing all of our podcasts for some time now. Podcast Motor has a great range of services for podcasters at all levels. They can help you to set up your podcast but also offer a couple of excellent services to help you to edit your shows and get them up with great show notes. Check them out podcastsmotor.com.

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there friends, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 280 of the ProBlogger podcast.  It’s been a while since we chatted and I do apologize for that, I needed a little time to get my headspace right and work on a couple of other projects, but I’m glad to be back. I’m particularly glad to be back at this time that we find ourselves in. We currently find ourselves in a bit of a crazy time with COVID-19, CoronaVirus, and all that it is meaning for us in the world we’re living in. We’re seeing so many people impacted, the economy impacted, and we’re seeing lots of new things, or at least they’re new to some people. We’re seeing a lot of people now having to work at home, something that many of us, as bloggers, have been doing for a while. Today, what I want to talk a little bit about is how we navigate this time as bloggers. How do we, as bloggers, not only keep our businesses going, but how do we actually do something to serve our world where there’s so much need at the moment. I jumped on to Facebook Live earlier today and shared my thoughts on that.  What I want to share with you today is a recording of that Facebook Live. I did a bit of teaching in the middle of that. I talked a little bit about what the world doesn’t need right now, what the world does need right now, and why we, as bloggers, are actually ideally positioned to make a difference. I want to give you some practical thoughts on how to go about that. Some things to keep in mind, some things to avoid, also just tackling that tricky question of how do we actually make it a win-win for our audience and for us without seeming selfish in the midst of that as well, and actually about how not to be selfish in the midst of that as well. There are some of the things I cover in the recording I’m about to play for you. I just want to say though right up front, I hope you’re doing well. I’m doing well, I’ve had a bit of a scare and I’ll talk about that in the recording today, over the last week or so, but I hope you’re doing well. I really do want to emphasize the point that I make numerous times in this recording that I hope you look after yourself in this time.  We need you to look after yourself. If you are going to make a difference, if you’re going to use your blogging, your online profile to make the world a better place, right now we need you to look after yourself as well. I hope you’re doing well and I hope you do take seriously the question I pose of you in this recording: what can we do at ProBlogger to serve you better through this time? Is there something that you are facing right now in your blogging that you’d like some content to be produced to help you to navigate that challenge. If you would like to drop me a line, my team a line, you can send an email to [email protected] and that will go to our support team. We’ll put it in front of the person who is best able to help if we can, and hopefully that will inform some content going forward. If you do want to stay in touch with this, head over to our Facebook Page, facebook.com/problogger, and you will get any future Facebook Lives and updates from there. We’ve got our email newsletter which is still going out every week over in ProBlogger that you can sign up for. If you want the show notes today, head over to problogger.com/podcast/280. I’ll come back at the end of this recording and wrap things up. Thanks for listening! Hi there everyone, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast, also welcome to those of you who are watching this live. I am going live onto Facebook today while I’m recording. Because I think it is an important topic and it’s one that I do want to get our communities input in as well. Our love viewers may have some thoughts to share that I will include in the podcast as well as if I think they’re relevant.  Obviously, we’re going through uncharted waters right now with this whole COVID-19, CoronaVirus, thing. As I was just saying on the live Facebook, this is something that most of us haven’t been through before. We have not really done pandemics, at least in my lifetime. There’s certainly been health crisis in different parts of the world and we can learn from people who’ve gone through those, but this is new for us all. We’re all finding our way. One of the things I do want to say right up front is that it is a chaotic time. Here in Australia we’re moving towards social isolation, we’re seeing different parts of the world people going into lockdowns. There’s chaos happening right now, but I tweeted the other day that in the midst of chaos always comes invention, always come innovation, always comes entrepreneurship. I mean entrepreneurship not just in terms of making money, but entrepreneurship really is about seeing a problem and solving that problem. Usually in a win-win kind of way for people who have that problem and also the people creating the solution. Once we’re going into a term of chaos, we’re also going to see some real innovation at the moment. Just yesterday, I saw one of my friends on Facebook saying that they were working on 3D printing of ventilators. Ventilators are going to be something that there’s shortage of in different parts of the world in hospitals and he wanted to come out with a way of 3D printing a ventilator. I don’t know how he’s going to go with that, but he said there are communities already getting together to 3D print medical supplies. This is innovation happening right before us as a response to the chaos and the need around us. Whilst it is an uncertain time, whilst there’s also a lot of fear, my hope is that we as humanity are going to respond with innovation, invention and it is my hope as bloggers that we can be a part of that. That’s one of the big themes of what I want to talk about today, is that whilst this is tough, there’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of pain, there’s a lot of sickness going on, hopefully we can meet that as a community and that’s my challenge to us today. Let me talk a little bit about what I think the world doesn’t need right now. I want us to keep this in the back of our mind as we think about what we can do, let’s start with what the world doesn’t need right now.  I don’t think we need bad information right now. There’s a lot of information flying around and I don’t think we, as bloggers, need to add to that, unless we have some expertise already. One of the things I’d encourage us all to do is to resist the temptation to just share whatever we see on Facebook, but to really fact check and to leave it to the experts to share that and to find credible sources of information that we can share. But certainly unless you’ve got the expertise, I really want to say up front, we need to be really careful about that.  I don’t think the world needs right now is more hype or more messaging about COVID-19. There’s so much going out there. We really want to be restrained in how much content we do share right now on this particular topic and we really want to avoid hype. The other thing the world doesn’t need right now is more fear. Fear is a healthy thing, fear is a signal to us that something important is happening, something that might hurt us, but at the same time what the world does need right now is some hope and we can be a part of that. I don’t think we need empty memes, I don’t think the world needs manipulation right now, to buy more stuff. What the world needs is some practical support. My hope is that we can be involved in that. What does the world need right now? Hope, practical solutions to problems that are emerging. I don’t just mean health solutions, I think there are all kinds of problems emerging right now. For example, I’ve seen problems in our community around shortages of food, I’ve seen problems in our community of people who are feeling isolated and lonely. These are problems that the world needs solutions for and we’re beginning to see that innovation happen. The world right now needs places where we can come together, and where community and belonging can happen, particularly in this time where physically people are becoming isolated, the world needs perhaps some virtual spaces and some safe spaces where they can find that belonging. The world needs people who are skilled at working online right now. I really want to emphasize this, even in the last two days I’ve had three different organizations contact me and say, “We need your help.” My church, they want to move all their stuff online and we’re seeing this all over the place. Schools are moving online. Some of them don’t have any infrastructure really set up. Our churches and places of worship are doing it, not for profits. I had a not for profit email me in the last 24 hours saying, “How do we move online? As a team to work online, but also how do we move our communications online as well.” Because they’re not able to do events. We’re seeing community groups move on. There’s a lot of stuff moving online. The world right now needs people who have experience and who have the skills and the tools to go online. As bloggers, many of us are ideally situated for that. Here is the thing, as bloggers, we are ideally situated to serve our world right now. Here are few other reasons why I think we are ideally placed to be a part of solutions right now. Firstly, we have technology already set up. Most of us already have our blogs, most of us already have the tools, the computers, the cameras, the microphones, the lights to create content. We’ve already got that stuff at our fingertips. We’re used to using it already. Even just the fact that we’ve got our smartphones, but we already have the apps probably on our smartphones to create content. The world needs this skillset.  We’ve got the technology, we’ve got audiences. We already have networks established. We’ve got trust, influence, and reach of our audiences. There’s potential there to influence and to have an impact upon those audiences. We’ve got experience at managing communities, we’ve got experience of communicating, of writing. These are the skills that our world is going to need right now and we have a variety of skills with technology in the online space as well. As bloggers, I want to encourage you to see yourself as a resource that our world really needs right now. What do we need to do as bloggers and as people with some of these skills. Firstly, I want to encourage you to tap into your community. If you haven’t already, get into your community and just check in with them. Ask them, “How are you?” I did this at the start of the live video today. How are you? What are the needs that you’re facing right now that I can support you with? As ProBlogger, we want to support our bloggers through this process. You need to tell us what we need to deliver to you. We’ve already been hearing people ask questions around how do I work at home with kids around? How do I make a difference to my community? We’re trying to create content for that. I want to encourage you to ask those two questions of your audience. How are you going and how can I serve you better through this crisis? Share your story. I think it’s really important to share your story of how you’re approaching this situation. A couple of days ago, I shared on Facebook about how I went through social isolation. I had a bit of a scare with the CoronaVirus having gone overseas and had to go to the doctor and get a Corona test. Thankfully I’m clear and I’m fine. I shared that story on my Facebook page. Share your stories as much as you can.  Even if you haven’t had direct contact with COVID-19, you can do that. My wife, Vanessa, yesterday shared a Facebook post about how she’s preparing for COVID-19. She had so many positive comments about that. Particularly her post was around preparing with family and kids. Share your story. Look at what other people are doing in your niche. This is something that we really need to do as bloggers, is actually join with others in our niche to tackle these problems. You might have a hundred readers and another blogger might have a hundred readers, and together you could create something that’s going to impact 200 people that you couldn’t have created by yourselves.  Also, we’re going to find that a lot of us are doing the same sort of things. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel every time we want to communicate something. We should be joined together, collaborating, creating things together, supporting what each other are doing, of same bloggers doing this already with raising money and other types of things as well. Share what others in your niche and others are doing on your blog. Look offline as well for how you can use your influence, your experience, your skills. For me, this has been about in the last 24 hours volunteering some of my time and some of my expertise. I’ve got a friend who started a Facebook group called Love Your Neighbor Melbourne, it was called. She basically set this group up to try and give practical support to people who might have a need. There’s a lot of people in Melbourne and other parts of the world who can’t get toilet paper right now or can’t get nappies for their kids right now. This group, people are saying, “I need this,” and other people are saying, “I’ve got this.” And they are putting them together. Her group went very quickly to a few hundred people and in the last 2 days, got to over 5000, it’s probably up over 6000 people now. She’s never run a Facebook group before, she just had this idea, set it up.  There’s now 10 Facebook groups of different parts of Australia all doing this thing, and she’s out of her depths. I volunteered some of my time to sit with her and to talk to her. I’m going to do that again this afternoon. Have a look around of what’s going on that you can participate in, that you can bring your skills, experience, advice to. Another one for me is my local church, they’re moving all online. Our local schools are moving all online. There are opportunities there for me. It’s not going to bring anything to my blog, not doing it for that reason, but as bloggers, we’ve got skills that our world needs right now. Consider volunteering and giving some of those things.  They are some things that I would encourage you to do. As you are creating content for your audience, be really careful about the advice you give. I said right at the start, we need to encourage our audience with good advice and send them to reputable sources. Spend some extra time fact checking and finding good advice. I don’t think the world needs lots of opinions or maybe advice, right now they need actually good advice, particularly when it pertains to health. Avoid manipulating your audiences. I’ve seen a few people recently doing CoronaVirus sales on things. I’m like, “What is that about?” If your product actually is going to help people through some of the practical needs they have, that’s fine. But the world doesn’t need a CoronaVirus sale now on things that really aren’t going to help people right now. This is not an excuse to do marketing to your audience. I do think as business owners, it’s okay to keep marketing right now. We need to provide income for our families, pay our staff, but we also want to be generous right now as well. Share information that you’re qualified to give, don’t trade in fear, try not to be greedy right now, but to be generous. One of the questions I’ve got here to talk about is, “Can we monetize at this time?” Touched on that already. We do need to walk that fine line between being generous and also making a living. Really, my big advice here is to look for win-wins. Your audience has needs and problems right now, and you have some as well, you need to feed your family. If you can find some win-wins, ways of being generous, but also ways to sustain yourself during this time, that is a really important thing. Do get that balance right.  Of all we do over the next 3, 6, 12 months, however long this is going to last, is serve our audience, but we don’t actually serve our families and ourselves, our bodies, then we’re not going to last 12 months. But if what we do is feed ourselves right now, then we’re going to end up with no audience as well because they’re not going to stand for that, they’re going to be looking to you for answers and truth and help right now. Go get that balance right. Lastly, please be safe, please look after yourselves, please care for those around you, look after your neighbors, be wise in the way that you interact with people, and be generous as much as possible. The big thing that I learned suspending two days by myself in some social isolation while I had my test was that I really appreciated the little things that people did for me. Those little check ins with messages, the little gifts, and things that people dropped in, those things are really important and I encourage you to be looking after your neighbors, and your friends, and your networks, and your audience in those ways as much as possible. Lastly, please let us know if we can serve you in some way. Please let us know if you have a problem, particularly in your blogging right now, so that we can provide some content for you. We would love to be a part of your journey and resourcing you as best we can right now to serve your audience and your families as well through your blogs. If you’re listening to the podcast, I’m going to wrap things up now and then I’m going to dig into some of the comments and questions from my Facebook Live people. Thanks for listening to the podcast. I know it’s been a while since we’ve had an episode. I am planning some new ones to come out soon, but I wanted to get this one up as soon as possible. Thanks for listening and we’ll chat with you in the next episode. Hi, it’s just Darren again. I’m going to jump into this point because at this point I did finish the teaching that I prepared and we went into a bit of a Q&A where people shared their ideas, their questions, their thoughts on the situation. So much good stuff happened in that Q&A that I thought I would just put it here at the end of this episode for you if you are interested. We particularly did talk a little bit about that balancing act of monetizing your blog through this period, that comes up a few times in this question and answer. Someone asked me about the lights that I’m using in my Facebook Live. There’s a variety of questions there. It’s not as focused on the topic at hand, but I wanted to include it for those of you who want a little bit more over this particular issue. If that’s of interest to you, that will play right to the end of this episode. But I did want to just jump in and let you know that’s what’s happening.  Just to remind you that you can head over to problogger.com/podcast/280 and there’s a full transcript of the show today. Anyway, back to the Q&A. Okay, everyone on the live, thanks for letting me ignore you for a little while. I’ve seen a lot of your comments going up. Has any of this been helpful? If you’ve got any questions, have you got any comments, have you got any things that you’ve been doing on your blog that have helped your audience, now’s the time to pop them in. Just having a little look back through the comments. Good to see so many comments, thank you everyone for your comments.  Amy from Adelaide, “Stuck in isolation with a kid and dogs. Send help.” Hey, Amy, you should check out the Love Your Neighbor group. There’s a South Australia one and I encourage you to check that one out. Just search for Love Your Neighbor South Australia, one of my friends is setting that up, or a friend of a friend. Apparently, it’s going really well.  Sonia is saying, “In Ontario, schools and universities close for three weeks.” It’s going to be weeks, it could be months. We got to brace ourselves for the long term. Like I was saying, we’re going to look after ourselves if we’re going to sustain ourselves through this time as well. Ronel is saying, “The video and audio is great. Love it. What type of lights are you using?” I’m just using these little Neewer, they’re light panels. Paul, good to see you, mate.  Sharon from Michigan has tuned in. Good to see you, too. Sharon says, “I’d like to post some tips since I’ve worked from home a long time, but I don’t want to look opportunistic. Any tips?” I just think share them. As long as you’re not saying, “Pay me for my tips. I’ve got secrets and I’m not going to tell you.” People are more than happy to learn on that front. We are going to do a post, possibly a podcast, possibly a live video on some tips that we’ve learned, we actually asked in our Facebook group and on our Facebook page for our audience to give their tips. I’m going to share some of those as well. That may be another way to do it, is to actually get some tips from different sources so it doesn’t look like it’s just you. As long as you’re generous and genuine with your information, people would find that useful. Jason, good to see you from South Korea. Hope you’re doing well over there. Hey, Simon, good to see you. Jason says, “I’m happy to be here as I lost all my teaching jobs here due to the virus. So I am needing some ways to recoup the finances from home.” You are not the only one. I’ve actually noticed quite a few people now looking to blogging, setting up blogs for the first time. If that’s you, we have a free start a blog course which you can find on problogger.com. Go over there if you need help in getting the blog up on the internet. I think this is a great time to start a blog, the world does need your advice. If you’re a teacher, then you’ve got some skills that are going to be useful to a lot of people right now because they are moving into new ways of teaching people. Jason, good to see you. That’s what I’m feeling too. “In the bible, the beginning was chaos.” Yes, this is one of the ideas of out of chaos comes good things and that is certainly a part of different faith traditions, it’s also a reality in science as well. I think it’s a reality in lots of areas of life. Out of chaos, out of crisis, is opportunity not just to get, but to give, and to invent, and innovate as humanity. We are going to see some amazing innovation over the next little while.  Tricia, good to see you. Carla says, “Hey, Darren. We’ve decided to make Merry Body completely free until first of April 2020, no credit card required.” Excellent! “Purely decided that if we could do something, we must do something. So we thought to offer unlimited yoga, pilates, and meditation.” That’s great! A lot of people are going to be doing it over the next little while. We’re going to see those acts of generosity, that’s what the world really needs right now. The world also needs some ways to spend its time that isn’t just consuming news about COVID-19. There’s going to be a lot of people sitting at home looking for stuff to do. Yoga, that type of stuff, meditation, that’s all good stuff that people will be wanting and needing right now. Well done, Carla for that.  Jason says, “Less fear, less propaganda, less conspiracy theories, less political rhetoric, more solutions.” Great, I’m glad that resonated with you, Jason.  Sonia is saying, “I manage a neighborhood watch group with 135 members and I developed a Facebook group where we can socialize while we are self-isolating. We share our favorite movies, books, and reminiscing.” This is brilliant. This is one of the things that I was saying before, we need to solve problems and meet the needs of people, but those needs are not just health related. Certainly, that’s a big need right now, but our world needs to solve the problem of isolation and loneliness right now. What we’re seeing with Facebook groups and all kinds of things emerging is people creating solutions for that. Well done, good on you. Jason says, “What I am doing here in Korea is to help expats who can’t speak Korean understand the warnings and precautions. We brought the local community and foreign together and participation is quite high.” Great! That’s fantastic! There must be a lot of people right now who are feeling isolated from their homes, people who are trapped in different places because they’re unable to travel. I think that’s a great need as well. Excellent.  Aleya’s saying, “Very helpful, great.” Simon says “Very helpful, great.” Sherry, thank you for your comments, Paul as well, Tricia. Tricia says, “I told my viewers that I was just going to carry on as normal.” I think that’s a completely good way to go. Maybe, just acknowledging what people are going through and then providing good information on whatever it is that you blog about is what they need. I think people need normal as well right now. It is going to get to a point where we are going to be overwhelmed with information about COVID-19 and we need some other stuff going in as well. I think that is a service that you can offer, Tricia. Well done. “Give them a sense of normalcy.” There you go, you just said exactly what I said.”  Ronel says, “Thanks for the feedback.” You’re welcome. Sonia is saying, “There’s lots of virtual museums and other attractions you can visit your families online.” Brilliant, yes. We’re going to start seeing more of them, I think. As real life museums have to deal with the fact that they are empty, I reckon that’s another place that’s going to start thinking, “How can we serve our audiences? How can we sustain ourselves?” We’re going to see creativity in that space as well. This is why the world needs creatives, they need content producers, they’re going to need us. Position yourself to be on the other end of that. Lani shared that start a blog course, if you are looking to start a blog right now. problogger.com/startablog, it’s free and I would love for that to go viral right now and to see thousands of blogs start up because of that. Again, you’ve got lots of time in your hands. This is a great time to start a blog, but also the world needs your content.  Sonia is saying, “I will post these virtual tours after this isn’t live. I’ll also post links to education curriculum sites.” Brilliant, I think that will serve your audience well. Aleya is saying, “I was planning a week of giveaways in my private Facebook this week. I decided to stick with it and the feedback so far was good. Group members are grateful for something fun in the midst of everything. I’m making the prizes practical and relevant. Still addressing the virus in the group so there is balance there.” Brilliant! That’s great. The world does need fun right now. If you can solve that need, then that is brilliant. I could do some of that myself if I had time for it. Diana says, “Hi!” I’m saying hi back. “Going alone, I’d given for my business.” Yes, I think so. I was actually talking to my PT, who you know, I think, Andy, and I was saying to him he needs to start doing some classes online because there’s going to be a lot of people at home in their lounge rooms, with their families watching Netflix. That’s good for Netflix, but the world’s going to need someone to actually get us up off the couch and start moving around, and training us, and giving us a little bit of exercise and some practical things we could do with our body weight. Brilliant!  Sharon says, “I just published a post about homeschooling in a pandemic. I’ve been homeschooling for years. Hopefully it will help parents have some ideas about where to start.” Brilliant! I’m seeing a few others doing the same things. Check out what other people are doing, maybe you can create a homeschool education video service where you actually give kids a math lesson or something like that. I don’t know. One of my friends, Erin Chase, I think it was this morning, she has a site about preparing $5 meals. Someone will get the link for me. But she got her kids with her and part of what she does is she creates recipes for people and shows them how to eat cheaply. She actually got her boys in the kitchen with her and they started making stuff. I think they’re going to do daily recipes and walk people through. She’s involving her kids in creating some content, giving them something to do, giving them some skills about communicating and presenting. She’s also building a business in doing that. She’s actually found a way to give her kids something to do, continue having a business, and also serve her readers because her readers are looking for recipe ideas to cook during these times. Brilliant example of meeting some of those ways of doing things. Sherry says, “I would like to offer a tip to check your pre scheduled social media posts to make sure they still work with the new reality and are anti-insensitive.” Yes! I think that’s a brilliant idea. A lot of us do have that sort of automated social media stuff going on. Some of those social messaging might not be relevant. Maybe there’s references in there that you put in there thinking they’d be interpreted one way and maybe they’re not at the moment, so that’s a great tip.  Susan saying, “I am trying to do my bit to help. Currently working on a series of articles, publishing them as I go about how people can make money staying at home and then afterwards, I’ll post something about how they can enjoy themselves, self-care from home. Brilliant, I think that’s great. Particularly if that’s the kind of need your audience has and are asking for content on. Angela, good to see you, love your work too, hope you’re doing well. River says, “The tricky thing is first not looking like you’re trying to cash in on the situation. And secondly, are people going to be able to afford to buy what we produce whether it’s a course or checklist of videos, series, etc.” Interesting times. You have nailed it there. It’s not an easy line to walk. Really, it’s about being as generous as you can for free, and that builds trust, it builds influence, and those who are able to afford hopefully will be able to reward you for that in some way as well. Whether it be now or whether it be in the future when they’re back on their feet, it all does help. If you’ve walked with someone for free through crosses, they’re not able to pay you, they will come back at some point.  I actually met someone yesterday in this Love Your Neighbor group that I’m a part of, he was helped in really practical ways. Two women brought him nappies for his child. It was really moving to watch this community service guy. He obviously can’t afford much at the moment, but within an hour of him having those nappies given to him by strangers, he was offering boxes of tissues back into the group. He had access to something. He was moved from being skeptical and a bit scared probably to ask for help to being generous by the act of someone else being generous to him.  The same happens as bloggers. I’ve seen it time and time again, when you help and you walk through a problem with someone, that doesn’t always have a payoff straight away, but it can have a payoff way down the track. Take a long term view of it as well. It is a wonderful group, check it out, Love Your Neighbor. There’s Love Your Neighbor Melbourne, there’s Love Your Neighbor Gold Coast, there’s Love Your Neighbor South Australia. In fact, there’s going to be multiple South Australian groups, there’s lots of them already. Okay, thank you everyone for your comments. We have had more than we usually do. I’m not going to take any more of your time up. I have appreciated your comments, your ideas, I may actually just present the whole lot of this as the podcast to our listeners. Check it out again, if you want to get started, you can go back and watch the video again or go and check out the podcast in a couple of days. Sonia says, “Yes, you’re right. One of my neighborhood watch members offered me a job because she loved the regular newsletters I sent out for my community.” Perfect example. Generosity, maybe it’s karma, some people might describe that as karma. I think it’s just reciprocation. As human beings, we tend to pay people back, we tend to pay attention to people who help us. That’s just the way we are wired. All right, thanks everyone! Do stay healthy. I do encourage you to look after yourselves and those around you and then with whatever energy you’ve got left, throw it out into the wide world.  It’s great to connect with you and we look forward to chatting with you soon. Lastly, if you do have any needs right now, any ideas for content that you want some help with, let us know in the comments as well and send us an email through our contact form. Thanks everyone! Chat soon! Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

Today on the podcast, we have a special guest, Jeff Goins. I’ve been wanting to bring Jeff Goins to the podcast for a while now. Many of you know of Jeff, he has a fantastic blog that I do encourage you to check out. I wanted to get Jeff on the show today to talk a little bit about how his business or his blogging business has evolved over the years, because he started a number of years ago now. What he’s doing today is very different to the way he started. He really started in a personal record keeping kind of way with his blogging and he’s grown his brand, and his business around that.

Today, I've got a special treat, a keynote that I gave a couple of years ago at our ProBlogger event in Melbourne. It's titled Evolve Don't Revolve. It's all about how as bloggers and online entrepreneurs. It is really easy to revolve in our blogging, to just go around in circles. The call of this keynote is to look at seven different areas where you can evolve your blog and online business. I also want to tell you about a new event coming up in August of this year on the 10th and 11th of August, again, in Melbourne. There's two options for those of you who want to come to our event in Melbourne.

In today’s episode we’re going to talk a little bit of our secret of growing your blog. I think it’s the number one way to grow a blog and this ties into a promotion that we’ve got on at the moment on our 31 Days To Build A Better Blog course. I know many of you have gone through our Start A Blog course over the last couple of months and to continue the good work that you’ve done, we’ve decided to make 31 Days To Build A Better Blog 50% off for the next week or so until the end of February.

Do you already have a blog and are thinking about expanding into another medium? Why not consider starting a podcast. Our Facegroup members have shared several questions about starting a podcast, especially about gear, content, engagement, hosting, launching, and monetization. I went to an expert for answers to all your questions. Today’s guest is Craig Hewitt, founder of Podcast Motor and Castos.

Today we’re finishing up our series of podcasts from stories who did our free Start A Blog course. We’re going to hear today from Jackie Baker from Pretty Things, Yummy Food. It’s a lifestyle blog and it’s only been going for six months. Jackie started her blog as a result of going through our course and you’re going to hear her talk a little bit about that in today’s story. She recommends a great tool for those of you who are starting out and want to create some cool social graphics and gives you a few good tips as well.

Today’s story comes from Stefano Caioni from stefanocaioni.com. He is a web developer, who is a photographer as well, and his blog is about photography. Stefano actually came to blogging with a bit of a tech background, which is different to many people. We’ve had others in this series who came with no technology kind of background whatsoever. Stefano has created a beautiful-looking blog with that background but he has some interesting reflections upon that journey.

Today's story comes from Melissa who writes the Blog Living in the Wait. Her blog serves as a resource for those waiting for something in their lives, whether it’s a job, spouse, home, or otherwise. Melissa discovered that you can still live life during that time of waiting for something that your heart desperately desires. By showing her vulnerability Melissa has created a blog that many will be able to relate to.

Today's story comes from Penny Wilson, an Aussie who writes about about language learning and language travel on lingomama.com. Penny has connected with bloggers that she respects in her niche. Also, she created an interview series that lets her connect with other language learners. I love the idea of interviewing people. Even if those people that you're interviewing aren't the high-profile ones, they each have their own network. They each have their own story. They each have their own value to add to your blog but also, as Penny shared, they can send people to read your blog as well.

Today's story comes from Jacob West, and he shares a short story that he submitted via video this week. He has a blog called Live Life Liberated, which you can find at livelifeliberated.com. Jacob shares some tips on how to prepare, if you want to start a blog. he main reason I wanted to share Jacob's story today is that it is a little bit different to some of the others that you hear about in these series. Most of the other bloggers that we're featuring in these series are solo bloggers. I love the fact that Jacob actually involved others in that journey.

Today, we are launching another round of our bloggers’ stories. It’s a series that’s going to go for the next couple of weeks. Today's story is from Denise Bumby from a blog called Does Size Matter? Denise took part in a course last year and as you hear, she worked though it at her own pace. It’s a short story and it goes for about five or so minutes, but I hope it is one that will warm your heart as much as it warmed mine.

Today is the final episode in our blogger breakthrough series. We may do this again in the future because I’ve had a lot of really great feedback on the stories that we’ve been featuring. I want to share with you a story from Rowan Sims. He took his blog from fairly inconsistent blogging, he switched his focus, and he shares two strategies that he used to help grow his traffic particularly Pinterest. He gives some good tips on driving traffic with Pinterest as well.

We're continuing our series of blogger breakthrough stories and we've got Anita Joyce from cedarhillfarmhouse.com. Anita talks about how she realized that her blog was very dependent upon page views and shares a story of what she did about that to diversify her income streams and to engage with her readers in a new way.

Today, we're continuing our blogger breakthrough series with a story from Krista who comes to us from Canada. Krista O'Reilly-Davi-Digui has a blog called A Life in Progress, it's alifeinprogress.ca. She's going to tell us a story of her first experience of a viral post. It's actually a post that went viral a number of times and the impact that it had upon her blog. I love this story because it talks about how Krista went from procrastination fear to showing up regularly and pushing through that. It is a beautiful story and I encourage you to listen to the end.

Rachel Miller is on today's episode to share various breakthroughs that helped her generate a blogging income that paid for her groceries and mortgage to building a 6-figure business. How’d she do it? Harnessing the power of her audience and going viral. Virals aren’t just about people seeing your content, but to help grow your bank account.

Today you’re going to hear from Todd Tresidder who has a remarkable story to share with you. He grew his traffic tenfold without producing hardly any new content on his blog. In fact, he deleted content on his blog and he’s going to talk to you about how he did that. I think you’re going to love today’s episode, particularly if you’ve been blogging for a couple of years. This is one that is particularly relevant for anyone who’s got an archive of content already. This is something that you can do.

We’re continuing our series of blogger breakthrough stories with a story of Trixi Symond. She has a great blog called Coloured Buttons. She’s also got another really interesting project which she’s going to tell us about in today’s story called Sew A Softie. I wanted to feature this today because it’s not directly a way to monetize your blog, although you could possibly monetize this type of thing, but it is something that makes a difference in the lives of your readers. It’s something that I think people will grab ahold of. It’s also the type of thing that could build engagement with your readers as well.

We're continuing our series on blogger breakthroughs where we've got listeners of the podcast pitching their stories to us to share with you. Today, we've got Mim Jenkinson who has a blog called Love from Mim. She started out blogging for one reason and ended up blogging for another. She's got a story that I'm sure many of you will relate to but also find quite inspiring as well.

Today’s story is from bloggers Carolyn Edlund. She has a great blog called Artsy Shark. You can find it at arstyshark.com. Her blog is about the business of art, and she’s going to tell us a story today that I think will be interesting to many of you. It’s a way of drawing readers into your blog that’s going to stop you from having to chase your readers, but hopefully attract them to your blog, and this has revolutionized her blog and has helped her to build a really successful business around the blog that she has.

Today's episode is part of our Blogging Breakthroughs series, which features bloggers’ stories about breakthroughs in traffic, income, and other aspects of blogging. You'll hear from Michele Robson who decided to start a blog about luxury travel on a budget a few years ago. Michele had some writing experience, but no real understanding of blogging. Her blog started out slowly, but she’s built it up to a point where she now earns a liveable income. Michele shares three breakthrough tips that helped her grow her blog from its start to where it is today.

We're continuing our blogger breakthrough series where we’re sharing stories of bloggers who have had breakthroughs in some way. Today, we've got a story from Sarah Cook. Sarah has a blog called Sustainable Cooks. Sarah has been blogging for eight or so years now. Things have really ramped up in the last year as a result of a mind shift. Also something really practical that she did. As in similar stories, it is a mind shift type thing that needs to start with, but it's also a practical. I'm going to let Sarah share that story. At the end, I want to come back and share a few thoughts and give you a free downloadable resource that you can also use to do the exact thing that Sarah did.

Today is the fourth installment in our blogger breakthrough series where we’re sharing stories from listeners of the podcast in how they had different kinds of breakthroughs in their blogging. Today’s story comes from a blogger who’s relatively new to blogging. She started blogging six months ago, using our Start A Blog course, which you can find the link to in today’s show notes. The blogger that I want to introduce you to today, her name is Libby Hakim. She’s got a fascinating blog. I love the topic of this blog. The title is Cooking With Nana Ling. I’ll let her introduce where the blog idea came from because that is part of the breakthrough that she wants to share today.

This is the third in the series and we’ve had some really great feedback from previous ones. So, if you haven’t listened to those, do dig back after this one to episode 256 and 257 and you’ll hear those. Today’s story is from Tom Lodziak who has a blog called Table Tennis Coaching. Tom had no income coming in from another source, no audience, no real profile that he can build on and he started incompletely the wrong way, as he puts it, but he gets to a point with his blogging where he’s able to reach his dream of quitting his job to pursue his passion of table tennis coaching. You're going to love this story, it's got some really practical tips but very relatable as well. There’s a few things that I want to pull out at the end this episode just to emphasize to give you some encouragement as well.

Today, we're going to continue our blogger breakthrough series of podcast with a story from my friend, Kelly Exeter. Kelly is going to be familiar to many of you because she has regularly spoken at our events here in Australia. Today, Kelly is going to share a story about how she went from being a good proficient, but a bit bland writer whose audience had plateaued, to someone who was writing with more personality and was writing in a way that was more magnetic to readers. Ultimately, it attracted a lot more readers. she's going to tell you exactly how many readers she had, and how many she went to just by implementing these three practical tips that I love.

We're kicking off our blogging breakthroughs series where you'll be hearing over the coming weeks from a variety of bloggers who are going to tell you their stories of breakthroughs that they've had over the years. I want to introduce you to the first of them, a friend of mine called Andrea Vahl. She's going to tell you the story of starting her blog back in 2009, so she has been doing it for a while now, and also how she got that book deal which is a great story. She also shares some really good tips that I want to talk more about at the end of her story. This story goes for about seven minutes, so in seven minutes time, I'll come back on and I want to kind of just expand upon a few of the things that she said and give you a little bit of further listening if it piques your interest.

In this week’s episode, I want to share an experience that I’ve had in the last week, that has shown me the power of taking a step out of your comfort zone and being vulnerable with your readers. Many of you will know about the article that I published on Medium in the last few days, about having a bit of a midlife crisis. Something a little bit different from my normal publishing schedule. In this episode, I don’t want to talk about the crisis itself as such but rather what happened when I put that article out there with my audience.

I want to invite you to be a part of an upcoming show on this podcast. We want to do a series of shows actually called My Blog Breakthrough. We are seeking submissions from you, listeners of the podcast and readers of the blog, to appear on the podcast by submitting a short audio clip where you talk about a blogging breakthrough that you have had. If that interests you, listen on, and I’ll talk to you a little bit more about what we’re looking for and how you can participate in today’s challenge.

What You Can Learn From the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Course From a blog post series to an eBook and now a course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog has certainly evolved. And in doing so it has helped many people. Today’s episode is based on information about the course. I created the course, which is a combination of repurposed teaching from places on ProBlogger and the blog post series, to: offer teaching that inspired action help people develop good habits give them a variety of things to try. The goal is to give you 31 modules that each contain teaching, a challenge, and further reading using a combination of videos, audio files, printable worksheets and links. There’s also a private Facebook group just for the students in the course to share what they’re doing and interact with each other on their journey. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Who is it for? Those who already have a blog; beginners to advanced bloggers; and groups. Does it have to be done daily? No, it can be done at your own pace. How much work is it? It varies depending on the stage you’re at; it usually takes 1–5 hours a week. Tips for Taking the Course: Regularity is key Be accountable Take action We’re extending the Early Bird price of $49 until the end of June. When it turns midnight (Pacific time) on June 30, the price goes up to $99. So if you’re interested, sign up now. Links and Resources for I Guarantee This Will Improve Your Blog: 31 Days to Build a Better Blog eBook Courses Starting a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 253 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start an amazing blog that will hopefully change the world, change the lives of your readers, but also change your life as well both through the blogging experience which can bring you a lot of joy and ideas. Help you to develop your ideas, but also hopefully will become a profitable thing as well, that’s what we teach over at problogger.com. Today’s show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/253 that’s number 253. In this week’s episode, I want to touch base with you about our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course, which I have mentioned a few times in passing over the last month or so. I’ve been talking about how it was coming and then last week, I mentioned that it was live and I had a number of you give me feedback that you needed a little bit more time to make a purchase. A couple of things I want to let you know, firstly we’re going to extend the early bird discount a little bit until the end of the month but I also wanted to answer some of the questions today that we’ve had about the course and also talk a little bit about the backstory of the course as well. I want to talk today about why I first came out with 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, how it has evolved, and particularly this last step in the evolution to bring it into a course rather than an ebook. I want to talk a little bit about why I think this format has helped so many people. I hope you find that interesting for those of you who want to build a course, or a product as well. We’re going to talk about what’s in it, who it’s best suited for, and I want to answer some of those frequently asked questions about who it is for, how much work is involved, and then also want to give you a few tips on taking this course as well. For those of you who’ve already purchased and there’s quite a few of you who are already enrolled in the course as well. If you’ve been wondering about whether this course is right for you, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, or if you’re just interested in the back story, and journey of creating a product like this, I hope you find this week’s episode useful to you. It is worth mentioning we are extending this early bird bonus until the end of June, so midnight Pacific Time, on 30th of June this year 2018, the price will go up from $49 US to $99 US. You’ve got a 50% discount to get in early, and there’s one little condition on that, we do want your feedback on that. We’re sort of considering you as early bids as well so we want to gather as much information as we can from you on how we can improve that course. We’ve already been improving it from our early testers but we like to hear from you as well. If you do want that early access through the course, make sure you head to problogger.com/31days. It will also be linked in the show notes. The reason we are extending the price is for two reasons, really. One, to allow those of you who need a little bit of time to get that money together. I know a $49 now for some of you isn’t that much money but for others of you, it is a big deal, and you need that little bit of late time to grab that together, so we wanted to extend that to make it as accessible as possible, and also we’ve had a few server upgrades going on at the moment. There have been a few brief periods over last the week because our resources area has been down and we got a few emails from people saying that you’ve been trying to access it. We just want to make sure everyone gets access to that by the 30th of June. Let’s get into today’s show. The first question that I have had from a number of people is about the journey of 31 days. I know some of you are familiar with where 31 Days to Build a Better Blog came from. It really came from, I think it was back 2007 or 2006 even, where I came up with this idea for a 31-day blog post series. The reasons that I first ran that first series is that, I noticed that the things that really improved a blog, and the things that I’ve noticed in the journeys of other full time bloggers that I’ve met was that the secrets really were around, people were taking small consistent actions over time. In fact, the small consistent actions that they were doing, writing a new blog post, responding to comments, these basic things were actually more important than almost anything else. It was really habit forming, that was the big thing that I noticed that really escalated the growth of a blog. Setting up routines, getting into the flow of creating content, getting into the flow of interacting with your audience, having an editorial calendar, and experimenting with different types of content. What I realized is that while still a lot of people were coming to ProBlogger, looking for the secret sauce, or the secret technique, those things can be interesting, and they can be fun, but what really was growing blogs was the small consistent actions, and habit forming, and doing was more important than knowing. A lot of people came looking for the secrets of making money blogging at ProBlogger, but really, what I learned in the early days of ProBlogger was that, what seem to help bloggers the most was when I challenge them to take action rather than just to gain knowledge. I wanted to create this 31-day blog post series that was a little bit of teaching every day, a little bit of knowledge sharing, but was more based around challenging readers to take action. I came up with this idea, by the end of the month I want you to have taken 31 actions. I did this blog post series and it went viral. It went crazy, bloggers from around the world, thousands and thousands of them took this challenge that I put out there over a month. By the end of the month, I was getting feedback from readers saying, “My traffic doubled this month.” Or “I’ve had more comments this month than I’ve ever had before.” Suddenly, I know what I’m doing with my blog. I’ve got a vision for my blog and I started getting these feedbacks from people that they really saw a lot of benefit from the learning but more importantly the doing. I ran this series of blog post three times over a number of years, and every time I did this series, I updated it, I added more depth, I tweaked the challenges because over the years, blogging has changed and some of the things in that first challenge really didn’t relate three years later when I did it again. I tweaked it every year, and in the last year, I think it was 2009 or 2010, I turned it into an ebook, and that was based upon readers saying, “Hey, we know it’s all on the blog already for free, but we want it in the one kind of place where we can keep coming back to it. We want to be able to print it out, we want to be able to keep coming back to it, and doing it again, and again.” Because it was actually a 31-day process that you could do more than once. I turned it into an ebook, not really sure whether anyone would buy the ebook, but very quickly found once I released it that it was a very popular product, and we sold tens of thousands of copies of that ebook in the year or so after I launched it. I updated it again in 2012 because as I said, things were changing in the blogosphere, and some of the challenges were becoming a little bit dated, so I came up with seven new challenges for the second edition. Late last year, we realized, well 2012 when we did the second edition was quite a long time ago, six years have passed and again, things have been changing, and this product, this ebook needed to be updated again, and we began to ask ourselves, should we do it as an ebook? Should we do it as a course, or in some other format? We kind of landed on the idea all modernizing it, updating it, both in terms of the challenges. There are some new challenges in this one if you’ve taken it before, but also in terms of the delivery method. I realized that a lot of people were benefiting from the podcast that I’ve been doing, and a lot of people preferred hearing and viewing content teaching. My team and I begin to put together this new version of 31-days to build a better blog as a course. The course is a combination of a number of things, some of it is repurposed, you all have had little bits of it on that the podcast in the past. There’s some references and further reading to blog articles as well, there are some printable worksheets that we’ve put together for it. the idea is still the same, every day or every module I should say, you’ll get a bit of teaching, and then most importantly, you’ll get a challenge to go away and do, and you also get a little bit of further reading as well, and to actually share what you’re doing in our Facebook group as well. This has involved since the early versions of the ebook, some of the challenges are still the same activity but we’ve added depth, we’ve added some further reading, we’ve added some more suggestions, so it is a deep and different experience to those of you who have had the ebook before. Every module, you get a video presentation and you can also download that as an audio file if you prefer just to listen while you’re out on your walk, you get printable worksheets, and also some links to some further reading, and some for that listening as well. There’s also a private Facebook group just for course students where you can share what you’re doing, and interact with other students on the journey. A few other commonly asked questions that we have been getting about this, the number one is who is it for? ProBlogger listeners span the whole breath of experience. we’ve got people listening to this podcast right now who have not even started a blog, we’ve got others who have started a blog in the first month, and then others who three or four years in, and then others who listen to this who are 10, 12, 15 years in the blogging as well. So who is this course designed for? We’ve actually designed it for a number of groups, probably not everyone in that spectrum. Particularly those who are just starting out, so those of you who have a blog, and I need to emphasize that if you haven’t yet got a blog, this course isn’t for you. I would highly recommend you go back and start out, start a blog course, which is a free course that you can also find on ProBlogger. This course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is much better for those of you who have just started a blog, that’s one of the groups that I think it’s ideal for. If you’ve done the start a blog course, this is designed almost to take you on your next steps. We kind of almost toyed with the idea of calling this your first 31 days of blogging. We didn’t do that because I think it also is relevant for those of you who are a bit further along the journey as well. If you’re just starting out, this is a great course to follow on. It’s a good companion course if you like to start a blog course. Number two group that this is ideal for is anyone who’s got an intermediate kind of level of blogging but maybe your blog needs a kick start in some way. I can relate to this, it’s been periods in my own blogging even in the last few years where I’ve kind of just needed a burst of something to really kick start the blog again. I spoke with one blogger this morning who is loving doing the course. She’s been blogging now for four or five years, but her bloggers hit a plateau. It grew and grew, she’s a full time blogger but it’s just been slowing, and whining a little bit, and she realized that some of that was because of her, some of that was because she was a bit bored with blogging. She needed this kind of little injection of energy. She found 31 days as a good way to give her a framework I guess to be more intentional about her blog. I also spoke with another blogger who is using 31 Days to Build a Better Blog to re-launch her blog. Her blog has been dormant for a couple of months because she’s had some other stuff going on in her life, and so she is using this course to help her kind of get it back up and going again, and to refocus it in some ways. I do know a few advanced bloggers who also have used the ebook version of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog as something to I guess give him that little injection of energy every now and again to give them a little bit of inspiration. The way we’ve designed this is that you can take it as 31 days in 31 days if you like and I’ll talk about the frequency of how you need to take it in a moment. You can also come back to it again, and again, and one of the things I found really interesting, I was actually at a conference late last year, at a theme con and someone came out and said, “You know, I do 31 Days to Build a Better Blog every year.” And I was like, why do you do it every year? And they bought it in 2009, they’re doing the first version every year, and he said, that it was just something that he does every October, and October is the month that he does it, and he works through it and he’s found it really helpful to kind of just ask himself the questions around the daily challenges, and once he doesn’t learn a lot from it, the challenge of doing something in each of these 31 areas has been enough for him. It may be useful for those of you who are more at that advanced end, but we have designed it more for beginner bloggers and intermediate bloggers particularly, and that’s who we’ve seen getting the most value out of it. The other thing I mentioned is that it is also ideal for bloggers who want to do it together, there is a group, a very small group of fashion bloggers, we’re going through it together right now, I’ve had an email from one of those this morning. It’s just a little Facebook group of five fashion bloggers, and they’ve all enrolled in the course together. That’s something that I’ve seen in the past that has worked quite well, bloggers within a niche doing it together, or even bloggers outside of a niche. There’s a couple of Facebook groups around who have taken the ebook version together in the past. That’s one of the things I actually have noticed, and we’ll talk about this in a moment, when you do this together, when you have that accountability, it can really help to accentuate the good things that come out of it in some ways. The second most common question that I get asked is, does it have to be done daily? Absolutely not. Whilst we’ve certainly called it 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, that was because the first blog post series was rolled out on a daily basis. We’ve actually designed this course version to be taken at your own pace. We actually ran this course with about 100 beta testers a few months ago, and we’ve surveyed them, and most of the responses that came back is that they took it, or they’re expecting to take it over two to three months. So it seems like the average is that people are working through a module every two to three days instead of a daily basis. That’s possibly because we’ve added a little bit more depth into this version of the course. Also, we’ve all got plenty of other things going on in our lives, and really to take this course, you need to put aside a little bit of time for learning, to listen to, and watch the video presentation, and work on the worksheets, but then you also need to put aside a little bit of time for doing the activity, and some of the activities do take a little bit more time than others. Which leads me to the third question I get asked is, how much work does it take? Let me just say though, I do know bloggers who have taken this course faster than 31 days. If you do have a lot of time in your hands at the moment, maybe you are having a mid semester break at college, or university, or maybe you’ve got a couple weeks of work, you probably could do the whole lot in a couple of weeks if you really pushed hard, but most people do seem to be taking it at a slower pace. I know a number of people who are even doing it one module per week, and they got a list of to do after 31 weeks. That next question, how much work is it? That’s an interesting one, there’s no one answer to this. We’ve designed the module so that you can consume each module in terms of the teaching of the module in less than an hour, some of them are less than that, some of them are kind of pushed right up to the A mark. As I mentioned a few times, you’re not going to get a lot of benefit out of this course if you just do the learning parts of it, you really need to turn that into action. Every day, we do give you a challenge, and in a couple of days, we give you a couple of things to do as well. This will vary a bit, depending on the day. Some of the days take a little bit more work than others, some of the days, you probably could do in an hour, so the learning might be half an hour, the doing might be another hour. Some of the days, you might actually need to put aside a few hours as well. It will also vary a little bit as to whether you’re a beginner blogger or a more intermediate blogger because some of the things you’ll find, if you’re an intermediate blogger, you might have already done some of the challenges, and so, you may be able to use that day more to evaluate how you’re going. For example, day 19 is about email newsletters, and so, for those of you just starting out, the challenge is to start an email newsletter. You’re going to have a bit of work to do, we’ll give you some tips on things to think about in doing that. Now, if you’ve already got a newsletter, you don’t need to do some of that work, but you could use that day to evaluate how your newsletter has already gone. that might take less time, so it will vary from person to person, most of those who are already doing the course, again, we survey them, and most of them are saying they’re spending between one and five hours a week on the course. Again, it’s designed for you to take at your own pace. If you don’t have five hours a week, you could just slow the pace down a little bit and work through it, and move on to the next module when you are finished. We do have some emails that will go out during the process just to prompt you to keep moving for the course, we want to keep people moving through because we know the people who get the most value are the ones who complete it but really, you are able to take this completely at your own pace. Lastly, I want to just give you a few tips for those of you who are thinking about doing the course, those of you who are already signed up, the number one thing that I found in talking to a lot of students of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is the people who do get to the end, the people who do get the most benefit are the people who seem to send a scheduled time to do it. I’ve been guilty of this, I’ve signed up for courses, I’ve taken ebooks, and I think to myself, well, I’m going to do that course one day when I get time, and I know that when I take that attitude with any kind of teaching, whether that be a formal learning qualification at a university or something else, like an ebook, or a course online, I don’t tend to move through it. I don’t tend to finish it unless I’ve scheduled time for it. I would highly recommend that you put in your diary a little bit of time every day, or a limited time every week, depending on your schedule but actually, put aside time to do it. Like I say, don’t just put aside time to learn, put aside time to do, that’s really important. The second thing I’ve noticed is that the people who seem to get the most out of this have accountability. Whether you are going to use our Facebook group for that, there’s a private Facebook group, or whether you’re going to take a buddy through the course, or do it as a group, or whether you’ve just got an offline friend who knows nothing about blogging who you ask to keep you accountable, I really encourage you to find some way of keeping accountable to keep you moving through this course, and to keep you taking action, and that’s the most important thing again and again. Which leads me to the last tip, the people who get the most out of this really do take action, the temptation is just to listen, just to learn, and then to put the doing aside for one day. As we all know, one day tends not to happen, and it leads to regret later on. Schedule time to learn, but also schedule time to do, and that’s really important. The last thing I will say is that we do have a 60-day guarantee on this product. We always have had guarantees, money back guarantees on all of our products. Personally, I would much rather have you as a happy, ongoing reader or listener, than having your $49—$49 will be great, that helps me to sustain ProBlogger to keep the podcast running, to pay my team, and fund my life and my children’s life as well. I much prefer to have an ongoing relationship with you as a listener, as a reader, than having your $49. Feel free to take advantage of that guarantee, to enroll, start interacting with the course, find out whether it’s for you or not, if it’s not quite for you, contact our support team and they will arrange a full refund for you, no questions asked. Do feel free to take advantage of that, and lastly, I really would love your feedback on how we can improve it if you’ve already taken the course, let our team know, just send our team an email via our contact form, or send it to [email protected] and let us know how we can improve that course as well. Lastly, remember the early bird price is $49 US, that’s 50% off, but that will go up on the 1st of July midnight, on the 30th of June. Again, go to problogger.com/31days for the link and more information on what’s included. I hope that answers all your questions, if you do have more questions on 31 days, any aspect of it, please shoot our team an email, [email protected] or you can shoot us an email via social media or in our Facebook group as well. thank you for listening today, we look forward to chatting with you next week in episode 254, and I look forward to seeing some of you in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Facebook group as well. Thanks for listening, chat next week. You’ve been listening to ProBlogger. If you’d like to comment on any of today’s topics or subscribe to the series, find us at problogger.com/podcast. Tweet us @problogger. Find us at facebook.com/problogger or search ProBlogger on iTunes. This episode of the ProBlogger podcast was edited by the team at PodcastMotor who offer a great range of services including helping you to setup and launch your podcast as well as ongoing editing and production of the podcast that you produce. You can check them out at podcastmotor.com. How did you go with today’s episode? Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts.

In today’s episode I want to do something a little bit different. Over the last few weeks, I've been sharing a quote of the week and I’ve had some really nice feedback on that. This week is all based around 11 quotes from Thomas Edison. I want to talk about these 11 things that Thomas Edison can teach you about blogging. This is just a different way of talking about some of the principles of building a profitable blog.

In today’s episode, I want to talk about email. In particular, I want to answer three questions that I got from some of our Facebook group on the topic of email. Specifically, I'll cover how to get started, email providers, types of messages, opt-ins, and sequences or auto-responders.

Today’s topic is how to create killer filler content for your blog. I want to really emphasize today that you probably should never really be publishing filler content. You don’t want to just post for the sake of posting. I want to share these ideas to go in between your other content–the deeper, more thoughtful, the original ideas that you have, I think the more of that kind of deeper, longer-form perhaps content, original thought that you can bring to your blog, the better. Really, what I’m describing today are things that can go around that and can add value to that in some ways as well.

In today’s episode, I want to talk about schedules and deadlines. I want to talk about keeping your content coming out on a regular basis, and if having a schedule or a deadline or an editorial calendar is actually a good thing or not. I know some of you love a deadline, others of you struggle with deadlines. We’re going to explore that a little bit today.

In today’s episode, I want to talk about where to find writers for your blog, particularly where to find paid writers— those writers that you want to add your own voice and to help you to create more content for your blog on an ongoing basis. A lot of listeners of this podcast dream of going full time but also have work that they really love as well. You can do both. One of the ways that you can do both is to outsource aspects of your blogging—one of which is the writers.

I want to talk about something that I get asked quite often about from people thinking about starting a new blog, but also from some who have already started who have doubts and insecurities around this kind of topic. The question that I get asked is, "Should you start a blog on a topic that you don't have expertise in?" I think there's definitely a case for it, and in this episode, I want to tell you why, but I also want to, more importantly, give you some tips on how to do that, because this is something I know a lot of people do struggle with.

In today's episode, I want to share with you a recording of a talk I gave this year at Social Media Marketing World. A great event run by Mike Stelzner and his team from Social Media Examiner. This talk is one that I got a lot of positive feedback on. The title of the talk is, Nine Things I knew About Blogging that will Accelerate the Growth of your Blog. It's nine things that really–today, as I look back over at the last 16 years, have been really responsible for most of the growth in my blogging. These are things that I think people that are just starting out with blogging will learn a lot from but also those of you who are along the way who wanna be the best in growth in your blogging someway. Some of these are more relevant to beginners than others. Others are a little bit more advanced. I hope there's something for everyone in this.

Today's episode is all about something that I know many of us struggle with in this space, it is shiny object syndrome, that time when you're working away and suddenly you find yourself doing something completely different to what you had set down to do. There are positives when it comes to shiny object syndrome. I want to explore that a little bit in today's show. I want to put to you that shiny object syndrome is actually something you can—maybe you should plan for, maybe you should actually build into your week.

Today, I'm answering a listener question about ways to promote your blog offline. Conferences, conventions and meetups are some ways to allow you to engage with your readers and drive more traffic to your blog. I also talk about some less conventional ways to promote your blog in today's episode.

I want talk to you about how I approach blogging whilst I’m away, whether it’d be for vacation or for work. It is always a bit of a juggle and my approach does change from situation to situation. I recommend 7 different approaches you can try as well as the tools that will help you when you do decide to blog while on the road. I think it’s so important to have time off from your blog. I know a lot of us get a lot of energy from our blogging but I still think we need to take breaks from it as well.

In today’s episode, I’m tackling a question about creating products to sell on your blog. It’s a question that came in from one of our group members on Facebook, Cathy, who was asking around how often she should she be creating new products for her particular blog. She’s been creating ebooks. I talked a little bit about how often, how frequently you might want to be creating products. Also, we dig in a little bit to how to schedule that and how to roadmap that. Also, how to select which products you want to talk about. How do you choose the right topics? I’m going to dig in a little bit to the format of products as well.

Where should we be going all in as bloggers? There’s so much we could do, there’s so much out there that we could be focusing our energy on but how do we work out what we should put our focus upon? That’s what today’s episode is all about. I really want to help you to begin to wrestle with where should you be putting your effort.

In today’s episode I want to share with you key themes and trends that I saw talked about at Social Media Marketing World a few weeks ago in San Diego. There were seven main themes that came about from the conference, particularly these things coming out of what people were calling Facebook Armageddon, and that is the first thing that I do want to talk about. Facebook made a lot of changes in the last month or so and they have rocked the world of social media marketing. A lot of what I want to talk about today ripples out from that and how people are responding to that. If you want to pick up on the latest trends of social media marketing, this episode is for you.

Building engagement is such an important part of building a profitable blog. In today’s episode, I want to talk about building engagement on your blog, building a sense of community around your blog and your online business. I want to give you three things that I think are really important if you want to build that engagement and that all revolve around the idea that I’ve talked before of being engaging yourself.

Today, I want to talk about your archives. I want to talk about those posts you’ve already written. I want to put forward an idea that I think has the potential to drive a lot of traffic to your blog and to help you build profit around your blog as well. The idea really starts with this premise: your archives are an asset. One of the things I want to encourage you to do this week and in an ongoing sense is to pay attention to your archives. If you’re getting 92% of your traffic to a single type of page, then that’s something you need to pay attention to. The reality is there’s gold in your archives, no matter what monetization method you use. Here’s my challenge: identify a post that you can update today.

In today’s episode, I want to talk about collaborations as a way to grow your blog, to accelerate the growth of your blog. I want to give you some practical ways that you can collaborate with other bloggers to grow you traffic, to create content, to build engagement on your blogs, and to monetize your blog. Collaborations have helped me incredibly to grow my blog, to scale it so much faster than I could’ve ever done alone, and I want to help you to do the same.

In today’s episode, I want to talk to you about growing your blog’s income, particularly those of you who’ve already got a bit of a start with building some traffic and income streams to your blog. This episode will be much relevant for those of you are perhaps at more of an intermediate level or advanced level. You’ve got a start but you’re not satisfied with the level of your income. Those of you who are just starting out, you'll probably hear some things that may not be relevant to you today but you might also find them useful to have in the back of your mind as you go forward.

Today we’re talking about how do you build authority, how do you build influence, how do you take this traffic from giving you their attention to actually beginning to feel connected to you on this deeper level and seeing you as someone to be trusted. In this episode I want to share 13 things that I’ve noticed good influencers do to build this authority and credibility with their audience.

In today’s episode, I want to answer a question I get regularly from readers. How do you relaunch a blog that’s previously died or become dormant? I will talk you through 2 scenarios for relaunching your blog and give you 11 things to consider during the relaunch, 11 questions to ask yourself that will help you to relaunch with your best foot forward.

I want to introduce you to a suite of WordPress plugin tools we’ve been using on my blogs for the past 6 or so months that we’re really excited about. The tools are from Thrive themes and over the last year or so they’ve developed a series of 9 or so plugins as well that are fantastic. These plugins we discuss are particularly relevant for anyone wanting to build a business around their blog. They’ll help you grow your email list, design landing pages, customise the look of your blog posts and convert readers into customers.

This is the last to the series of blogger stories that we’ve been featuring since way back in 221, the 221st episode. It’s part of our Start a Blog course which launches tomorrow. Today we’ve got a really interesting one for you. It is Chrissann Nickel. Chrissann’s blog is a collaborative blog. It’s a little bit different from some of the others that we’ve been mentioning so far. She gives some tips on that and talks a little bit about a thing about your readers.