Let’s set an Intention To write.
About 3 – 4 years ago, I chanced upon this book “Hypnotic Writing” by Joe Vitale. At that time, it was being sold for 39.95 I think. This single book changed the way I write. In fact I dare say, Only one advice changed my writing. (right now this book is sold in paperback in amazon, there’s no more ebook version).
Advice – Before you write – Set an Intention.
Joe’s advice was very simple. Before you sit down in front of your computer, you set an intention. The moment you set an intention, your mind start providing you with the information on what to write, how to write.
Just this creates an overflow of information in your mind and you have no way other than writing to let it out.
Since learning this lesson, I’ve used this advice in almost every situation where I have to write. In last 3–4 years I have yet to find this writer’s nightmare so called “White screen of death”.
I highly Recommend you to get a copy of Hypnotic writing from amazon.com
SIDE NOTE : Are you following on 100 articles challenge?
100 Article Challenge
100 article challenge.
Right Now it’s 4 PM sunday and a thought came to my mind. Something that can help you build your website, your products and web traffic. On Nov 25,2009 I clocked my article writing speed at 300 words at 7 minutes 55 seconds. I know it’s surprisingly high speed and now you know it can be done.
I am calling this 100 Article Challenge.
The challenge is very simple. You are going to write 100 articles for your website (niche). It doesn’t matter in how many days you can do it. It’d great if you finish is as soon as possible.
With 100 articles written, you have content to promote for your website for next 3 months and 10 days. You can write 10 articles a day and finish this challenge in 10 days. You don’t have to worry about content and what to promote for next 3 months.
You can submit 1 article per day for 100 days (imagine how much it’ll help boost your traffic)
You can put together a few articles and create a PDF ebook to give away to your subscribers and build a list
You can expand few concepts taken from articles and create small reports (sellable at $10 – $30)
There are so many ways you can use these 100 articles.
You have 30 days to finish this challenge.
Post your results and effort on your blogs
UPDATE : Right now it’s 7 pm, and I decided to write few articles after making this challenge. I didn’t cared about how many words I am going to write and ended up 5 articles with varying length. I’ll start posting these articles (and promoting by morning).
Are you going to pull up your sleeves and take this challenge?
Getting Started with Blogging
I just started re-editing my Power Up Blogging Website. My plan is to provide a complete course on blogging there.
Blogging is far more mainstream than you might guess. But the best thing about blogging is about the way it creates a platform between you and your readers.
And that’s what I like best about blogging.
I’ll be updating my Power Up Blogging Website and keep posting new content here on this blog.
Ironic thing is I am not making it a blog instead a content site 
You can already read tons of internet marketing content on this blog. I don’t want to make commitment which I cannot keep.
30 day blogging success – How to do it?
It’s been 5 years and 28 days.
Sept 7, 2004. I started my first blog without knowing anything about marketing, selling or creating content, designing. I knew nothing about blogging at all.. All I knew was what someone told me about it “Varun, its good for your site”. Yeah well.
For next 10 months life was pretty much like a roller coaster. I experienced more emotions in those 10 months than I ever did in my life. To me, succeeding with blogging was important. After failing in last 3 business, online business was my only hope.
And thank god for blogging, it changed my life.
So today, I am going to give you peeks into my experience and show you how to build a successful blog. I know there are many questions that might be in your mind right now. questions like
1. What kind of design should I go for?
2. How many times per week or per day should I post?
3. What should I sell on my blog (can I even sell?)
4. What about branding, building traffic etc?
5. I wonder how I’ll create content for the blog?
These are very common questions. And they are important factor that needs to be addressed. One of the difficult question I faced during my time was “how to sell using blogs?”. It took me many months and quite a few of sleepless nights to find answer.
2nd problem was “how to create content for my blog?”. Now if you know Content is Foundational stone for your blogs or website, then you understand how important it is for you to create content that brings reader, get them hooked and make them loyal reader.
If you know anything about writing, you know its not easy at all. In fact if you can answer just the above 2 questions on (selling and content), you have already won 98% of the battle. 2 % is all about persistence.
Boy did I persist. I created over 300 posts in 10 months and took my blog from making peanuts to making $150 per day. The crazy thing was it was on free blog system at blogspot.com (Did I hear someone talk about bad branding?)
My first thought was may be I got lucky. But I talked to a friend to mine and shared my ideas. She turned her blog in just 22 days ( I was literally pulling my hair out with the surprise results).
Don’t forget Content is the foundation base that you’ll need to provide to create a selling platform. That’s the only way to do it. There are no secret tagging system or secret keyword strategies or link building tricks… Nope, none at all. All of these tricks should be added later.
Foundational content
When you are creating foundational base for your website or blog, your content will become a KEY factor in it. More important than keywords you use, any SEO techniques you may implement.
This is where you should focus on. While creating content there are few things you have to remember. You should ask these questions to yourself
1. What does my viewers like about _____ (put your niche)?
2. What does my viewers want to read about _______ ?
3. What things viewers hate in _______?
4. WHat kind of content can be called timeless?
5. How other bloggers are writing their content?
5a. Is there anyway I can improve the content or the service of the content?
5b. May be I can enhance the experience of content in anyway?
6. Does it matter if I provide current gossip?
6a. Do I need to worry about gossip at all?
The moment you start asking these questions, you’ll start seeing the kind of content your readers want from you. You’ll be able to build a foundation with content that’ll bring traffic automatically. Think
How can I get readers to consume more of my content?
The answer lies within the above questions.
In the above story about my friend, she started posting 2–3 times a day with short articles and notices. Because that’s what her readers wanted and her traffic and income more than trippled in 22 days.
If you need any help with your blog design, content formation or blog marketing, you can always check up with me.
Varun Pratap
Aim for that peak like mad
Shadow Such people and Cheer Them On.
Blog Consultation : Do You Need Help With Your Blog?
Blog Consultation : Do You Need Help With Your Blog?
Let me solve your Internet Marketing or Blog Marketing Problems & answer any questions you want.
You can Ask any questions. No question is too small or stupid for me. You can ask me things like.
How to get traffic to new blogs?
How to sell affiliate products?
Do you think product A B or C can help me?
How Can I use email marketing with my blogs?
Do you think blog can help me brand my product/myself?
Can you show me how can I use advanced techniques like blog farming?
I am thinking of starting with PPC, I don’t want to lose my shirt over this, can you show me how to play safe?
Not only that I’ll help you with 4 key areas
- Content: Write great content over and over again. I’ll show you how to never run out of things to say…
- Design : A good design is a must. But you should know when to say “that’s enough”
- Reach : There’ll be no chance for your best design or content to sell your product or services without reach.
- Action: You are not selling anything unless your visitors take action
Like I said, There is no small question. I’ll help you with your issues.
2. Here’s How it works.
Contact me at with email subject line “Blog Consultation”. I’ll contact you and chat with you discussing your problems.
Depending on your choice -
You can either get a written review from me.
Or a Video review where I discuss what you can implement on your stuff.
Oh btw I don’t work with everyone… Here are few things you should remember when communicating with me.
- Your customers should be satisfied with your service or product. If you like “Bait and Switch” kind of guy, then please do not contact me.
I only work with people who are honest, ethical and have high morals.You can make money without using “Hook or crook” methodology. - You must sell multiple services or products. If not, then you should be open to create new product or services. I can show you many ways to increase profits by leveraging and multiple products is one of the best way.
- You must be open to new ideas and be ready to implement them. Only then you’ll succeed in any business.
If you are ready to get in touch with me then… Contact me Now.
Varun Pratap
Aim for that peak like mad
Shadow Such people and Cheer Them On.
How to easily structure a traffic pulling blog in 30 minutes or less?
How to do you create a traffic pulling blog?
I am often asked that question. You probably already know about blogging as a very effective tool for search engine optimization. To help you with structuring a traffic pulling blog, I decided to write this article.
Just how do you structure a “traffic generating blog”?
Basically, it consists of 2 simple things. Ability to index content and ability to reach and communicate with audience. If you remember, blogging was initially used by internet marketer as a indexing tool few years ago. Even then most marketer underestimated it’s ability and underused the tool. I wonder if you’ve already began to notice the fact how blogging has gone from just a fad to phenomenon.
1. Setting up your blog
Before you start blogging, you have to set up/install your blog. The easiest way to install blog on your website is by using Fantastico and wordpress combination. Most hosting companies have cpanel and fantastico installed for their customer’s ease. Fantistco will help you install wordpress blog in 5 minutes.
2. Setting up bare bone SEO structure for the blog.
After installation, you have to start with basic setting. Things like Permalink structure, which will define the links generation by the blog. You should also install few good plugins like “All in one SEO”, “google sitemap” plugin.
3. Using indexing tool properly
Indexing is done by pinging different services all over the net. Wordpress uses pingomatic.com to ping multiple services. What these pinging services do is that they let the search engines know of the updated content.
You’ll also find many websites, giving out a list of 60–80 different pinging services. Often you’ll find many blogger’s suggest you to add the list into pinging list of wordpress publishing. If you are dding that, then you should remove the pingomatic option and paste the links manually in it’s place.
Understand there’s 2 kinds of pinging used by wordpress. 1. The main ping when new content is posted. 2. Secondary ping whenever you do any kind of update on your blog (Editing existing post). If possible, you should check out few plugins (like ping optimizer) to avoid too many pinging possibilities. This will help you by not getting banned by ping services.
4. Ability to reach and communicate.
The most underused tool of blogging is it’s ability to communicate with others. People use blogging as indexing tool or ranting tool, but they tend to forget about the communication. Using blog will give you chance to connect with future prospects, readers and customers.
Think of it as tool to bridge gap of communication between you and your readers.
5. Promoting a blog.
If you’ve been blogging for some time, then you must have heard of one of the most popular myth that surrounds blogging is “Good content will bring readers”. Even with indexing tool and a great SEO tool, your blogging activities needs to be promoted to generate good traffic.
Connecting with others, article marketing and all the simple techniques can be used as promotion methods for blogging. Again, talking about promotion is bit out of scope of this article. We’ll discuss promotion in our future articles.
I’ll bet you’ll find it’s easier to promote a blog than a static website or a mini-site.
Follow this template to write article in 10 minutes
In this article, I am going to give you one of my favorite article template that anyone can use and write articles in 10 minutes.
I call this template “hi buddy”. Why? because when I am using this template, I am imagining that I am talking to my best friend about the product/website.
Whenever you get stuck writing an article, Imagine you are calling your best friend.
Lead – in Paragraph -And start a conversation like this…
“hey buddy, You know, I was looking for X and came across this website.” This is your lead in paragraph or introduction for the article. You don’t need anything serious or special opening for the articles.
In this section you are going to talk about WHY? Why you were looking at X/Y/Z product or website. For example, if you are looking for a product on article writing, you’ll say something like this…
“Hey buddy, you know, I was having problems with writers block and For the life of me, I couldn’t just get anything to write. So I ended up doing search on landed on this great website, where the author suggests I can write articles in 10 minutes. Would you believe that?”
Be a skeptic – Next paragraph, you can act like a skeptic and write like you didn’t believe a word what the author suggested. Now if you want an example, it’ll go something like this…
“Sheesh, I don’t believe I can write an article in 10 minutes. How I am going to get ideas for the article? What about the research? What kind of article style I’d use? Heck I type at 20 words per minute. Do you really think I can think, research and finish an article in 10 minutes?”
Give a Reason – In this section I want you to give reason why you think X works. Now I know with my own example, I created a wall too high to climb, So I’ll give you another example.
“But you know for some reason I want to believe him. According to him, using a template can cut down your time to think and write. Moreover it forces and creates a habit which you can utilize to write articles fast. In fact according to the author, Your brain get accelerated when you put some kind of problem in front of it and it tries to give many possible solutions”
Support Your Reason – Now All you have to do is support your reason. If I have to support my above reason, then Here’s how I’d do this.
“Don’t believe me? here’s a simple exercise for you. I want to think of words starting with letter C. Now do this for next 10 minutes. You’ll notice you’ll be getting the words even after you’ve stopped thinking. Surprised how your brain works?”
Add examples – theories – stories – If you want you can add example, theories, stories to your articles to make them lengthy and interesting. I think I don’t give an example for this, right?
Finish with a simple conclusion – Conclusion is easy to write. All you have to do is talk about what you talked about in the article. So if you have “hi buddy” template, you can easily write an article in 10 minutes with proper lead in paragraphs, examples and stories to make it interesting read. I just finished writing a 560 words article with the same template.
A fast warning on latest wordpress update
If you are thinking of updating your wordpress blog, then I suggest you to wait for a while. I recently updated my blogs with wordpress 2.6 and encountered one problem after another. I tried everything these guys suggested without any results.
2 of My main problems were
1. white screen after login – I can’t login to my dashboard.
2. Permalink structure effected: one of my blogs permalink structure is effected badly. I am getting 404 error for articles, archives, pages.
My only solution so far was to revert back to 2,5.1. My suggestion is to wait for a while and then upgrade.
How I started Making sense of conversion maths?
Ed’s response on my blog post “Zero – 150 Unique visitors in 8 days” got me thinking. So I am going to cover this very important topic. Its called conversion maths. Or Rather
Conversion Maths : 80 Unique visitors = $3 Income or 80 Unique Visitors = $70 Income Which you’d chose?
Before I start off this article, let me confess, I am not one of those fanatic testers. In fact I pretty much hate when I have to do the numbers and figure out if I am making money or losing. But this is a fact you have to deal with if you want to do marketing and run a business. So here’s complete background on how I got started…
I wasn’t a Traffic Expert back then…
If you have been subscribed to my list then you know my story. During my first 13 months as a failure in marketing… I started blogging and I wasn’t very good at generating traffic. On one of my main blog I was getting 80–100 uniques a day after continuously blogging for 3–4 months (that’s how much I used to suck).
When you don’t get traffic, you only have one option to turn to… Become good at converting people into clicks (Using google adsense). I think I applied every click tricks for adsense I could find… Some techniques were even pretty objectionable too.
Like the one here called Adsense beautifier. This is an example of a wordpress plugin. Of course this thing can get High CTR’s and in those good ol`days Google used to pay pretty decent money with ever click.
Though I am not using these techniques (as you can increase CTR with bit more creativeness). For example creativity with adsense. Now I don’t want to make this post another improve adsense ctr. So lets get on with story.
In one of those lucky days I sold a product and got a commission of $70. Now this kind of commission outside Internet marketing is pretty un-heard of (at least for a guy like me). So I was curious, surprised and really happy, but I didn’t do anything with the info. Later next week, I sold another of those product and this time I started wondering…
What the hell I am selling exactly for $70 commission?
Now I dug into my affiliate stats and started comparing the prices and their commission structure. I dug into my own stats to tried to understand few things like..
- Where people are coming from.
- What kind of mindset these people into before they came at my blog?
- Does that mindset change after reading my blog post (or pre-sell)?
- Which of my posts were pre-selling these costly products?
- Which keywords people are using to land up on my blog?
- Does these keyword have anything to do with decision making on the product?
- If I write this new post, will it help sell the product more?
Now as you can see, this was heavy duty work for lazy me. It took me like couple of weeks to gather that much data with small visitors. Remember, I didn’t knew about the list building concept back then…
Now after I got my data, I started working on …
- How to get more people into same mindset as when people were buying?
- Can I add something to get additional traffic to my specific blog page?
- Can I add something more to my blog post to increase conversion?
So armed with all these question and answers I started making changes to my layout structure. On how am I was writing my articles and pre-selling products.
Results : Are you interested?
After another 2 weeks I was able to sell 1 of those products in 2 days (or rather 180–200 unique visitors). now this was something good. Why ? because Before I was making $3 a day with adsense and odd change with affiliate products. Now I am selling a product at least 3 times in a week and making around $210/Week.
Now if you know the stats for affiliates, 90% of affiliates are not making $200 per month. Well Finally I was able to break that barrier.
Later on As I kept adding more post, information and becoming better at writing copy and converting, I was able to convert higher and make around $65– $70 per day just by selling affiliate products.
My lessons learned from this experience were
- If you know your basic numbers you can make more money
- Conversion Maths doesn’t have to be complicated. If doing A gets you more money, you just do that.
- Testing isn’t complicated (Hang on I’ll show you how too)
How to do basic testing…
Now there are tons of softwares and stuff out there helping you do basic testing. Of course there are also complicated formulas and terms floating (Multivirate testing) around too. Personally I do not worry about these things as much…
I want to find out 3 things first if I am starting out.
- How many unique visitors my pages are getting (in my case, I wanted to find out about that specific pre-sell page)?
- How many products I am selling from that page?
- What kind of offer I should make on my pre-sell page?
This should get you started to implement basic conversion and testing strategies. For example In that blog I am testing my character voice.
Currently this is converting at 17.9 % +– 10%. You might get worried by seeing this much variation but this version is outpulling my original by 300%. So I know for sure what kind of voice I am going to use in this market.
Whew. I almost wrote a 1000 word post this time around… Anyways I’ll add more on how to do strategy and conversion maths topic. So don’t you worry about it. For now… Sayonara.
How I started podcasting with these 8 steps.
Do you want to start podcasting and improve traffic?
If you have a website, podcasting has many applications that allow you to get in front of your customers, get your name out there, and ultimately make you more money. You’ll find there are tons of people who love to listen instead of reading a blog post or an article. These people download the podcasts on their IPod and listen as they go.
8 Step to Create your Own First Podcast.
1. Spend 1 to 2 minutes and brainstorm some topics you are interested in. He doesn’t have to be new and brilliant content for your first podcast, it should simply be something you have a passion for.
2. Select one or two of those topics that catch your eye.
3. Spend 1 or 2 minutes and brainstorm interesting facts that you know about those topics
4. Group those facts together under one or two headings.
5. By now, you probably see the one you want to podcast the most. If not, you’ll need to choose one now.
6. Go online and find a web site that talks about that topic as well that you can review in your podcast.
7. Write down an upcoming event that is related to your area of interest. For example, if the area you’re going to podcast on his genealogy, you might be able to find a local genealogical society which has a genealogy fare coming up. If you can’t find anything, think of a past event that you can review.
8. Develop a brief script on your own, or from the example in the Example box that follows this exercise.
Here is an example script for your very first podcast
“Hello and welcome to our very first podcast at [your web address, which you will get shortly… in the next exercise]. My name is [your name] and today we’re going to be talking about [your topic].
In this podcast we’ll be talking about [heading #1] and [heading #2]. Later, we’ll review a website and talk about an upcoming event.
First, we’re talking about [heading #1]. Did you know that… [talk about the interesting facts you wrote down].
Second, we’re talking about [heading #2]. Did you know that… [talk about the interesting facts you wrote down].
Now is the time in our show where we review a website. Today’s website is [say the web address and the name, if it’s different]. [Briefly describe the website and rate it on how helpful or informative it was as well as how easy it was designed to navigate around].
Finally, we’ve got to mention the [upcoming event]. [Mention who, what, where, when, cost, what to bring, what to expect].
We’ve had a great time on the show today and look forward to having you tune in next time!”
That was easy, wasn’t it? Sure! There’s nothing to it.You probably don’t even need the script. Often you just need a simple cheat sheet with you about the topics you are going to mention in your podcast.
As for as I am concerned, I need the whole script as English is not my first language. Even then I try to not rehearse when I am doing any kind of audio recording.
So what’s stopping you? Get going…
Oh Here are few links for you to get started too…
1. http://www.podcasting-tools.com/ This is an excellent site about podcasting and takes you through everything from an introduction to how-to-podcast as well as the technical aspects of podcasting. It doesn’t look great but it’s quite functional and informative.
2. http://www.podcastalley.com/ Podcast Alley is the podcast lovers portal. Featuring the best Podcast Directory and the Top 10 podcasts, as voted on by the listeners.
3. http://www.podcastingnews.com/ This might be a little advanced for the beginner, but it is an excellent and comprehensive news site devoted solely to podcasting news. Once you’re familiar with podcasting and want to really benefit from the industry and stay on top of it, this should be in your “favorites” folder.
Oh btw, if you go there right now, You’ll find story about Gary Vaynerchuk who started Winelibrarytv.com. Its complete interview. You should head over there right now and read it.
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