Day 19: How to Write “Tips” and “How To” Articles

Welcome back!

Yesterday you learned how to write an SEO article. Today you’ll learn about writing two types of articles:

Tips articles and “how to” articles. Read on…

How to Write “Tips” Articles

Tips articles are just what they sound like – you offer tips on a particular topic, rather than a “step by step” process.

Examples:

• Three Ways to Improve Your Golf Swing
• Seven Tips for Slimming Your Thighs
• The Ten Secrets of Writing a Great Sales Page

Tips articles work great for selling books and other information products.

Example: The “Ten Secrets of Writing a Great Sales Page” article could easily pre-sell a copywriting product.

However, you can use these articles to sell physical products, too.

Example: The “Three Ways to Improve your Golf Swing” article could pitch a particular club that would help the prospect improve his game.

How to Write “How To” Articles

The “how to” article is a step-by-step process, where you explain to your reader how to do something.

Examples:

• How to Look Ten Years Younger
• How to Juggle
• How to Replace Your Carpet

You can use these types of articles to sell most any type of product.

For example, if you’re selling an ebook, then you can offer a “how to” article that gives your readers an overview of how to do something, but it doesn’t go into detail. Your prospect needs to buy the ebook to get the details. Remember, “useful but incomplete.”

Example: Let’s say you’re selling a copywriting book. You might create an article titled “How to Write a Sales Letter.” You’d then outline the steps such as:

• Profile your target market
• Write a great headline
• Create a hook for an opener
• Craft your bullet points
• Offer a guarantee
• Call your prospect to action

And so on. You’d offer a few sentences for each step. Then you’d promote the copywriting book within your article.

Example:  “You now have a great overview of how to write a sales letter. To get the full details so that you too can create cash-pulling copy, click here…”

Of course this type of article works for physical products, too. Let’s suppose you’re selling puppy potty training pads. You could offer step-by-step instructions on how to use these pads to housebreak a puppy.

Today’s task: Write one tips article and one “how to” article. Be sure to load them up on your blog when you’re finished.

Then tomorrow you’ll learn about a type of article that tends to attract a lot of attention, so stay tuned!

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I do think the newsletter is a great value at $2. I mean, if I were to publish the 31 days to profitable blogging in an ebook format, I would price it at $27, minimum.

So $2 is the best way for you to get this information

NOTE that this is a paid newsletter accessible here — Internet Marketing Muscle Newsletter powered by Tiny Letter. It's $2 a month.

Here's an excerpt:

How to Tell if a Niche is Profitable

Sometimes a marketer finds niches that seem to have very few other marketers actively working in the niche. And the first thing the market sees is dollar signs, as he believes he found an “untapped” or “unexploited” niche.

Maybe you’ll have the same experience and the same thoughts.

To read more, you have to subscribe.

NOTE that this is a paid newsletter accessible here — Internet Marketing Muscle Newsletter powered by Tiny Letter. I am posting here on the blog to give you a real-world preview of exactly what you will be getting with the PAID newsletter (it's $2 a month).

Day 2: How to Profit from Your Blog

Welcome back!

Last time we touched on three ways to profit from your blog. And even though this course is all about making money through affiliate offers, I want to continue with this discussion so that you’re aware of the many ways to make money with your blog.

Indeed, even though you’ll make money as an affiliate, in the future you may want to incorporate some of these other methods. Read on…
 

Make Money With AdSense

Google has a program called AdSense, where they allow you to display marketer’s pay per click ads on your blog or website. When your visitors click on any of these links, you make money. The advantage is that you don’t even need to pre-sell your visitors, because you get paid for the click – not the sale.

While this is a “quick and dirty” way to monetize a blog, it shouldn’t be your first choice. That’s because if you’ve chosen a good niche and you’re sending highly targeted traffic to your blog, then you should be able to make more money by selling affiliate products.
 

Sell Advertising and Links

Instead of using AdSense or placing affiliate links on their blog, some blog publishers opt to sell advertising.

Generally, this means that they sell banners and text ads to people in their niche. Some bloggers also sell product reviews, but this can get into shaky legal territory if it’s not done correctly.

If this appeals to you, you can put a link on your blog where you present your advertising opportunities. You can also sell your space on blog-advertising networks like blogads.com. You can even sell your ad space via eBay.com or CraigsList.org.
 

Create and Sell Your Own Products

This is one of the most profitable ways to monetize a blog. Instead of promoting an affiliate offer and just keeping a fraction of the profits (generally a 50% commission for digital info products), you promote your own products and keep 100% of the profits.

You can create these products yourself. You can hire a ghostwriter to create them for you. Or you can even purchase the rights to other proven products (via resell rights or private label rights). Whatever you choose, you get to keep all the profits.
 

Use CPA Offers

Yet another way to monetize a blog is by offering CPA (cost per acquisition) opportunities.

This is where you get paid when one of your visitors performs a specific action, such as filling out a form. You can find these sorts of opportunities on sites like www.maxbounty.com.

Now you have a good overview of most of the popular ways you can make money with your blog.

Starting tomorrow, you’ll get an in-depth look at how to make money with affiliate offers. Stay tuned!
 

NOTE that this is a paid newsletter accessible here — Internet Marketing Muscle Newsletter powered by Tiny Letter. I am posting here on the blog to give you a real-world preview of exactly what you will be getting with the PAID newsletter (it's $2 a month).

Day 1: Welcome!

Welcome to the 31-Day Guide to Blogging For Bucks!

I’m so excited about your decision to join this course. And that’s because –

You’re about to discover a step-by-step process for publishing your own blog and making money from it!

It doesn’t matter if you’re not very technical. It doesn’t even matter if you’re new to the internet. That’s because in the next 31 days you’ll discover:

• How to choose a domain name and webhosting.
• How to get your first bog up and running fast.
• How to monetize your blog.
• What to write about to keep your readers hanging on your every blog post.
• How to drive targeted traffic to it and turn your blog into a popular niche hang out.
• And much more!

By the time you finish this course, you’ll know exactly how to start and run your own profitable blog!

Listen, for this course you’re going to learn how to make money with your blog primarily by promoting affiliate offers.

To that end, you’ll complete these steps:

1. Choose a hungry niche.
2. Select a profitable, in-demand product to sell to this niche.
3. Set up a blog and start creating content that caters to the niche.
4. Promote your affiliate product on your blog (sometimes even directly in your posts) and start making money.
5. Drive targeted, cash-in-hand prospects to your blog… and cash in!

You’ll learn these steps (including all the intricate details) in the coming lessons…

But before we get into that, I want to show you that there are plenty of other ways to benefit and profit (directly and indirectly) from your blog. Read on…
 

Establish Yourself as an Expert

No matter what you’re selling or what your business model is, a blog can help you achieve more because it helps establish you as an expert.

Whereas people use to publish books to showcase their expertise, now most anyone can publish a blog. And once that blog becomes popular, the blogger’s status is further elevated in the niche.

And that’s NOT all.

The more good content you post, the more your readers start to trust you… and that indirectly leads to more sales.

Plus if you allow your readers to interact with you (by allowing comments), that further strengthens your bond with them. End result? A more profitable blog.
 

Get Publicity Opportunities

Some people use blogs to raise their status in a niche. And some people use this elevated status as a springboard to more opportunities, such as free publicity and book deals.

Example: The big book publishers like to see when one of their newly signed authors has a platform. By platform I mean a waiting audience. A blog is one such platform. If you build a popular blog and then go after a book deal, you can bet the publishers will take note.

So far you’ve discovered three main ways to benefit from your blog.

Tomorrow you’ll learn a bunch more, including ways to directly profit… so stay tuned!

So for my Webify Your Business Meetups, I set one up for this site.

Here's the link:

==> Internet Marketing Muscle

I showed our Meetup members how to participate in a blog carnival, how to set one up, and why it's important to do so.

Participating in blog carnivals gives you the opportunity to get eyeballs on your website. It also gives you a chance for exposure to other bloggers and webmasters in your niche. Often, you'll find that you'll get the attention of other bloggers and they'll start sending you traffic, giving you backlinks, and mentioning you in blog posts.

However, the magic, in my opinion, begins when you host your own blog carnival. Here's why. For those reasons above, people will want to submit their posts to your carnival. Then, when you approve an entry, that blog owner will promote the heck out of your carnival. They want people to see their article and they'll often promote your website (that contains their post) more vigorously than they promote their own sites.

In short, you will gain a good readership each time you make a blog carnival post.

Key recommendations:

• Do them weekly
• Give yourself a couple of days to read all the articles and approve
• Don't add a bunch of categories
• Keep it simple
• Publish when you say you will publish

That's about it. Come check mine out. I just started it and this is the first time I've mentioned it. Feel free to submit a post from your own blog to this Carnival here.

http://www.internet-marketing-muscle/blog ==> Move to ==> http://www.internet-marketing-muscle/

Why? That's another story. See "How to Have a Static WordPress Website with a Link to Your Blog" for more on that.

Here's a nifty little article, directly from WordPress.org, that shows you exactly how to move your WordPress blog. This works equally well with regard to moving your blog within your own site or moving it from one webhost to another.

==> Moving WordPress

Another, better, safer, quicker–but more expensive method (i.e., it's not free)–would be to use WP Twin. It does all that is suggested in the article above and zips up everything into one compressed file that you can download to your PC that you can then place anywhere you please. Pretty cool.

I am truly saddened by this event–another Yahoo service offering, MyBlogLog, is shutting its doors on May 24, 2011. I really liked this service (I think I have been signed up since before Yahoo acquired them), and used it as a social network years before Facebook and twitter.

Like all good things, I suppose, it had to end. It had a great friend-building tool, loads of statistics and data, and it helped get my content indexed. I had over 800 fellow blogging friends there.

MyBlogLog was truly ahead of it time and it usually delivered on its promise–and then some.

Goodbye, old friend.

Oh, one more thing–thanks Yahoo, for killing another awesome service!