Today I want to continue our series of posts looking at principles of building a successful blog by looking at the topic of Trust.

A Quick Definition of The Type Of Successful Blog Im Writing About

It might be worth stating that the type of blog that Im talking about in this series is a blog that isnt purely about profit or traffic – but a blog that has influence in its niche.

It is certainly possible to build a profitable and/or well trafficked blog without Trust – in fact I know a few bloggers who blog purely for Search Engine Traffic who dont really care about influence, brand or loyal readers but who just want traffic that they can convert to cash.

These bloggers are certainly successful on some levels (I guess success really comes down to your goals) – but thats not the style of blogging that I do and is not what this series is on about.

What Im on about is helping bloggers to not only be profitable and have traffic but to build blogs that have profile, influence, authority, credibility, respect and a brand that opens up opportunities beyond quick profit.

By no means is my approach the only way to make money blogging – but its where Im at and as a result is what I write about.

Why Building Trust is Important

OK – so now were on the same page lets talk about Trust.

Im not sure we need to spend too much time talking about why building trust is important as its pretty much common sense – but in short – if youre looking to build influence, to build a brand that is respected and you want a site that is authoritative – youre going to have a lot better chance if people actually trust you.

Yes with some clever copywriting and good positioning in search engines you can probably convince people to buy certain products – but in order to build lasting influence – trust is going to need to play a part.

On the flip side – many businesses today have seen the way that a lack of trust or even worse, broken trust can hurt a business, destroy reputations and ruin years of hard work.

So building and maintaining trust is paramount for bloggers wanting to build influence – so how does one do it?

One of the best resources on the topic of building influence through trust online is Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. However as itll take a day or two for Amazon to ship you a copy (and I recommend you get one) I thought Id jot down a few principles of building trust online that Ive gathered over the years both from my own experience of trusting others and building trust with others.

A Quick Exercise Before You Read Any More

Before you read my thoughts on how to build trust – heres a very quick exercise to do.

On a piece of paper or in a text document – jot down a blogger or blog that you trust. Under the name – list 2-3 reasons why you trust them.

OK – read on.

4 Principles of Building Trust Online

1. It usually takes time to build

Im a pretty sceptical guy – I dont really want to be but after years of being bombarded with marketing messages and experiencing disappointment at expectations not being met by people making big promises my guard is up. I suspect Im not alone.
While Im sure there are people who are more trusting than others – Im pretty certain that most people in my generation (and the generations that come before and after mine) are a fairly suspicious lot. We are capable of trust – but it usually takes time to get there.

2. It is Earned

I do have the capability to trust you – but more often than not itll only come once I see that youre worthy of that trust. An example of this principle hit my inbox this morning – it was from a reader who had just bought my 31 days to build a better blog workbook.

Her email included this:

Ive never bought an ebook before, partly because I dont trust people with my credit card information and partly because Ive always suspected most ebooks are just fluff. But after reading your blog for 12 months and being on the receiving end of useful information every day over that time I decided you were probably a credible source of information.

The sense that I got from her email was that she only made the purchase based upon her previous experience of what I do – something that was earned by providing her with help day by day over a year.

The take home lesson for bloggers is to give value, be useful and prove that you have something worthwhile and authoritative to say on your topic.

Look for ways to genuinely and generously improve the lives of your readers – do this over the long haul and your deposit in the trust bank with readers grows over time.

3. The recommendations of others are important

I still remember (but cant find a link to) a post by Seth Godin a year or so back where he talks about how he sells a lot more books through a blog post when hes talking about someone elses book than his own.

It was the perfect illustration of how the words and recommendations of other people promotion you carry a lot more weight than you promoting yourself.

Were social beings – we make decisions together – we buy things that others recommend – we trust those that others trust.

This means you have a couple of tasks to do:

1. Build relationships with others. Some bloggers take the attitude that other bloggers are potential competition and as a result they stay clear of them. However a recommendation from someone else in your industry could be gold – build relationships.
2. Find Ways to use this social proof. If someone does recommend you it doesnt hurt to highlight it to others. You dont need to do it in an ego driven or big headed way – but do find subtle and relevant ways to share it with those in your network.

4. Be Yourself

One of the fastest ways to destroy trust is to be caught trying to be something that youre not.

• Make a promise that you cant fulfil
• Present yourself as someone that youre unable to be
• Make a claim thats not true

All of these things set up expectations in the eyes of others that cant be met which will lead to disappointment, anger, disillusionment and as a result – broken trust.

Not only that – I find that people are pretty good these days at picking people who are presenting themselves as something that theyre not. You might not even have to get caught out to have people suspicious (and untrusting) of you.

• As a result its best to be yourself.
• Let people know what you do and dont know.
• Be transparent about your motives.
• Share your stories of failure as well as your successes.
• Admit your mistakes.

All of these things make you more human, relatable and help to build trust.

What Would You Add?

Ive only scratched the surface on Trust with this post – theres so much more to say and Id love to hear what youve got to say on the topic.

• What bloggers do you trust (who did you write down in the exercise above)? Why do you trust them?
• How do you build trust with your readers?
• What stories and experiences do you have to help illustrate these principles of building trust?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Trust – Principles of Successful Blogging #2

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Many people are searching for ways to make money fast online these days. Its certainly in large part due to the economic crisis and people either being unemployed or underemployed and having a hard time making ends meet. However can you make money on internet projects as quickly as needed? I guess the main question is what your idea of FAST is?

For example

I personally think that adsense is a great, relatively easy and cheap way to start developing online income. But, even if you reach payment threshold lets say by the end of January, you wont receive that payment until the end of February. That isnt exactly my idea of fast but it is quicker than some other affiliate programs (Amazon is one of the slower ones out there.)

In fact, most affiliate programs will be sending out checks anywhere from 2 weeks after the reporting period up to 6 weeks after the earnings reported. So how does one make money fast online?

Believe it or not there are a number of ways. FIrst, there are affiliate programs that pay directly to a paypal account. For instance paydotcom.com has merchants that pay monthly to their affiliates via paypal. So, this is at least a bit quicker. There are other affiliate programs that will do similar paypal paments. Some will even pay directly to your paypal account on making a sale. One approach Ive seen quite a bit is that every other sale goes 100% to the affiliate. So, the first affiliate sale the product producer gets 100%, the second one the affiliate gets 100%, next the product producer and then back to the affiliate. If you have an offer like this I would build a page on one of your own sites (or using a free site like blogspot or wetpaint, etc. just check their rules first. Then I would use article marketing at various other sites to build links to your sales page for the product using your anchor text that youve researched. You really can distribute the same articles to multiple directories (be sure to check THEIR rules though on whether or not they want previously unpublished material.) The whole thing could really be setup in one afternoon.

Another approach to make money fast online is to use a service like odesk to advertise your services either for writing, research, or other specialized skills. Say for instance you can make great videos. well, many internet marketers stink at making great videos of their content, so for a fee (Id ask for an advance and then the balance on completion I think) take the text theyve given and make a really good video that they can then upload to video sites.

Okay so maybe youre not good at videos but can setup wordpress blogs really quick and well. Again, odesk or WarriorForum is a good place to advertise these skill sets. For that matter if you have a particular talent like that you may want to just write up a good detailed tutorial and then sell THAT. Accompany it with a video screencast of how to install wordpress and youll have a product that you can get quite a few sales of.

The WarriorForum is a great place to find internet marketers and they have a special section called WSOs these are Warrior Special Offers. You have to be a paying member now to post there, but the membership ($37 for 20 years) is WELL worth it for the valuable tips you find. The idea of the WSOs is to highlight offers at a special rate for members of the WarriorForum. I wouldnt go and sign up and post an offer the same day, but look around first, learn, get a feel for the place and whats needed or in demand and then go from there.

Heres a parting thought for you. dont you think that Levi Strauss did better selling jeans to gold miners than 95% of the gold miners in California? I suspect so. he found a need and found a way to supply it. So, thats the way I think of the WSOs at WarriorForum. theyre all selling jeans and picks to the gold miners.

Some other ideas are more tedious but can still raise some quick money. Develop a site/domain with a wordpress install. Build out a limited number of pages of content and then sell the premade site ready to go. Develop a theme or set of themese for blogging software (or just an html template or collection of templates.) This is a tougher sell as there are so many free templates out there, but there might be someone wanting a customized theme.

Building backlinks for a site, or social bookmarking might be something that an individual or company may be willing to pay for. Browse the same outsourcing sites that weve talked about using to outsource OUR tasks and get ideas there. There really can be a lot of options for you to make money fast online, its definitely more challenging, but with some creative thinking can be done.

Last week I shared a set of slides from a presentation I recently gave which outlines a variety of lessons that Ive learned as a blogger over the last 7 years. Over the coming months I intend to expand upon many of the points in that presentation – starting today with Listening.

When I began blogging in 2002 I made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of false assumptions about blogging. One of the things I quickly found out didnt work when trying to grow a blog was to use it purely as a broadcast tool.

In the first few weeks of blogging it was almost as though I was using the blog as a platform or a stage where I stood with a megaphone in hand blasting out my message for anyone who might happen to be passing by to hear. Its no wonder that only my wife read my blog that first week (and even she never really came back).

Nobody likes a loud mouth. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of someone talking AT them.

The people we tend to be drawn to in real life are people who pause in conversation to let you have a say, people who ask questions about you, people who have a genuine interest in what youve got to say.

The same is true (in most cases) when it comes to blogging.

Of course there are cases where blogs are successfully used as broadcast tools with little interaction between blogger and reader – however in most cases there is at least some element of listening going on by the blogger. Let me explore a few ways that a blogger should consider listening:

Listen to the culture of the blogosphere

This is one for those yet to start blogging (and it should also be applied to those getting into new social media tools like Twitter, Facebook etc).

I was chatting with a new blogger recently who described her first week of blogging as being similar to travelling to a new country and having to adjust to a new language, climate, etiquette and customs as an outsider.

When travelling overseas for an extended stay (perhaps for a new job) most travellers know that one of their first tasks as a new resident is to make some cultural adjustments.

• learning some basic words in the local language
• finding a local who can talk them through the etiquette
• getting a map so that they can find their way around
• learning to use systems like public transport. etc

In a similar way – when youre new to the blogosphere (or any new part of the social media-sphere) its important to pause, take stock, learn about the culture, learn to use the tools, discover what is acceptable (and not acceptable), learn the rhythms etc

The danger in not learning the culture of the blogosphere is doing something that not only doesnt work but that offends the locals and hurts your reputation.

Listen for where your potential readers are gathering

One of the key tasks that any new blogger who wants to grow their readership should do is identify where their potential readers are already gathering online.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back – its not enough just to build a good blog with great content in order to find readers for your blog. If you want people to know about your blog you need to get out there and interact with them and develop a presence in the places that your potential readers are already gathering.

Of course before you can find these places you need to have an understanding of who youre trying to attract – so do a little work on defining who you want to read your blog and then begin to look for where that type of person is already gathering (I talk more about how I did this in this recent video on how I use promote my blog).

Listen to what others in your niche are saying

One of the most powerful things that I did which helped take my early blogs to the next level was to begin to monitor what others in my niche/industry were talking about.

I discovered the power of this accidentally one day when I just happened to be surfing on another small blog that broke news of a big story. I picked up the story on my own blog (linking to the first) and then my post got picked up by a massive blog which drew in a lot of new readers. Knowing what was happening in the niche helped to break stories but also build relationships with other bloggers in the niche.

Back then the tools for monitoring other blogs and topics were primitive and meant some manual hunting around (I remember in the very early days having to manually bookmark the blogs I wanted to track and visit them each every day to see if theyd posted anything new) but these days it is a lot easier to set up and automate.

My own monitoring of my niches generally happens in two ways:

1. Subscribing to Feeds of Key Sources of Information – these days most sites have some way of subscribing to them, usually via an RSS feed. I have a folder in my feed reader for each of my main topics which contains a number of key blogs and news sites in that niche. I used to follow close to a thousand blogs to do this – but these days have refined the list to much less for each topic.
2. 2. Keyword Alerts – using Googles news and blog alerts I have a number of alerts set up so that if any news site or blog uses a keyword that Im interested in I know about it. Choosing keywords that are specific enough can take a little time (some words just generate too many alerts) but on almost a daily basis these alerts identify important posts in my niches.
3. Recommendation Sites – the other listening tool that I use to help me know whats going on in my niches is to subscribe to sites that are in the business of looking for popular content in my niches. These sites can be a little hard to find depending upon your niche but because Im largely working in the Tech space there are a few including TechMeme and Delicious. TechMeme looks at what content key blogs are linking to in the tech space and Delicious is a bookmarking site that produces a list of popular content being bookmarked at any point in time (its not purely tech related but does consistently produce good results for me). Both of these sites have RSS feeds you can subscribe to to monitor whats hot.
4. Twitter – I also find that being active on Twitter and developing a Twitter account that has a niche focus can also help you listen to what people are saying about your niche. This partly happens naturally (those you follow in your niche will share links) but there are also great tools including Tweetmeme (which shows you what is being retweeted in different categories) and other monitoring/search tools such as Twitter search (you can set up an RSS feed for different search terms) and tools built into Twitter clients (like TweetDeck which allows you to set up a column specifically for alerts). More and more useful tools are being set up for Twitter to help monitor what people are saying about your industry.

Listen to what is being said about you

The other use for some of the tools mentioned above (keyword alerts and the Twitter keyword monitoring) is that you can use them to alert you when someone is talking about you, your business, your blog or your brand specifically.

Ive talked previously about setting up a vanity folder in your feed reader to help you do this so wont go into great detail about it here – however its something that Ive found particularly useful for a couple of reasons:

1. Building Relationships – when another blogger links to you it is useful to know about it so you can go and build a relationship with that blogger and their readers.
2. Reputation Management – from time to time you might also be mentioned on another site/blog/press in a more negative way. Knowing quickly about this is also important as it enables you to respond (if necessarily) or at least monitor developments.

Create Listening Spaces on Your Blog

Have you ever had a conversation with someone where you simply could not get a word in edgeways? The person talked so fast and without taking a breath – to the point where there simply wasnt space for you to be listened to.

Sometimes I get that same feeling while on blogs. Its not that the blogger isnt interested in their reader – its just that they get so excited about what theyre blogging about that they just dont stop long enough to let others have a say.

One of the simplest ways to create these listening spaces on a blog is to ask questions. Ask them at the end of your posts, ask them half way through the and even write posts that are nothing but questions.

Listen to the Questions Your Readers are Asking

One of the most important things to be on the listen out for is questions.

I remember one of my first teachers drumming into the class I was in that there was no such thing as a dumb question and that if one person asked a question it usually meant that others also had the same question going around in their minds.

As a result – when a reader asks you a question, you can bet that theyre not the only one thinking it.

Questions reveal potential topics to write about, problems with your site and opportunities to expand what youre doing on your blog. Pay careful attention to them in the following areas:

1. comments section – this is the most obvious place for your readers to ask questions
2. your inbox – what questions are you getting from readers via your blogs contact form?
3. search engine referral terms – often people arrive on your site having plugged a specific question into Google. Most stats packages will reveal these terms and phrases – keep on the look out specifically for questions – also check out 103bees – a tool that specifically monitors and collates questions being asked in your search stats.
4. questions typed into onsite search boxes – this is a goldmine of information, monitoring what people are searching for when theyre actually on your site will show you all kinds of needs, problems and challenges that your readers want to learn more about. Lijit is one tool that helps you track these questions.
5. ask readers for questions – from time to time it can be worth writing a post on your blog that specifically invites readers to ask a question.

Listen to what is working (and what isnt)

The last thing Ill add on the topic of listening before I open this topic up to others to share their thoughts is to listen by tracking what is and isnt working on your blog.

This means setting up your blog with a good metrics tool (I use Google Analytics but there are other great ones out there) and regularly using it to work out what is readers are responding to on your blog.

Some places to start include:

• What posts are being read most?
• What posts are generating good conversation/comments?
• What posts are being linked to by others most?
• How are readers using your design? (use a tool like CrazyEgg to create a heatmap)
• What days of the week are people reading your site most on? What times of the day?
• What pages are people bouncing from your site on (bounce rate shows how many people arrive on your blog and immediately leave)
• What posts are people spending most (and least) time on?
• What posts are you getting most negative feedback on?

It is easy to obsess on some of these stats – but its also easy to ignore the useful stuff in them that could help you improve your blog.

How else do you Listen in your blogging?

Ive talked for way too long on a post about listening – so now its over to you.

What would you add? Do you use some of the above techniques? What has worked well for you? Im all ears!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Listening – Principles of Successful Blogging #1

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A Guest post by Jade Craven.

Have you heard of Johnny B Truant? He started writing at The Economy Isnt Happening but recently, he revealed hes made $10?000 in 3 months. In his Ittybiz column, he told how he made nearly $3?000 in one month. Hes also written a couple of guest posts here on ProBlogger here and here.

What really attracted me to him was that he didnt earn this money by taking advantage of people or using questionable tactics. He did it by finding out what people wanted and providing them with a solution that benefited them both.

In this post, Ill talk about how Johnny did it. Ill provide strategies and case studies so you can apply these tips to your on blog. Ill even talk about the tactics he used to promote his killer new ecourse, for those who are looking at selling information products from their blog.

Finally, Ill give you an exclusive discount for that e-course Zero to Business – just skip to the bottom if you want 10% off.

4 Ways To Earn Money By Helping People

Give Free Stuff strategically

Image by Anil Jadhav

How Johnny did this:

• He released a free instructional ebook about setting up a blog.
• He did free website setups in return for testimonials

How You Can Do this

• Barter your services with other skilled bloggers
• Release an introductory report
• Do free work in return for references or exposure
• Do case studies highlighting your skills.

Case studies.

• Leo Babauta, Skellie and Chris Garret got a lot of exposure because of their guest posting.
• Neil Creek takes headshots of attendees at twitter meetups for use on their social media sites. He has received a lot of praise over this, both from the local twitter community and international photographers. He has gone on to get many more clients and enquiries.
• Darren used to do case studies on his blog as an advertisement for his consulting. He no longer offers this service.

Provide calls to action regularly

Image by kozumel

How Johnny did this:

• He would frequently have P.S at the end of his post – including a few humorous ones
• He would simply state Call to Action

How you can provide calls to action:

• In the conclusion of the post, tell the reader what you want them to do
• Give them an incentive to click through

Case Studies:

• Ali Hales guest post on Problogger. She talked about the topic of staff blogging before encouraging people to check out her ecourse. As an extra incentive, she gave the readers a discount code.
• Dave Navarros post on Freelance Folder, where he encouraged the readers to give an example in the comments.

Find your people.

Image by Elvire.R.

How Johnny did this:

• He got a guest posting slot of Ittybiz, offering himself as a case study
• He is on the faculty of Project Mojave
• He has guest posted on the places where his target readership hangs out

How to do this:

• Find blogs that attract the kind of people you want to target. See if you can guest post on that blog.
• Seek work and joint venture opportunities
• Look for regular writing opportunities

Case studies.

I dont need to offer any case studies. Look around at your favourite blogs. Do you see the same people being featured? Are the same people interacting? They are the loyal fans.

Are you a loyal fan of anyone? Youll usually find you tend to hang out in that persons group. You may buy from more than one person. These are the people you want to connect with.

Selling something? Focus on selling solutions.

Image by Doug88888

How Johnny did this

• He offered wordpress installs at a discounted price. To compensate, he asked that people buy through his affiliate link
• He sold group coaching to those that couldnt afford the price of individual coaching..
• When realizing that people were still needing information, he created a course that was cheaper than getting Johnny to help them through the process.

How you can do this:

• See if you can offer a service at a discounted rate in exchange for purchasing something through their affiliate link
• Find creative ways of making your products more affordable without underpricing yourself.
• Listen to your audiences needs and create products to help them.

Case Studies:

• Sarah Prout does this in her Twitter Success Blueprint. She realized that businesses needed an affordable way to learn about twitter, so she created an ebook with information catered to professionals, as well as other twitter users.
• Men with Pens do this with their blog critiques. They offer a discount for ones offered on the blog.

I know many people hate being sold too. Rather than promote his course Zero to Business, Ill talk about what you can learn from it.

What you can learn from the course

There are three main things I loved about the promotion strategy:

• He created humorous videos with viral potential.
• He purposely avoided hype in his sales page
• He provided real and useful bonuses

Lets discuss how you can learn from each strategy.

The Humorous videos.

• He mocked a number of the key sales tactics in the internet marketing niche
• In his letter to his affiliates, he recommended that people promote the videos rather than the product

So – how can you adopt this to your launch?

• Offering a quality resource that your affiliates can promote
• Mock some of the common techniques used in product launches in your niche

Avoiding Hype

• Johnny repeated several times that this product would provide technical solutions. It not make them rich.
• He then explained the costs of learning this if you paid his normal consulting fees.

So – how can you adopt this to your launch?

• Talk about the practical reasons about how your product can help someone
• Explain to them how your solution is better value than the alternative

Cool Bonuses

• He provided individual coaching to the first five people that signed up
• He offered group coaching to those who signed up by a certain date.

So – how can you adopt this to your launch?

• Offer bonuses that are exclusive and are not freely available to other marketers
• Offer bonuses that will provide real value to the majority of your buyers

My call to action:

• If you want 10% off Johnnys e-course, Zero to Business, just use the word problogger as the discount code. Its that easy.
• If you want to check out Johnnys blog, go on over to his fancy new site.
• If you want rants about zombies, check out his twitter feed.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How One Blogger Made $3k a month by Helping People – And How He Can Help You

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Today Im running two competitions here on ProBlogger – both centre around the Blog World and New Media Expo happening in Las Vegas next week. The first (in this post) gives one lucky blogger an opportunity to get a last minute pass to attend – the other (which Ill post about in a few hours) gives 3 readers the chance to come have dinner with me.

For those of you whove not heard about BWE – its going to be a great event with thousands of bloggers coming together to talk blogging and social media. Ill be there and speaking on a number of panels including:

• Internet Marketing for Smart People – with Chris Brogan, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone.
• How to Make Money Online – at WordCamp Las Vegas with Jeremy Wright and Chris Garrett (yes Im finally going to meet me coauthor of the ProBlogger book)
• Blogging Super Panel (Live Feedback Site Reviews) – with Jim Kukral, John Chow, Zach Johnson and Brian Clark

OK – onto the first competition

The prize is a chance to win a weekend pass to attend. Its worth $495 (see full details of what it includes here).

Please only enter this if youre able to get to Vegas for the weekend and cover your own accommodation. This prize only gets you into the conference (and to a couple of the parties).

To enter you have to do two things:

1. Either write a blog post that links to Blog World Expo saying why you want to attend OR tweet a tweet that says why you want to attend and includes the #bwe09 hashtag (choose one of these options, not both).
2. Come back to this post and leave a comment with a link to your post or tweet to prove you did it.

Well close off entries for this competition at midday on Wednesday Vegas time/ (yes you need to get your skates on). There is one entry per person (so dont set tweets to go off every minute til the closing time).

Thanks to Blog World and New Media Expo for putting up this prize. If youre coming along I do look forward to seeing you!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Win a Weekend Pass to Blog World Expo Worth $495

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