Google today announced a new feature that impacts bloggers – a new URL shortener that integrates with Feedburner and a new ’socialize’ feature on Feedburner.

This allows bloggers to use Feedburner to send Tweets out automatically via Feedburner.

Of course most bloggers already have tweets going out to promote new blog posts by using either a plugin or a service like TwitterFeed.

Feedburner give you a number of options – including the ability to tweet out just the title or include some of the body (or only the body), adding hashtags (based upon your category), adding something before or after the title, filtering (to stop some new posts going out) – and limiting how many tweets go out.

Get more help and details on setting up your Feedburner account here.

In many ways it is pretty similar to what a lot of the other alternatives give you for this type of thing – but it is good to be able to have it all managed from one account. I’ll also be interested to see how Google/Feedburner integrate this into their Analysis/metrics (ie to see if they can measure clicks on their URL shortened links accurate – I’m not seeing any mention of this but it would seem like a logical extension).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Google Add Socialize Feature to Feedburner – Tweet Your New Blog Posts from Feedburner

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In my recent post on the importance of having your own product to sell I was asked in comments by Todd for advice on choosing the best topic to create an ebook on.

Here are a few quick thoughts on some starting points for choosing a topic for an e-book – mainly for people who already have a blog:

Todd – Good question. For me it was partly just about blogging for a number of years in my niche and starting to just get a hunch for what would work. I guess in that time I began to see patterns in what was working and what was not working in my niche. I also began to get to know my readers more and saw the challenges and problems that they faced.

Of course saying ‘go with your hunches’ isn’t probably the answer you were after – so below I’ve identified a few steps to work through in choosing a topic for an E-book.

Step 1: Ask Some Questions about Your Readers and Their Needs

here are some questions I’d suggest you consider to help you identify and sort through those hunches.

• what questions do you keep getting asked repeatedly by readers (via email, in comments etc)?
• what are readers asking you to make recommendations on?
• what posts on your blog are getting the most visitors?
• what posts on your blog are getting most comments/discussion?
• what trends are emerging on your topic in your niche?
• what’s the biggest problem or challenge for people in your niche – particularly for beginners?
• what terms are people searching for to arrive on your blog?
• what words are people searching for on your blogs search tool?

Answering these types of questions should point you in the direction of some topics that could be suitable for an e-book.

Step 2: Ask Some some More Probing Questions to Narrow in on the Topic

Once you’ve identified some of these topics you will probably want to narrow the field a little by asking some of these questions:

• what topics have you written a lot about already that you could pull together as the basis for an e-book? (see a note on this below)
• what do you know enough about to write something useful? Do you have the authority and expertise to write it yourself or should you outsource the writing?
• are you interested in or passionate about the topic? I’m sure that not all authors are passionate about their topics but it sure helps because there is a lot of work involved!
• is the topic you’re thinking of writing about something that really needs more than a single post – can you write enough to justify it being an e-book and something people pay money for?
• are there many other resources already available on the topic – how will yours be different?
• is the topic you’re thinking about too wide or narrow? Sometimes topics are too big and could end up being a series of e-books. ON the other hand some topics are too narrow to really justify being an e-book and perhaps it’d be best to widen it and look at a larger topic.

Step 3: Test Your Topics

Once you’ve narrowed Your Field – test the topics that you’ve come up with. I’ve seen a number of bloggers come up with ideas for big projects that they think are great which in reality are not. If only they’d tested their ideas before investing significant time into them!

You might want to bounce them off a fellow blogger, perhaps test them with a small group of trusted readers, ask some questions on Twitter etc. If you’ve not covered the topic much on your blog before you might also want to test the idea on your blog with a post on the topic to gauge reader interest. Alternatively you might run some kind of poll to see if your suspicions about your readers needs are confirmed.

The key is to try to find out if the topics you’re thinking of writing about are the types of things people are REALLY interested in and willing to pay for. Note: This might be an ideal time for a survey.

Three last thoughts:

1. ‘How To’ Topics – My suspicion is that ‘teaching’ or ‘how to’ type e-books are going to be more attractive to potential buyers than other types. I’m sure there will be exceptions but most of the e-books that I’ve seen do well either lead people through a process, explain something, solve a problem or give them skills and understanding over a particular topic.

2. Start with a Problem – when it comes to selling an e-book you’ve got a lot better chance of convincing someone to buy it if you can tell them that it’ll solve a problem that they have. In my e-books I took the problems/challenges of ‘building a better blog’ and ‘taking better portraits’ and centered everything in the e-book around them. These problems were reflected both in the writing and the marketing of the books. Once you’ve identified a problem you’re on the right track.

3. Repurposing Old Posts – I mentioned above that you might like to consider what topics you’ve written about a lot already that you might be able to base an e-book on. All I’d want to qualify this with is that you’ll probably want to add some solid extra content to these types of e-books. I’ve proved (twice) that people are willing to pay for stuff you’ve published before but in each case I worked hard on adding extra material to make it more valuable.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

3 Steps to Help You Choose a Topic for an E-Book

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Today a new ‘make money blogging fast‘ product is being launched into the blogosphere that promises those who buy it that they can make big money blogging – fast.

As this thing is launching and I’m already getting emails about it from readers asking if they should buy it – let me give you a few quick reactions to it and other products I’ve seen like it.

Do keep in mind, I’ve not bought the product so I’m making these calls based solely upon what I’ve seen in the sales material and what I’ve heard from charter members. Much of what I have written below applies to most of these kinds of products (and there are many).

Note: I’m not naming the product here (and I’m certainly not going to try to make a quick buck with an affiliate promotion), I just don’t feel good about promoting it in any way – for reasons that I guess will become clear below.

Make Fast Money Blogging?

Here’s the main thing – making money from blogging instantly… immediately… quickly… fast isn’t something I’ve seen too many people achieve (I’m actually yet to meet any). I have seen bloggers make A LOT of money blogging – millions of dollars in fact. It’s certainly possible to do – however in every case that I’ve seen the blogger has worked their butts off blogging for a long time, building their authority, credibility and by writing content that is original and useful – well before their blog started making money.

If you think you can flick a switch or change to a new system and instantly make a lot of money fast – you’re in for a fall. Don’t fall for that line – to make money in this game you’re going to have to work really hard and have a long term view of things.

Lots of Blogs Each Earning Little Bits of Money

OK – the methodology of this program is that you need to start a blog network – multiple blogs that each earn a relatively small amount of money, that mounts up to be a significant amount.

Sounds like a reasonable way to approach things and there is actually some truth to the methodology. I know a number of bloggers who have made some money this way, a few that even make a full time living from it.

I’m not going to knock people for taking on this model – it can work and I guess people do need to make a living. I even did it for a little while myself. However keep in mind that there is a cost of this method – something that I learned for myself the hard way.

The problem with maintaining lots of blogs is that while they each might make a little money that adds up to a reasonable amount – you end up with lots of blogs that don’t really amount to anything in and of themselves on any other level than that they earn a little money.

Perhaps that’s all your dream is (to make a little money from lots of blogs that no one has ever heard of) but what I love about blogs is the way that they open up other opportunities for a blogger. A blog can build your brand and profile to the point that it opens up doors for new jobs, partnerships, book deals, speaking engagements, friendships, business ideas…. etc. The problem is that most bloggers who have experienced these opportunities have worked hard to build a small number of blogs (usually a single one) which they’ve worked hard at – rather than spreading themselves thinly across multiple blogs.

My experience of a small network of blogs was that it while I was able to sustain 10-20 blogs (20-30 posts a day) that the quality of what I was producing was pretty low. I did get a little traffic to each from Google – but never really generated any regular readers, never had anyone comment, never had any opportunities open up as a result of those blogs.

It was only when I switched to having 1-2 blogs with quality, useful and original content that things opened up. As a result I slowly started to make real money blogging and more importantly started to see opportunities to leverage the profile of my blogs to bigger and better opportunities.

Using Other People’s Content

One of the main methods taught by many make money blogging products is to use other people’s content on your blog for the bulk of your posts. This one teaches that you should use other people’s content for the bulk of your posts and throw in some original stuff from time to time. They even give you tools to find and import other people’s content quickly (remember you need lots of blogs to make this work – so you need to do it quickly).

Again – this is something I dabbled in for a while. I did it all manually and tried to use the content in a way that added value rather than just copying and pasting in content (I also did it with the blessing of those whose content I aggregated and always acknowledge sources) – but in the end I dropped it as a method for a couple of reasons.

Firstly it was the most boring thing I had ever done (and I’ve worked on conveyor belts on production lines for 12 hour shifts – so I know boring). Blogging can be an amazingly uplifting experience – but copying and pasting in content is not fun.

Secondly it’s only marginally useful – there are ways of aggregating content from other sites that can be useful, but it always takes work and extra effort for this to happen. The method demonstrated in the product I’m referring to just mashes up a load of content from other sites in a way that doesn’t really help anyone. As a result a blog that does this as the bulk of its content isn’t really useful to anyone, except the blogger making a few dollars from it. The demonstrator describes the post as quality content – it’s not really. It’s on topic, it might do ok in Google, but it doesn’t really help anyone.

Thirdly – you end up a blog that isn’t really unique or original. This comes back to my points above about creating blogs that actually help build a brand or profile for you. If all you do with the bulk of your content is rehash and mashup other people’s content you’ll never get a name for being anything much more than someone who reads, quotes and links to other people’s content. Perhaps I’m crazy – but I’d rather be known for someone who has original, interesting and useful ideas than someone who whips up mashups of other people’s stuff all day every day. But maybe that’s just me?

Fourthly – while search engines unfortunately do rank this kind of content, I’m finding that they’re getting better and better at identifying truly useful content and junky content like this that is created purely to get search traffic. Sites like this can and do rank well but often they fall out of the rankings and in the long term don’t tend to rank well.

Note: at least the teaching offered in today’s course acknowledges sources of content with links and only uses short quotes from those sources – I don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as some tools that scrape content, strip links and acknowledgements and automatically produce very spammy content.

Final Thoughts

In the end people will believe that they can make fast money blogging if they want to. Some people just want to believe the dream and nothing I can say will convince them. They’ll happily pay their $67 a month, create a few of these ‘blogs’ and a few months later realise that this isn’t a ‘fast’ or particularly ‘easy’ game.

If you’re tempted then please just pause for a moment and think about your objectives for blogging. If you’re looking to purely make money and you don’t want any real personal satisfaction or have any goals of building a brand or profile – then this type of model may actually work for you.

But if your dream is to build something that grows your profile as someone with authority in your niche, or to land a job or book deal, or to get invited to speak at an industry event, or to be quoted in mainstream media about your topic, or it’s just to build a blog that has loyal readers who keep coming back because you’re helping them…. then perhaps this isn’t the type of blogging model for you.

Your Thoughts?

PS: Interestingly the sales page of this new product highlights some successful blogs that make a lot of money blogging. They include Dooce and Mashable. I would argue that these blogs pretty much prove my point. They’re all about original and useful content. They are not about creating lots of blogs that each a little money – they’re about putting in a lot of work to produce useful and original content over a long period of time and don’t resemble anything I’ve seen about the actual product being promoted on the page.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Make Fast Money Blogging Products – My Reaction

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If youve done a bit of research into website flipping then you have probably already found out a whole load of conflicting views and information. The reality is that website flipping is profitable, it works and most importantly you can flip anything if you can prove to the world its worthwhile.

With so much bad information out there, knowing exactly whats worthwhile and whats not can be a difficult process. The golden rule for website flipping is that traffic = value. This could mean that single page web sites which are keyword optimized and receive a lot of traffic are actually profitable to sell!

Micro-sites are actually incredibly effective ways to flip websites. Whilst people think that flipping small sites is for small-timers, some of the best website flippers are the ones that are smart enough to do the research beforehand, find an extremely profitable niche and then exploit the search engines by building a site that is laser-targeted, keyword rich and search-engine friendly.

Micro-sites really are the site flippers secret weapon and this is because they make extremely profitable Google AdSense landing pages which when advertised on places such as SitePoint really does get a lot of interest. Especially when you can show that they are already profitable. Lets face it, anyone would be mad not to buy a website that is already making a fully automated, passive income.

Creating the perfect micro site is all about impact. This means your template for the page needs to be more attractive than normal, because when it comes to building smaller websites, there is limited space for content. You need to fill the gap with an attractive layout and good presentation.

These days, youd be surprised to hear that a lot of micro sites are actually ran using the ever popular blogging platform and pseudo-content management system, Wordpress.

Wordpress is a great way to build a micro-site for flipping because it instantly makes site management a piece of cake. Add to the fact that its also natively search engine friendly, and you have the perfect platform to build micro-sites that are ready to flip.

When it comes to selling a micro-site its all about profit. You need to show to potential buyers that with next to no work, they can have a profitable site which will make them regular money. There are two main types of directly profitable sites; the first are Adsense ready type sites which are designed to get traffic and send visitors through to AdSense, and the second is to create an internet-marketing style micro ste.

There are countless ways to build micro sites and it really does depend on what you envisage as being most profitable. If your experience lies in affiliate marketing, then chances are you can make a potentially profitable marketing site quickly.

When it comes to building micro-sites the secret is to think about your seller and build a site theyd be interested in. Before you start, take a look on popular places to sell so that you know exactly what type of site is profitable and most importantly, how much theyre selling for. Micro sites can be extremely profitable, just make sure to do your research beforehand!