Author Archive | Jean Lauture

Two things are surprising about the technique I’m about to teach you for selling affiliate products…

First, it’s surprisingly easy. In fact, it’s so simple you might be tempted to dismiss it. Don’t. This method has been proven effective and it’s one you definitely want to put in your marketing arsenal.

Second, while it doesn’t take much time, it can be a real money maker. In fact, if you choose an affiliate product that pays instantly and if you have a traffic source (such as your own list, social media, etc.) then you can potentially put money in your pocket in less than 3 hours.

Here’s how it works: Choose an affiliate product you like. It needs to be one that you have, one that you can get from the seller for free, or one you buy. Regardless, you must have a copy of it yourself. Also, it’s better if it’s a product you personally like and use, although that’s not required.

Read the sales letter carefully and choose the biggest benefit. This might be in the headline or it could be in the bullet points.

Write a short report – 5 pages is fine, 10 pages is super and you don’t want to go any longer than that. In the report, detail how to do this one technique that you’ve pulled out of the product that provides this benefit. For example, how to get 10,000 visitors a month to your blog would be a good benefit.

If you don’t want to write the report, outsource it.

Create a squeeze page and use this big benefit as your title. “How To Get 10,000 Visitors a Month To Your Blog.”

Once they enter their email address and press the opt-in button, they are redirected to your affiliate page for the product. Not many will buy at this point, but it’s important that they see the page.

At the end of the report, send them back to that affiliate sales page. You might write something like this: “I hope you put this into action, but if you’d like to take a massive shortcut and reduce the time it takes to get 10,000 visitors a month to your website, then click here to get the complete fast-track system.”

Use your own wording. Your message is that what you just taught them works, but to do it quickly without the trial and error and mistakes, they can simply get the fast track system because it’s so much easier and faster. Plus they get tons of other benefits, too.

So what you’re doing here is building a list, giving them real value and then immediately marketing to that list the exact benefit they’re looking for. Plus of course you can follow up with those that don’t initially buy, plus you can also market other products to them in the future.

Once you get good at this, it shouldn’t take you more than 3 hours to set up and you can use your system for as long as you like. Send website visitors to it, tell your lists, offer your free report on social media, buy ads, etc.

Does it sound too easy? Oftentimes it’s the simple techniques that create the biggest results. Making a couple of thousand dollars on each one of these systems that you set up is not unheard of. And depending on how much traffic you send and the product you choose, it could be even more.

And if you like, you can outsource the entire thing for a reasonable fee. Imagine if you just set one of these up a week. It might not be glamorous, but the path to wealth and riches is frequently a simple process applied consistently. The method described above can be your path to financial freedom.

Did you know there are actually 4 types of residual commissions? Let’s explore them…

Automatic recurring commissions – these are likely the ones you’re most familiar with. You promote a membership program and you get paid monthly for as long as that customer retains the membership you sold.

Cookie commissions – when you sell a product, a cookie is placed on that customer’s computer. Then anything else that customer purchases from the seller is linked to you, and you get a commission. But if the cookie is deleted, or if the customer changes computers, then you will no longer receive commissions on their purchases.

Lifetime commissions – this works like a cookie commission, only instead of a cookie the product seller uses the customers email address to track sales. Thus, as long as the email address remains the same, you can receive commissions on all sales from this customer for years.

Second tier commissions – this is when you refer other affiliates to the merchant. Sort of like a multi-level program, you get a small commission for the sales your referral affiliate makes.

Now then: If you make a traditional affiliate sale, you get paid and that’s it.

If you make a monthly membership type of sale, you get paid until the customer cancels which means you usually get paid for several months. Not bad.

But if you promote products with either cookie or lifetime commissions, you can get paid for years on anything else they buy from that vendor in addition to the original sale.

Imagine a product seller with a fleet of 30 or 40 products. You promote just one of their products, and 20 of your customers buy that product. Now over the course of the next few months and years, this product seller promotes other products to these 20 customers, resulting in a further 80 sales over time. Normally you wouldn’t make a dime on these sales, but in this case, you make the full commission on each and every one.

So next month you get unexpected commissions, and the month after that, and five years from now, too.

Nice.

And it’s all because you promoted products with lifetime referrals or cookies.

So where can you find these products?

One method is simply to keep your eyes peeled. Not all selling platforms allow for lifetime referrals, so by looking at those that do, you can find the product sellers who will pay you for every product they sell to your customers, not just the ones you promote.

Next, use a search directory, such as www.affiliatescout.com. When doing your search, choose “lifetime commissions” under “features” without any other search parameters and you’ll find hundreds of results. Go back and narrow your parameters to find the exact programs your audience might be interested in.

Most of all, anytime someone asks you to be their affiliate, ASK if they pay lifetime commissions. Sometimes they’ll have two programs, one in which they only pay commissions on the first product sold, and a second, secret program they reserve for their heavy hitter affiliates in which they do pay lifetime commissions. It never hurts to ask.

Bottom line: If you can make recurring or even lifetime commissions from your promotional efforts, why not go for it? You do the work once, and you get paid over and over again. You can’t beat that.

Once an online marketer gets to a certain income level, that marketer almost invariably gets stuck. They can’t seem to make any more money, even when they pour more and more of their time into their business. Why? Because they are working IN their business rather than ON their business.

That’s why it’s so important to begin outsourcing as soon as you can afford to, which is actually a whole lot sooner than you probably think. If you believe you need to be bringing in a hefty six figure sum before you can get yourself some help, think again.

The fact is, the sooner you begin outsourcing some of the more mundane and time consuming facets of your business, the sooner you can begin growing your business in a truly substantial way.

You’ve only got a fixed number of hours in the week. Do you spend them doing:

A: The tasks you don’t like to do
B: The tasks you don’t mind doing, but they could easily be done by someone else
C: The tasks that you’re brilliant at doing and that you enjoy performing
D: Planning and strategizing to take your business to the next level

Obviously you want to delegate A and B as fast as possible so you can focus on C and D.

Are you doing your own support? Are you answering your own emails and phone? Is it taking your entire morning just to do support, answer emails and so forth?

Next question: Exactly how much do you earn each time you work your own support desk or answer your own emails and phone? What’s that? Nothing? Maybe it’s time you hired someone to do it for you.

In fact, if you do it correctly, hiring someone to perform your support tasks for you can pay off from day one.

That’s because it frees you up to do the things that MAKE YOU MONEY.

Ah-hah! Imagine that – devoting nearly ALL of your working time to those tasks that make money, rather than doing support.

In the military there are two distinct areas of operation: Front line and support. The front line wins the battles while the support does just that – support those who are out there winning the battles.

In sports, you’ve got offense and defense. The defense is crucial for stopping the other team from scoring, but they generally DON’T SCORE any points themselves. The offense does that. If you’re spending all of your time on defense (answering emails) then you’re not devoting any time to offense (making sales.)

Here’s how to hand the bulk of your email tasks off to your new assistant: If you don’t already have a private email address, create one. This is the address you give to JV partners, fellow marketers and your mother. The people who matter most to your business and your personal life.

Once a day you check this address and answer these emails personally.

Everything else – EVERYTHING else – goes to your support address or support desk where your support person checks it daily or even several times a day.

This includes payments, autoresponder emails, hosting emails, questions from customers, complaints, testimonials, affiliate requests, etc.

Your support person has access to your accounts, too. Your hosting account, autoresponder account, PayPal account, etc. I know – it seems like a big leap of faith to give access to your PayPal account to someone else, but no worries. You can limit the PayPal functions your support person has access to. For example, they can issue refunds but not withdraw funds.

Your support person or team is basically going to run the day to day operation of your business for you.

When training your support staff, you can write out step by step procedures on how to do things, record videos or audios, or simply have them contact you when something comes up they haven’t handled before. In other words, there is a learning curve. But after the first week you shouldn’t have to spend much more time on training, especially if you’ve got the right person for the job.

You can also have your support person or team do all those other things you don’t like to do such as analyze stats, clean email lists, install websites, social media, etc. Whatever it is that you prefer to hand off, go ahead and do it.

If you hire someone for 2 hours a day, that frees up 2 hours of your own time. If you pay them $12 an hour, that’s $480 a month – quite possibly more than you currently pay for programs and how to info.

And it’s 40 hours per month that you’ve just gained. Imagine if you use that 40 hours each month to create and market a new product – that’s 12 new products in a year. If each product were to make you just $3,000 initially, and then just another $500 a month – well, you do the math.

If you’re still hesitating, then think about this: If you strike a deal with your support person to pay them monthly, then you’ve got 30 days to use your new found time to make more than enough money to cover them for the first month.

30 days and 40 new found hours. But that’s not even the biggest benefit of bringing someone in to help you with your business.

The biggest benefit of all is what it will do for your mindset, because suddenly you ARE a business person. There’s no more wondering if you’re just dabbling in a hobby. This stuff is REAL and you are now responsible for someone else’s income. This is the motivator that will kick you out of bed each morning and ensure you have a productive, successful day.

Use one of the freelance sites to find someone. Yes, it’s going to feel like a big step, because it is. A big step in the right direction, that is. Because the rewards are going to prove that it was totally worth it to take this next, logical step in your business evolution.

Standing apart from the crowd of other emails in your prospects’ inbox isn’t easy. There are gimmicky ways to do it – write subject lines that shock, use lots of funny characters in the subject line, use the latest “hot” subject line [for the past year this has been “Hey”] and so forth. But how do you get your recipients to become avid readers of your emails?

Sane Method #1 – Tell stories. There is a marketer who appears in my inbox about once a day. Gmail highlights this email, because Gmail knows I read his emails. Why? Because he entertains me with stories. I know when I click his email I’m going to get swept up into another world. And even if it’s just his world and just for a minute, it’s a great escape to my otherwise sometimes monotonous day. And yes, I buy his products, too.

There’s an added bonus to telling stories besides the fact that your emails get opened and read, and it’s this: Telling stories is fun. Instead of selling, selling and more selling, you’re now entertaining. You can embellish, you can be flamboyant, you can add your own personal touch, you can get creative and you can have a blast doing it.

Suddenly your day is just a little more exciting because every moment you’re watching for the next story to fall into your life. Even a routine trip to the store can become an exciting adventure. The newspaper holds new meaning and the websites you visit are a treasure trove of possible stories you can share.

Sane Method #2 – Be a coach. Think of your readers as your students. Love your subject and stick to your subject. Only build your list with people who want info on your particular subject, then teach them all you can about it. When it comes to recommending products, tell them the good and the bad. Give them lots of detail. Be their coach first and foremost and they will hang on your every word.

This method works especially well if you love your topic. If you find yourself spending hours on the Internet learning about this topic, hitting all the forums and websites, finding the best products and so forth, then this method is for you. Every new site you visit is an adventure because you are continually on the lookout for more information you can share with your students. And selling becomes easy because again, you are simply sharing your knowledge with your students.

The [Not-so] Crazy Method – Hide clues in your emails that lead to prizes. I haven’t yet tried this method but I’ve been tempted. What if every email you send out holds a clue to a valuable prize? Collect all the clues and you find the prize online. There’s little doubt this method will get your emails opened, but will they be read? In the right niche, yes. Imagine doing this in a gaming niche – what a killer technique. The viral effect alone could be huge.

So tell me – is this last method crazy, or a millionaire maker? I don’t know of anyone who’s doing it – yet. But no doubt someone will. And in the right hands, it could be powerful, indeed.

The easiest way to go full time is to BE full time. That is, quit your daytime go-to-work type job and begin working full time online. When you’re full time online you’ll discover opportunities that otherwise would have passed you by. And you’ll be able to create a lot more opportunities as well, by having the time to forge relationships with other marketers, time to work on your own social media, blog posts and products and so forth.

But the problem for many is their online business isn’t making enough money yet to enable them to leave their job. And until they leave their job they won’t have the time to grow their business into a full time income. It’s a catch-22 situation that holds a lot of marketers hostage for years.

So how can you get some extra money coming in immediately? By offering services online. When you offer a service, it’s fairly easy to get clients and get paid. You typically won’t make a fortune, but you can make enough to replace your income from your job. And then you can use your extra time to create your own products, build your own sites and so forth.

Here’s a list of services you could offer:

Being a personal assistant to another marketer. This job is doubly great, because you’ll also learn as you earn. You’ll need a good variety of skills to land a VA position, but never underestimate the power of Google, either. Anything you’re required to do but don’t know how can be found on Google and YouTube.

Freelance customer service. Many marketers don’t want to hassle with support tickets, but they can’t afford to hire someone full time, either, because their own business isn’t big enough yet. Offer to do support 1 hour per day, 5 or 6 days per week for $10-$20 per hour. Get 3 clients and you have a nice little side income. And best of all, you can do these support tasks as you have time throughout the day from the comfort of your computer or even your mobile device.

Writing. This could be anything from simple articles and emails to full blown product creation. Content is hugely important and every marketer needs more great content. If you can write in a conversational manner and do good research, you can make money freelance writing. You might even ghost write books, too.

Copywriting. This is a little trickier than simple writing, in that your job is to sell with the written or spoken word. However, it can pay quite well if you’re good, and copywriting is a skill you’ll need to hone for your own business anyway.

Proofreading and editing. If you have an eye for details, you can be a proofreader. If you’re good at taking rough copy and turning it into something coherent that flows well and makes sense, then editing is for you.

Ebook formatting. Getting a book ready for Kindle or even to make into a sharp looking PDF takes skill. Can you do it? Then there are tons of marketers who need you.

Graphic design. Are you good at Photoshop? Can you make headers, product covers, logos and so forth? Then this is a great way to make some extra money.

Website design, maintenance, security, SEO and so forth. In other words, anything and everything technical. If you’re good at the technical side of online marketing, you’ll always have work because the majority of marketers really don’t want to bother with it – they’d rather hand the work over to an expert such as yourself.

And anything else an online marketer needs…

In the course of building your own business, make a note of the many things you’re having to do. Ask yourself, “is there a market for this service? Do I enjoy performing this service?” If so, then you’ve got a skill you can sell to others to make ends meet until your own business is running full steam ahead.

What a great daydream this is: You make a ton of money online and then go tell your boss to ‘have a nice day.’ This is the scenario you see in sales letters all the time. “Buy this product, put it to work and next week you can kiss your job goodbye, forever.”

Real life doesn’t always work like a sales letter. In fact, life continually gets in the way. You make some extra money but then it dries up. Or you have an emergency and the extra money bails you out of that crisis but you’re no further ahead.

Or – and this is the most common of all – you have the best of intentions but you never quite get around to making that fortune online. And so you are still at your job. Even though a year ago/two years ago/five years ago/ you swore you would be retired by now.

Whoops.

How do you eat an apple? Unless you’re a horse, you eat it one bite at a time. In my early years I found that building your online income and telling your boss to shove it works the same way – you go through the process of replacing your income one step at a time.

It’s a funny thing: You can make $5,000 a month online fairly easily, but only when you KNOW you can do it. Until you KNOW it, it seems just out of reach. And as long as the goal seems out of reach, your subconscious will sabotage you every step of the way to see to it that it never happens. If you can’t conceive it, there is no way you’re going to achieve it, no matter how hard you try.

It’s like getting a job. You can’t get the job without experience, but you can’t get experience without a job. Same way with making money online.

But right now, this instant, I’ll bet you know that you can make enough to cover just one of your bills, right?

So pick a monthly bill of yours, any bill. Now get enough income coming in each month to completely cover that bill. Maybe it’s your $100 water bill. Great. All you need to make is a consistent $100 a month, and it’s taken care of.

Don’t spend this new income on anything but paying that bill. Any money you make above what it takes to pay the bill is either reinvested into your business, or…

… you pick another bill and start covering that each month, too. And you just keep adding another bill and another bill into the mix until they are ALL covered, including your mortgage or rent, including your food, including everything.

But notice how you did it – not all at once, but simply one bill at a time. Your mind can wrap itself around this concept of taking it one step at a time. Your subconscious will stop fighting you and you’ll be surprised how easy the process becomes. It’s all about small steps that prove you can do it, that prove you can move on to the next level, and the next.

Once you’ve got all of your bills covered and then some, you can quit your day job with confidence, because now you KNOW you can make money online. There is no question. You’ve already proven you’ve got the confidence and the skills.

The magic is this: Instead of sitting down at your computer and thinking, “Okay, I’ve got to make enough money to cover all my expenses this month,” you simply tell yourself you’re going to make enough to cover one little bill.

You’re no longer trying to create an entire business, you’re simply taking the first steps. You’re enjoying numerous successes along the way that fuel you to keep going.

Get that first bill paid and you’ll be on your way to achieving total financial freedom, one step at a time.

Do you have domain names sitting around idle? Maybe you bought them with the intention of doing something in particular, but you just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Here’s a cool idea: List them for sale on sedo.com and then forget about them until one of two things happen…

You decide to use them or…

… you get an email from Sedo from someone who is offering to buy one of your domain names.

You never know if or when this might happen, but why not at least give it a shot? One marketer I know of did this with his domains. Six months later, he got an email from Sedo saying someone was offering $100 for one of his domains. He wasn’t interested in taking such a low offer, so he countered with $2,000 just to see what would happen.

The buyer countered with $300, he countered with $1800, and several emails and counteroffers later he sold it for $950. Not bad for a $9 investment. Sedo took a cut and he got the rest.

And while he did have plans for that domain name, he figures he can just choose a different but similar name when the time comes – no big deal.

There’s no guarantee you’ll sell your domains this way, or that if you do, you’ll make a lot of money. But as you know, domains have sometimes sold for ridiculous amounts. There’s no harm or fee for listing your domains, so why not give it a shot and see what happens? You’ve got nothing to lose and potentially a nice fat return for trying it.

Plus, if you’re creative and do some market research on hot topics and keywords, you could potentially start registering new and marketable domains that have a high chance of selling when you list them in a domain marketplace like Sedo, and turn this strategy into a full-time business. Some people are already doing this now… Why not you too?

Wouldn’t it be terrific if you could go from being Mr./Ms. Marketing Nobody to immediate “guru” status overnight? You’d enjoy instant authority in your niche and a high level of credibility with your potential customers as well as your potential JV partners. People would trust your opinion. You’d be quoted in blog posts and asked to do guest posts…

You could get interviewed. You could join lucrative joint ventures and mastermind groups. Your social media accounts would become magnets to followers and fans. Customers’ sales resistance would go down and your sales would go up, and so forth.

Becoming an ‘overnight’ authority in your niche shaves a few years off of your online marketing career path. You’re taking a quantum leap from being an unknown to being – well, KNOWN in your niche. And you receive all the benefits a known expert in your field gets, only without the years of work.

Sounds pretty good, don’t you think? Yeah, it’s cheating, but it’s not. Who ever said you have to take years and years to accomplish what can be done in a few days or weeks?

Here are 5 ways to do it:

1. Interview others. Oprah wasn’t an expert, she interviewed experts. And by doing so, she became associated with every expert she interviewed. In your case, you’ll want to go much more narrow and deep than Oprah, choosing your targeted niche carefully and then interviewing anyone and everyone in that single niche.

2. Buy named rights products and sell them. These are products sold by big name marketers that allow you to keep their name on the product when you sell it. You’re basically co-featuring with an established expert. At the bottom of the salesletter you can write something like, “From the desk of ‘your name’ and ‘guru’s name.’ Buyers will assume you have partnered with the guru in putting this product out. These types of resale rights generally aren’t cheap, but that plays in your favor as well, since it greatly limits any competition.

3. Create a product yourself, then let a big name marketer be the co-author and co-owner. This heightens your profile and generally brings in a lot of sales from that marketer’s list, as well as from affiliates who promote for that marketer.

4. Write/edit a book full of other people’s articles. Choose a topic and then find articles written by the experts on this topic. Ask their permission to place their articles in your book, giving them full credit and links back to their website. You do the editing, write the introduction, and also add notes at the beginning and end of each article if you choose. But the experts are still doing all the heavy lifting, while you get to associate your name with theirs. In fact, it looks like a collaboration between you and all these big names, with YOUR name on the front cover.

5. Do all 4, along with guest blogging and being active in social media. All of a sudden people will say that they see and hear you everywhere.

Some people take a lifetime to go from the mail room to the boardroom of a company. But this is your business, and YOU make the rules. Don’t wait years to become an expert in your niche – decide to become one today.

Getting traffic isn’t rocket science – it’s actually pretty easy when you know a few of the best tricks pro-bloggers are using every day to get more traffic to their blogs.

Create an not-so-secret inner circle of your best buddies.

Put together a list of your very best and most influential readers. These are the ones who regularly interact with you or post replies to your posts, share your posts with their followers, send you articles, buy your products and so forth.

Put these folks on your special inner circle list, and email them to let them know of their newly attained status. Let them know the benefits – they’ll get to see your posts before the general public and they’ll be apprised of any new offerings, updates and ideas before anyone else.

Solicit their feedback on your posts. This creates a sense of ownership for them and increases the odds they will go out of their way to share your content with their followers. Give them special benefits to thank them for their help, and offer to help them in return.

Make it brain dead easy to share your content.

If content is too difficult to share, your readers and inner circle are less likely to share it. So add the appropriate social sharing buttons for sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Write in-depth content that makes your readers look sexy-smart.

Here’s a little secret: People like to look super smart to their readers and friends. Okay, so maybe it’s not a secret. But the fact is, in-depth articles tend to get shared more because the people sharing them want their friends to think they read in-depth articles. Plus, when someone new lands on your in-depth article, they are more likely to subscribe to get even more info than if they land on a simple fluff piece.

Another secret: Posts with images, lists and videos will attract over 5 times more links than posts containing only plain text. So don’t stop at just the words – add things like images and graphs to make it share-worthy.

Cheat. Just a little.

This isn’t really cheating, but it sure feels like it. Look at your old content and find the pieces that are still relevant, whether they were written 3 months ago or a year ago. Now share them again via social media. This way you get new traffic without having to write new content – how awesome is that?

Write a mini-sales letter to promote each blog post.

Traditionally, when a blogger writes a new post she sends out the title and first paragraph to her list with an invite to click the link and read the rest. But the real meat of a blog post isn’t in that intro paragraph, which is why this method isn’t worth beans.

Instead, write a mini sales letter that gets the email reader curious and excited to know more. This doesn’t have to be long; 50 -100 of the right words is perfect. Build curiosity and show them what the big benefits / takeaways of reading your article will be, and your click-through rates could double if not triple.

That’s it – 5 simple tips to increase your blog traffic. Pick out your favorite and try it right now, then make a note to use the other 4 within the next 7 days and you’ll begin to see a real boost in your traffic within the month.

One of the toughest things about blogging is the self-imposed pressure to always have a terrific, earth-shattering, life changing blog post that makes people catch fire reading it.

You know what I mean. You’ve got that little voice whispering in your ear that if your posts don’t measure up to some impossibly high standard you’ve set, then all is lost and the world will know that you’re a fraud.

The good news is, it simply isn’t true. You don’t need every post to be a 2,000 word masterpiece or the final definitive word on your topic. Instead, all you need is content that gives your readers what they want. That’s it. Your readers want to know the latest news or the best methods? Then that’s what you give them. Forget trying to be a great writer and instead focus on being your readers’ ‘friend in the business’ and you’ll be an AMAZING blogger.

Here are 10.5 more tips to take some of the blogging pressure off of you and put the fun back into blogging:

Make yourself a posting schedule and then stick to it as regularly as you brush your teeth. Surprisingly, having a blogging schedule actually makes it easier for you to blog. It provides soft deadlines that keep you motivated to sit down and write. You won’t be able to put off your blogging if your readers expect a new post every Tuesday and Friday, and you know it.

Keep a running list of blogging ideas. Use a program like Evernote to keep track of your ideas and the resources you can draw from when writing your posts.

Forget being totally original. Seriously. Every idea is built upon or inspired by someone else’s idea. So give credit where credit is due, provide your own unique twist or take on the subject and relax – no one expects you to reinvent anything.

Re-purpose your content and other people’s content, too. Curate, list, pull bits and pieces from here and there – it’s all good. Just give credit to everyone you sourced from. And go back to your own content and see if you can’t update it, re-purpose it, mix it up or whatever. Odds are if you’ve been blogging for more than a year then you’ve got a small goldmine of content you can mine to create new content.

Be more of a reporter and less of an expert. Being the go-to expert in your niche is difficult, especially when you’re new to blogging. The pressure can become so unbearable that you cease to write, afraid you’ll pen something that will make you look foolish in your readers’ eyes.

But if you place your focus on reporting instead of being the absolute authority, magic will happen. You’ll feel freer to express your own opinions, you’ll find it’s far easier to write posts, and because you are referencing other authorities and experts in your niche, you become your own authority to your readers.

Mix up your content. Are you only writing blog posts? Then add videos. Are you only podcasting? Then write blog posts. If you limit yourself to one media, you’re also limiting the number of people who will engage in and benefit from your content.

Short is great. So is long. There was a time when it was suggested (actually, I saw this again quite recently) that no post should be under 2,000 words, and all posts should take days to write and be the absolute authority on whatever you’re writing about.

Hogwash. I briefly mentioned this in the beginning – write as much as you need to. If you can cover your topic in 200 words, DO IT. If it takes 2,000 words, then just make sure you’re holding your readers’ attention for the ENTIRE 2,000.

This reminds me of the “short sales letter vs long sales letter” debate. It’s a stupid, ridiculous debate, and here’s why: A blog post or a sales letter should be exactly as long as it needs to be and no longer. Period.

Stop leaving terrific blog comments on other people’s blogs. Seriously. You just read a post on a high traffic blog and you’ve got your own opinion or insight you want to share that you’re sure will help that blog’s readers.

Don’t do it. Instead, create your own post on your own blog and link back to the original blog. Then let the original blog know that you mentioned and linked to them in your post. This way your blog has more great content and who knows? You might get a backlink from the blog you referenced.

Use images. Every. Time. Maybe more than once, too. It’s irrefutable that images work at grabbing attention, so make sure that every post you make has at least one image. And be sure to place a caption under the image, because people are far more likely to read the image caption than anything else on the page (other than the headline, of course.)

Publish your articles on other sites. Sites like LinkedIn, The Huffington Post and many, many others allow content to be republished on their sites as long as it fits their guidelines. This is a terrific way to pick up new subscribers by posting a link back to your own profile or blog.

And what about Google’s duplicate content penalty? The duplicate content penalty doesn’t apply to syndication or curation. If it did, you’d never see a major news site appear in the top of the search results because they all subscribe to services that helps them get duplicate content, such as the Associated Press. And bloggers who frequently syndicate their content to other quality sites report that they receive no penalties what-so-ever.

10.5. Ask for the subscribe. Ask. And ask. But don’t be obnoxious. You wrote a post on getting traffic, and you’ve got a free report on even more ways to get traffic? Ask them to subscribe right there at the end of your post. “To get 27 more ways to get targeted, free traffic with the push of a button, simply tell me where to send the report and it’s yours.”

If you’ve been having trouble blogging on a regular basis, hopefully reading this has made you realize that blogging doesn’t need to be stressful. The rules are not as rigid and some would have you believe, and the most important thing of all is to simply give your readers what they want and lots of it, in whatever form it might take.