 Parrot Pinata Bird Toys - Large Balls & Stars Chew Toy Shredder Palm Leave Tear US $8.50 
|
 Parrot Toy Planet Pleasures Bird Swing Medium Toys US $17.99
|
As a blog owner or writer you often are very comfortable working to understand your readers and their needs and wants. You work hard to produce great content that provides true value to your readers and keeps them coming back for more. You are following a popular formula that says "I'll give my readers great content and they will see how valuable it is then they will purchase my products because I've built a high level of trust."
This is all well and good - but we made one big mistake following this formula that we'd like to help you avoid. Traffic to your blog and revenue from your products are not entirely connected. In-fact you can have thousands of page views each day and sell very little. Conversely you can have only a few hundred page views each day and be very happy with your income. Why? well there are two key reasons. The "quality" of your traffic and the biggest one - the ability for your blog to convert traffic into action.
Let's look briefly at the quality of your traffic. When creating your blog posts you may be targeting specific keywords - likely "long-tail" keywords. Depending on how your blog ranks for these keywords you'll either attract high quality or low-quality traffic. Think of quality in terms of "qualified" traffic - your visitors have an interest in the content you provide on your blog. You may be attracting visitors with your keywords that are not necessarily qualified and quickly leave your site.
How do you know if the traffic you are getting is "qualified" - focus on two metrics - the time they spend on your blog and your blog's "bounce rate". These are two metrics you can find if you use Google Analytics to track the performance of your site (by the way - if you don't then you should search "Google Analytics" and sign-up for the service right after you get done reading this article). If the time your visitors spend on your blog is short - and your bounce rate is high then your traffic is not made-up of quality, qualified visitors.
The second reason why you are not making as much money as you'd like is because you are not focusing on converting your blog readers. By converting we again mean moving them from passively consuming your content to taking some form of action. These actions can consist of:
1. Signing-up for your e-mail list
2. Leaving a comment on a blog post
3. Sharing your content via social media
4. Purchasing one of your products
The big mistake we made was not working hard to make sure our readers became actively involved in our blog by "converting" them to take action. We thought providing great content would be enough - we were wrong. Content is vital for gaining quality traffic but this is only part of the story. Moving readers to do something is critical.
So, how did we fix the mistake?
Improved ease-of-use. We worked hard to make taking action easy. From placing a sign-up form for our blog's e-mail list on the front page to including links to social media under each post we tried to make taking action a natural part of visiting the blog.
Lead by example. Since we were encouraging our readers to share content via social media we became much more active using Twitter and Facebook for our blogs. We wanted to make social media a natural part of interacting with our blog.
Provided rewards - Improved bonuses for products, provided better "bribes" for e-mail list sign-up. Anything within reason to encourage interaction and action on our blog.
Asked our readers - As the saying goes, if you don't ask you don't get. So we asked our readers to sign-up for our e-mail list and asked them to share our content via social media. Of course we also asked them to purchase our products.
Got a little bit "in their face" - For a long time we avoided tools like pop-ups that encourage e-mail sign-ups. But after reading reviews and talking to other bloggers we decided to give these tools a try. They do work to increase e-mail list sign-ups without too much negative impact.
The results of our changes? We definitely saw our conversion rate increase significantly. And also our income from the blog. But most importantly we saw more participation on the part of our readers. If we can build-up the level of trust to the point where readers participate then we are definitely on the right track for long=term success.
So what can you do?
A. Don't lose your focus on understanding your readers and producing great quality content. Doing this successfully is the new ticket to entry as a successful blogger.
B. Evaluate the "quality" of your visitors by checking your Google Analytics time on the site and bounce-rate metrics.
C. Revise your keyword strategies and / or content if the quality of your traffic is not where you want it to be - remember you need qualified readers as the foundation for your blogging business.
D. Make it easy for your readers to interact with your blog by adding convenient ways to sign-up for your e-mail list, leave comments, and share your content via social media.
E. Ask your readers for their help - encourage them to leave comments and to share your content. And of course - ask your readers for an order for one of your great products or services.
So now you have some ideas of how you can avoid a big mistake we made - and in-fact many bloggers make. Not working to improve conversion of readers visiting their blogs. Conversion is vital for income and income is vital for your success.
Want to learn more about marketing your blog? Visit http://blogmarketingbasics.com We offer free professional quality blogging tutorials that will help you get your blog started right. Be sure to sign-up for our blog marketing newsletter to get regular tips and information to help you build your blogging business.
Whats On My YouTube Today?
Pooping Dog Barbie FAIL Toys Doll Funny Video Review Video Michael Mozart of JeepersMedia
Here Are A Few Items From Amazon You Might Be Interested In.
| Account limit of 2212 requests per hour exceeded. |
Items recently purchased on this site:
Thanks for visiting!
Tags: news, del.icio.us, bookmark, bookmarks, map