I have been blogging about blogging in over 2 years. I am the kind of person who can concentrate on one thing in a long time, and I have done that. If I still thought that I could give you any knowledge I would. I am empty at the moment.

I know I probably are going to regret this, but I started out to harsh. I have blogged a lot lately (or not so lately.) I need a break. A big break.

I’m not done with blogging, far from.. I love blogging, blogging is what keeps me up, it’s dying funny, all the networking and stuff. It’s great.

I just don’t see the potential in this blog anymore, do you?

I really want to thank everyone who have supported me, in building this blog and the persons who have helped a lot in the good and the bad times.

These names include Jordan Cooper, Rob Rammuny (robsfriedchickentips.com (internal joke)), Derek Jensen, Chris Brogan (awesome tutor), Henrik Blunck, Nicholas Cardot, Tee Riddle, Joe Boyle(pikachu!), Keith Bloemendaal, Michael Stenger, Eren McKay(boots? what?), Andrew Kolyvas, Suzanne Vara.

And lots more. These person have helped me being where I am now, I am exceptionally happy for all the help you guys have done. I really wouldn’t be here without, your advice, your humor, your everything. Your support. Everything thank you!

I have had fun with you guess, and I still want to be in touch with all of you, even though I am not gonna be in the same niche as many of you are.. Though I will still be blogging. That’s the point. I will still be here.

I also want to blog about blogging. But just not on this blog, not on any specific blog. I will be blogging everywhere, just in a more minimal way.. You will eventually see my name pop-up here and there..

I doubt this decision of mine, but I still can feel that it is the right thing to do.

You have been a beautiful audience. Beautiful I tell you, really.. Thanks for all the love and support, I hope that I have helped all of you a lot, and that if you have anything to ask me about, then ask me. I will still be as friendly as I were before and I don’t bite.

I am ready to move on. I will still as I have stated before, be active. I will be more active in the comments area of all blogs, because I will have the energy. I want to connect with all of you.

The reasons isn’t you, it is a mixed thing between the time it takes to find new topics, to be unique in this niche, every marketing technique is already written about, and then there’s school. The stuff in school is getting serious now, I just got the best grade in a presentation. It was heavy work, definitely.

I want to thank everyone. Don’t make up a passion, it will not be worthwhile. Follow your heart.

So this will probably be my last DaneBlogger post. See you all soon. Somewhere else!

Did you know that Darren Rowse’s main blog isn’t ProBlogger it is his Digital Photography School that is. The thing is I think it is harder to sell a product to a person who is a marketer or at least knows a bit about marketing.

So if Darren Rowse isn’t making the majority of his money on ProBlogger do you think that you would that? Do you think that you will make more money writing about blogging, or just writing about a passion of your’s? There is so many bloggers writing about blogging, and when they start they literally doesn’t know a sh*t about blogging. They make their experience there.

If you know the stuff about blogging and have earned some(a lot of) money on it, you know how to start off a new blog and how to make money from blogging, but if you haven’t you should keep away from the niche.

So when you just start blogging you should write about something new, or something that is not already being overused. You also need to educate on what you know, not educate on what you learn. You need to know your stuff, to be able to learn other people the stuff.

It is easier to sell stuff to people who doesn’t know why you have a long sales page and stuff like that. So if your niche still is in technical developing, like people aren’t using Twitter, they aren’t using Facebook, you will have to find your readers somewhere else, and while still keep building content.

So when the people comes on all the social networks you are one of the leading experts in your field. Of course what I would do is maybe find a niche that is not overdominated but they also need to know a bit about the Internet, cause that’s a good way to build readers and of course your blog is on the Internet.

You would also like to have a niche where you can sell stuff. If people aren’t used to buy stuff, in your niche, they will probably not buy from you because they are used to get everything in the niche for free.

Of course you can change that, but it takes time to make people wanting to buy your products, you really need a lot of trust.

Though everything takes time. You just need to think hard about what niche you are going into.

Consider niche vs. time vs. passion.

Well of course I started off in school, last two hours was gymnastic, then I had to bicycle home, around 5 kilometers, then a shower. Then I could start being productive.

First I started with a few tweets, then I removed some stuff from my primary computer to my laptop (music etc.). After that I watched some television, there’s a series that I follow, normally I don’t watch that much television, but well I do watch a few series.

After the tv series, I tweeted some more. And just promoting my blog, and now I sit here writing.

What I Should Have Done

I know I could have done more stuff and been more productive. What I could have done, was:

1. Skipped the television show
2. Tweeted more, than these few tweets
3. Promoted some more
4. Written more than one blog post
5. Interacted with more people

I chose to priority in a more fun way, watching the series, written only this blog post. I could have done much more. What I’m trying to tell you is that you should organize your time.

Set up a schedule, for every day. In a day when you have nothing to do, just get some sleep and get up early and work. Work on your blog, latest project or something like that.

I like to have a clean desk when I’m working, so I usually always have a clean desk. It just gives me more space and room for thinking.

So when I make sure everything is clean, I can work and I want to work. I hear music and then I’m productive. So when you are having a rainy day, do something, don’t just stand there and do nothing, get something out of the day.

This is a blog post on how to stand out from the crowd. And you will look different from the other bloggers/marketers in your niche. In this case difference is good. So when you stand out from the crowd you are circled, when you follow the stream of marketers/bloggers you are squared.

It’s all about being circled.

1. Start a Blog

If you are in a offline or online business and your business do not have a blog, you should start on now. IMO starting a blog is probably the main marketing you should do online. If you want to be very social (ie. use social media) you have to have a central location to send people to, with all your content.

What blog platform?

2. Develop an Outstanding Brand

Branding is huge. My brand is DaneBlogger, start your own brand. Darren Rowse’s brand is ProBlogger. Almost every successful Internet marketer is having a brand, lots of people doesn’t think that a brand is needed. You can definitely live without a brand. But, a brand is easier to remember than, a name.

People tend to call me Dane, as of DaneBlogger.. It’s like my nickname, just bear in mind that my name is Mikkel Juhl, but if you like, just call me Dane, because that’s like my nickname.

3. Use E-mail Marketing to Stay in Front

Email Marketing ins’t dead, far from, it will give you an edge over the competition if it’s done right. You can see some stuff about email marketing at this blog.

4. Network With Your Customers

Be on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, wherever your customers are located, be there interact, build a strong bound to them. They liked to be interacted with.. Anyway, here’s how to dominate your niche using Twitter. Be social, and whenever there’s coming a new social media up, join and see if it has a future, it may have.

5. Give Value. Receive Second

(This is probably one of the best advises I have for you)

You should really expect nothing in return, and just give them value first, regardless of whether they will buy your products or not.

Maybe start with a free product and then when they’ve read the awesome product you will be able to sell.

6. Get Your Own Theme, or A Premium Theme

This is relatively important. If you buy a premium theme of WordPress, you will be seen as serious. Because you want to pay for your blog. If you get you own design, you will be able to build a brand from that theme. The theme can follow you everywhere.

Hope you enjoyed todays blog post.

Greetings, my name is Mikel King and I was asked by Mikkel to fill in this week as a guest blogger. I am here not to tell you how to write great or even passable content. There are already numerous posts available on this site to help guide you in that effort. I am going to take slightly different tact and show you two tools that will hopefully help you capture your thoughts and free your mind to produce the best content you are capable of. My feeling is that having the right tools to capture your ideas on paper so to speak, the easier it is to organize them into a content worth publishing.

The first tool I would like to briefly about the iPhone App from WordPress which is great for the blogger on the go. Fortunately this application works equally well on the both the iPhone, iPodTouch and if you are so blessed there is an update already available for the iPad as well. What makes the app useful is that it allows you to quickly capture your ideas and save them to your site for future development. Tru you can actually write and publish an article with this app. However, I personally only use the iPhone app for jotting down notes that I wish to expand on later. I’ve never written a complete post soup
to nuts with the app, because unfortunately for me I only connect with the app from my ipt. The iPodtTouch is somewhat limited in comparison to the iPhone because it lacks the some essentials that the mobile blogger can not live without. These being chiefly a camera and cell service.

Limitations aside the WordPress iPhone app is invaluable for maintaining a direct connection to your blog which allows you to effectively moderate your comment stream. This means that you have the ability to approve, reject and respond to comments left on your blog in a timely fashion from almost anywhere. Being a responsive to your reader base is extremely important to growing your reader base a contributing factor of why so many bloggers are on twitter.

This of course leads me to the second application that I personally find absolutely indispensable and that is the Firefox add-on ScribeFire. As I mentioned it is an add-on to the Firefox web browser that enables you to enter a split screen view of a particular site at the same time as the blog editor. The value of this tool becomes immediately apparent when you have to insert a URL into your blog. With SF you can view the site you are referencing in the top half of the browser ensuring that you have the correct URL. This is extremely handy if you are culling a list of URLs that you wish to comment about. Gone are the days of flipping back and forth between different browser windows or tabs and then returning to your blog page to paste in bits that you need.

In addition ScribeFire makes it trivial to link in rich content from other sources like YouTube, Flickr, Zemanta or other image source repositories like Twitpic. You can even upload images from your hard disk directly into the system if your account has the appropriate permission.

The ScribeFire editor includes all of the standard buttons you are accustom to in the WordPress web gui based editor. For instance if you wished to change the color of the font to emphasize a particular phrase you would just click the font color button.

Suppose you you would like to change the the formatting from left justified to right or centered. Obviously there is is another simple button to access these options. The following figure give you and idea of the options.

While ScribeFire has a multitude of easily accessed features they are not the focus of this article. I really just wanted to impress upon you how easy it is to perform common blogging tasks with these tools. They will help you concentrate on producing higher quality content by enabling you to craft your blog more efficiently. By giving your blog the unfettered creativity it deserves, your content will be king. And don’t you want your kingdom to reign long and true?

Now, I could end the post at that… but somehow I don’t think Mikkel would publish it, would he?! Haha, nope… I am going to explain what a mentor is, how they can help and possibly even give you some examples of who mentors can be.

What is a Mentor?

“A wise and trusted counsellor or teacher”

Wiktionary.org

“Someone who guides another through a process”

Joe Boyle

“Someone that gives guidance, a teacher.”

Keith Bloemendaal

Right, so a mentor is somebody that you can talk to and learn from… that makes sense!

My personal definition of a mentor is:

“Somebody that you can turn to for advice and who lets you learn from their mistakes and successes”

Shane Hudson

Now we know what a mentor is…

How can I learn from a Mentor?

If you are planning to copy everything they do… STOP! Your mentors will have had a lot of experience in certain areas, learn from their mistakes and successes. Simple as that. If they did something wrong (though I am sure as mentors they would be clever enough to know to learn from their own mistakes!) then you should figure out why they did it, what went wrong and how you can prevent yourself from being in the same boat.

You can also do the same to their successes, what did they do right? How can you replicate, but not copy, their success?

Who can be my Mentor?

Well, in theory… everyone. Of course, some people may not be as good as others at teaching and giving advice but that does not mean their advice is not worth listening to! In fact, I do not believe that the person you think of as a mentor even has to know who you are!

What you may not realise is that you almost certainly already have many mentors! Think: parents, family, friends, teachers, authors, celebrities.

Although I do not recommend doing everything your favourite celebrities are doing (maybe I just don’t like fashion!) there can be things you can learn from them. It is also a good idea to have mentors in completely different areas to you, this way you do not just copy them!

My own mentors include (but are not limited to): my parents, friends, family, teachers, Roland Millward, Paul Sabaj, Lindsay Branscombe, Sir Richard Branson (though he stole my childhood dreams.. but that’s another story, haha!), Gary Vaynerchuk and indeed… every person I have learned a thing from.

The mentors that I have listed I have spoken to the majority of them before (though not met in person!), this does not have to be true. Most people that you are not able to speak to (eg. celebrities and historic people) usually have a lot written about them. Read some (auto)biographies, you can learn a lot from them!

Who are your Mentors?

Now you know mine, who are your mentors?

New bloggers struggle to get readership as much as intermediate or even long standing bloggers. Growth is a big part of your blog as lead generation and finding new people to do something not only pays the bills, it also intensifies your passion for blogging. I know that there are those out there that believe that they would have the same passion for blogging if they were not making a dime or of they were making millions. Ok, I trust you but if the readership is down, sales are down – ultimately the blog goes down. It is a cycle that we do not like to think about but encompassed in passion is drive and when there is no drive, the passion is lost and the preverbal wall is hit and little by little the blog articles decrease until one day you realize it has been a month and nothing has been posted.

Bloggers alike will agree that growing your blog never stops. Sure, you may be happy with your 200 or even 2000 or so readers each day as you have probably connected with each one of them in one way or another and built an online community around your blog. But what if you could reach 25 or 50 new readers each day and you can interact with them and then their friends and their friends. If you are a follow the numbers person this is music to your ears as watching the traffic numbers increase is really something pretty to look at. How do you grow your blog, isn’t just writing great content and pushing it out to your regulars enough?

10 Tips to Attract New Readers to Your Blog

1. Social Networking Sites

The ones that come to mind are Twitter and Facebook. You are more than likely already doing this. What about LinkedIn and industry niche platforms? LinkedIn is for job seekers right? Think again. It is a business platform where you connect and share information with others in groups and by answering questions. People will buy from people they know – and read blogs of people they know.

2. Webinars

Webinars that you tune into live almost always have a hashtag to follow on Twitter. You are exposed to others who share your interest of the webinar subject and can connect with new people by sharing thoughts about the webinar on Twitter. Connecting with people is exposing yourself to them and building a relationship.

3. Forums

Oh how I love Forums. American Express Open Forum, Third Tribe Marketing, LinkedIn Groups. Forums pack the most punch when it comes to meeting, engaging and helping others. Talking with people and helping them solve a problem is not only exposing your knowledge, willingness to help another but having your signature line have your company name, blog link and possibly an email address, is that inviting subtleness that lets them know that you have a blog and also that you are open to receive communication outside the forum.

4. Monitor Trends

Monitoring trends and getting your article up before everyone else is no easy task however, if you are on top of what is going on and keep a close eye the just when the trend starts or right after it peaks, you can get great exposure to the article and your blog. Follow Twitter trends directly from your twitter page or a freehandly tool is Trendistic. Remember, Google loves new, fresh content.

5. Read and Comment on Blogs

This is not just the a-listers. Find up and comers and read and and comment. They will be very appreciative and return the favor. They will relate to you well as you share a common thread – both up and comers and searching for ways to get new traffic. Friends read friends.

6. Read Other Commenter Blogs

Ever see the same person over and over commenting on a blog but you never really paid much mind to see if they have a blog? Find it! If they are loyal to the blog that you both are reading and commenting on, they very possibly will be loyal to those that read and comment on theirs.

7. Exceptional Content

Do you homework and write great content … content that targets keywords and also asks people do do something. The content can be the best in the world however if no -one is reading it then it is pointless especially if it does not drive it back to providing value for your business. Yes, it’s about the readers but giving them the information and them clicking off to go on to somewhere else is not providing any value to your business. Value is determined by your business strategy and what you want out of it. Are you solely looking to build your online community? Are you looking to attract new customers, new people to comment on the blog? Determine why you are blogging and then write with that in mind.

8. Interests

You have other other interests outside of work right? Well, so does everyone else. You never know who may meet that could become a customer from a shared love of futbol. It is always very easy to find fans of teams that we love and come together as one but yet when it comes to business, it seems as if we lose our ability to connect easily and freely.

9. Local Community

There is a world on the other side of the computer that is waiting for you to emerge. Going to meet-ups, networking events, sporting events is another way to meet new people and get exposure to your blog. People will be curious to see what this blog is all about especially if they are a blogger. Competition is high to see if your blog matches up to theirs.

10. Article Marketing

Ezines, GoArticles are two very popular sites that you post your articles to with the understanding that the articles may be and most likely will be republished. The articles are required to be republished “as is” with your bio paragraph as well copyright information.

There are many ways to grow your blog and increase readership. These have proven to be effective for me. The best advice to grow your blog is to first to identify why you want to grow your readership. While this may seem like it is obvious to increase sales or get new clients, the articles are not always written with this in mind. An article that is a list of how to or ways, etc. needs to have enough usable information for the reader to go and put it into motion. If it works for them, they become a loyalist. An article with an affiliate link needs to entice the reader enough that they have to click the link. Growing your blog is a long term strategy as it involves time and a whole lot of commitment. People want to connect with the author and learn more about them and know that they really care about their readers by interacting with them. We know that people love to share any mentions of themselves and who they are friends with. Be that person.

What have you done to grow your blog? What has worked and not worked for you?

Suzanne is the founder of Kherize5.com, an advertising and social media marketing agency for small businesses and publisher of a blog that provides advertising and marketing tips.

We are talking about the importance of having your own domain names. As a special bonus video I show how you can register a domain name, at GoDaddy.

Take it easy, hope you enjoy it.

How to Decide Your Domain’s Name

Bonus Video Tutorial

What you want to do here, is to register a “secondary” domain. Let’s say you want the domain “ihaveahorse.com” – then I would recommend you to register “ihaveahorse.net” here. And then buy your primary domain later (instructions later on)

How to Get a Webhost for Your New Domain

When you register a domain name on GoDaddy, you will not instantly be able to blog. You need a host. A host is the place where the blog platform will be, so it is important that you choose a host which is reliable and one you trust.

I use on several domains a host called “Bluehost”, I almost never experienced any downtime with Bluehost. They are perfect for blog hosting.

So if you registered the so called “ihaveahorse.net” domain from GoDaddy, then you should go to Bluehost now.

Click on the “Sign Up Now” button and then type “ihaveahorse”(your primary domain) and then choose .com.

That would be your primary domain. Then fill every field, go to payment. And then you are ready to host your own domain. When you have your host, your primary domain and your secondary domain, you’re ready to start your blog.

We’ll follow up on that in the next video.

Resources

Google Keyword Tool

Buy the primary domain and host: Bluehost

Buy the secondary domain: GoDaddy

We’ll keep in touch!

However, out of all these blogs, how many actually succeed? Well, not too many sadly. You by now know all the great benefits of blogging. It’s blatantly obvious what is possible. With all that is possible though, too many get caught in one of the biggest mistakes of them all:

Being Boring!

I don’t know how many blogs I come across every single day that are just lifeless and make you really scratch your head. They’re just like everyone else. Their design is like everyone else. Their content is just like everyone else. Sure, you may think that your blog is great but if it really isn’t after analyzing your competition, exactly what are you trying to do?

One of the biggest things you can do to set your blog apart from the rest is really bring something unique to the table. We’re not talking about content people have never read before on a concept that’s never been thought of.

See that plain design? Get rid of it. Read those, in all reality, boring posts now from a different perspective? Become a better writer. You see, the bloggers that tend to do the best, are those who are unique. They’re different but at the end of the day, they’re pumping out content just like everyone else.
The difference? They add their own personality and flair and really stack the value. Their blog isn’t a huge turn-off and even if some are basic, they’ve done something decent to them.

Over 133 million blogs…just think about that number for a second. Are you REALLY bringing something different to the table or are you just lying to yourself? Either way, you’ve got two options: Either on the list or crumbled up and thrown in the trash can.

What things are you doing differently with your blog and what, in your opinion, makes you unique from others?

Mike Stenger is a social media consultant with a strong passion of business and all things Internet. You can find Mike at his blog where he talks about success, business and social media strategies. You can also follow Mike on Twitter

I also find it easier to promote good content, because it is something I know that other people will like. So if I have an article, which I in particular doesn’t like that much, I don’t promote it that much, if I even promote it.

So when you have enough content (at least 20 articles) and good content you can start promoting your blog like hell. Of course you should promote the blog in its early days, though I think that you should wait a bit, till you have lots of pillar articles(how to write good content link) to serve your readers with. I would wait just a bit till I start promoting the blog off like crazy.

It’s so Hard to Promote My Content

Okay? You think so? Then I really don’t think that this is a place for you. You know, before the web 2.0, it was much harder.

Blog promotion is now just something you do 10 minutes each day, tweet a couple of times, add it to Digg etc.

Before web2.0, you had to do link exchanges and then do some offline marketing, do you think that’s an easy way to promote a website? I wouldn’t recommend link exchanges, as they doesn’t give you anything at all.

The offline promotion is something you should keep doing though.

How to Promote Your Blog

There are lots of ways to promote your blog. Though there is 3 ways in general.

1. Buy traffic

I haven’t tried and I really don’t reckon that this is a good way to get traffic, because over 50% probably wouldn’t be quality traffic. It’s not good for blogs, though I think that if you need people to do a certain action, then it’d be good. (like subscribe to your email list and then offer them a free ebook.)

2. SEO

Optimize for Google, it takes some time, although it is worth it. Google can bring you in quite a lot of traffic, if the SEO is done right. You just need to consider whether you want to spend the time learning how to do a great job with your blog’s SEO (or whether you want to spend the money on a SEO expert, who probably will be overpaid, just saying)

3. Create Something That Gets Attention

This is stuff that goes viral, you will get traffic from SM(social media) sites, other blogs and stuff like that.

You can create a free report, free videos or something like that, they will be shared throughout cyberspace. Though this takes some time, and it isn’t bad to have some “contacts.”

What You Really Need

You need to establish relationships with your readers. If you get loyal readers, who trust you – they will promote your stuff. Fans will also promote your stuff.

I think the true key in our time, with the web 2.0, is that it is possible to run a two-way conversation. It helps us building a relationship with our readers, which is one of the most important things when blogging and tweeting – etc.