He aims . . . to please . . .

According to every movie and TV drama I’ve ever seen (and therefore a concrete fact) military snipers live via a morbid but awesome motto: “One shot – one kill.”

What does shooting people from great distances have to do with keeping my customers happy?

I’ll get there, but first let me tell you an almost unrelated story about really bad Chinese food and the crappy waiter who taught me a lesson.

So last Sunday, Amanda and I decided to to spend the day doing what any red-blooded Americans would: sleeping late, eating poorly and shopping. So at around 5:30pm we walk into a nearly deserted P.F. Chang’s for some Chinese food before heading out the mall.

Now I should point out that the mall closes at 7pm on Sundays, so I figured a half hour lunch would leave us plenty of time to shop and at first things seemed like a normal late lunch. We meet out waiter, we get our drinks, we order an appetizer. So far so good.

But that’s where the train left the tracks.

Our lettuce wrap appetizer comes out with only two lettuce leafs, both of which lasted about as long as two gimp zebra on the Serengeti. Then we were left sitting there, twiddling our thumbs and staring around the room. We sat there for over an hour and in that time we saw our waiter three times, had our drinks refilled once (not by our waiter) and were fed fried rice that was dripping oil.

That’s over one hour to get an appetizer we couldn’t eat and split one disgusting entree between two people.

Now this post isn’t here to complain about P.F. Chang’s shitty service – the real point is a valuable one and it’s this:

I was so mad and baffled by the crappy service that I was beyond the point where I wanted to complain. I was so irritated at the totally blown afternoon (we never made it to the mall) that having a manger say “I’m sorry, here’s a coupon” would’ve just pissed me off even more.

There wasn’t anything they could do to make it up to me except give me my hour back and pump my stomach.

So I used the only real power any customer has: I left no tip and I won’t be going back to P.F. Chang’s again.

So take away from my oily fried rice the same lesson you can take away from sniper school:

You have one shot.

We talk a lot about customer service and turning angry customers into happy customers, but  we rarely talk about the times when we don’t even the opportunity to talk to dissatisfied customers.

How many times do you think customers give us a second chance to wow them versus turning their backs and vowing never to buy from us again?

If my crappy lunch experience is any indication, probably a lot.

I could have given the manager at P.F. Chang’s an earful and ranted until they gave me a gift card for a free meal, but I don’t want anything else from them, free or not. So instead of an earful, I said nothing and they lost a customer, probably for life, with no chance to win me back.

You have to get it right the first time because you may not ever get a second chance.

It’s why I’m putting more energy into asking for customer feedback by giving away my products for free to make them better.

It’s why I don’t put a lot of time and effort into “handling” angry customers – because when your effort goes into not having angry customers in the first place, you can spend a lot less time and money on the back end.

It’s why customer experience should be a higher priority than customer service.

So what are you doing for your customers to make sure their experience with you doesn’t need a customer service rep?

“I do everything I’m supposed to do. I write blog posts, I’m on Twitter, I’m on Facebook, I’m doing everything I’m told, but I’m still not making any money online. What am I doing wrong?”

Sound familiar?

You’re busting your ass for a whole lot of nothing while other people online seem to breeze by with no effort at all and lots of cash in their pockets.

It’s a pain in the ass, sure, but let me ask you something:

Are you really worth paying for?

I’m not asking if you’re an expert in your field.

I’m asking if what you DO for your customers, your readers and followers right now is worth paying for.

If your answer is “maybe,” this is an uncomfortable question.

When your readers come to your blog, are they finding content that is ass-kickingly, unapologetically, ruthlessly helping them?

When they sign up for your newsletter are they getting newsletters that change their lives?

When you offer a product are you offering game-changing opportunities, or just the opportunity to give you their money?

You’re here to help people.

No matter what your business does. No matter how much money you’re after. No matter what your goals for the future.

You’re here to help people above all else.

I don’t want to get all kumbaya on you, but the number one killer of profits for hardworking online entrepreneurs is lip service instead of customer service.

These entrepreneurs work their asses off.

They eat, sleep and breathe their business.

They crank out blog posts, tweets, build links, but it’s all just going through the motions.

I call it “Everything But” marketing. The passion isn’t there — to them it’s still just math.

It’s facts and figures and numbers and everything but the people.

These are real people.

They’re your readers, your customers, your followers, they’re not numbers.

They’re coming to you for help and you’re in a position to give it to them.

You have to make that real.

No matter how small your operation might be, creating your own product is the best way to gain clients and customers, spread your message and, let’s face it – make money!

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There’s a vitriolic war raging about Twitter and what it means to have “true connection” through social media.

On one side are guys like Scott Stratten from @unmarketing who makes his no-automation-is-good-automation views pretty clear.

On the other side are scores of software applications promising rapid growth of followers and influence with hands-off automation.

Today, I want to tackle this head-on for two reasons:

1. I’ve got some vitriolic views of my own.
2. I think there is a level of Twitter automation that can maximize ROI and keep you from being a social media douchebag.

But first, another dose of social media cold water on the groin.

Let’s talk about this bullshit idea of “true connection” on Twitter.

And I say it’s bullshit for pretty obvious reasons – when you and I “connect” on Twitter, we’re not really connecting.

• You’re not at my house.
• We’re not laughing over a beer.
• We’re giving each other surface-level networking.

It’s a step below small talk.

And it’s great. It’s fabulous even! Don’t get me wrong, I love that we can do even that and I’ve written plenty about the power of Twitter and what a big fan I am of it for small and solo businesses.

But let’s be clear here, true connection this ain’t.

And when it comes to arguments against automation, the one I hear the most often is the “Cocktail Party” argument

If you wouldn’t do it face-to-face at a cocktail party, don’t do it on Twitter.

And I like that, it’s common sense.

You wouldn’t introduce yourself and pitch your shit all in the same breath, would you? (God, I hope you answered no.) So of course you wouldn’t do it on Twitter either.

I do, however, have one small problem here:

Twitter isn’t a cocktail party

There are some similar aspects inherent in the system, sure, but we can see pretty clearly that there are two very distinct sides to Twitter:

Side A is the side of connection – it’s the party-ish side where we all get to know each other.

Side B, on the other hand, is the broadcasting side – the microblogging side where your followers sign up to read what you have to say.

Now I admit…

Automating personal connection is totally lame – more to the point, it’s rude and insulting.

I don’t encourage anyone to use automation tools like auto-following or auto-direct messaging.

But…

Automating the broadcasting side of your Twitter feed is a different story.

Apps like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck that allow you to pre-schedule your tweets have been ripped to shreds by many of the “no automation” opponents, but let me ask you this:

What could be wrong with automating when you send out hand-picked links and blog posts?

If you were handing out flyers for a garage sale in your neighborhood, would you stand outside at 4am?

That would be dumb.

People out at 4am are few and far between and most of them probably aren’t interested in a garage sale.

If your audience isn’t there, why are you?

That’s where I think apps like Timely could become wickedly effective.

Timely analyzes your Twitter activity and schedules your tweets to be sent out when they will be most effective.

Whether this really works or not is up for debate and I’m testing it for myself as we speak, but I see nothing wrong with smart scheduling, in fact it’s just good practice for you and your audience.

I do want to point out though that automating the time that tweets are sent is good business, but automating what you tweet is not. Choosing links and blog posts you’ve never read to share at random shows a lack of respect for your followers.

So we start to see that to automate Twitter without being a total douche, you have to automate the areas in which automation is best for your audience.

Use apps like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Timely and WordPress plugins like Tweet Old Post to get your message out there when your followers are actually listening.

And when the time comes for you to be on Twitter – actually be on Twitter. Show up and be there to interact, talk and (yeah, yeah,yeah) connect.

Is it true automation?

No.

Is it 100% human connection?

No.

But I think it’s the middle ground where Twitter ROI becomes a real, tangified metric.

I’m continuing to test this approach now just to double check that my money’s where my mouth is, but I encourage you to do the same.

Don’t just blindly tweet.

Don’t just take advice from social media “experts” and assume it applies to you.

Test everything for yourself and find what connects (there’s that damn word again!) with your audience. Then you can say you know what’s really effective and why.

Oh, and while you’re at it, you should probably follow me on Twitter.

You know, as a test

How many times this year did you helped a potential customer without asking to be paid?

How many times did you type out long, thoughtful, helpful email conversations with your readers, answering their every question but never pointing them to your paid consulting page?

How many times have you shared a premium secret from your latest ebook with someone just because you didn’t have the guts to say, “It’s in my book, would you like to buy it?”

You’re getting totally screwed over right now.

And the worst part is that it’s by you.

I take that back.

The worst part is that two simple questions are screwing you over.

How you answer these two simple question is holding back your solo-business and keeping your profit levels low and your stress levels high.

Of course the good news is that, if you can reconcile your answers, you can reverse that trend and send your stress level down and profits up, up, up.

So what are the questions?

What do you do?

What does your business do?

Told you they were simple.

But how do you answer them?

Are your answers the same for both?

“I’m a blogger.”

“My business is a blog that helps readers solve X, Y and Z.”

If that sounds about right, you’re in trouble because I need to lay a little hard, entrepreneurial truth on ya:

What You Do And What Your Business Does Are Two Different Things

You help people.

You solve problems.

You kick serious ass for your customers.

That’s you.

Your business doesn’t help people.

Your business doesn’t solve problems.

Your business makes money.

Period.

It makes you cash so you can continue kicking serious ass without worrying about a day job.

But your business does not, and I repeat, does not do what you do.

The division of labor keeps everything running smoothly; you help, the business collects.

When you help and your business helps, there’s nobody left to collect. You forget to make money because you’re only in business to help.

Of course you also can’t pay the rent or keep your lights on so your help doesn’t reach very many people

Always Charge For A Premium

You know me, I’m a big believer in free. I love my blog because it let’s me give 90% of what I do away for free and still make money charging for the other 10%.

But my business plan works because I have a premium line that freebie seekers don’t get cross.

Don’t be afraid to charge for your service, it’s why you created your business in the first place.

You provide the awesome, the biz provides the cash.

It’s hard for a lot of “artistic types” to wrap our heads around, I know.

We like helping people, it makes us feel good to provide that answer that changes everything for someone who thought there was no hope.

But your customers don’t need a helpful martyr and if you really want to help a lot of people, you need the resources to reach them, which means money, Sonny.

This truly is a mindset that will make or break your business so If you’re having trouble with making a change and accepting payment for your services, I suggest you purchase one of my consulting calls so you and I can spend some quality 1-on-1 time working to change that mindset to one of more abundance.

The sooner you change this mindset and start embracing these two simple questions, the sooner you stop stressing over the cash flow in your business.

Yeah, you read it right.

I’m no longer an Aweber customer because they’re good at what they do.

Good — not great, not mind blowing, not write home to mom about — just good.

Are you losing customers, readers and subscribers because you’re good at what you do?

A Love Gone Cold

We’ve talked in the previous two posts about what it means to build a following within an established tribe or market.

But we haven’t touched on how to keep them coming back.

That’s where I think my experiences with Aweber are a perfect example of how real innovation can keep your tribe hungry for more and fiercely brand loyal.

And how a lack of it loses customers.

And let me be clear: I’m not here to bash Aweber, I’ve never had a problem with them.

I’ve been with Aweber for 3 years or so and I’ve been content every day of that time, but they haven’t wowed me once in those 3 years.

After years of same-old-same-old, our relationship as customer and provider felt stale and I started to wonder what else was out there.

Innovate or Die

As an audience, we’re intrigued by novelty sometimes and clever is always an appealing way to waste 5 minutes, but for true staying power we want to move forward as a tribe.

We don’t just want new, we want better.

If you can’t provide us a steady stream of those things, we’re not interested in you as a contributor.

Just think of all the me-too bloggers out there pumping out content that is neither new, nor innovative, nor unique.

It’s something they read out of a book, not knowledge hard-won. They repeat and regurgitate and wonder why no one shows up to read their latest post.

When done right,  innovation is a sign of caring for your tribe and your worthiness to be a leader in it.

You provide for your tribe’s ever-changing needs.

You prune away the old and ineffective.

You streamline constantly to ensure that the tribe’s experience with you is ever improving.

Being Good Isn’t Good Enough

I know some of you think it’s weird that I would walk away from a service provider that had done their job well. But being good isn’t good enough anymore.

There are plenty of competitors out there that are good.

In fact, most of your competitors are good at what they do — it’s why they’re still competitors.

Aweber competes with Constant Contact, iContact, Blue Sky Factory and Mail Chimp just to name the big players, and everybody is “good”.

But what I want, and what your customers want is WOW!

I switched my newsletter over to MailChimp and they haven’t wowed me yet either, but I’m willing to give them the chance and let them be $20 a month cheaper while they try.

And believe me when I tell you that your customers are making the same kind of decisions every day.

So it’s now it’s time for you to answer the hard questions:

Are you going out of your way to make friends with your clients?

To treat them like family?

Are you looking out for them, even when they’re only paying for your basic service?

You should be.

Because while they don’t expect you to constantly create earth-shaking new leaps, they do expect you not to rest on your laurels while just passing for good at what you do.

They expect you to fight for them, even after you’ve won them over.

So are you just good? Or are you committed to being WOW ?

Yesterday we talked about how to captivate an audience by building a tribe, what it meant to build a tribe and why tribes don’t need or want leaders.

Today we’re going to delve into the first of the two steps for captivating your audience: building a sense of community.

We, the tribes, don’t need another hero.

We’re not interested in leaders who direct our paths.

What we really want are fellow tribe members willing to play with boundaries and report their findings back to us.

We want one of our own.

Ever been friends with the guy in the office who gets promoted and becomes your boss?

Yesterday he was one of you, but now he’s one of “them.”

Suddenly he doesn’t share your woes and cares. Suddenly his ideas aren’t yours, they belong to a totally unfamiliar tribe.

Now he “leads” your tribe from the outside. He directs it, but he does not improve it.

He can’t improve it because he no longer understands what it means to be a part of it.

Compare that to the industry leaders you and I follow and look up to…

We don’t follow Liz Strauss or Chris Brogan or Seth Godin because they have all the answers. We follow them, read their work, listen to them speak because their ideas are our ideas.

Sure, they articulate them more clearly and spread them farther, but they are still the ideas of the tribe, the ideas around which we initially gathered.

They don’t lead us, they’re part of us.

They are our more courageous selves. They’ve poked the box when we didn’t have the guts to.

They didn’t lead us by the hands, but instead drew maps of the previously unexplored and warned us where the dragons were.

They are the tribe members we wish we could be.

That’s why we follow them.

Paying Your Dues

When I was younger I hated being told I had to “pay my dues.”

Being told by employers that my ideas might be great, but I couldn’t just waltz in with great ideas and expect to be a real player in their game.

They were old, I was young. They were big, I was small. They were right, I was wrong.

When I was a fat, old, white executive, then I could talk to them about my ideas, but not a second before.

I thought they were full of shit.

My ideas are great, but you’re rejecting them because I’m too young to be giving them to you? The lack of logic is physically painful.

It wasn’t until I started to explore online community and social media that I realized what paying my dues really meant.

It meant becoming part of  the team.

It wasn’t my youth they rejected. It wasn’t my ideas or my approach.

I was an outsider. A hadn’t proven myself to the tribe yet.

I hadn’t gone through the ritual of manhood, so to speak. I needed that time under my belt, that trial by fire, not because I or my ideas weren’t good enough, but because I had to prove myself to be worthy of the attention and respect of the tribe.

How to Build a Community When We Don’t Need You

Think for a second how many bloggers and online entrepreneurs you encounter every week who are know-it-all’s or Mary Poppins (practically perfect in every way) because they think that’s what we, the tribe, want.

They grace us with their presence and don’t understand why we don’t give a shit.

We don’t give a shit because they aren’t one of us yet.

It’s your job to prove to us that you belong in our tribe. That you have something to give, something to offer, something we can look up to.

Because we don’t need another hero.

We don’t need a gunslinger that rides in, saves us all and talks a good game.

More to the point, we don’t need you.

Not yet.

Not until you’ve payed your dues and proven yourself to be worthy of our time and attention, not by trying to be a the leader and hero we don’t need, but by being the helpful, load-bearing tribe member we do need.

It’s Not About Time

Paying your community dues, becoming a part of the tribe isn’t about time.

I know guys who started down the online business / blogging road with me who are no farther along than they were when we began because they’ve just waited for others to find and appreciate their natural genius.

But it isn’t about waiting a certain number of years to become a member or to be taken seriously.

It’s about the quality of what you provide.

We’ll accept you into our tribal fold in no time at all if you demonstrate to us your dedication to working hard for us and to improving our collective good through sacrifice and effort that’s beyond the average.

Which leads us to tomorrow’s final installment of the how to Captivate Your Audience series: The Revenge Of Innovation where we’ll talk about the second key to captivating an audience and building a tribe around your business.

Make sure you sign up for free updates by email or RSS so you don’t miss new posts.

When you write something new on your blog do they consistently flock to read it because they don’t want to miss out?

When you release a new product are your loyal fans lined up and ready for your next release?

Or do you have to scrape for every visitor you get and pepper your Twitter feed in the hopes that someone will buy your new product?

Captivating your audience brings them back again and again, but of course the real question is what captivates us as customers? And how can we keep our customers and readers coming back time after time?

The Captivation 2-Step

Know what my biggest source of repeat traffic to this site is?

Direct traffic.

Not RSS, not the email newsletter, not Twitter.

It’s people remembering to type my name into the address bar or click on the bookmark they created.

That to me says a lot. It says that (baring a few missteps) I’m largely doing pretty well at captivating my audience. He said, totally jinxing himself

But this got me thinking, what does it take to truly captivate an audience? To keep them not only liking you and what you do, but actively seeking out your next release?

Which brings me to what I think are the two big steps to creating, captivating and building what Seth Godin calls a “tribe” or Kevin Kelly calls “1,000 True Fans.”

Over the next two day’s we’re going to be discussing those two steps in greater detail, but today let’s dive into what it means to captivate your audience and the truth behind a tribe.

Truth Behind The Tribe

The basic premise of Seth Godin’s book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us is that true brand loyalty and customer evangelism comes from developing and selling products in markets where there exist small bands of very picky customers.

An example Seth gives is condiments: there aren’t any tribes centered around different types of mustard so there’s little room for differentiation or brand loyalty for that condiment, mustard is mustard; hot sauce, on the other hand, is diverse and polarizing.

I do have one problem with the idea of tribes. Or at least what the idea of tribes has become to online marketers.

The subtitle of Tribes is “We Need You To Lead Us”. I don’t think that’s quite accurate to way tribes really operate.

That conjures the image of a group of mindless, peon consumers who desperately seek someone who knows what the hell is going on.

Based on how most online businesses attempt to build a tribe around their brand, I must not be the only person that has that impression.

I don’t know about your customers, but my customers and blog readers aren’t mindless or peons. In fact, you guys are extremely discerning. You know what you want and you expect it.

And you aren’t unique as a tribe in that respect.

Tribes don’t want “leaders,” they want exceptional members; stellar contributors.

A Personal Example

I’m personally a big fan of the paranormal.

I dig talking about, reading about and hearing about ghosts, UFOs and the Loch Ness monster even if I don’t really believe in most of what I hear. I’m a huge Coast to Coast AM fan, have been a paying member of their Streamlink service for many years and still listen to reruns almost constantly on my iPod.

I’m definitely in the C2C tribe.

We have special places we hang out. We have a specific language and technical terms that outsiders don’t understand.

Most importantly, we’re pretty damn discerning about what we want and what we like — even down to which hosts we like best.

My tribe is the Art Bell tribe. He was the creator and first host of Coast to Coast AM. Art spoke out and asked hard questions of people who didn’t normally get airtime (kooks and nut jobs, in other words). He was fun and my C2C tribe loves him because he was one of us.

When Art retired, a new host took over and I’m definitely not in his tribe.

But the point here is this: I don’t listen to Art Bell reruns every night because he was an authority with answers to the mysteries of life. I listen to those shows because Art spoke for me and my tribe.

Tribes don’t value leaders. Tribes value contributors.

We don’t exalt know-it-all’s.

We exalt and rally around achievers.

And that’s what we’re going to talk more about tomorrow.

How to build a community around your brand and why most business get this step totally wrong.

Tomorrow’s Post:
“Captivating Your Audience II: Beyond Thunderdome”

5 years.

5. Freaking. Years.

Half a damn decade of screwing the pooch just to figure out how to properly build an online business.

Most people would’ve quit during 5 years. Most people DID quit during those 5 years.

Most of the people I remember from those days are totally off the radar now, back to their 9-to-5′s cursing the day they ever heard the words “blog” and “internet marketing.”

But you know what I really regret about that time?

It’s not how long it took.

It’s not how other people succeeded when I failed.

It’s not how many sleepless nights it cost me.

It’s that I didn’t just ask someone for help.

I started my online endeavors fresh out of college with no business experience. I was an actor for crying out loud!

But I jumped into my new role with gusto and, after 5 long years of busting my balls, I finally learned from my mistakes and started to slowly climb upward in earnings, followers and success.

Of course if I had just asked for help from someone that knew what they were doing, I’d be a lot better off that I am now.

It’s in that spirit that I started offering some consulting services.

And it’s also why I tried to keep them affordable. Because for me back in 2006, money was the biggest reason I didn’t ask for help.

Then again “pride” came in at a close second.

Why Consult?

I recommend consulting as a great business model in “How to Turn Your Blog Into A Business”, but there’s a giant question when it comes to becoming a consultant: what the hell do you know that you can help others with?

I had to ask myself why anyone would want to hire a consultant that has five years of mistakes under his belt?

The answer was clear and easy:

Not one part of my expertise comes from theory.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that everything I know about building a business online I know from actually building a business.

I’m not an expert because I read blogs.

I’m not an expert because I read books.

I’m not an expert because I took some courses.

I’m an expert because I’ve got 5+ years in the trenches learning how to effectively use the weapons I have.

Why Ask For Help?

So you know there’s a sales pitch coming right?

Here goes:

Why should you buy one of my consulting packages to improve your online business?

Because one hour with me will cost you some dough, but it will save 5 years.

Put away pride and cheapness because let me tell you from hard experience that if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have hired someone to help my over-confident newbie ass out.

Because while those 5 years taught me a lot, they also hurt like hell. They were 5 years of not having enough money, anxiety-inducing credit card bills, running back to day jobs and constantly having feel like an idiot around everyone who thought my business dreams were useless.

So why hire me?

Because if anyone knows the roadmap for avoiding that quagmire of bullshit it’s the guy that waded through it at its widest point.

So click on the button below to learn more about my consulting packages and let me help build online business using my hard-earned map.

But pictures can be a huge pain in the butt — and the wallet.

Buying expensive stock photos just to use on a single blog post doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, particularly if you’re bootstrapping your new blog. Spend money on a shopping cart, not on a picture.

But, of course, all that said, we also can’t just steal any image we want and use it. That’s why today I’m going to reveal to you the five websites that I use to get kick-ass free images that you can use for any of your projects. Every image on these sites is free, but many require a link attribution so read the rules before you use anything.

SXC

SXC.hu is the go-to resource for pro-quality free images. Just sign up for a free account and you can search through thousands of killer photos and graphics.

What makes SXC stand above other resources is that it’s the free arm of Getty Images and is run by the team at iStockphoto.com.

Getty and iStockPhoto are two of the biggest and best players when it comes to premium stock images and you get the same quality in SXC’s free collection.

All SXC asks is that you give proper image attribution when specified. That is, you give proper credit to the creator of the image when you use it and link back to them.

That’s a small price, though, to pay for their high quality photos.

Flickr

Flickr is a service where users can upload their photos and store them online, but most of these photos aren’t available for use to bloggers like us.

Flickr does however, offer you the option to search for images that are under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

That means that you can use this search engine to find Flickr images that you are free to use, distribute and create derivatives of and all you have to do is provide a credit back to the user that uploaded them.

Now Flickr won’t usually give you that “stock photo look,” but personally, I prefer not to have my photos look staged and fake.

Stock business images of people in suits looking too happy just make me feel sketchy.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Free Digital Photos is a smaller website that SXC, but they have a really interesting business model. You are free to use any of their images, with attribution of course, but only at their smallest size.

If you want a larger size of a particular image, you have the option to purchase it, but small sizes are always free.

These free images are too small to be any use for eBook covers or the like, but for blog post images they are perfectly sized. The quality is surprisingly good as well, very professional.

I also like that you don’t have to sign up for an account, but that’s just me.

MorgueFile

MorgueFile, despite it’s weird name, contains some nice “candid” style images upload by users and yours to use for free.

It’s actually one of the only places that doesn’t require an attribution link back to the photographer.

I like MorgueFile and you do occasionally come across a great pic, but most pictures are obscure and a little bit random.

That’s good for some bloggers though

Google Images

All you ever hear about finding images with Google Image Search is that you can’t use them for your blog, but that’s not strictly true.

Google has added the option to search for commercially licensed images that you can use for your projects.

To find them just go into the Advanced Search Options and choose the option you want from the Usage Rights drop down menu.

From there just search for the keywords you want and dig through the image results.

This technique has been a great one for finding images on obscure royalty free websites that you normally won’t find high in the search rankings.

I do want to stress again that you should make sure to read the attribution rules for any image you want to use, but these five website should provide you with all the pro-quality royalty free images you could ever want for your blog.

And if you’re not sure how to use images to spice up your digital products, click here to download your copy of my How to Turn Your Blog Into A Business ebook where I’ll walk you through the steps of creating digital products that sell.