If you're a regular reader of this blog, chances are good you'll want to sell something on your blog one day.

Even if you don't have anything to sell and think selling is evil, you can still learn a lot by studying the techniques of writing to sell. For example, you can look at your About page as a sales page (see No Meat Athlete's), where the "sale" you're trying to make is a subscription. In that case, you should present the benefits of reading your blog and, at the end, ask for the sale with a subscription button. (How to make nice buttons is the topic of a future post.)

It goes beyond just this though. You can use the techniques of writing ad copy to make every single post you publish more effective — that's the whole premise of the blog Copyblogger, which I hope you read.  If I had to point to a single moment when blogging got really easy, I'd say it's when I started studying copywriting.  As soon as I started incorporating it into my everyday writing, traffic took off.

So in this post I'm going to explain my thought process in writing the sales page for the e-book I just released. If you find it helpful to use the actual page as a template for your own, feel free. Keep in mind that, although I'm talking explicitly about a sales page, these ideas can be extremely powerful when used even in your daily posts.

Rule #1: Don't Be Sleazy

Nobody likes a fast-talking used car salesman, and people can sniff that out online a hundred miles away.  The kind of online selling that's cool is about connecting with your readers, building up trust by giving them tons of valuable content, and then, every so often, selling them something they actually want.

If you do all of that, and then all the sudden start talking car-salesmanese on your sales page, you're going to turn people off.  It's just weird.

Don't be weird.

Start With a Strong Headline

Writing an effective headline is crucial. The purpose of the headline is to attract attention, to get the reader to read the first sentence of the post (and it's the job of the first sentence to get the reader to read the second sentence, and so on).

You don't want to try to be witty here.  You're trying to sell something, not make people laugh. If your headline can be both funny and effective, great. But funny comes second.

To get some ideas for good headlines to use either on your sales page or your everyday posts, try the Cosmopolitan headline exercise.

Keep Your Sentences and Paragraphs Short

Internet readers are not known for their attention spans, and nothing scares off a reader faster than big blocks of text.  Write your sales pages (and even your blog posts) in short, simple sentences and paragraphs to draw readers down the page and keep them wanting more.

Connect Emotionally

If you want the reader to pay attention to you, you need to engage them on an emotional level. It's best if you can imagine a single reader as your target, and write directly to that specific person. Suggest that he or she "imagine" how it would feel to use your product, and then paint that scenario with your copy.

And remember: It's not about you.  Make it about them.

It's common practice in copywriting to first present a problem, so the reader feels some small amount of pain and recognizes the need for a solution. Then — BAM — you're there with your product to fix the problem. But some people prefer to take an all-pleasure approach and leave the pain out.  You're free to choose.

List Benefits, Not Features

Bulleted lists show up in a lot of ads because they're effective — readers in a hurry are drawn to them. But many people make a big mistake in their bullet list that costs them a lot of money: They list the features of their product rather than the benefits the reader can expect to gain by using the product.

"Personalized nutrition plan" is a feature; "Learn exactly what to eat for your specific needs" is a benefit.  "Five killer ab exercises" is a feature; "Strengthen your core and look great by summertime" is a benefit.

You get the point.

Scarcity Sells (If It's Genuine)

People procrastinate. There will be plenty who love your offer but don't buy, for the simple reason that they don't sense a need to buy now.

So put a deadline on your offer. Maybe it's a special price they can get by buying before a certain date. Maybe it's a bonus that goes away at some point. Whatever it is, make sure it's genuine. If you say the price is going to go up, it had better go up. Otherwise, nobody will believe you when you say it next time.

Make a Strong Call to Action

For some reason, lots of people do all the above but neglect to seal the deal. You have to ask for the sale.

How?  Tell the reader to buy. Use buttons or links with the words "Buy Now." In the case that it's not an actual sale you're trying to make, but rather to get the reader to visit a new page on your blog, the magical words "click here" are extremely effective.

Include a PS

Why do you put a PS on your sales page? Simple: Everyone reads the PS. So put something here that you want everyone to read. Maybe it's a guarantee, maybe it's a bonus, maybe it's a reminder that the offer expires soon.

If You Have It, Use Social Proof

People like to know that other people like themselves have bought your product. Chances are, you won't have testimonials right away, but as soon as you can get them, include them.

The best testimonials are from people viewed as authorities or from people who will be seen as similar to the reader, and they explain how your product solved a problem they were having.

Eliminate Distractions

It's very important that there are not a lot of links on your sales page that readers might use to leave.

It's not that you're trying to trap them — they can always press the back button or close their browser. But just like a kid who is easily distracted by shiny bells and whistles, so is the average Internet reader who likes to do 14 things at the same time.

You want to remove all the links from your sidebar or the top of your page. Some online copywriters will even tell you to remove your site's banner, but I prefer to leave that so that people who show up from Google have some confidence they're at a real site, not some automated scam that will send a robot to clean out their savings account.

If you're using a free Wordpress theme (or heaven forbid, Blogger), you might have trouble doing this.  Being able to edit the layout of individual pages is one of the reasons I use Headway for my blogs (that's my affiliate link).  I know Thesis can do the same thing, and I'm sure there other premium themes that can do this as well.  There might even be some free ones that do it, but those are the exception.

I hope these tips can help you write your sales page, or as I said, pretty much anything else you write online.  Even better, I find that studying copywriting makes me want badly to produce a product to sell.  It's exciting!  So even if you don't have any ideas yet, hopefully that increased desire will help you come up with some good ones.

Sooner or later, every blogger thinks about writing an ebook or other information product.  For most of them, that's as far as it ever gets.

Fear is mostly to blame.  Sure, maybe the idea isn't perfect yet, or the amount of work seems overwhelming.  But take away fear, and all of the sudden these problems become surmountable.

Dave Navarro has a great post called Weekend Challenge: How to Turn a Beer into a Product.  Reading that post went a long way towards killing the fear for me.  Prior to reading it, I envisioned "My Ebook" as this giant monster with three heads that I might one day find the guts and the determination to slay.  Dave's article made me realize I could have a product in a weekend, not a year.

Producing Your First Ebook

My ebook, Fuel Your Run the Tarahumara Way, took longer than a weekend, and it wasn't as cheap to produce as Dave's product (which might cost three bucks max, and that's if you're drinking the good stuff).

No, it took a few weeks and it cost me 73 dollars.  But that's a hell of a lot less than I had always pictured when I thought about "My Ebook."  And the result, with a nice, shiny cover design and an attractive layout, makes it look like the work of an author, not a blogger in his mom's basement. (I swear I don't live in my mom's basement.)

You can do this.  If you're scared to write an ebook because it might not sell or your readers might hate it or someone might tell you that you suck, you have to do this.  It'll teach you to get over that.

Start small, like Dave suggests.  Or put just a little more time and money into it: You'll be shocked at how easy it is to produce something great when you leverage the resources now available on the internet.  Here's how I made my first ebook for 73 bucks.

How to Get a Great Ebook Design for $73

1. Find the perfect photo.  ($15)

You might be able to find something free, using clipart sites or Flickr's Creative Commons photos.  If you're on anything but the thinnest shoestring budget though, head over to istockphoto.com and just try not to be floored by the hundreds of beautiful images available for the price of lunch.  (Bonus: This is also a great place to find photos for blog posts.  The ones I buy usually cost between one and two dollars.)

2. Pay a designer to assemble your cover. ($50)

I'm a member of this unbelievably valuable internet marketing community called The Third Tribe (affiliate link), and in the forums there I met a woman named Sherice Jacob.  Sherice runs eCoverArtist, where she'll make you an ebook cover for 50 bucks. (The fancy kind that looks like a 3D book, magazine, spiral bound report, etc.)  Sherice was very accommodating of my lack of design know-how; we went through several iterations of me suggesting something stupid, her doing it for me, then me changing my mind, and she was pleasant and helpful throughout the whole process.

If it's a killer cover your after, I'd recommend spending more than 50 dollars on the design.  But if you're looking for a quick way to make your first (or second, or third) product look pretty damn good, especially if you have an idea of what you want it to look like, well, look no further.

3. Get a template for the actual document.  ($8)

Again, this is a place where it'd be easy to skimp and just use a plain white background and some standard fonts.  But when you can get a nice-looking template for five or eight dollars, why wouldn't you?  The templates like the one I got from EbookTemplates.net have a ready-made table of contents, title page, and headers and footers you can modify with your own information.

Until recently, Microsoft Word couldn't publish to PDF very easily, so most ebook templates you'll find are for OpenOffice Writer, which is free and works just like Word.

Other Costs

The above $73 gets you an ebook design.  You'll have to put it your own ideas and your own time, but that's the fun part.  And if your book is a recipe book, like mine, then of course you'll have to spend money to test and develop the recipes.  But since you get to eat the food, I'm not counting that.

I also pay five dollars per month for a service called e-junkie (affiliate link) that I use to sell stuff, mainly because it makes it easy to track and manage affiliate programs. This allows you to pay bloggers a commission when they refer people to your site to buy your ebook.  (And if you're interested in joining the affiliate program for my book, you can learn about it here.)

Do It

I hope you're convinced that creating an ebook, even one that looks pretty good, doesn't have to be expensive.  And that's one less excuse you now have not to write one.  Get over that fear, set a deadline and make it happen.

In my next post, I'll write about the process of writing a sales page to sell your ebook.  And honestly, the techniques of sales pages apply equally well to your About page and even your regular blog posts.  Every time you write, you're making a sale.  You're asking for the reader's attention.

When you write your blog posts, you're competing for attention, just like advertisers who want their ad to be the one that gets noticed and read.  But the techniques of writing sales copy are not obvious at all, so you won't want to miss that one.

Now get to work!

This is a guest post by Rachel Wilkerson, from rachelwilkerson.com and the bloggers' blog Hollaback Health.

When I was in college, I ran all the recruitment activities for my sorority and I loved it. It's a hectic time — the "parties" during which we met potential new members (PNMs) was a carefully choreographed, incredibly hectic time. In the weeks leading up to recruitment, I led my chapter through hours of workshops to prepare everyone for the process of meeting hundreds of new girls and hoping that every single one of them wanted our house. Sure, it was tiring, but "We rush hard" was our motto.

But I realized this week, getting people to read your blog isn't so different from getting girls to think your sorority house is fabulous. Here are five things sorority girls can teach you about blogging.

1. Know who you want.

One of the best workshops that I created was Finding Your Perfect PNM, in which we described our "perfect" new member. We talked about all the details. From what she looked like to what her dream job was, we knew we couldn't get good girls if we didn't all agree on what we were looking for. In the same way, Finding Your Perfect Reader can help you get more readers. Instead of saying, "I want more readers," you can focus on the specific audience you think will get the most out of your blog and really seek them out.

2. First impressions count.

Totally reinforcing the "shallow" stereotype of sorority girls, let me go ahead and say that we were perfectly aware that appearances mattered during recruitment. It wasn't that everyone had to be a perfect 10, but we definitely put our best faces forward. We paid attention to the details because we knew girls would be more excited to hear what we had to say if we looked polished and pulled-together. In the same way, your blog's design and layout is your chance to make that great first impression. Does it need a manicure and to have its split ends trimmed? Sure, it's about as fun as getting a wax, but you have to put some time and effort into your blog's "outer beauty."

3. Make people feel at home.

On the day we gave PNMs tours of our house, we wanted them to be able to see themselves living with us. This would be the place they'd come home to for two years and we wanted them to feel comfortable. In the same way, you can be welcoming to your readers. Whether it's making yourself easily accessible via e-mail and Twitter, responding to more comments, or simply writing an "About" page that conveys warmth and enthusiasm about the reader (not just about yourself), take the time to really welcome people and let them know you'd love it if they stuck around.

4. Talk up what makes you great.

During my recruitment workshops, we spent a lot of time talking about all the great things our chapter had to offer. Whether it was our cook's amazing grilled cheese sandwiches or our house's intercom system, we had a long list of things we could casually mention that made our house special. In the same way, you can design your blog to highlight what makes it special. And it doesn't have to be that special. Just like most sorority houses had cooks, most health blogs have recipes. But which blogs make them easiest to find on the homepage? By highlighting something as your "thing," you're sending a message that you do it well and that people can consider you an expert in that area.

5.  …but don't be ashamed of who you are.

As much as I wanted girls to love our house, I made sure our members knew that being real is more important than telling PNMs what they wanted to hear. Sure, we could spin everything and made it sound like we were perfect…but most PNMs wanted to join a house where they felt like they could be themselves. In the same way, don't spin everything you do and create an image of yourself that's perfect; your readers want to feel like you are real. When answering a question or tackling a tough topic, don't just say what you think they want to hear. Say what's real.

Contrary to popular belief, sorority girls are interested in more than just frat guys and Greek Week. We care about our houses and want new members who will love our house as much as we do. And as a health blogger, there is more to you than just recipes and race recaps. You love your blog and want people to read it and become a part of it — so rush them hard!

I gave away free blog coaching calls to 10 health bloggers for two main reasons:

1) To learn as much as I could about what problems real health bloggers face, in order to make this blog better.

2) To learn if I could provide enough value to offer blog coaching as a paid service.

I'm happy to say that the calls were a huge success, on both counts.  I haven't finalized the details about exactly what type of services I'll offer, but look for more on that in the coming weeks.

But even more importantly…

I learned a TON about what information health bloggers need to know, now.

The good news, for you, is that even if you didn't win one of those free calls, you still benefit, right now.  This post contains 21 of the most important concepts that came up time and time again during the free coaching calls.

Sure, no list can replace personalized, targeted coaching for your specific blog.  But chances are, most of these tips apply to you, just as they did to so many of the bloggers I talked to.  (And that I'm giving this information away is a perfect example of #13 in action.)

The 21 Most Crucial Tips for Health Bloggers

So enjoy the fruits of 10 hours of carefully examining 10 blogs and in depth conversation with the awesome bloggers behind them.

This is valuable stuff.  I hope you put it to use.

Search Engine Optimization

1. SEO is more about getting quality links than about tweaks of meta-tags or anything else.  If you've tried SEO and nothing's happening, you need to get more links.

2. The best way to get quality links from bigger blogs is to guest post.  You have to actively seek out opportunities.

3. Linking out to other bloggers with related topics is great for building relationships and for SEO. Having a huge blogroll probably is not.

4. SEO and social media are two sides of the same coin: Bloggers and others with the power to link use social media, so when your stuff spreads on social media, it gets seen by people who can link and help your authority in Google's eyes. Search engines follow people. (I wish I could remember who said this; I learned it from Brian Clark at Copyblogger.)

Social Media

5. Pick one or two social media channels to really commit to and get good at. Build a following of people who look forward to the stuff you share (most of which is NOT your stuff). Then when you do share your stuff, they'll care.

6. Use Twitter as a research tool. Figure out what the top bloggers and Twitter users care about, since they're the ones you want links and retweets from. Then give it to them.

7. Write headlines so good that people want to share them even before they read your posts.

8. If you have written homerun posts that didn't spread or attract the search traffic you had hoped, go back and delete the opening paragraph about your dog's trip to Niagara Falls. People don't want to share stuff when it has that fluff at the beginning. Then promote it again. Do this on any post that you're linking to in a landing page.  Finally, stop writing about your dog's travels.

Making Your Traffic "Sticky"

9. When someone new shows up at your blog, you have a few seconds to hook them. Put links to your absolute best stuff, either landing pages or individual posts, right there on the homepage so they'll find it, bookmark it, and share it.

10. Make your About page about the blog, not you. Think of it as a sales page, with the sale you're trying to make being a subscription to your blog. Put a "Subscribe" link or email form at the end, as the call to action.

11. Make it easy to subscribe to your blog. Don't forget that most internet users have no idea what RSS is, so make it clear that they can get posts in their inbox.

12. Use your blog title, tagline, and navigation links to make it immediately clear to a new visitor (and Google) what your blog is about. Ask someone who doesn't know to make sure it's obvious.

Making Money from Your Blog

13. Absolutely, positively don't hold back your best stuff because you want to sell it one day. If you want to build a readership, you have to give away great content for free.

14. Most health blogs seem to be more about entertainment than education. Focusing on education is a way to distinguish yourself, and it's a lot easier to monetize with e-books, membership sites, and other information products than entertainment is.

15. If making this switch seems scary, realize that your readers won't abandon you because you fail to tell them about your day a few times.  Write a couple really informative posts and promote them, pay attention to the results, and use that information to decide what direction to take.  (Want to see it in action?  Look at a few No Meat Athlete posts from November or December of 2009, and then look at everything since then.  Readership has gone up 25-40% every month since I made the shift.)

16. If you're trying to sell something, the sales copy should emotionally engage the reader, stress benefits to the reader rather than features of the product, and better say "you" way more than it says "I."

17. On second thought, your blog should read that way even when you aren't selling something.

18. Study copywriting if you want to get better at this type of writing.  I like Robert Bly's book (affiliate link).

19. The area above the fold is the most valuable on your blog. Replace low-paying ads with links or graphic ads for your own stuff.

20. Especially if your blog is part of a business, email autoresponders are a great way to establish trust over a period of time.

21. Think of blogging as "content marketing": You give away tons of free information to establish so much trust, credibility, and authority that buying from you is a no-brainer.

Really, I hope you put this stuff to use.  Learning is worthless unless you take action.

Guess what?  I'm in an e-book!

Mary, the blogger behind A Merry Life, took her three years of blogging experience and combined it with input from several well-known bloggers in the health niche to create A Merry Life Guide to Creating a Better Health Blog.  (My contributions were mainly to the search engine optimization section.)

I've read Mary's book and I can highly recommend it to anyone who feels there's something they're missing about this whole blogging thing.  From technical basics like setting up Wordpress, to techniques for building your readership, to ways to make money from blogging, there's a lot of stuff here that would have been really nice to know back when I started.

But we can learn more from Mary than just what's in her book.  Having created an e-book, she's in a position that many of us hope to one day be in but aren't sure where to start.  Mary was kind enough to let me pick her brain about her new book and the process of creating it.

Interview with Mary from A Merry Life

Matt: One thing that surprised me about A Merry Life Guide to Creating a Better Health Blog is how comprehensive it is, covering such a wide range of topics.  There's really a lot of information there that would have saved me a lot of time if I'd known it all when I started out!  Were you targeting primarily beginning bloggers with it?

Mary: I was targeting beginner to intermediate bloggers. Because I have a tutorial for starting a blog on my site I have a lot of beginner bloggers who email me questions about the basics of blogging. I started writing the ebook trying to address those questions and it eventually evolved into a very comprehensive ebook that touches every aspect of blogging.  I might have started out writing it for beginners but it turned into something that has helped even more advanced bloggers.  It's perfect for someone who has been blogging for a few months and wants to grow their blog but is stuck on how to do that.

Matt: Which of the many areas that you touch on in the book is your favorite, or the one you're best at?

Mary: Oddly enough the one I'm best at is the one I never thought I would be the best at: the technical stuff. I've set up countless Wordpress blogs and hosting accounts now both for myself and other people, so I've learned a lot about setting up a blog and making it run well. I think because it's something I had the least confidence in it's the one I've researched and then practiced the most. But my favorite will always be the writing aspect of blogging. I love to write and I enjoyed sharing my best blogging tips for the e-book.

Matt: I love that you encourage everyone to use Wordpress, and to self-host it.  It's so much smarter to start out that way so that you don't have to switch down the road.  You dedicated several pages of the e-book to Wordpress-specific stuff.  Did you worry about upsetting Blogger users who purchased your book and didn't want to switch to Wordpress?

Mary: I did worry about that because a lot of health blogs are started on Blogger and a few popular ones still use it as their publishing platform.  I'm not anti-Blogger by any means and I've actually encouraged some people to stick with using Blogger. But in general I do think self-hosted Wordpress is a better option for most bloggers since it has so many options and gives you the ultimate control over your blog.

Matt: I liked the section on advertising, especially on how to best use Adsense and handle offers from companies who want to pay you for text links in the content.  Which ad methods have you tried, and which have you had the most success with?

Mary: I've tried a ton of advertising options. I've used Adsense (and currently do), BlogHer, Foodbuzz, other advertising networks, sold direct advertising, sold link ads… you name it and I've probably done it. For a long time I had no ads on my blog but eventually I realized I wanted to at the very least cover my hosting costs. Once that happened I realized I could probably make more money with it and started researching and testing things out. The key to making money through blogging is testing different methods. You can find something that works but it might stop working or it works but something else could work better. It's a constant game of figuring out what works the best for your site. Personally I've had a lot of success with Adsense and selling direct advertising.

Matt: E-books are really a great way to monetize your blog in a way that adds value to readers, as opposed to some ads and other methods of making money that might annoy readers.  But the idea of writing one is probably overwhelming to a lot of bloggers.  How much work was it?

Mary: I have to be honest and tell you that it was a lot of work. I did everything myself from the writing to the design to the promotion. The only thing I had help with was editing to catch little mistakes I overlooked. I should have kept track of the time I spent writing it but I worked on it slowly over a couple of months whenever I had free time. The writing wasn't very hard because it was all information I already knew and it just flowed naturally as if I was doing a coaching session with someone. But writing a 60+ page book is a lot of work whether you know the information already or not. It can get overwhelming, but when you finish that final product it is all worth it.

Matt: How did you go about announcing the e-book to your readers?  Did you do a big launch for it, or just start selling it one day?

Mary: Since it was a huge project I was working on it came up naturally in posts and I wrote a few posts specifically about the ebook the week before launching it. I did do a small launch for it and sold quite a few copies within the first two days because of that.  It was my first e-book, my first launch, my first everything! It was a great learning experience and I'm glad I did a launch instead of just putting it up to sell like I originally thought about doing.

Matt: I think a lot of bloggers have ideas for information products like this, but worry about negative feedback, since readers are so used to getting content for free on blogs.  Was this an issue for you?

Mary: Oddly enough I expected negative feedback but didn't get any at all. I suppose it still could come in the future, but so far everyone has been really happy with the e-book. I think readers are used to getting free content but a lot of people are willing to pay for information they want packaged into one information product from a source they trust. I know that personally I have bought these kinds of products and as long as the value exceeds the price I've been happy with them. I tried to make sure my e-book did that for anyone who bought it and so far everyone has agreed that it's worth the price.

Matt: Are there any e-book sites or services that you used and would recommend for those of us interested in doing it ourselves?

Mary: I used Open Office to create the ebook because it converts to PDF, which is the format of most e-books of this type.  I use ejunkie as my e-book delivery service, which ties in to both Paypal and Google Checkout. It's been really great and I totally recommend it. It allows you to sell multiple products, set up affiliate programs and more. For $5 a month it's completely worth it because it simplifies the process. 

Thanks to Mary for taking the time to share her experiences with Health Blog Helper readers.  Beginners and semi-beginners, especially, be sure to check out her Guide to Creating a Better Health Blog.  It's the stuff you didn't even know there was to know that you don't want to wait to find out about a year from now.

Please note: I'm a member of Mary's affiliate program, so I'll earn a little bit o' dough if you buy her e-book.  It's an extremely valuable resource for new bloggers, so I don't feel bad about that.

]]> http://www.healthbloghelper.com/blog/mary-a-merry-life/feed/ 1 http://www.healthbloghelper.com/blog/mary-a-merry-life/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBlogHelper/~3/vYwv_a9dyoE/ http://www.healthbloghelper.com/blog/how-to-land-a-guest-post/#comments Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:02:50 +0000 NoMeatAthlete http://www.healthbloghelper.com/blog/?p=1365

I recently got the biggest opportunity I've ever had in my year-and-some-change of blogging: I wrote a guest post for the hugely popular blog, Zen Habits.

There's a good chance you've heard of it, even though it's not in the health niche, per se.  With maybe 150,000 subscribers (as in 10 times even the largest health blogs I know), Zen Habits is one of the most popular blogs on the web.

The results were pretty much what you'd expect.  Several thousand visitors to my blog, 300 new RSS subscribers, a couple interview requests, links from new blogs in new niches, and increased Google traffic due to the link.

In other words, the most exciting several days of blogging I've ever had.

Guest Posting as a Traffic Building Tool

In the food and health blog niche, guest-posting serves more of a fill-in role than a marketing role.  We help each other out when someone's going on vacation.

But in other niches, guest-posting is known as the best way to grow your blog.  If you have 1000 readers, every new post you write might reach another 10 or 20.  When you write for another blog that has 1000 readers (or 10,000 readers, or 100,000 readers), you have the opportunity to multiply your readership overnight.

You also get a backlink or two out of it, usually with exactly the keywords you want, and as an SEO strategy you can't beat that.

Five Steps to Landing a Huge Guest Post Spot

So here's how you make it happen.  These are the steps I followed to land my guest post opportunity.  Use them; they work.  One final piece of advice before you get started: Don't limit yourself.  I was sure Leo (the guy behind Zen Habits) would say no.  But I asked anyway, and look what happened.

1. Find the right blog.

You definitely want to go big (as in, bigger than you).  The question is how big.

Pick a blog just a little bigger than yours, and it's likely you'll succeed.  It's not too hard to build a relationship with that blogger and get them to read your post, and if it's good, they'll post it.  Maybe you'll even exchange guest posts.

Pick someone huge, someone where it seems that a single link from them would absolutely MAKE your blog, and your chances of success go down (but my example is proof that this doesn't mean you shouldn't try).

"How big?" really isn't the question I think you should be answering.  "What blog could I write an absolutely killer post for?" is better.  The perfect topic (and headline) can get you on a blog that it feels like you have no business being on.

2. Develop a relationship.

The bigger the blogger, the tougher this is.

Leave comments on their blog.  Reach out and retweet their stuff, or link to them in a post.

The point of this step is so that when you pitch them your post idea, you're not a total stranger.  Of the guest post requests I get, so many are automated, from people I've never interacted with before, or from businesses that have almost no tie to No Meat Athlete's content and are simply looking for a backlink.  That's no way to get a guest post spot.

3. Come up with the perfect post idea and pitch it.

If this step is easy, you're on the right track.  Ideally, the choice of which blog to target was dictated by which blog you could write a great post for, and chances are, you already have a few ideas for posts in mind.

Now it's time to do some homework.  Watch what the blogger links to and retweets to get an idea of what he or she finds interesting.  Look at the titles of their posts and the subject matter.

Use this information to solidify exactly what you'd like to post about, and come up with a catchy (if tentative) title for it.  Cosmopolitan, anyone?

Finally, make your pitch.  Use what you know about the blogger to do this as appropriately as possible.  If you're close enough with the blogger that email isn't going to weird them out, then do that.  Otherwise, send them a tweet.

When I pitched Leo of Zen Habits on my idea to write a post about trail running, I knew he didn't respond to emails, but that he did use Twitter.  So I crammed my pitch into 140 characters or less, rather than annoy the guy by invading his email inbox.

Once Leo gave me permission to email him some details, I included a link to a similar post I had written for my blog, to give him an idea of what my writing style was like.  He gave me the green light, I cheered so loudly my wife thought I was crazy, and it was onto the next step.

4. Write the post.  (And make it damn good.)

This is the time to write your best content.  When you have the forum of a much bigger blog to spread your message, the post you write is more important than any you've ever written for your own blog.

Make it good.  First, since you haven't locked up your guest post spot until the blogger has approved your post, make it fit their style.  If they use a lot of subheads, use subheads.  If they favor lists, write a list.

Be yourself, but fit their mold.  You're a guest, after all.

It took me five days to write the Zen Habits post.  Leo had given me a few ideas of what he'd like to see, and I made sure to include all of them in my own style.  I did something I rarely do for my own blog—actual research.  I edited meticulously, and I even paid for a stock image to include, like the ones I saw on Zen Habits.

Finally, don't forget to write your tagline. "So and so writes the blog XYZ and does so and so."  Only make it good.  Ideally, use the keywords you care about in your backlink, rather than your blog title. (I didn't know this yet when I wrote my guest post.)

Or, even better, if you think the blogger will allow it, link instead to some of your best content in the tagline.  A landing page, perhaps.  Letting readers know they can click over and get something awesome, rather than just your blog homepage, will increase the number of people who visit your blog from the big one.

And what about links to your own blog in the actual content of your guest post?

If they're extremely relevant, I say go for it.  But I wouldn't do it more than once, for fear of sending the wrong message to the blogger and having your post rejected.

5. Once it's accepted and published, promote the hell out of it.

When your post is in the spotlight of a much bigger blog, you have a bigger chance of going viral than ever before.  So do everything you can to help with that.

Link to it.  Tweet about it.  Ask for retweets.  Share it on Facebook.  Email your friends and brag.  Post it on forums that you belong to.  Beg people to go check out your name in lights.

Now, Do Something

The only way you'll get the chance to guest post on a bigger blog is if you take action.  Bigger bloggers aren't going to ask you to guest post.  You have to go get it.

Rachel Wilkerson writes her own blog and is editor of the bloggers' blog Hollaback Health. This post is the third in a series by Rachel on how to deal with negative comments.

Because even if you know you shouldn't, sometimes they do get to you. But the more time you spend nursing your ego, the less time you spend writing great posts! Here are some tips for developing a thick skin so you can bounce back quickly.

13 Ways to Relish Negative Comments

Know that no success is achieved without some negative feedback. Plain and simple. No one is loved by everyone. Not even Oprah. Let go of the feeling that everyone has to love you. It's never going to happen and it's useless to strive for it. Actually, the more you strive for it, the less good work you'll probably do.

Feel the love. Try to take the POV that if people care enough to comment it's because they care enough to read your blog and care enough to help you improve. Not all comments are constructive, but when it is constructive criticism, try to think of it as tough love.

Be proud of yourself for starting a discussion. It's not a discussion if everyone agrees with your every word. It's not exciting either!

Think of a time you've left a negative comment (or at least considered it). Did you hate the blogger? Think she was stupid? Want him to stop writing? Probably not. You probably just felt compelled to voice your opinion.

Know thyself. Take pride in your strengths. Be confident in your good qualities, even ones that you don't blog about. Know who you are…and who you are not. If you know you aren't a stupid person, then it's hard to get worked up about a comment that calls you stupid.

Remember that people don't know you; they know what you write. So when a comment goes after YOU, remember that people don't see the big picture.

Say thank you. Seriously. As you're re-reading your negative comment say thank you (to yourself, you don't have to e-mail the commenter). And say, "Thank you for _____" and then fill in the blank. "Thank you for making me even more passionate about my cause." "Thank you for reminding me that I still have work to do." "Thank you for being so ridiculous that you got me 200 more hits today."

Consider that you might actually be a public figure. We can all agree that tabloids are ridiculously invasive but we can only listen to celebs complain so much before we want them to go into their million dollar mansions and get over it. They put themselves in the public eye, after all. I know it doesn't seem like you're a celeb. I know you just think you're a nice kid who wanted a place to write…but if you have a book deal, a business, or even are just getting a lot of great swag…well, you may not be Kim Kardashian, but you are using your blog and readers to gain something. In that sense, you are putting yourself in the public eye.

Start practicing for your celeb status. Even if you have a teeny-tiny blog that no one reads, you have no idea where it might take you. The more you get used to dissenting opinions, the better prepared you'll be for the day your reality TV show debuts or your book comes out.

Remember that even if you don't leave negative comments, you still might get them. Fair? Probably not. But don't think of yourself as a victim. You're putting yourself out there.

Laugh at the ridiculous ones. Seriously. E-mail them to your friends and family. Print them and put them on your bulletin board. Highlight the typos and grammatical errors.

Laugh all the way to the bank. Own what it is that makes you you, even if it's the thing people trash. Perfect celeb example? Jessica Simpson. That woman is dumb like a fox. Don't be offensive or stir up controversy for the sake of getting attention and readers, but recognize that sometimes a little controversy gets you more readers. When my book comes out, maybe I'll sign it "the oft-mentioned ho bag" and send it to everyone who worked at the State News when I was in college.

Let it go. Don't pretend to let it go. Don't say "I'm not going to think about it." It's OK to think about it! Think about it long enough to own it and how it makes you feel. Thank the commenter, learn the lesson, and then…let it go.

Blog growth is rarely steady.

You do something good, and traffic spikes.  Then you get a little bit comfortable and the stats float back down to Earth, but to a permanently-higher level than before.  Then you do something really good again, and traffic spikes even higher.

And so on.  The point, then, is to create more spikes.  So here are 10 ways to make your next one happen this week.

1. Get a new design.

Clean design is so important.  If your blog looks amateur, people aren't going to feel confident sharing your content.

For both of my blog designs, I've used a site called Design Crowd, where you choose the amount of money you'll pay and designers compete by submitting their designs.  Now I'm working with Revive My Blog to give my blogs a facelift.

2. Guest post on a big blog.

Guest posting is such an underused strategy for increasing readership.  And since you get to craft the link back to your blog, it's not a bad SEO strategy, either.

Pitch a slightly-bigger blogger on your idea for a guest post that's perfect for their blog.  Or go really big, and pitch someone you're sure will say no.  (That's what I did, and this amazing opportunity came of it.)

If they say yes, make it one of the best posts you've ever written and promote the heck out of it when it's posted.

3. Take a break.

Take a week off and figure out what you want your blog to be.  Arrange for four or five bloggers to write guest posts for you while you use the time to recharge the batteries.

They'll appreciate the chance to reach your audience; you'll enjoy a break and the traffic they send when they promote their guest posts.

4. Create an email autoresponder sequence.

The email inbox is prime internet real estate.  There's an immediacy to email that RSS or social media sites just can't match.

Your goal is to make people look forward to your emails (and therefore, to open them).  The easiest way to do this is to provide them with a sequence of emails that truly offers value.  Sites like AWeber and MailChimp make it easy to manage an email list and set up an autoresponder, the sequence of emails that automatically goes out at specified intervals to new people who sign up on your list.

5. Figure out what your blog is all about and write that cornerstone content.

When someone new shows up at your blog, what do they see?  If you said, "my most recent post and an 'About' page," you've got some work to do.

Your best stuff, the content that defines your blog and gives the most value to the reader, has got to be front and center.  Create landing pages that link to your best posts on a given topic.  If you don't have any posts like that, decide what that topic is and write them.  You want content that people will bookmark, Tweet about, and link to.

6. Go back and clean up all those pages from the early days that say "I" all over them.

First rule of marketing: It ain't about you.

We all make our blogs about us when we start them.  Many people never stop writing about themselves, and a few succeed that way.  But it's way easier when you make it about the reader, not about you.

Define your ideal reader.  Age, sex, name, job, hair color, favorite Jonas brother, etc.  Really.  And get inside their head.  Then write your pages and posts for that reader.

7. Do the Cosmopolitan headline exercise.

I didn't invent it.  I don't know who did.  I first read about it on Copyblogger.  But it works, so I wrote a post about it.

Do this, then realize that all your headlines need to be this good.  If you can't come up with snazzy headline for a post, chances are it's not worth posting.  Which brings me to…

8. Decide that if you don't have something great to post, you won't post.

This might be the single best decision you can make about your blog.  You do not need to post every day. More people will unsubscribe because you overload their feed reader with mediocre stuff than because you only write three posts a week.

When you have nothing to post, don't write a post called "Boring Weekend."  Instead, take the time you would have spent writing "Boring Weekend" and make the next day's post a homerun.

9. Look around the blogosphere (not just health) and see the potential.

It's easy to forget that there are blogs that aren't about health, food, and fitness.  But take a look around and you'll likely be amazed.

There are blogs that are 100 times the size of the most popular health blogs.  There are blogs that don't accept comments (because they don't have to).  There are blogs whose posts get more tweets than they have words.  And there are lots of bloggers whose blogs are their jobs.

10. Join the Third Tribe.

The best thing I've done all year has been joining the Third Tribe the day before the price went up the first time.  Now it's going up again on June 1, at 5 PM Central.  That's my affiliate link, but I'm not going to try to sell you on what the Third Tribe is.  I'll just tell you that it's worth every penny, and let you check it out if you're interested.

Now get to work!  You probably can't do all of these this week, but what if you could do three of them?  Where would your blog be by next Monday?

Rachel Wilkerson writes her own blog and is editor of the bloggers' blog Hollaback Health. This post is the second in a series by Rachel on negative comments.

The moment we see a negative comment, the first instinct usually is to pounce. We get defensive and want to attack. "Why does this person read my blog if they don't like it?!" we think, as we begin typing a nasty/sarcastic response back.

Hold on. Step away from the computer. Let's look at the comment.

First, you have to look at the nature of the comment. Is it constructive criticism? A questioning of your facts? Or is it snarky, mean, or maybe just kind of laughable?

We'll take the snarky, mean, and straight-up ridiculous first. This might be a sarcastic comment about your regular content. ("Oh, wow, your life is just perfect, isn't it?") It might be a judgment of your lifestyle. I'll use an example of a comment one of my blog friends has received on a few occasions: "You really shouldn't drink so much; here's a link to AA." Now, this is a girl who drinks at most three drinks at a time — and not every day. Usually it's in the context of dinner out with friends and most of her readers are young women who are social. So whatever you think about drinking, for the sake of this post, let's just agree that this comment a little ridiculous.

If a comment is ridiculous, don't respond. File it under "C" for "Crazy." Your regular readers will likely realize it's ridiculous and just dismiss the comment. It really doesn't make you look bad. But arguing with people who are ignorant to what your blog is all about is a waste of time and you'll just fan the flames and show other readers that they can get a rise out of you. The other reason that there's often no need is because your readers will often respond on your behalf, which is a good feeling.

Now let's look at constructive criticism or questioning of facts. These comments usually begin with something like, "I love your blog but I have to disagree with you here…" They might question a source you used or call you out for being insensitive to a certain topic. This is hard, because once you get over initially being annoyed, then you realize, "Uh-oh…what if I was wrong?"

But there's nothing wrong with that! It's all about how you respond to it. This happened to me a few weeks ago. The commenter had a really good point and I felt like I had learned an important lesson from her. I responded to the comment in the comment form with a short note and an apology and then I e-mailed the reader personally and apologized again and expanded on it. She wrote back and apologized for being harsh (which I don't think she was) and she also wrote, "I think it's cool that you give your readers personal attention like this." Well, yeah. My readers mean a lot to me and it's important not to be so arrogant that you think you're above making mistakes in your posts.

And e-mailing the commenter directly also encourages them to respond in an e-mail; then you don't turn the comment field into an open battle field.

If you look at the comment from a truly objective point of view and truly don't believe you are wrong or you have more thoughts, ideas, or sources to share that back up your point, then you should respond. But first, calm down. (Seriously.) When you're ready, respond with a comment and argue your point. But say everything you need to say in that response comment; I make it a goal to respond once in a situation like this and then not again. (This once led to me posting a 1,200 word comment on why I had written about STDs the way I did. I don't do that very often, but in that case, I wanted to tell this reader and any others who were paying attention that I put thought into my blog and don't just type whatever is on my mind without thinking.)

And only respond in the comments and not in a post. By writing a whole post, you are basically giving a commenter attention and, unless you were really wrong and you really need to make it right, responding with a comment is sufficient. It's also important to move on. Don't start your next post by saying, "Well, some people didn't like my post this morning on…" Nope. You addressed it there. Move on. Spending too much time defending yourself is just distracting. And the people who read through a Reader will not have known about the comments; when you post a response, you're inviting them to go look at the debate.

When you get defensive over negative comments, the phrase, "If you don't like it, don't read it" usually will escape your lips. This is a pretty standard defense and it has its place. I think it's really important to make the distinction that "If you don't like it, don't read it," can and should apply to subject matter. For example, I don't read a lot of vegetarian blogs because I'm not a vegetarian. But I do read some vegetarian blogs because I like their style that much. I like how they say things even if I don't agree with what they are saying. So isn't it kind of great to strive to make your blog one that is respected, even by people who don't necessarily want to live your lifestyle?

But do not just toss that defense around lightly. Saying, "If you don't like it, you can leave," is another way of saying, "I don't need you!" But…you do kind of need readers, right? I don't know about you but I do want people to read my blog. I don't want to get so arrogant that I start telling my readers to shove off if they call me out.

And really, this goes back to looking at the nature of the comment. I don't mind losing the crazies. I'll accept having less readers because I write in a particular style. But I am not OK with having less readers because of how I respond to them when they don't worship every last word I write.

Well, my free coaching call giveaway has been open for a week, so I figured it was time to pick some winners!  (The fact that I finished finals today may have had something to do with it, too.)

Picking the winners was so hard.  Without exaggeration, I spent hours on it.  Forty-five of you entered and there were compelling reasons for every single one.  In the end, it came down to choosing a wide variety of blogs to get a little taste of all different types of health and food blogs.

To those who didn't win: Thank you so much for entering.  If I learn from this process that I want to offer it as a paid service, you'll all be offered a very special entrants-only discount when I launch it, just for being part of the contest.  Those who are on my email list will get a good deal too, so sign up for "The 7 Mistakes New Health Bloggers Make," if you haven't yet.

Here are the winners, in no particular order.

• Honoring Health
• Fit Feat
• Life After Bagels
• The Healthy Apron
• Daily Unadventures in Cooking
• Lean Bodies Health and Fitness
• Gluten-Free Fitness
• Your Nutritionista
• Lil Veggie Patch
• Health on the Run

Thanks again to everyone who entered.  I'm really looking forward to this.