This is a guest post by Charles, who blogs at Big Idea Blogger. You can connect with him via his blog or follow him on twitter @ BigIdeaBlogger.

You have heard the advice by now. Many big-time bloggers have said,

“Get more RSS subscribers. You’ll get more repeat traffic.”

But I’m unconvinced. What about internet marketers like Frank Kern who doesn’t get an iota of RSS subscribers? He still gets tons of readers to his Mass Control blog. Look at his Alexa ranking, it’s 10,591. By comparison, Copyblogger ranks at 10,500.

Yet nowhere on Frank’s blog do you see our familiar bright orange button. (Oh my, he is too lazy to even get RSS subscribers!)

But he still gets hordes of raving fans, and his blog averages 80-100 comments per post. And while the top bloggers earn six figures, Frank’s business earnings is in the millions. How the heck does he get so many followers who are not just regular readers, but regular buyers of his products?

Here’s my answer:

He gets people to join his LIST. His email list.

Is there a difference between RSS and email subscriptions, you ask?

There is. Let me explain.

1. Feed Updates vs Unread Emails

When you see a list of unread emails in your inbox, what do you do? If they are not in the spam folder, chances are you’ll open it. Something has been wired in us since our old days of traditional mail – that we need to at least check out what’s inside the mail before we decide to either continue or skip it. But when you see a new article in your list of subscribed RSS feeds, you say “That’s interesting. I’ll check it out later.” Then you forget about it, and before you know it, the update gets buried below newer updates.

2. RSS tool vs Email

Let’s face it, most people who subscribe to RSS feeds are already bloggers themselves. We bloggers are familiar with the tool. But people outside of blogging don’t know squat about RSS. Before I was introduced to blogging, I didn’t know what RSS is (and I didn’t care). But I knew email before I knew blogs. If you want to reach out to readers beyond the blogging circle, email should be your primary means of contact. Besides, more people read emails than read blogs. Even if all your readers are bloggers, you should consider email because of point #1.

3. Pull vs Push marketing

Blogs are a great medium for “pull marketing”, which are things like building trust and forming relationship with readers, etc. But it must be complemented with the “push marketing” of email. If you have a retail business, when you do a promotion, you don’t just sit there in your “shop” and expect your regular customers to know about it. You got to notify them. Likewise, when you are promoting a product on your blog, you don’t just write a promotion and expect your regular readers to show up. What if they miss your RSS update?

Even if they do show up, are they expecting it? Will they be in the right frame of mind to buy? You got to push the promotion to them. You got to notify them via email. And preferably tell them a little about what you are promoting before directing them to your blog.

4. Bloggers vs Marketers mentality

Here is where it’s not really just about RSS or emails. The difference originates from the thinking behind bloggers and that of marketers. Bloggers treat their blog as their baby. They have spent their lives raising it up.So their blog is the only thing on their minds. All their traffic-building efforts are designed to build up their blog. RSS included.

But marketers have a bigger picture in their minds. They know that their blog is just a piece of their business puzzle. They know that “the money is in the list”. All their traffic-building efforts are designed to build up their list. They know that once they have their reader’s emails, they can both send them great content AND promote to them as often as they like, so long as they don’t abuse the privilege. When they need feedback, they just send their readers to their blog to comment.

That’s where Frank Kern gets his 80-100 comments on every post, despite doing absolutely nothing to get RSS subscribers. He builds his email list instead. As a result, he works less hard, but gets more followers and makes more money than most bloggers.

You should read The Blogging Wealth Gap by David Risley, as recommended by Tom. David does a great job explaining why the difference in results between bloggers and marketers.

Having said all that…

I’m not against RSS, and I’m not against the advice to get more RSS subscribers. Displaying a huge number of readers in your feedburner chicklet does add lots of credibility to your blog, so I’m all for it. But you need to start thinking bigger like a marketer and start building up your email list.

As the saying goes, “the money is in the list”.

This has been a fantastic guest post by Charles, who blogs at Big Idea Blogger. You can connect with him via his blog or follow him on twitter @ BigIdeaBlogger. Please comment below with your thoughts!

It is just 3 days until I marry the most amazing girl and we head off to Canada for 2 1/2 months! So right now I am thinking of the best way to take StandOutBlogger to the next level when I get back. So today I want to look at Podcasting.

Do you subscribe to Podcasts through your iTunes account?

I subscribe to about 10 or more different Podcasts through iTunes because sometimes I really don’t feel like listening to music while I am driving and would rather something entertaining or education.

This got me thinking about SOB, as Podcasting is something that I have become really interested in lately and see it as a great way to find new readers/listeners/viewers, as well as also making sure I am constantly keeping this blog fresh.

My Podcasting Dilemma

But now I am looking into Podcasting, it has got me thinking about whether vlogging (video blogging) would be better than audio blogging? I mean people love visuals, right? But then that cuts out the majority of people wanting to listen in their car. (some will still watch while driving )

So I thought my easiest solution to this dilemma was to ask you, my readers, which method you would prefer. Let me pose a few questions, and if you could answer them by adding a comment below that would be great!

My Questions To You…

1. Do You Subscribe To Podcasts Through  iTunes?
2. How Many Do You Subscribe To?
3. Are They Audio Or Video Podcasts?
4. Would You Prefer StandOutBlogger Podcasts In Audio Or Video Format?

If you could leave a comment below with your answers to these questions that would be fantastic!

PS. My fiance should be making a guest post within the next day or so, which should be highly entertaining. Then after that I am going technology free for the week after my wedding – so don’t stress if I do not reply! I will get back to you.

PPS. I have a few guest posts lined up, but would love some more. If you are interested in guest posting on StandOutBlogger, shoot me a quick email with your post idea, and I’ll let you know if it’s something that the rest of my readers would love.

This is a guest post by Simon Rogers, a fifteen year old from the UK who blogs at Teenius.com. You can connect with him via his blog or follow him on Twitter @teenius

The majority of new bloggers are in it for the money. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that – I’m sure most of the experienced bloggers are in it for the money, too. The thing you have to balance is when you actually start earning from your blog, and this article will discuss your options.

Why is early monetisation so bad?

I know a few of you reading this article will be pondering on the above question. Well, basically, if you try to earn from your blog right at the start, one of two things is going to happen:

1. You cram your site full of adverts and make a reasonable amount
2. You use an “acceptable” amount of adverts and earn very little.

The truth is that in the early stages of a blog’s life, it has neither the traffic nor the authority to start earning, and those two are probably the two most important things.

OK, but WHY is it actually so bad to try and earn from your blog early on? The thing is, if you go with option one (listed above), you’ll find that due to the vast quantity of adverts on your site, people will leave a lot quicker. This won’t help your traffic one bit, and will probably slow down the growth of your blog. If you opt to go with the second option, there isn’t really much point as you’ll hardly earn anything.

So, what do I do instead?

Well, in the early stages of a blog, it’s all about growth. You need to be driving traffic and looking to the future rather than trying to squeeze every possible cent: you can do that when the time is right and you’re getting enough traffic.

You can still earn!

I’m guessing a lot of readers of this article will have a new blog, and I’m also guessing they’re getting more and more disheartened as they read more and more of this article. Well, to those people, don’t worry! I’ve got some solutions so that you can still earn!

• Affiliate Sales: Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn from new blogs. This basically consists of selling a product and getting a percentage. You’ll often get banners that you can put up on your website to advertise the product. Even if you only make one sale, you’ll probably earn more than selling advertising space directly.
• Adsense: Google Adsense is an amazing program where you get paid every time someone clicks one of the adverts. The only problem with this is that you hardly get paid anything, and because of the nature of the program it can often make your blog look ‘spammy’.

Those are, in my opinion, the two best ways to earn from new blogs. There are, however, other ways to maximise the advertising space on your blog though, my favourite of which is to use them to build traffic.

How do you build traffic through advertising space?!

Simple: give it away. Give it away?! Am I mad?!

Actually, no, I’m not. There are loads of contests all over the internet where you can win advertising space as one of the prizes. Well, the next time you see someone looking for prizes, donate one of your advertising spaces. This will get you good exposure as these contests are usually advertised well.

Conclusion

From the above points we can (hopefully) conclude that you shouldn’t dive in at the deep end searching for treasure when you launch a new blog. You should build traffic so that in the long term you can sell your advertising space for more. That said, you can still earn through affiliate programs and Adsense.

I am sure you will agree that this has been a fantastic look at early monetization of your blog. Thankyou Simon for really setting the standard high for guest posts on SOB, and for anyone interested, I recommend you check out Simons blog at Teenius.com. - Tom

This effort is incredible in itself, but the thing is, that he has done all this, while showing you exactly how to do it yourself. A bit confused? Let’s take a look inside IncomeDiary and highlight a few of the things that Michael has implemented in the process of building this blog so quickly into the profitable blog it is today.

First a quick disclaimer: Michael is a personal friend of mine, and has been a fantastic mentor to me. So this may or may not affect the bias of this post

What Is Income Diary?

Income Diary is basically a blog with two main focuses, inspiration and action. Michael constantly inspires you with a mixture of interviews with successful Internet entrepreneurs and lists of big money makers online.

Then calls you to action with his free 7 day course that takes you through the exact steps you need to follow to create your first successful blog! As well as that, there also happens to be a fantastic forum that already has over 2,000 members.

Let’s Dig A Little Deeper

High Profile Interviews

I think the easiest way for me to do this, is to just link to just a small selection of his interviews, and then you can not only see the calibre of Internet entrepreneurs that he is interviewing – but also the quality!

• Joel Comm – ‘Adsense Secrets’ and ‘iFart’ Iphone Application Fame
• Craig Newmark - Founder Of Craigslist.com
• John Chow – Infamous For Making Money Telling People How Much He Makes!

A lot of the more recent interviews also contain a podcast of the interview as well, which is handy if you want to use your driving time to listen to them.

Creative List Posts

Everyone is telling us that social media love lists, but not many people are able to do them well. Check out these lists and telling me if you think Michael knows how to write a good list post:

• 30 Cool Things For Successful Entrepreneurs To Do
• Top 30 Dyslexic Entrepreneurs

Now that is quite a bit of inspiration so let’s get into the education, because I did say that he has built IncomeDiary.com to $5,000/month teaching people how they can do the same…

FREE 7 Day E-Course

A lot of bloggers really struggle to make money from their blog because they do not understand or implement list building. Michael has put a lot of the focus of Income Diary into this money making technique and it is definitely paying off for him.

I personally signed up to receiver the 7 Day E-Course because I understand the value in learning from those who are currently in the position that I am aiming for. While I am not going to go into depth about the content, I will leave that for Michael to explain when you sign up, but I will say that after doing this course personally, I would highly recommend that if you are looking to start your first blog or just wanting to make it something more than it currently is, then you need to sign up.

The Blogging Forum

Have you ever wanted a place where you can just chat with other bloggers and find out what is working for them and just chat with people who can relate with you as a blogger – because I know my friends and family don’t understand!

The Income Diary forum is especially for bloggers and after just 3 months already has over 2,000 members – what a great networking tool! I must say that this is the last feature of this blog that I have taken advantage of (I only just signed up!), but I am looking forward to just having a place that I can go to learn, to share. To celebrate and even to vent! So become a member of this blogging forum today and join the community.

That’s enough from me. What do you think?

Michael Wants Your Thoughts!

When Michael asked me to write this review of Income Diary for him, he specifically said that he wants EVERYONES feedback!

So let Michael know what you think of this blog, what he is doing well and the things that you think he could improve on. Leave your thoughts below and let’s get some discussion happening!

This guy doesn’t just talk the talk, he has been blogging for over 10 years now! That is a long time, but who wouldn’t want to be making $10,000 a month – just from blogging?

The reason I am telling you about this, is becuase in the email that he sent me, David let me know about a free ebook that he has  just written called ‘The Blogging Wealth Gap‘ (Click To Visit).

Not Another Ebook About Blogging!

Now I know what you are thinking, ‘Another Ebook About Blogging’, but this one really  surprised me. ‘The Blogging Wealth Gap‘ is all about monetizing your blog (and David obviously knows his stuff there).

David notes that a lot of bloggers do not make good internet marketers – which is why they never make any money! (Are you in that  category?)

Download The Blogging Wealth Gap

In fact the equation he puts across is this:

SOLID BLOGGING + COMPETENT MARKETING = LOTSA MONEY!

This ebook is definately a ‘mindset changing’ ebook, and has made me consider how I run StandOutBlogger.com.

If you are serious about making money from your blog and not Charity Blogging (another concept David discusses in his ebook) then head over and grab this fantastic free resource.

David has even more resources on they way and I am really excited, because David is one of the most ‘no-fluff’ type of bloggers I know. And  what he has got to share is definately worth learning (because I want to be a $10,000 a month blogger).

If you are serious about montizing your blog, I definately recommend that you download The Blogging Wealth Gap.

The one thing above all else that really grabbed my attention and made me want to read more was the inclusion of personal stories.

Let Me Give You Some Examples Of Personal Stories:

• A Blog Where The Blogger Shares Their Experiences
  This is one thing that I have really tried to make a regular part of my blog, because I see a lot of value in the power of being a personal blogger.Now when I say ‘personal blogger’ I am not meaning the ‘bear-all, dear diary’ type of personal blogger. What I am talking about is using stories from your personal life to highlight the points of your post.A great example of this would be my Mountain Climbing post
  about goals (which just so happens to be my most commented blog post.

  Benefits Of Personal Stories In Blogs
  
  It Builds A Relationship With Your Readers
  
  No longer is your blog ‘just a blog’ – there is now a person behind the blog, that they can relate too. I have found being personal to be one of the biggest assets to the growth of my blog.

• A Corporate Website That Includes Testimonials
  Have you ever been to a corporate website and while it looks professional and everything seems legitimate, there is just something that doesn’t sit right. Because while a company can say as many nice things about themselves as they life, if they do not have a few short statements from a couple of clients – it is all just self promotion.Now I know that a company would never put a bad review up, but it does give a sense of security knowing that regular people do recommend the company
  .
• Product Sales Page With Personal Results
  This is one thing that I have never been able to understand. I constantly see a lot of products being promoted on Clickbank, or PayDotCom promoting products supposedly created by the writer of the sales letter – that do not include personal results.I have not seen the sales statistics for these products, but I will take a guess that they are not selling very many copies of their product.
  
  For Example:

  If you are promoting an ebook telling people how to build a massive list, then we want to see pictures of your Aweber account with a huge amount of subscribers. A video would be even better.

   

  If you are selling an acne cure report we want to see before and after pictures. Something even better would be before and after pictures of not only you, but also people who have successfully used your report.

The whole concept about being personal with your blog, website or sales page is that people like to read about other people, they like to be entertained and they want to know they are learning or buying from a real person (not just some lifeless computer generated sales page.

What are you doing to make your blog personal? Or do you not agree with what I am saying at all? Either way, comment below with your thoughts!

Blog: StartYourFirstWebsite.com

Purchase Price: $35 (The domain alone was worth more than that I believe)

Sale Price: $200

Who wouldn’t want an extra $165 for a weeks work? And by ‘one weeks work’ I mean part time (cause I barely did anything at all!)

So how did I do it? Anyone who has done blog flipping before knows that they key is to a successful blog flip is adding value!

Add Value To Your Blog

The more perceived value a blog has, the more someone will be willing to pay for it! (That is just common sense)

How Did I Add Value To StartYourFirstWebsite?

I was able to add a lot of value extremely quickly by one simple method! Twitter.

As well as receiving the blog, the purchaser would also receive a Twitter account that I had created that had over 2,000 followers!

Other than that, all I did was change the theme, and add about 4 extra blog posts, then listed it straight back up for sale. Bidding was going well up to $90, then I received a BIN offer via PM which I took! It was seriously that simple!

How Do You Get Into Blog Flipping?

Before you just jump into blog flipping and start making a heap of mistakes that first time blog flippers usually make, I would recommend starting by getting a good education.

I am a huge fan of learning from others mistakes and that is exactly what I recommend you to do.

Desmond Ong has written a fantastic guide that takes you right through the whole blog flipping process. Blog Flipping Formula comes from Desmonds personal experience, flipping a heap of blogs. In fact he made over $5,000 in one week using these methods!

It’s not expensive, but it is definately valuable. Who wouldn’t want to learn how a person using this same exact blog flipping formula to make thousands of dollars in one week?

What Am I Doing Now?

Well considering the success of my last blog flip, I am considering doing something similar, using the blog flipping formula to off load a few of my excess domains -while making some extra cash!

What Success Have You Had Flipping Blogs?

Have you sucessfully completed a blog flip? We would all love to hear you results, and what you think contributed to your successful sale. So comment below.

But I won’t go on anymore about the program because today I want to talk about the results I have had with one of my blogs using the program and discuss the poker of keyword search engine traffic.

My Keyword Search Engine Traffic Results

For those of you who do not know (which is probably all of you ), I work for my brother as the marketing manager of his design and drafting business. I created him a website probably 12 months ago, but we never did any promotion and there it probably got 5 visitors a month. Over the last 2 weeks I decided to make the transition from a .com domain to a .com.au because I found that we were having trouble ranking in the Australian search results (which is our target market), and have set the website up as a blog writing posts to target specific keywords . Search engine traffic has been amazing!

The website is Archilads (Don’t criticise design and structure as I’m still working on it)and here are my keyword search engine traffic results after just one week!

(Just so you know, I edited my stats pages so that I could make all the major points visible in the image above. I however did not change any of the numbers.)

100 Visitors In The First Week. 82% From Search Engines.

I don’t know if you are understanding this, but I only bought the domain on the 11th of May, which is one week prior to start this. Meaning I had to get these terms indexed and ranking in just one week! This is the power of keyphrase or keyword search engine traffic!

Using Market Samurai (or Micro Niche Finder if you don’t want to spend as much) I found a selection of keywords that had very minimal search engine competition but decent amount of searches  (ie 20+ a day). And as you will notice from my sloping house plans post has been received quite well on Google.

In the long term I am targetting the top position for the search phrase ‘Australian House Plans‘ (already number 10) and for my email capture page I am targetting top 3 position for ‘House Plans‘ (Currently on page 13). I see a lot of value is ranking high in these search terms as we are targetting builders who are looking to purchase pre-designed house plans.

Keyword Search Engine Traffic Converts Great!

The other benefit of search engine traffic is that people who are searching these terms are looking for something. If you are able to provide what they are looking for them you will convert a large proportion of your visitors.

With Archilads we are currently planning the creation of our latest house plan series for builders and as part of our marketing method we are looking to build a email list of builders and homebuyers interested in our current series – meaning they should also have an interest in our upcoming plans. Check out Archilads Aweber account as a result of our week of keyword search engine traffic:

16 Subscribers From 99 Visitors!

I would say that is a pretty decent conversion rate! That is the benefit of targetting keywords that not only have limited competition and decent daily traffic – but are looking for what you are offering! If you are currently struggling to build traffic to your blog, or getting traffic but it isn’t really converting, then you may want to start focusing on keyword search engine traffic.

What has been your experience with keyword targetting? Have something to add to this post? Please comment below!

What I have found is 5 results of a successful partnership and why I’d rather journey with someone than go it alone.

Partners Inspire

When you are working on something alone you only have yourself to please and disaapoint. I don’t know about you, but personal satisfaction only does a small amount to keep me motivated. I am very much an ‘other people focused’ type of person – and my motivation and inspiration comes from wanting to help or please someone else.

As my wedding quickly approaches, I have found my passion and drive to make something of myself online has dramatically increase. You see, now that Fiona and I are in a partnership, my sole focus is to be able to provide for her – yet not in a way that will keep me away from home for long periods of time.

My inspiration to work harder and be more creative with my online businesses, comes from my desire to acheive my best for my partner. If I was still going at this alone I would have no where near the passion that I have now.

Partners Compliment

Every good partnership is made up of people who have skills and talents that compliment each other. You do not want two head strong leaders because I was always taught:

Two captains sink a ship

In other words, if you have two people trying to lead, there is sure to be conflict – and it will most like end in mutiny. But if you are able to form a partnership with people who compliment each other, with defined roles – you are on the right path to success.

Partners Challenge

Ever tried to psych yourself up when you are getting slack? It doesn’t really work does it?

Have you ever worked on a project with someone and found yourself getting slack? Chances are you didn’t even realise you were getting slack before your partner started to challenge your work ethic! Accountability is a gift. While most people see it as a burden, I know that I would not get half of the work I current do, if Fiona didn’t constantly ask me what I had done that day. Knowing that she will ask me, motivates me to get ask much done as possible!

Partners Encourage

While partners are constantly challenging us, one sign of a successful partnership is encouragement. If you have a good partnership then obviously you want to see your partner achieving their best. So when ever they have a setback or feel like they want to give up, you are there to encourage them, to be the person that believes in them. The power on encouragement is grossly underrated and I believe that a person that feels supported and is constantly being told that they can achieve what they set out to do – will be way more likely to do what they set out to do, than someone who is never encouraged.

Partners Celebrate

There is nothing worse than acheiving one of your goals, only to realise that you are all alone, celebrating by yourself. Where is the fun in that?

So not only are partners there to inspire you, compliment you, challenge you and encourage you, but they are also there to celebrate your victories with you. And the bonus is, that since they have been on the journey with you, they will know the ffort that you put in and the struggles that you have, making them understand the joy that you now feel in your accomplishment!

How have your partnerships fared? Where they successful or did they not go to plan? Share your partnership stories in the comments below!