Last week, Ramit Sethi and I recorded a private videocast for a select group of readers. The three short videos below, all 2-8 minutes in length, describe our blogging tips and techniques, as well as an examination of traditional publishing vs. self-publishing.
He and I have both had the privilege and tactical experience of:
1) Building highly-trafficked blogs in a crowded blogosphere of more than 120 million blogs. More important, both of our blogs are well-known for action-oriented readers (For data on this blog’s readers — that’s you! — check this out).
2) Publishing books that reached The New York Times bestseller lists. Ramit’s experience is fresh and most up-to-date from his last three weeks with I Will Teach You To Be Rich, while I wrote The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been on the New York Times business bestseller list continually for 23 months, since its publication in April of 2007.
Here are some of the topics we cover in the a la carte videos:
Currencies Besides Royalties and Direct Income
Google Juice and SEO Misuse
Choosing Post Topics: From Google Keyword Tool to Stumble Upon
Post Length and Publishing Time
Tactical Redating of Posts
Regarding the plug-in I mention for keeping your best content on your homepage, the very smart Lloyd Budd at Automattic explains:
Have your WordPress theme developer to update your theme to take advantage of the simple 2.7 feature “sticky posts” to have articles stay on the front page: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/is_sticky
Self-Publishing vs. Big Publishers – 5:11
How to Build Traffic – 7:22
More Blogging Tactics – 2:35
In Ramit’s latest post, you will find an additional video on our mutual “false starts” and mistakes.
The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.
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Hi Tim,
I am grateful to find your blog via Ramit Sethi and have to tell you that I am looking at blogging in a different light now thanks to you guys. I am looking to increase my readership and the quality of my content and this gives me the direction in which to shoot for.
I enjoyed your book ” The Four Hour Work Week ” and now will definitely enjoy your newsletter.
Cheers!
Tim,
Give BlogGlue a try, its ideal for self publishers. It allows you to network with other bloggers, almost like Facebook. The network recommends posts from your blog as you publish them.
We use relevance, are really goos at it, 5% – 35% CTR. It drops into your blog, let people know you’re running it and I promise with your name recognition you’ll have a few thousand bloggers recommending your blog posts within a few days.
Giv me a shout, I’ll upgrade you gratis!
As a real newbie starting out on my first faultering steps into the big wide blogging world, your advise and guidance is such an inspirational help. So many people out there are favouring so-called advise such as make all your blog posts 500 – 600 words, SEO is it! Keywords & phrases is the root to Eldorado. Sexy traffic secrets for getting 1000,000,000,000,000 hits a day bazonga! that it’s refreshing to hear you qualify my own gut feelings that:
The Secret to Blogging Success is to … Just Write Good Content. And …
Love what you do. Love what you write, & be genuine. Give value. Give MORE value. Give something that will improve lives.
Thanks guys.
Don’t have my blog up & running yet – still writing that “good content” – but hope to soon. I’ll just put some of your 4-hour work week tips into practice! In the meantime, feel free to join me on Facebook. I’m there as TM Southern, author. Feel free to “Like” me too. See you all there.
Tom
Great advice. Thanks for sharing.
That was an awesome video! The most powerful intro ever!
Hey Tim /Ramit,
great clips & great advice – I love the rapport between the two of you in these clips,
I have to admit, I also often ponder the ‘length of post’ question and have had (presumably busy) readers ask me to write shorter posts but then I have to assume that other readers prefer longer posts (borne out by traffic stats) and always quickly come to the conclusion that the post is simply as long as it needs to be without worrying about it – I just write until I’m finished.
I also think there’s a lot to be said for the way a long post is chopped up into well formatted and clearly titled chunks so it’s easier to digest (and removal of any distracting clutter is obviously a good idea too),
take care & best wishes,
Alan
Hey Tim,
Great tutorials. Very helpful indeed.
I’m sure this post will rock. Traffic tips are best as next. Thumbs Up (y)
Very interesting post. I really learned a lot.
Tim and Ramit your videos are great and helpful! They were interesting enough to keep me hooked up. 5 stars for these videos!
Very useful.
Thank you
Very helpful and awesome! I’m an Egoscue therapist trained under John Cattermole in Phoenix (see chapter in 4 Hour Body), and I’m now battling aggressive cancer. I blog my experiences at http://www.memoriesahead.com If anyone is interested, please check it out. I love feedback. 🙂
Would be interesting to know your opinion on the future of blogging and publishing in regards to Facebooks instant articles for mobile where content creators are being pushed to build their homes on rented land. This makes content unsearchable in Google and harder to monetize.
Facebook works to become a self-contained world wide web with algorithms which dictate what content is shown to people. A scary thought for politics and the future. Delegating these civic responsibilities to unelected private companies (social media platforms) is happening rapidly and almost by default.
What effect do you think this will have on building audiences and monetizing them? Are bloggers to become advertising agencies producing sponsored content for brands? What about small startup publishers/media outlets? Here’s an edited article of a longer speech given at Cambridge
http://www.cjr.org/analysis/facebook_and_media.php
Brilliant content as always you are both so generous with sharing your experiences…hmmm somethings to think about.
Really enjoyed this post. Was very informative and I was surprised to hear both of your thoughts on things such as the length of posts, time of day posting, and how to target the right audiences with content. I was wondering if you would give your quick opinion on guest blogging? My website focuses on this subject and provides it to bloggers for free. I was curious as to what you think about it.
Thanks,
Spencer
How long do you expect a new blogger to work (on average) until he/she hits a traffic inflection point?
Thank you.
Thanks Tim and Ramit,