Many a times we keep looking for some magical bullet to be successful or when we see highly successful people we feel they were born with silver spoon or luck favored them hence they are at this position today.

But, success can be achieved implementing small and simple things in life, let me share with you 4 quick tips to be successful online.

Look at your Fears

Be honest with yourself.  When it comes to doing something, what is it you’re afraid of?  What are the specific things holding you back from reaching your ultimate goal?

As you identify what you worry about and then tackle those things head on, with each success, you will start to be more and more motivated.

For me, when I first got started as a online, I was afraid to create anything that wasn’t PERFECT.  I wanted to create the absolute spotless eBook.  I wanted it to be so perfect that I became miserable trying to write it.  And I quit many times.

Finally, I decided to just write and share what I know.  People will either love it or they won’t.  You can’t please everyone anyway.

The point being:  address those fears.  Whatever they are, whatever these obstacles are that keep you from staying focused and active…face them, find a way to overcome them and then chop their heads off.  )

Model Other Successful People

When you need that extra boost to stay motivated, conduct some research and learn how other writers or famous people started out.  The majority at one time or another waited tables, worked construction, or cleaned houses.  They weren’t always successful but had to work their way up.

Seeing the success of people we admire is a great way to stay motivated.  Each one of them had to be 100% committed in order to meet schedules and deadlines.  Knowing that other people go through the same emotions and struggles, and learning what they did to get past those barriers, will help you out a lot.

Another thing you can do is look at HOW they stay motivated.  Many of them share their “secrets” in their writings.  You can even approach some of them via email or telephone and ASK them how they overcome difficulties.

In other words, when you see something that works, try it yourself.  Find out how others “made it” and do what they did.

Spread the Word.

Sometimes sharing your goals and aspirations with close friends and family is a huge motivator.  When people expose their dreams, in a way, they’ve made themselves accountable for your own success.  In essence, they’ve now presented a challenge to themselves.  In addition to making these desires public, you have also created a cheering section.

Now, when you aren’t motivated, you can always have those people remind you of why you wanted to write.  Have them repeat back to you what you had shared with them – how important writing was to you, that writing was a passion, etc.  They can help you keep your dreams alive.

When I first started an offline Christian newspaper (actually, I hadn’t even started it yet) I had folks asking me “When is it going to be here — I’m ready to read it!”

Need any more motivation than that?

By giving other folks involved, you not only have accountability, you have waiting readers who want to see your finished product.  Sometimes as much as you want it yourself.

Reward Yourself.

Many infopreneurs create a tradition for their successes.  When you get your product finished, reward yourself with something important.  It doesn’t really matter what it is, but bait yourself with something you really want and make that your prize.  Whether it’s a new dress, a trip to your favorite restaurant, a night out at the movies, whatever it is, congratulate yourself for your successes.

I personally like a large deposit into my bank account by selling a lot of copies.

Hey, we’re being honest, right?  )

One writer collected beautiful Oriental paintings by a particular artist in China.  Although not expensive, the paintings were all signed and beautifully done.  Each time she successfully published an eBook, she would buy another piece of his work.  Within a year, she had completely redecorated her living room with his artwork on all the walls, and, she had to switch to new rewards because she was running out of wall space.  No matter what you choose, it’s important to choose something you like and can look at from time to time as a reminder that you succeeded.

Be good to yourself.

I think that’s a song by Journey, but it illustrates the point.

So, what do you to motivate yourself for success?

Staying motivated and sticking to a schedule can sometimes seem more of a chore than a delight.  As a info product creator, it’s important to set goals for yourself.  These goals will help you see progress, successes and provide you with inspiration and motivation.

It’s one thing to start creating a product.

It’s another thing to finish it.

Often times when someone feels they’re boxed into a corner, they lose desire and motivation.  They feel forced to do something instead of wanting to do it.  I know that it happens to me.  I get trapped by deadlines or sidetracked with delays and I just want to quit writing at times.

And taking a risk at times can help get me fired back up (Which is just a sports phrase that means MOTIVATED).

What kind of risks?

Being totally honest.  Sometimes it is good to just say how you feel, even if those feelings are a bit controversial.  For example:  I’ve actually said, “You know, the customer is supposed to always be right…but sometimes I just want to tell some bozo ‘You’re an idiot.  Go away.’” That may come across a bit controversial, but it certainly keeps things interesting.  Some of the most motivating (and ultimately, rewarding) things you can do as a writer is to be totally honest and just share what’s on your heart.

Being totally vulnerable.  Another way to stay motivated by taking risks with your writing is to open up and let people see the real you.  So what if you’re a male — you can still share how you love your wife and kids.  It may not be a “war story” or a “macho” thing to talk about, but you might be surprised at how many other people feel the same way.  I continue to share about my being a Christian (Many people say don’t do it…it’s bad for business and you shouldn’t mix the two) because that’s something I’m passionate about.  Like me or hate me because of it — you gotta respect me for not holding anything back.

Being totally personal.  Want to stay motivated?  Talk about what you love.  Even when what you are writing ISN’T about what you love.  For example:  Already in this eBook I have mentioned golf.  In the last section I mentioned my relationship with Christ.  See how they were worked into the content?  Not only does it allow me to stay motivated by sharing more about myself and the things I am passionate about, it also allows my readers to get to know me on a more intimate level.  And that builds all kinds of positive things into a relationship:  trust, loyalty, friendship.  So, get personal and share who you are, what you think and feel, what you want and strive for in life.  The real you.

The key to taking risks isn’t to be careless.  It’s about being honest and forthright, even when others may not agree with you.  Ever watch Jerry McGuire, the movie?  That’s what Tom Cruise’s character did.  It cost him his job.  But, it changed his life.  And ultimately, he was the big winner.

Looking forward to your comments...

Do you follow Harry Potter movie series? If you do, you must be aware that last movie is going to divided in to 2 parts, one part releases this year end, the other is going to be released next year. They have completed shooting for both parts, but they will be releasing it in two parts.

Did you watch Lord of The Rings Series, same strategy was followed for it. After grand success of Matrix, Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions were released over a period of time, though Matrix Revolutions was a continuation of Matrix Reloaded, unfortunately they didn’t have a great success at box office like Matrix.

Why am I talking about movies, and why am I talking about continuation series, why not about sequels. I feel there is good correlation between the planned series and sequels released in movies and online marketing world. There is a key difference between planned two part series or trilogy vs sequels that are released based on the success of the first part and response on the subsequent parts.

In online world also 2 part or 3 part series are very popular for driving traffic or building lists. This technique is used by eminent marketers and if used correctly it can get you decent traffic and build highly targeted list for you.

You can use this while writing blog posts, like I have been doing, or writing articles, follow-up series or mini report series. Divide them in to parts that are linked to each other and then watch the strategy at work.

They key difference between planned series is that you start with an end; you know which milestones you have to cover from start to end. In case of sequels you plan an extension after the success of first part.

Let’s see how you can use it for driving traffic to your site.

When you are planning to write an article, create an article of around 1200 words instead of 500-600 words and then divide it in to two parts. In part of this series, I will let you know where to end Part 1 and what to cover in part 2.

Submit Part 1 to article directories and in the end put a link to Part 2, which is posted on your site. You can follow similar approach for your 2 part blog posts also. Another idea you can use for your blog posts is become a guest blogger and post Part 1 on someone else’s blog and then point the readers to your blog to read part 2 of the series.

This way you will get good back links and highly targeted traffic.

You can use the same tactics while writing short reports series or viral reports. Plan different topics in area of your expertise, say Copywriting. Create a full length report of around 60 pages, discussing various tools, techniques, checklists and swipe files for copywriting. You can divide this ebook in to 3 parts and give the first part away at forums, giveaway sites and ebook listing sites and use it as a list building machine to get access to the other 2 parts of the series. In part 2 of this series I will share with you what to cover in the first report that you giveaway and how to divide the content in to 3 parts.

This strategy of dividing your content in to 2-3 parts has proven to work and many marketers have used it to their advantage. You can use it effectively for driving traffic using articles, blog posts and viral reports.

In Part 2 we will see how to divide your content for maximum exposure, what to write in Part 1 and what to cover in Part 2.

Please comment below and let me know... I would really appreciate it.

How many times have you been impressed with presentations you have attended? Have you seen people like Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Armand Morin, Robert Kiyosaki, Donald Trump etc. present in front of large audience, the complete group seems to be mesmerized by what they are sharing and the style in which they are sharing it.

How would you like to create and deliver great presentations? Let me share with you the secret formula of highly effective presentations.

I divide the secrets of putting together great presentation in 2 parts:

-      Preparation

-      Delivery

Preparation

A very simply structure of presentation that I learnt during my MBA course is:

-      Tell them what you are going to tell them (what to expect)

-      Tell them the content (meat)

-      Tell them what you told them (summary and action point/s)

That’s it. No fancy formula.

It’s about setting expectations in the beginning, so, you need to tell them what you are going to cover in your presentation, outline the objectives. This is like telling your listeners the favourite channel they want to hear WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). You presentation should start with an impact; we are majorly impressed when someone throws startling data at us, something that we never knew or some startling revelation. Do a good research on your topic and put together first couple of slides that will catch their attention. Very much like salesletter, we need to have an impressive start.

State the objectives of your presentation, what you are planning to accomplish from the presentation or what will they achieve by the end of presentation. This kind of tells them what they will know by the end of your presentation.

Dive in to the content, present your topic; here also it will be good to have numbers and facts as a part of your coverage. I am planning to write a separate post about what to cover in your presentation to make it impressive. But, one thing that I can say for sure is, know your topic really well. It can be through Google search or you are an expert in your field. But, you need to know more than what your audience knows. This is to ensure that they respect you.

Finally, conclude with a summary of what you covered in your presentation and put in action item. People would like to know the take away and what you expect them to do. So, it is very crucial to tell them the action point, also, have some time for question and answer session.

That’s in brief about Preparation part. Now, let’s talk about Delivery.

Delivery

The presentation that seems to be very natural and effortless, be rest assured that lots of effort gone in by the presenter to make it effortless. Have you read The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo? The author mentions that before any public presentation Steve Jobs presents in front of his launch team for at least 2-3 days, they ensure that the presentation is flawless and smooth.

Whether you are delivering a presentation on stage or webinar, you should rehearse it and ensure that you are not always reading the slides verbatim. The content on slide should be small bulleted points and supported by clip arts or photos where ever possible. Don’t put everything on slide, you should use slides as starting point to expand the thoughts. When making public presentation it is important to make eye contact with your listeners than just reading through your slides. Would you like someone who is just reading through the PPT without even looking at you throughout the presentation?

Rehearsing is also important to time yourself. Be it seminar, knowledge sharing session or webinar, you want to ensure that you stick to the time given to you for delivering your presentation, if people have more questions and that needs extra time, that’s fine. But, you should aim to complete your main presentation in stipulated time.

While you are delivering the presentation ensure that you take pauses at appropriate places, check with your audience whether they are following or not, check with them if they are fine with your pace or not and invite participation from them. While sharing factual data or numbers, speak as naturally as possible, without putting great emphasis, the impact of data should be felt by them and not by you in your voice, because you have already gathered the data and digested it to deliver in your presentation1 J

While concluding your presentation thank your audience for sitting through and listening to you, tell them what you covered and finally tell them the action you expect from them. This technique can be used in sales presentation, information sharing session or webinar.

So, there you are with the simple formula revealing the secrets of great presentations. Have a format to your presentation which lists objectives, meaty content and summary with action point; follow this with rehearsal and sound delivery.

Share some techniques that you use while making presentations?

Automation is the key to everything we do. To the extent possible we should try and automate routine tasks. Unfortunately, we can not automate brushing, bathing and getting ready; but we can at least automate computer tasks! J

In this post I want to share with you how I automate my blogging tasks and how you too can. In Part 1, I will share with you what I do to automate blogging tasks in WordPress and in Part 2, I will share with you what I do to automate traffic generation activities to the blog.

I will share with you some plugins and the overall strategy that allows me to blogging in WordPress blog. So, let’s get started.

Automating Twitter, Facebook and Buzz Announcements

Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz are the most popular social sites where people share “What’s on their mind” or about the latest site they are enjoying or their latest blog post. So, in case you don’t have these as a part of your blogging strategy, you should include them. They do help you in creating buzz about the blog post you have made and lets people know about what you are up to.

Now, let’s see how we can automate these tasks, rather than doing it manually by going to all 3 sites. You will need to use one plugin and one service to achieve this and believe me it’s very simple to do it.

You need to have Twitter Tools plugin installed on WordPress, it will automatically post to twitter when you post on your blog. I have written about Twitter Tools plugin in my top 10 wordpress plugins post. So, you have automated posting to Twitter.

The service you need to use is FriendFeed, this is also used as social bookmarking site, but you will use it for automating your posting to Facebook. Create an account with FriendFeed and go to Tools, you will have an option to connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Connecting here means allowing FriendFeed to post to both these account and get the latest posts from these accounts to post to FriendFeed, in short to keep all 3 accounts (FriendFeed, Twitter and Facebook) in sync. Once you connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts at FriendFeed, it will get the latest tweet from Twitter account and then post it on to your FriendFeed and Facebook account. So, now you have automated posting to Twitter and Facebook without even logging to your accounts. Now, let’s see how we can automate posting to Google Buzz.

Login to your Gmail account and access Buzz. There is link available Connect Sites, where it allows you to connect other sites, connect Twitter to Google Buzz. This will allow you to post your latest tweet to Buzz. So, now you have automated posting to Twitter, Facebook and Buzz without even lifting a finger. Wasn’t it simple?

Automate WordPress Blogging and Backup

How do you normally publish your blog posts? Do you type the complete post and click Publish button to publish it instantly or do you the schedule them for future release? With version 2.5 WordPress introduced a new feature i.e. allowing us to schedule the post to get published on a specific date at specific time, similar to autoresponders. This is a very powerful feature.

Let’s say you are going on vacation for 2 weeks, but you still want to post on alternate days, so, type out your blog posts and schedule them for release on specific dates at specific time. You have already automated announcements to Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz, so, as soon as your automatically scheduled post appears on blog, it will notify the 3 accounts also.

Backup is another key aspect of your blogging tasks. If your blog is really important asset for you then you need to back it up daily, WordPress database backup plugin comes by default with WordPress, you just need to make the necessary settings, after activating it, and ensure that a daily backup is automated.

That’s it for this part. We saw how to schedule your posts in advance, how to automatically post at Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz and how to back up your database. In part 2 we will see how to automate social bookmarking and submission to blog directories and submit your content to other web 2.0 sites.

How do you automate your blogging tasks?

In part 1, I shared with you the plugins I use to get people share by blog posts on social sites, tweet my posts and build list after driving traffic.

In this post lets go behind the scene of blog and see some plugins that help me know more about traffic to the blog, what visitors are looking for, how much time on an average a reader spends on my site and how to automatically backup my blog.

Google Analyticator

Goggle Analytics is a great tool for bloggers also, it tells us a lot about our visitors, where are they coming from, what posts are being read the most, which social sites are sending us traffic, how much time is spent on an average by a visitor, which are the entry points, which are the exit points. If you set up conversion goal, it will track that also for you.

If all this is done by Google Analytics what does the plugin do? You know, I am a lazy person, I would like to see everything in one place rather than going to different places and logging in to different sites. Google Analyticator, gets all the data from Google Analytics and displays in my admin dashboard, so, I can view everything I want to know about without leaving my blog.

Psychic Search

This plugin also tells you about your visitors, how they are finding you and what exactly are they looking for on your site. It keeps a log of every search someone has looked through your site with, it groups all the searches together and you can see what terms have been searched the most.

Psychic Search also stores the searches people typed into Yahoo, Google, and MSN in order to find your blog. It also stores those words that returned zero results to your readers. This tells you what to write in future posts. It’s very easy to install plugin and you will be able to view all the data from your admin panel.

Admin Management Xtended

How cool will it be if you could change the order of your posts? How cool woul it be if you have to make a small change in the title of the post, you don’t have to open the post, edit it and update it? All this and many more features are available in Admin Management extended plugin. As the name suggests it gives you the extended admin management capabilities.

You can change the order in which posts appear, if you want some post to appear at top, using default wordpress it’s not possible, as it will display all posts by publish date only, but using this plugin you can specify the order. To make a small edit in the post title, go to the posts listing page and there you have a quick edit button, just make the change and you are done. You definitely feel more empowered, don’t you! J

All in One SEO

I am not a SEO expert, I haven’t studied much about how to optimize my blog for good SEO rankings, I write blog posts to share what I know and interact with you. If that’s the case with you, this plugin can help.

All in One SEO, can help you optimize your blog post for search engine, by putting targeted title, small excerpt/ description about the post and meta tags. So that when search engines crawl your site, they find what they are looking for and you can concentrate on generating the content, which is what you like to do, correct!

Permalink Migration

The permanent link to the blog post is known as permalink. This is the setting we define in the admin panel >> general settings. For example, my permalink structure is %post id%/%post title%. So, it will display the link as http://www.amarmehta.com/92/my-top-10-wordpress-plugins-part-1

Now, what if I decide to change the permalink structure in future, to make it more user friendly, say add .html at the end of all post titles. It’s easy for me to do it in the admin panel, but what happens to all bookmarks that have been submitted, what happens to all the posts that have been crawled by search engines, what happens to all the links I have posted in forums, reports, ebooks etc. When people click those links, they will get 404 Page not found error, correct, no more! J I have Permalink Migration to help me. It indexes all links and when I change the permalink structure it will have the mapping of links i.e. old link and corresponding new link, so, when someone comes to your site, they will get what they are looking for.

WordPress Database Backup

This plugin comes installed with WordPress and provides an easy way to backup your WordPress database. You can download the backup file, or have it emailed to the address of your choice.

Having backup of your online assets is very important. Mailing list and blog are very key assets, so, being able to automate your online backup is a blessing. The plugin is very easy to use – just activate and then select “Backup” under “Manage” in your WordPress control panel.

What are the plugins that you use that allows you to get the best out of WordPress? Please share them here.

Before starting my blog, when I used to visit other popular bloggers blog I would always observe what system are they using, what kind of images are they using, what kind of information are they sharing and what plugins are they using for their blog.

So, when I started blogging, I took the entire list of plugins and installed them on this blog, but then gradually I started realizing what is useful for me and what’s not and based on that I deactivated some and installed some one.

In this two part series I will cover the 10 plugins that I like the most. In Part 1, I share with you the plugins that will allow you to increase traffic to your site, increase involvement and build your list. In Part 2, I will share with you how to add some advanced admin features.

Let’s get on with this part.

AddThis and Digg Digg

We need traffic, we write so that people read and share it with others. Social sites have become good stream of driving traffic. So, the easier we make sharing our blog posts to various social sites the better.

AddThis is one of the most popular social sharing buttons available. They have quite a few services available and you and pick choose from the list to display on your site. You can select from their default options of you can select a button style and add the sites and the order in which you would like to display them. For this blog I have chosen that option. It’s very easy to configure, no coding required, simply install the plug-in and select the style and option from the settings panel and you are done.

If AddThis is so good what’s the need for another plugin. I installed Digg Digg because, it gives those buttons on the top right side at the beginning of each post, you would have noticed it on this post also. There are some people who notice big buttons at top and would click them to share, there are others who would do it only after they read the complete post, so, the easier we make for them to share it, the better. That’s why I have installed both AddThis as well as Digg Digg.

Disqus

While driving traffic is important, it’s equally important to involve them, get them to contribute them on your blog. This is when WordPress has included comments feature. But, I didn’t like the default comments feature, because if someone has put a comment and you want to reply to that, but there are 5 more people who commented after that, then your reply will have to refer to the person name and write response. I wanted something that allows me to give nested comments, so that my response is below the main comment.

But that’s not the only reason why I got Disqus, as there are many simple plug-ins that give me nested comments feature. Disqus does 3 things in one (that’s what I have discovered so far, when I discover more I will definitely share them with you). A) It gives you nested comments structure B) It allows you to import comments from popular social sites like Facebook, Twitter etc and display on your blog C) It does comments moderation based on the rule set by you and will keep very selected comments for your moderation, otherwise your comments moderation is automated.

Twitter Tools

Do you use Twitter as part of your online marketing strategy, then you definitely tweet about your latest blog post. But, you have to login to Twitter every time your post on your blog. How would you like to automate this?

Twitter Tools, as the name suggests is not just one plug-in it contains 4 plugins in one. You can activate whichever ones you like. The main plugin does the job of tweeting about your latest blog post as soon as you post. You can add the prefix like “Latest Blog post” and then your blog title and link will appear.

You can use additional plugins that will allow you to use bit.ly (url shortening service) API to post shorter urls in your tweets and in case you want to post it for some Twitter lists then you can include hashtags also in your tweets straight from wordpress. Isn’t this automation cool! J

Action Popup

This is by my favorite programmer and brilliant marketer Robert Plank. You have got the traffic to your site by putting together quality blog posts and people talking about your site on social sites, how about building your list.

You might have noticed a pop-up on this site when you visited the blog for the first time. I have installed Action Popup with basic design and subscriber option. You can design it the way you like and you can make it appear as many times as you want and specify if it should appear in specific post or not. The pop-up appears when someone is trying to leave your site.

You have a very good control over the pop-up content and appearance and its very easy to configure.  You can do many cool things with action popup. So, get Action Popup today for your site. In fact Robert gives you 3 cool bonus plugins as a bonus! J

What plugins do you use for driving traffic, interaction or building your list? Any cool tricks you would like to share?

Your very encouraging response to my previous post, 5 Powerful free resources for your business, is the motivation behind this sequel.

Fax Zero

In the last post I had shared with you a resource that allows you to get your personal fax number and receive faxes at no cost, but it does cost you to send fax using eFax. How about a service that allows you to send fax at no cost? Fax Zero is a simple, no frills service. They have a very easy to use interface.

You need to have scanned version of fax you want to send out, key in your details and the recipients details. They send you an email with verification link, to ensure that you are real human being and no one is trying to mass broadcast faxes using bots. That’s it, recipient will receive your fax with the first page printed with Fax zero.

Jing/ Screen Toaster/ Screener

We have talked about a free software that you can use to create screen capture videos. If you don’t want to install anything or if you want to host the videos at no cost, I have 3 services that you can make use of.

Jing

Screen Toaster

Screenr

All 3 services have very simple and easy to follow instructions on how to take captures and once you are done how to share the video. They will host the videos for you and you get a simple link that you can put on your site. It can not get easier than this to create videos. Now, you don’t even have to install a software, just go the site and start taking screen capture videos. Create one today and you will soon be addicted! J

Google Analytics

Testing and tracking are very important part of all businesses, they are very important for online business also. We need to know where people are coming from, what they are going through while they are on our site, what are the hot spots, what’s the conversion rate. There are many sophisticated scripts available costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get all this data. But, you don’t want to spend that much, you don’t want to spend a penny when our friend Google is at our help.

In case you haven’t heard, Google Analytics is very powerful resource that you can use to check traffic to your site, page visits, time spent by visitors, search terms, conversion and make more. You can add as many sites as you want, you can set your own conversion targets, you can do conversion tracking while doing split testing. It’s a very powerful resource which reveals a lot about our visitors. It’s not complicated to use at all. You get a simple javascript code to insert in your site and if you are having a wordpress blog then this cool google analytics plug-in will do everything for you.

Media Convert

What do you do when you have a file that you are unable to open on your PC or Mac? You normally get a suggested program to open the file but you many not be able to view the file. I go to Media Convert and check if I can convert it to the format I want to view it in.

It’s a service where you have to upload the file you want to convert, you can give a url also and you have to select a format in which you want the file to be converted. They have formats for documents, audios, graphics, videos or any other media type. Just select the option and submit, the conversion process starts and in a short while you a get link to download document in your desired format. They even have a service that allows you to host this media to share with others.

Audacity

This is the best free resource available for creating audios. You can record your own voice or you can record an interview using audacity. Use the Lame (yes, that’s actually the name) plug-in to convert the recorded files to MP3 format.

You can use Audacity for editing existing audios, adding background sound or adding intro and end to the audios for your branding.

So, there you are with 5 more powerful free resources. Do you want more? I share them at Give Me My Bonuses site.

Do you use any cool free resource? Why not share it? You know sharing is caring! J

In the last post we covered 5 tips to become blogging superstar.

We talked about conducting surveys, giving very useful information worth paying, blogging on controversial topic, participating in other blogs and discussions, and optimizing your post for search engine. Let’s continue with some more tips to become blogging superstar.

6. Arouse curiosity with password-protected posts.

Your visitors can see that your blog has a lot of good content. But then they notice that you lock up your best content behind password protected posts (with the passwords only being available to your subscribers). You can bet curiosity will get the best of many of your readers… and they’ll subscribe.

Script like Wishlist Member and Digital Access Pass allow you to do it easily, they allow you to put teaser text that is enough to arouse curiosity and then lock up the rest of the text only for your members. You can do similar thing for premium downloads or audios and videos also.

7. Learn to create killer headlines.

People will decide whether to read your post based on your headline. As such, use headlines that include power words like “how to”, “amazing”, “secrets” and “discover”.

Your headline should create curiosity in their mind to read your post. They should be willing to find out more about what you have covered. With social bookmarking becoming very important part of blogging strategy, it’s crucial to have attractive headline, as that’s the only thing visitors of social sites would see to make a decision to click your link or not.

8. Vary your posting style (some long, some short, etc).

Don’t always post a 400 word “how to” article. Instead, mix things up by posting articles of different lengths and different styles. I have covered different blog post styles in 6I formula for creating popular blog posts.

There are times when you want to share some personal stuff also, or you may invite some guest blogger to post on your blog. Variety is spice of life, so, mix and match different things on your blog to keep the excitement going!

9. Interact with your readers by answering their comments.

Your comment section isn’t just a place for your readers to talk amongst themselves – it’s also a great place for you to interact with your readers. In fact, if you’re not responding to comments on your blog, you’re missing out a huge opportunity. Since people buy from those they know, like and trust, this simple act of interacting will grow your income.

Also, comments section is a great source of knowledge for you to know what your readers want to know. You can cover responses to their questions in future blog posts, and if you see a trend then you may consider creating your next product also on the same. Comments are also as important as surveys.

10. Make blogging a part of your daily routine.

Add “write a blog post” to each and every daily to-do list until it becomes a habit. If you write just one short blog post per day, in a year you’ll have 365 blog posts – and a whole lot more readers, subscribers and income!

But, don’t over kill yourself, if you don’t have anything to blog about, you may want to limit yourself to once a week blog post, and blog more often when you have something to say. But, make sure you have a routine for blogging and you stick to that. This will get your readers to make a routine to read your blog posts on specific time intervals!

Creating a big, popular blog isn’t a matter of doing one thing in a short span of time. Instead, you can become blogging superstar by consistently taking a series of smaller steps. The information covered in these posts may sound simple and common sense, but believe me that’s what it is, there is no great secret. Remember our age old saying “Slow and steady always wins the race!”

Please share, which are your favorite tips? What do you do differently? What has worked for you?

Just imagine if you developed one of the most popular blogs in your niche. Think of how much money you could make selling your products or affiliate products. Imagine how big your fan following would be.

All of this is within your reach – especially if you follow these 10 quick tips to become blogging superstar:

1. Survey your readers to find out what they want.

Adding a poll or short survey to your blog not only makes your blog interactive (which is a good thing), it also gives you an idea of what kind of content and solutions your readers are looking for. WordPress has free plug-ins that allow you to add polls to your blog.

You can do this even before you start your blog, survey your niche or look at popular forums in your niche and figure out what are the most frequently asked questions. You can consider answering those questions in your blog post and wherever needed you can recommend resources that contain your products or affiliate link. Surveys are very powerful for planning your next product! J

2. Give your readers info that they’d gladly pay for.

Just because your blog is free doesn’t mean you should post content that’s not worth anything. On the contrary, you should post valuable content – the kind of solutions your market is already paying for – on your blog. That way you can build trust and establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

This goes back to the age old marketing principle or human psychology that “if free content is this good, paid content will be Great”. This doesn’t mean you should give away everything you know for free. You need to draw a line between what to giveaway and what to sell. You can give them useful information that gives them good deal of information about the topic of your expertise, but they can make the best use of information by using your product or service.

3. Write about hot or controversial topics to spur discussion.

When there’s a controversy going on in your niche, decide which side you’re leaning towards and blog about it. Push a few emotional buttons. Then create a call to action at the end of your post where you specifically ask your readers for their opinions and feedback. The more emotionally charged the post, the more likely it is that you’ll get comments.

We, human beings are emotional and curious by nature, so, any controversy will attract us to give our thoughts or opinion on the same. So, if you take up a current hot topic or controversy and express your opinion on the same, people would like to express their thoughts and they would invite their friends and relatives to put their thoughts also, so, you are talking about viral, word-of-mouth traffic.

4. Join the blogosphere discussions.

Your blog is not an island. Start visiting other blogs in your niche and join the community discussions. You can comment directly on their blogs. Or better yet, write a response on your blog using a trackback link.

Forming a network and collaborating with others helps you in getting better and quicker exposure. If you are kind, others would do the same to reciprocate your favor. This means more backlinks to your blog from other highly targeted sites from your niche.

5. Optimize your posts for the search engines.

You don’t have to optimize every post you make. But if you make a point to optimize at least one post per week, you’ll see a steady increase in traffic.

Tip: Use a tool like WordTracker.com to uncover your niche keywords. Choose words that have low competition. Then include your keywords two or three times for every 100 words of content.

Don’t stuff all your posts with keywords, that will do you no good. Your readers will be able to immediately make out that you have written it to get higher SEO ranking for your chosen key word. Now a days, search engines have also become smarter, if you use the same keyword repeatedly in your post then they will penalize you rather than rewarding you. So, write it in your natural style and keep few basic SEO principles in mind.

In the next post I will cover 5 more tips to become blogging superstar.

Who is your favorite blogger? What do you like the most about him/her?