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Remarkablogger in Top 100 Internet Marketing Blogs List

Cool. Remarkablogger is in the top 100 internet marketing blogs. Yay for you! Why do I say “yay for you” and not “yay for me”? Because this is just one more little piece of proof you get the good stuff, here.

So… like I said: yay for you!

Blogging Leads to New Skills

Blogging leads to new and valuable skills needed for online business success. When you first begin blogging, you think “it’s just writing,” but you are quickly dispelled of that illusion when you have to fiddle with your blog’s template code or get a plugin. The moment you realize nobody is hardly reading your blog makes you understand there is much more to blogging than… just blogging.

Most of us need to learn new skills in order to truly succeed online. I already had a background in web design, which gave me a head start, but even I have been surprised at the constant barrage of new things I’ve had to learn in order to succeed with my blogs, past and present. If you’re a new blogger, you may be experiencing that sinking feeling of dread at all the stuff you have to learn.

Since I’ve already been there, let me give you a roadmap of new skills you should pick up that will best help you.

Writing

Many of us think we’re much better writers than we really are. Suddenly writing for a blog when you haven’t done much writing recently will make that painfully obvious. Writing coherently, consicely, and skillfully takes practice. See my recent Blog Writing Series of posts for more help on this.

Despite all the fun I like to have with techniques, social media, and SEO, good content is still the foundation upon which everything is built. Do what you can to improve your writing, and specifically learn about copywriting.

Web Design

It’s hard to get your blog to do what you want if you don’t know a thing about FTP, HTML, CSS, and a bunch of other alphabet soup. My suggestions are to:

Learn how to use an FTP program to upload files to your blog. This is how you get plugins for WordPress. Even if you get plugins that let you install stuff more easily, those plugins still have to be added to your blog via FTP. I use FileZilla, which is free and open source software. Learn HTML/CSS. Hypertext Markup Language is not as tough as you might think. Not only does knowing HTML help you with design issues, it helps you write better-formatted posts, too. Cascading Style Sheets is how web pages are visually formatted now. It’s easy to get yourself into a formatting jam the visual controls in your blog software won’t get you out of. Only people who can write a little code can do that. You can learn HTML from several sources. I recommend the W3C Schools. HTML.net is also a good place to learn.

Marketing

Blogging is often a form of marketing. People market a product or service with their blog. You need to have some understanding (the more the better) of these areas:

Research

In order to learn all this stuff and write great blog posts, you’ll need to learn how to find the information you need quickly and efficiently. You need to become adept at searching online. You need to learn how to take notes on paper or electronically.

People Skills and Networking

Perhaps the most important new skills of all are the ones you have to develop in communicating with others and networking. I can attribute my success directly to an intense focus on this, which has been difficult, since I’m a bit of an introvert. But by forcing myself to make contact with people, I have made excellent friends and now have a posse that has got my back. Opportunities come my way through my network. Social media helps a lot with this, especially Twitter.

Have Your Say

What new skills has blogging brought you? Tell us in the comments below.

Overnight Success and Instant Riches - Myth or Reality?

Yesterday, I told you that I made $1,000.20 in a night.

And that’s true. But in a greater context, it’s not true. No, I didn’t yank your chain, I really did make that much money in one evening. But in the greater context, we have to look at how I reached the point where it’s possible for me to make 1k in one night.

You see, in another sense, that headline could just have easily read “How I made $1,000.20 in a Year”. Doesn’t quite have the same impact, though, does it? But it has been a little over a year since I made Remarkablogger into a real business.

Over that time:

I grew my subscribers to over 2,600 by providing the best free content I could create.  I grew my Twitter followers in a few months to over 2,100 by providing value and engaging with people.  In less than a month, I have grown my Remarkanotes email list to over 300 subscribers by providing cool links and information you can’t get on the blog.

Sometimes, what I have to offer is not free. Sometimes, it costs a little money. My strategy is dead simple, and it works: make the free stuff great, but make the paid stuff flat-out amazing. There’s your big internet marketing “secret”, right there. Really sleazy and spammy, huh? :)

So before I go off on a tangent about internet marketing, let me make my main point: it took me at least a year of hard work and intense study to achieve my “overnight” success. Luck had nothing to do with it. I am not part of some “elite” or “A-list”. I started at the beginning, just like everyone else.

Many of you are at the beginning right now.

Yes, You Can

What I’m doing and what I’m showing is attainable. When I started doing this, I made anywhere from a couple hundred bucks extra a month to several thousand dollars… but in some months I made nothing beyond my day job at all. We’re not talking about insane, unbelievable amounts of money, here. 

Example

Say you write an ebook and you want to sell it online. Let’s do a little math here to show you what I mean (by the way, I hate math, but I hate it much less when there are dollar signs involved). Let’s say your ebook sells for only $19.99 and you sell only 10 copies of it. That’s about $200 you didn’t have before. If you take out hosting and domain costs for a product website and pay-per-click advertising costs, you should still have a profit.

But if you sold that product from your self-hosted blog, and you have been building up an audience that is hungry for what you have to offer, your costs are less and your sales will be greater. Let’s say you sold 10 ebooks without the expenses of a new domain/hosting and online advertising: that’s $200 free and clear.

That’s your cable bill, or perhaps your electric bill. It’s slightly better or more Christmas presents. It’s you finally taking your wife out for a nice dinner and a movie. The point is, you have it. 

With a little more work, you could have a product that sells for $39, $47, $129, or even $197. If it’s something your audience wants and is willing to pay for, then you’re really in business. Selling 30 copies of a $39 product earns you $1,170. That’s not a lot of sales, by the way–not for something sold online.

Affiliates

Let’s take this to the next step, now. Say you create an affiliate program for your ebook so that other people can sell it for you. You make a chunk and they make a chunk. The profits from the higher sales volume utterly dwarf what you’re paying out to your affiliates in commissions.

Using the previous numbers, let’s say that on top of the 30 sales at $39, you also have 5 affiliates. These 5 affiliates collectively sell a total of 50 of your ebooks for a 50% cut. That’s another $975, for a total of $2,145.

How to Begin

These numbers are ridiculously conservative, because I don’t want you to think I’m exaggerating. The truth is, you could easily sell more than 30 copies. You could easily have more than 5 affiliates, and those affiliates could easily sell more than 50 ebooks collectively.

Again, my point: this is totally realistic and do-able. It’s not some impossible dream that only some people can do but others cannot. You can do this.

But you can’t reach the point where I’m at right now unless you take the first step.

Online Business School will get you started.

How I Made $1000.20 in One Night

Can’t see the video? Watch it on the blog.

Online Business School Now at 50% Off

In this long-ass video I show you how I do exactly what Online Business School Continue Reading…

What Election 2008 Teaches Us about Blogging

Can’t see the audio player? Please head on over to the blog to have a listen.

What can election 2008 teach us about blogging? Plenty, I think. Positive “campaigns” vs. Continue Reading…

Online Business School Opens for Business at 12 noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern

Naomi Dunford’s Online Business School will open for business at 12 noon Pacific time / 3pm Eastern time. Yes, I have been pushing this. Why? Because my mission here is to Continue Reading…

“How Not to” Blog Posts

Sure, the old “how to” post is great. It’s a staple. We see so many of them, though, that sometimes we want a switch-up. One way to educate while Continue Reading…

SEO Radio with Me and Chris McElroy: Make Your Blog Stand Out

I met Chris McElroy on Twitter. He invited me onto his SEO Radio show on the BlogTalkRadio network. We spent a fun hour talking about blogs that really stand Continue Reading…

Top Ten Things to Not Do on an Internet Marketing Blog

I’ve seen my share of internet marketing blogs, and many of my clients are internet marketers. After I help them, they no longer make these mistakes, of course. ;)

So, Continue Reading…

Maybe You Don’t Need to Make $500 an Hour, But…

…That would kick ass, would it not?

I should think so.

Naomi Dunford from IttyBiz is on a tear with this great free content she’s been releasing. The value level on Continue Reading…

Blog Writing Series: Simple doesn’t mean Stupid, or, How to Write So Anyone Can Understand You

This is the fifth and final post in a series on blog writing. These posts are based on ideas from a great little book called The Elements of Business Continue Reading…

Blog Writing Series: Separate Fact from Fiction on Your Blog

 
icon for podpress  Separate Fact from Fiction on Your Blog [2:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is the fourth post in a series on blog writing. These posts are based on ideas from a great little book called The Elements of Business Writing, by Continue Reading…

Blog Writing Series: Don’t Get Mad, Get Persuasive

This is the third post in a series on blog writing. These posts are based on ideas from a great little book called The Elements of Business Writing, by Continue Reading…

Blog Writing Series: Quit Qualifying Your Words and Just Say it Already

This is the second post in a series on blog writing. These posts are based on ideas from a great little book called The Elements of Business Writing, by Continue Reading…

Why We’re Broke, and How to Fix It

Many of you know my friend Naomi from IttyBiz and read her blog. Many of you have read SEO School and know how awesome she is. She knows her Continue Reading…

Blog Writing Series: No More Rambling Brain Splats

This is the first post in a series on blog writing. These posts are based on ideas from a great little book called The Elements of Business Writing, by Continue Reading…

Coming Up This Week on Remarkablogger: Blog Writing Series

Blogging is mostly writing. You can do a lot with multimedia on a blog, but words are the primary currency in which we all trade. The first week of Continue Reading…

The Best of Remarkablogger October 2008

The brilliant colors have come and gone, there’s a real chill in the air, now–no messing around! Winter’s coming. October has gone out in a blaze of glory like Continue Reading…

Blog Conversion ‘Splained

If you can’t see the video, watch it on the blog.

In this video I ’splain all about blog conversion. The two resources I mention in the video are Aweber Continue Reading…

Learn from Internet Marketers without Spending a Dime

Can’t see the audio player? Please visit the blog to listen.

It’s Thursday, and that means audio! Many of us use blogs as marketing tools to connect with people who Continue Reading…

The Difference Between Blog Strategies and Tactics

Everyone knows what goals are: an outcome or a result we desire. We achieve goals through strategies and tactics. What are strategies and tactics, exactly, and what’s the difference Continue Reading…

Do You Have a Cornerstone Product?

A cornerstone product is a term I use for the focal point of your blog’s monetization efforts. Your cornerstone product is the product for which you are known. For Continue Reading…

Blog Pages, Posts, Categories, and Tags… HELP!

When should you use a blog page instead of a post? How do you know what should be a category versus a tag? After this post, you will know Continue Reading…

Loren Feldman Drops some Blogging Knowledge

If you can’t see the video, watch it on the blog.

If you don’t like to hear salty language, don’t watch this video, because Loren swears quite a bit.

Loren Continue Reading…

Five Winning Approaches for When Your Audience Doesn’t Read Blogs

The research results are clear: people don’t read blogs. I was reminded of this the other night by a message from a friend on Twitter, a social media and Continue Reading…

A Positive Message on Marketing in a Down Economy

Coming up soon I will have access to something wonderful that I am going to pass along to you. It will be a learning program for beginners created by Continue Reading…

Great Blogs, No Traffic - You Can Help

Chuck Westbrook has come up with an ingenious program to provide exposure for great blogs which don’t have a lot of traffic. Chuck wants to end “the tragedy of Continue Reading…

Hear How this Woman with a Dream Creates the Ultimate Blog Strategy

 
icon for podpress  Remarkablogger Client Call - Vicki Flaugher [53:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Vicki Flaugher is a woman with a dream. She’s on a mission to help women become entrepreneurs at SmartWomanGuides.com. She knows the power of blogging. She had doing pretty Continue Reading…

Who is Your Blogging Mentor?

In the movies, at the part where things are the toughest and the heroine is just about ready to give up, she does not have a meltdown and check Continue Reading…


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