Over the coming month or two I’m wanting to get as practical as possible here at ProBlogger and as part of that I’m wanting to base as many posts as possible on real questions from readers.
So – the ‘question box’ is open.
I can’t guarantee that I’ll answer them all – but I’ll attempt to get through as many as possible or to find others who are better qualified than I am to do so.
Any topic is fine – but I’ll of course give priority to those that are on topic to this blog.
Fire away – looking forward to seeing what the ProBlogger community comes up with.
Note: If you don’t want your name/blog to be linked to your question feel free to ask it anonymously. Please submit the questions in comments below.
In the nature of Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, (great read!), what do you think was the tipping point for ProBlogger.net?
Stickiness? Any favorite “word of mouth” tactics? A particular connectedness that you found or had?
Look forward to hearing from you!
-Chad.
What is your working setup like and how is your office mapped out? Do you have a separate room specifically for work where you can close the door on at night and leave it all behind?
Do you have any experience dealing with advertising based on a user’s geographical location (or geo-advertising). Does ProBlogger use any plugins or software to facilitate geo-advertising?
I just started a celebrity blog, how would you suggest I monetize it? Also, how can I drive traffic to it? I found a niche, highlighting mishaps and funny happenings. I need to learn how to network with other bloggers in the same niche, but a lot of them don’t seem open to friendliness. Not sure if they look at me like I’m competition…?
How long before your first blog reached over 1,000 visitors per day?
Thanks Darren.
I’d love you to write some more articles based around getting comments. feed subscriptions, etc. for blogs who aren’t about blogging. The less tech saavy readers still don’t really get a lot of the stuff we think they are “supposed” to do!
Thanks Daz.
RT
What do you find the best way to add relevant graphics to each post without violating licensing or infringing on copyrights?
I am from Brazil and I hold a blog to help people with their studies about English Language. My blog is quite new (around 7 month), but I would like to expand its reaching, increase the readers by feed and subscribe.
So my question is: what should I do to get that?
By the way, I sign ProBlogger feed and you really make a great job.
What do you think is the best way to approach and acquire guest contributors to your blog? And what should they expect in return?
What do you see as the greatest threats to the viability of the blogging industry in coming years?
I start a personal finance blog about a month and a half ago. I’ve had abut 50 visitors so far with my best day having 7 visitors. This is my first experience with blogging so I am not sure how to draw people to my site. What are some good methods for beginners for drawing traffic to a blog? Any suggestions for improving my blog in general would also be appreciated.
I started another blog recently that you kindly linked too. Ive decided I don’t want to write that blog and should focus more on the one I have. Should I sell it or redirect it, in your opinion ;)
Over the last few months I’ve seen a surge in traffic to my blog! However, the clicks on my Google Adsense ads has dropped to virtually zero! How can this be? I thought increased traffic would mean more clicks. Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for any help you can give regarding this very vexing issue!!!
i want to know .. what is the best site that provide a good hosting with good prices and accept e-gold to use it for my new blog ??
Is RSS feed a must? I don’t read them, and am not sure people in my niche subscribe to them either. It seems like it detracts people from actually going to your site everyday (where the money is made).
I find that some weeks are great for google indexing, then other times my best “key words” are dropped from the index. What are some of your SEO tips to stay indexed with Google?
I am seeing the same thing as Brad V. My blog about tattoos has begun picking up readers quite nicely the past month, but the number of Adsense and Amazon clicks have both declined. I am certainly not complaining about the increase in readership, but the lack of clicks makes me wonder if it’s all just bots.
I tried installing one of the “stats” WordPress plugins that I saw recommended here, but for some reason it didn’t work properly. It gave me a couple of error messages that removing and reinstalling it from scratch did not fix. I would appreciate seeing continued advice about statistics and referring sites, so perhaps I can figure it out in the future.
You’ve got lots of great advice about strategies for attracting advertisers that I’ve found really handy. However, I’d love to hear some of the absolute nuts and bolts of the process — not just optimizing the blog for advertising, but the following:
-where do you find contact info for the marketing departments of companies, both large and small?
-what do you propose as being a reasonable rates to ask for? i imagine this is pretty fluid based on niche and ad run time, but can you suggest ballpark figures for bottom-, middle-, and high-range prices?
thanks!
Dear Darren,
What is the cheapest, fastest and most effective way of popularising my blog?
I run a blog that is more of personal nature so with that in mind I ask the following questions:
1) Do you find personal blogs to be relevant in today’s blogshpere?
2) What are some tips you can give to someone running a more personal blog to help them gain readership?
3) In general what would you say is the best way to monetize a personal blog?
What value do you put on guest blogging? I’ve seen some people that have complained about it, saying that you read a blog for the author and the author’s point of view. Not the point of view of some schmoe down the street.
I know you’ve used guest bloggers here before, so you obviously see some value in it, but how much?
Darren,
What are your top 3 predictions for an emerging trends or disruptive forces that will hit the blogging world in the future? What advice would you give your readers to stay ahead of the curve? These can involve a new technology, blogging fad, or whatever. Thanks for this blog!
What is the best approach in successfully getting interviews from prominent bloggers, such as yourself?
You’ve dedicated several posts on guest blogging, perhaps you could write a post on writing and getting interviews with interesting people in our niche.
What would be on your list of DOs and DONTs for approaching the interviewee, conducting the interview session, making the interview interesting for everyone involved and reading?
Thanks,
Vivien.
What is a blogging niche? How do I know what niche I’m in? How can I find other blogs in my niche?
What were the fundamental differences between my blog and your blog when it was of similar age? What have you already done in terms of monetization and personal goals?
Have you noticed that returning visitors are less inclined to click-through? If so, how would you go about monetizing such traffic?
I write a blog about digital scrapbooking. My readership is growing and I am wondering as I take steps to commercialize my blog – how do you determine the worth of links in your posts referencing a product?
For example, I will have companies contact me and send me their products to try and I comment about those products in my blog if I like them – then I link back to the product and company.
My questions are: 1) if this is truly a product I use and would endorse, am I cheapening my blog by accepting product from those who give it to me to write about it? 2) How do you determine what that type of exposure on your blog is worth? 3) Can someone truly do professional blogging (make money) from the TypePad platform – or is WordPress a better fit?
Lots of questions – I really appreciate your blog – can’t wait to read answers to other questions in the comments on this post as well.
What is the best way to keep track of which blogs you have posted comments on? As I look to establish my blog and my reputation in the industry I am targeting, I am becoming increasingly engaged with other bloggers in the community. Keeping track (efficiently) of where, when and how often I have commented would be a great plus. Are there good tools for this? Some blogs will have a RSS feed for comments but others will not and this alone would not capture all of this info that I think is relevant and useful.
Many thanks.
I’d really like to know how you manage writing for multiple blogs at the same time. I’ve tried it, and everytime the stats look like they are on a see-saw. One goes up, the other goes down, I can’t strike a balance. How do you do it? Is it all about time management, or is there some trick I’m missing?
I’d also appreciate some technical posts covering monetisation. As soon as I think I understand something like AdSense it does something to really confuse me, like giving me small amounts of money without any clicks. There are also loads of acronyms, it would be nice to see how these specifically apply to bloggers.
Thanks.
I find it frustrating when I link to other blogs and don’t receive as much as a thank you let alone a linkback. Am I wrong for feeling this way? Shouldn’t proper blog etiquete call for a show of gratitude?
What are your thoughts on this?
For you, at what point did blogging go from being a hobby, to being your income? How did you decide that blogging was the avenue you wanted to pursue?
I’m reading your blog mostly through Google Reader and I noticed that at the end of every post there is an Ad. Something like “Advertisement: Make Money with Chitika….”. Is there a wordpress plugin that you use so to rotate and display ads on RSS feeds?
Thanks
I’d like to learn more about SEO. I just started blogging and originally set up a site on wordpress.com before moving to my own domain. I have a niche blog and when I search for “blogs for executive assistants” my old wordpress.com one shows up but my new one only shows up on the 3rd page of results! I’m obviously missing some critical steps.
I don’t understand the need for bloggers to bother with putting those RSS feed icons and the subscribe widgets on their blogs. It just seems like unnecessary clutter. After all, the little RSS icon can be found in the address bar, right? Why can’t a blogger just direct people to click on that to subscribe? Or is the icon only available in the Firefox address bar?
Hi Darren.
How do you decide which blogs to add to your RSS Reader, how do you manage your feed list and when/why would you unsubscribe from a blog?
Darren,
First of all, lots of luck with reading the questions your gonna get. And much more luck on trying to answer them :)
So here’s my question: What did you do before you where a Problogger, and what made you decide to become a problogger?
I have the ultimate question.. I made a post on it trying to get readers to help but no one could solve the problem. Click here to see the problem and post
Hi Darren,
My blog has recently been stumbled via the use of linkbait: a video of the simpsons intro in live action.
Since then my traffic has stabilized to roughly 1200 visitors a day (from 2800, decreasing slowly)
My question is two parts:
Part 1 – how do you make you site sticky enough to convert stumblers to subscribers.
(I have managed to ‘capture’ about 28 stumblers so far, I would like to increase that hopefully)
Part 2 – How do you monetise without angering your incoming stumblers?
Thanks again,
Z.
Hi Darren,
I’m curious; do you have a special (perhaps SEO) reason for hosting your site with the .net URL instead of using the .com URL?
Thanks
Hi Darren,
From your experience, how would you advise those who are new to blogging in managing their time well, ie. between learning (from various avenues such as blog like yours) how to blog effectively and the actual time you put what you had learnt into practice???
Thanks and regards,
Chong Choon
in all your blogging days, have you ever wondered what the future of this blog would be if/when you run out of ideas? What would you do then – I see you branching out to other activities such as the Jobs Board too – would you instead convert this into a freelancer’s domain?
And yes, guest blogging doesn’t count as an answer ;)
Do you feel Problogger.net is giving bloggers a false impression that they should start a blog about blogging? This blog is the number 1 port of call and to many you are a role model. Do you think you should encourage bloggers to NOT start a blog about blogging because it is such a saturated niche?
Would you recommend using wordpress or any other blogging platform as a cms?
Darren I know you’ve mentioned using colours, pictures, design etc before to make your blog unique.
But how can I go about doing this? I have a wordpress theme with colours that match the site the blog is attached to. But neither really reflect my personality. And I don’t have the first clue on how to change a wordpress theme either.
Can you please recommend some good resources for choosing colours layout, design etc and also for learning how to adapt a wordpress theme. Thank you. Catherine.
I second Chad’s question about adding graphics to my blog. I’m concerned about licensing and copyright issues.
I designing my first blog. and I selected subject homejobs. where can i will found easy to navigate template for this? and how i can monetize the same?
Where’s your idea come from to write posts. or How to make a bloggers is’n confused to write a post. Thanks!
what question would you like to answer?
seriously, what do you believe to be your strongest topic within the problogging field?
Would you recommend a high frequency of posting to get traffic through Google. Or do you think it is more beneficial to write a small number of high quality articles that may get picked up by social networking sites?
Basically: Quantity vs Quality which is more important?
Well, here’s something easy for you :D
Which stat package do you recommend? I like it to be free or cheap($5 or less), able to take large traffic, say 500k, and with no linkback like sitemeter.
another one: do you recommend using post excerpts on index in WP? I see many people saying it helps SEO, and others like Lorelle says Google knows blogs and considers them differently.
Thanks for your comments on my blog.
I became a full time blogger early this year. However, unlike other people, I miss the work place and socializing with “real” people. Did you ever face this situation?