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How to Establish Trust Online Posted: 27 Apr 2008 04:24 AM CDT @eMarv asks - “how do you establish trust online?” I’ve touched on this with a few of my other answers this weekend but let me share three thoughts: It’s not something that happens quickly - I wrote a post a while back titled ‘Do you kiss on the first date? The Art of Courting as a Blogger‘ that explores how you need to work up to taking your relationships with readers to the next level. Trust takes time to build and you should see every post you make as a way to grow the relationship. It is something that is earned - you’ve got to put the runs on the board somehow with your readers to show that you’re worthy of trust. This includes blogging for the long haul, showing that you know what you’re talking about, demonstrating your transparency, going the extra mile for readers etc. The recommendations of others are really important - while I can tell you why you should trust me you’re far more likely to actually trust me if someone else tells you that they trust me and recommend that you do too. Read more on this topic with a series that I wrote on Blogger Credibility. How do you work to establish trust with your blog’s readers? Share This

Should I Have a BlogRoll on my Blog Posted: 27 Apr 2008 12:57 AM CDT @SalesBlogcast asks - “What’s the difference between haveing “links” vs. a “blog roll?” Benefits? Chosing wisely?” Ultimately the word ‘blogroll’ is just a different term used to describe a list of links, usually on the sidebar of a blog. It’s just a different label for the list of links I guess. When I first started blogging everyone had a blogroll but these days I don’t see as many. One of the problems with them when your blog grows is that they can become quite political to maintain. I ended up giving up on having one on ProBlogger as I had so many requests to be on it - now I just have one with my b5media co-workers. The other thing about blogrolls is that I hear people trying to get on them because of the SEO benefits of doing so. I’m sure there is some Google juice passed from blog rolls but suspect it’s not massive. Google seem to have more of an emphasis on links in content rather than links that appear on every page on sidebars/footers from what I can see these days. I’d be interested to hear whether others have blogrolls, why they do (if they do) and how they decide who is on and who isn’t? Share This

Hiring Virtual Assistant to Help Administrate Your Blog Posted: 26 Apr 2008 07:03 PM CDT @jb108 asks - “how do you feel about VA’s, do you use any, how many, how much work and what type do you delegate to others.” I love the idea of VA’s (virtual assistants) and can see a lot of tasks that I could potentially have one do for me - however I’ve never really felt completely comfortable with the idea and don’t currently have budget set aside for one. I do have Lara help me with comment moderation and a little other admin work when I have a project going on that I need assistance with but apart from that I don’t personally delegate much work. Of course at b5media we have quite a sizable team of staff to do a lot of the administrative stuff to keep our blog network running (I think at last count there were 12 full time staff). followup question from @jb108 - at what point in blogging career do you recommend delegating to VA’sI think it partly depends upon ylife situation. I know one bloggers who works a full time job and runs multiple blogs. He doesn’t want to give up his work so he’s always hired VAs to do everything except write content on his blogs. It probably also depends partly on your own skill set. If there are parts of blogging that you don’t enjoy or can’t do very well then I don’t have a problem with hiring someone to do them. If it’s going to take you 3 weeks to do a job that someone else can do in a day then that’s 3 weeks that you can work on something you are good at. I’m probably talking more about outsourcing things like setting up a blog, design etc - but the same thing applies to ongoing jobs on your blog. I know that Having Lara work an hour or so a day for me means I’ve got an extra hour to write content each day - something that is important to me. I guess it’s about priorities and what you feel you can do with the time freed up. Share This

How to Grow Beyond Blogging Posted: 26 Apr 2008 02:16 PM CDT @itravin asks - “you’ve gone from blogging to b5 to become an author now, can you do a post on blogger growing beyond blogs” You know it’s never really been my long term goal to write a book or even to start a blog network. In fact when I started blogging I didn’t even think it’d be more than a hobby! So I guess without going too deeply into the topic my advice would be to go into whatever you do with low expectations but with eyes wide open to the opportunities and possibilities that might present themselves to you. b5media came about as an opportunity as a couple of other bloggers (Duncan and Jeremy at first) approached me to ask if I’d like to explore what working together might look like. None of us had any real idea on what would come out of the discussion but we all entered into it open to the possibilities. The book was similar in that Chris and I started out to write an ebook together. This evolved into a ‘real’ book one day when a publisher at Wiley dropped me an email to see if I’d be interested in publishing something with them. It was out of the blue and unplanned but when I began to explore it it felt right. The same thing was true for me when I started Six Figure Blogging with Andy and even when I started the Job Boards here at ProBlogger. In post situations it came about as a result of someone else approaching me with an idea. Of course this isn’t the only way - other bloggers are much more strategic and proactive - but my personality and style is perhaps a little more laid back. So to sum up my approach - work hard, watch, listen, be open and when opportunities that ‘click’ come along - leap at them. Do you have any tips for itravin on how to extend from being a blogger to explore other mediums and opportunities? Share This

How Do I Make Money Fast Blogging? Posted: 26 Apr 2008 10:50 AM CDT @eMarv asked - “how can one make 25K in 2 months by blogging? :) I know, I know… “ I think you know the answer to that question from your last few words. But when it comes to blogging it’s not a get rich quick thing. I don’t know too many (any) bloggers who made $25k in their first two months. Having said that - I did meet a blogger this week who started a blog and 2-3 weeks later sold it for $3k - so I guess there are some ways to build them quick and sell them off (but this is probably an exception rather than the rule). My philosophy of building money through blogging is that the secret is in trending up over the long haul. If you’re after fast money head to the casino - but don’t hold your breath there either! What would you add to this? Is it possible to make fast money blogging? How would you try if you had to make money fast through blogging? Share This

Full or Partial RSS Feeds? Posted: 26 Apr 2008 07:53 AM CDT @SeanBannister asks - “on Problogger your RSS shows the entire post but on DPS it only shows a teaser” Whether to post excerpts or full feeds is something I’ve grappled with on and off for years now. I used on only do excerpts here on ProBlogger too but in the end decided to switch. The main thing that held me back from switching to full feeds on ProBlogger was the issue of duplicate content. I see a new blog scraping my content every day or two so there must be many sites with the same content as ProBlogger out there. This is frustrating and while I try to track down those who do so without any acknowledgement of source I can’t possibly stop them all. The good thing now is that ProBlogger has authority in the eyes of Google as it’s been around for a few years and I’m pretty confident that Google ranks us as the original source of all the duplicate pages. I’m a little less confident of this with DPS so have kept it as an excerpt feed. Having said this - I’ll probably switch DPS to full feeds at sometime soonish as it’s got a fair ranking in Google now. Further Reading on Full vs Partial RSS feeds: Full or Partial RSS Feeds - The Great Feed Debate Full or Partial Feeds - Poll Results Share This

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