RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

7 Methods to Boost Your Writing Skills: Tested

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When I first started blogging, I hoped that I would get everything at once. Bigger traffic numbers, wider audience, more engagement. However, many of my posts seemed to be unnoticed by both, people and search engines. What was I doing wrong? Well, many things, actually. The reality is you cannot become a good blogger (journalist, writer, or whoever you want to be) without improving your writing skills. Only after making hundreds of mistakes, you will figure out how to write the content that will get you noticed.

The good news is that with a few proven tips and tricks from my own experience, chances are you will get through this faster than I had to. Today I’m going to share with you several methods I used to boost my writing skills. They helped me, and they are sure to help you too! [Read more…]

They’ll Always Love You for Your Body!

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Today's post is by Alan Bechtold of Ink-U-Bator Mastermind, one of my VERY favorite people in Internet marketing and publishing… cause he's someone who truly CARES about your success AND shares fantastic advice. 🙂

There’s one key to a never-ending supply of fresh, targeted traffic and revenue most affiliate marketers never talk about – even top experts. Maybe it’s because the subject is sometimes seen as politically incorrect. Perhaps it’s because some consider it outright offensive. Still, it’s tough to escape the basic logic of this time-tested technique.

It’s sad so many people are so prudish about it. If more people knew about it, they’d see the success in their lives they richly deserve. Perhaps the social stigma would finally lift, if it was discussed more openly. Maybe we could finally spread the word about this simple, life-altering concept, far and wide, changing even more lives.

What’s the fact so many people avoid discussing in public?

It’s this: people will always follow you in growing numbers directly proportional to the body of work you’ve produced.

I’m often confused by the general reluctance to discuss it. People seem more than willing to avoid acknowledging the existence of this fact at almost any cost. They’ll spend weeks building elaborate SEO campaigns and pay thousands for the latest Click Bank traffic “tricks” course to keep from having to consider the almost inevitable impact applying this simple principle would have on their lives.

I think it’s the “work” part of “body of work” most people are too embarrassed to discuss. Even worse, “body of work” implies work you do more than once.

Oh, no!

Seriously, when it comes to information publishing, the more you’re “out there,” the more people will find you naturally. A growing body of work accomplishes this every time. Without tricks. Without having to work endless variations of systems designed to trick the search engines that always seem to get shut down just about the same time you finally get them all set up and running.

Every time you add a new information release to what you already offer, people who got what you last released will be there, eagerly waiting for its release. They’ll be your best customers for whatever you release next and they cost nothing to reach with the news that there’s something new to buy.

Each new release also acts like a magnet, pulling in new people from word of mouth and the natural buzz something brand new seems to carry with it. When people discover your newest release and like it, they’ll start looking for other things from you.

They’ll look for your body of work.

This increases the sales of your previous releases. The bigger your body of work, the more impressed they are and the more inclined to make more than one purchase they become. This creates an undeniably proven exponential effect that continues growing even long after you stop feeding new releases into the mix.

It’s really not all that hard to do. You just have to shake off any natural aversion you have to the concept of building a body of work and start putting it together now.

Think about publishing outside of your Website or newsletter more often, to get this rolling. Look through all your past published work. If you’ve been online for a few months, you’ve already got enough blog posts or Website or newsletter updates to gather and publish in a good book, with just a bit of editing.

Select a sub-topic that’s currently hot with your audience, then gather up all the related posts and comments that relate to it. Add some updates and maybe a bit of running commentary of your own, to bring things up-to-date. Possibly provide the “story” behind the topic and even behind-the-scenes stories about how the entire discussion unfolded – what you were doing as it happened, how you felt, responses you considered posting, but didn’t.

Call some of the people who contributed to the conversation and interview them. Transcribe it and include it. Add photos of them and you.

Ask your blog or website visitors to contribute their stories on a selected topic. If you can, offer a prize for the best submission. Prizes aren’t necessary, in most cases, but they do tend to turn up the heat on participation. Still, people love will love knowing they could see their names in a book, electronic or otherwise. They always will. A lot of people will happily contribute just for the satisfaction of getting published.

You’ll build more rapport with your current audience with this sort of interaction, and you’ll get your next book built for you!

Set a goal to get something published expressly for distribution outside of your current in-house online media at least every three months. Every two months, if you can do it.

You can always sell or give away what you publish on your blog or Website, too. You probably currently do. However, today’s e-reader market (Kindle, Nook, iPad, etc.) is now so easy to reach with your published works, there’s no reason not to also make your work available on them, too. After all, they represent a ready-made potential audience of millions who could discover you and want more from you as soon as they see what you have to offer now. All you have to do to reach them is set up some accounts, follow some simple formatting instructions and publish.

I know it sounds tough. It does require some consistent effort for a while. But, the effort is honestly easy and fun. And there are dozens more ways to quickly put together information products that e-reader users will love.

Even better — e-reader book buyers are showing a marked preference for shorter works. This is excellent for all of us! It’s much easier to quickly produce 24- 48-page books, and the more you release, the faster to your body of work grows.

Just focus on quality and value. Always over-deliver. Give people $10 worth of information for free, to generate leads with links inside. Offer $50 worth of information value for $5. Remember that the value of the information you’re providing, especially in the e-reader market, isn’t based on padded page counts. Focus on quality, regardless of the resulting number of pages and you’ll build an ongoing flow of traffic and revenue that grows exponentially over time.

It’s virtually a can’t-miss system, proven over decades of constant testing. Your body of work has the power to put you in the diver’s seat of the rest of your life. The small amount of work (pardon my use of the word, right out in the open and everything), over a short period of time, is a tiny sacrifice in return for the huge rewards it so surely will bring.

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Ros

Fresh Content or Good Content – Take Your Pick

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Do you want to write fresh content or good content? Seems like a strange question, right?

As an aspiring writer you’re taught that fresh content is where it’s at, it’s where you’ll get your big break. But is that true? Not really.

Sure, fresh content is the way to go, but only if you can somehow uncover content that no one has written on yet, and a quick look around will tell you that just about every topic under the sun has been written.

So how do you write good content if it isn’t new content?

1. Find a New Angle

 

There are thousands of stories floating around the internet about how to keep weight off during the holidays. Nine out of 10 of them will all parrot back exactly the same thing. That means if you want your article to be the one to catch, you have to spin the information in a way that makes people pause and continue reading.

Spinning information in a unique way is the best tactic a successful journalist can employ.

2. Stay Up to Date

Staying up to date on currently trending topics is the best way to keep your content as fresh as possible and to continually improve on your writing skills. Becoming a fantastic writer is a continually evolving process that requires submerging yourself in the world of writing.

3. Find Your Voice

Just because your favorite author has a flare for using witty euphemisms when they write doesn’t mean that you do. You have to determine your own writing style and capitalize on it – being confident in your own writing is what engages people to keep reading. Just about anyone can tell when something comes fluidly and when something is forced, and no one wants to read writing that doesn’t flow.

4. Write Often to Write Well

Even if it’s only a few sentences a day, a paragraph here and there, or something no one ever reads, writing daily will help you continually improve your writing skills and take your content to the next level of awesome.
Sometimes people get so caught up in finding fresh content that they pass up content that can be written in such a way that it becomes great content simply because of how it’s written.

Writing fresh content doesn’t make you a great writer – writing well makes you a great writer.

10 Words that Make Bloggers Seem Dumb

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I could write about many more than 10 words that make bloggers seem dumb, but let's keep it simple to start. 🙂

I recently heard a CNN broadcaster use the word ‘orientate', and she was NOT discussing a map, or its orientation.

Grrr… How VERY wrong.

Incorrect word and grammar usage frequently frazzles my brain (and others with average English language skills) to the extent that we lose the overall message while we ponder how the speaker or writer managed to graduate from grade school, let alone university.

Note: My grade school comment does NOT apply to those who blog in English as a second language.

I admire you!

However, it IS worth your time to learn the lessons below. 🙂

As for all you native English speakers – here's a review…

  1. Irregardless – NOT a word, despite the fact that some dictionaries include it, for the following reasons:
    • Containing the suffix ‘less', regardless already means ‘without regard'.
    • Adding the negative prefix ‘irr' to regardless, is therefore redundant.
    • Moreover, ‘irr' nullifies the existing ‘less', making it a double negative.
    • Ergo, ‘irregardless' actually means ‘with regard', yet those using it typically mean to say (write) regardless.
  2. Orientate – The word is ‘orient'. The only time ‘orientate' or ‘orientated' is acceptable is when referring to the orientation of a map to its compass points – BUT ‘orient' will suffice and simplicity always works best.
  3. Ironical – Use ‘ironic'.
  4. Conversate – Use ‘converse'. We don't conversate, we converse.
  5. Lie vs. Lay – Instructing your dog to ‘lay down' is going to confuse him as he wonders ‘lay WHAT down?'. The correct phrase is ‘lie down'. Lie means ‘to recline', whereas ‘lay' means ‘to place'.
  6. It's / Its – Apostrophes seem to pose problems for many bloggers. ‘Its going to rain' is wrong. It's is the contraction for ‘it is', therefore ‘it's going to rain' is correct. ‘Its' on the other hand is possessive pronoun, indicating that ‘it' owns something, e.g. ‘its name'. By the way, never use Its'.
  7. There / Their / They're – They are over ‘there' at the river and ‘they're' getting ready to go canoeing.
  8. Than / Then – Than is a conjunction used in comparisons. That hamburger was more than I could eat. Then is an adverb usually denoting time. They are coming at Christmas, we'll see them then. Then can also mean in addition or in that case. If you plan to ski, then you'll have to buy tickets.
  9. Your / You're – Your is possessive – that's your hat. You're is the contraction for ‘you are'.
  10. Accept / Except – Accept is a verb that means “to receive, admit, regard as true, say yes.” His application to Stanford was accepted. Except is a preposition that means “excluding.” I know everyone here except the fellow standing in the corner. I can't accept this gift.

OK, go ahead, find all the bloopers on my blog and I'll correct them. 🙂

Did you find this post informative and useful? Do you have pet peeves about grammar and word usage? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please post it below!

Cheers,
sig-ros

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Affiliate Marketing: How to Write a Product Review

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Affiliate marketers' businesses survive, thrive or die based on their ability to write a product review. Read this article and learn how to write profitable product reviews!

product review

How do you choose the products you buy?

Do you simply accept as gospel truth all the good things a merchant says about their own product? Or, do you ask your friends' opinions and look for independent product reviews before opening your wallet?

If you're a savvy consumer (which of course you are), you put more stock in your friends' opinions and independent product reviews.

As affiliate marketers, we become much more successful when we approach our site visitors as friends and take the attitude that they too are savvy consumers.

From that standpoint, an affiliate's real work is to pre-sell our merchant partners' products by writing fair and balanced reviews, also known as endorsement letters.

Sure, writing a review for each product takes time and effort, but it's an activity that sets the super affiliates apart from their less-super counterparts in terms of rewards… read ‘income'.

A product review can be either stand-alone or comparative.

A stand-alone product review focuses on a single product, while a comparative review is an evaluation of similar items that allows readers to choose which product best suits them.

Before you begin to write a product review, you'll need to evaluate the product. (Nothing like stating the obvious, eh?)

I prefer to endorse products that I've actually used. However, buying a product isn't always feasible. If that's the case, affiliate managers will often grant ‘proven' super-affiliates access to products for their review. That's especially true of information products and services that are delivered online, such as internet dating services.

But, what if you're not yet a super affiliate, and can't fathom a basement full of treadmills to review for your exercise site?

Well, do what your customer would do if product reviews didn't exist on the Internet – go to the store and test those treadmills out!

And how do you review acne medications for your skin care site if you don't have acne? Surely, you must know someone who had acne, or has teenagers who used to have acne. Ask them to tell you what worked for them.

If you can't find out that way, search Google for “consumer reviews” + “acne medications”. Read as many as you can to come up with three to five effective products (that have affiliate programs).

Once you've collected information about the product, it's time to start writing that product review.

The structure for a product review is simple, containing an introduction, overview and summary.

The introduction consists of a few sentences outlining the problem and introduces a possible solution for the reader, without going into detail. The overview describes the product's promise, a description of how the product is used, as well as its effectiveness and value. The summary is almost a repeat of the introduction, and contains a strong recommendation for purchase based on your conclusions.

To simplify the review-writing process, I ask myself the following questions when writing product reviews for my own affiliate sites.

  1. Who is my reader and what is their problem?
  2. What does the product promise?
  3. How well does the product solve the problem? What does it do? How does it work?
  4. Does the product offer good value? (Would I buy this product?)

Let's look at each question in turn.

The first question asks, “Who is my reader and what is their problem?”

If acne is your reader's problem and your site visitors are adults, you probably want to avoid terminology like ‘Zap those zits!' and use more age-appropriate language.

Remember too, that ‘zits' aren't really the problem. The real problem is how your reader feels about having pimples all over their face and how that affects their life.

If you've experienced the problem yourself, say so. Describe your experience, and show understanding and compassion for the reader's plight. Speaking from real experience earns your readers' trust which always improves sales rates.

If you have trouble figuring out how your reader might be affected by his problem, then you can research that online too.

For example, I searched Google for “hate acne” and came across Acne.org, where one young woman lamented:

My sh%tty skin is seriously ruining my social life and my relationships with men. I'm avoiding it all just cuz I don't want to show my face. Its really sad. I also spend a lot of money on make up. I'm not even asking for the most perfect skin (even though it would be nice) but even if I was limited to just a couple zits….and then it would take me under 30 mins to get ready….I would never be home, and I would go back to living the life that I ohh so miss.

That gives you a pretty clear picture of how she feels, right?

Now address those concerns using emotive terms and you'll improve your conversion rates.

Here's an example.

Rather than say, “Product A will cure your acne”, start with a question that appeals to your reader's emotion, such as “Is acne ruining your social life? Scared to leave the house – or even show your face? There IS a solution to your plight.”

That introduction brings us to the next question which is, ‘What does the product promise?'

Does the product cure the problem? Does it work faster, or with less hassle and expense?

You found answers to that question during your product research. In this section, you simply summarize your findings.

Next, answer the third set of questions, “How well does the product solve the problem?”, “what does it do?” and “how does it work?” based on your product research.

Results are the most important information, so it's not necessary to provide nitty gritty details about how you use the product or what it's made of or how it is packaged, etc. unless the merchant does not supply that information on their site, and you consider the information of importance to your reader.

Too, we're all aware that no product is perfect, so don't go overboard and write a completely glowing, one-sided review. To make the product review balanced and fair, detail what you do and don't like about the product. If you want to avoid negative statements when outlining your dislikes, try phrasing the sentence like “although I'd prefer a slightly less greasy formula…” or “although the bottle lacks a pump dispenser…” and finish on a positive note.

Lastly, make a value statement. For example, “While Product A and B both eliminate most acne problems in 30 days, Product A wins our ‘best value' award priced at $20 less per bottle. Or, if you're writing a single product review, you could say something like, “Acme's Acne Product would be great value even at twice the price, but at this price it can't be beat!”

For even better conversions, be sure to include a product graphic on your product review web page, and a testimonial or two from users that you solicit through your site or use with permission from your merchant partner's site.

In summary, tell your visitors what you would say to a friend if you were telling them about a product that you found and liked. That will make writing reviews easier and your friendly appoach will push your conversion rates through the roof!

Did you find this post informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please leave a comment below!

Cheers,
sig-ros

8 Phrases Guaranteed to Boost Site Traffic

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We all want more traffic to our sites…

Here are 10 phrases that will help you boost traffic and bring visitors back to your sites, time after time.

  1. “Subscribe / Sign Up”
    Tell your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, and when they subscribe you'll capture their e-mail address. Each time they receive a copy of your newsletter containing snippets of articles recently posted, they will be prompted to visit your site. Watch your Analytics go nuts on those days!

  2. “Free”
    Freebies are always a good incentive to encourage folks to sign up for your newsletters. Too, you may allow visitors to use some of your articles on their own web site. Just ask them to include your resource box at the end of the article. This is a free way to advertise your site all over the internet.

  3. “Bookmark Now”
    Make it easy for your visitors to bookmark your web site, and give them a good reason to do so.  For example, promise fresh content daily or weekly.

  4. “Like us on Facebook”
    To expand your reach exponentially, your sidebar should incorporate links to all the major social media sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

  5. “Take our Survey”
    Ask your visitors and newsletter subscribers to fill out your online survey or questionnaire. This brings people back to your site. Use the feedback on ways to improve your web site to increase traffic and visitor retention.

  6. “Enter Our Contest”
    Give your visitors a chance to enter an online contest or sweepstakes. People love to win stuff, and they will come back to your site again and again to see if you have new contest offerings.

  7. “Join Our Forum”
    Ask your visitors to participate on your online discussion board. By participating they will meet other people, and they will  return to your web site on a regular basis to stay in contact with their new friends.

  8. “Join Our Affiliate Program”
    Allow your visitors to make money selling your products or services. This will increase your traffic (and revenues) when they link back to your web site.

How Readable Is Your Writing?

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Is your Web copy easy to read and understand?

If sales conversions on your affiliate sites are low or few visitors respond to your requests, the problem may be that your message lacks clarity or simplicity.

To check your articles for reading ease and “grade level”, I recommend using a tool that incorporates the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. [Read more…]

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