Content – What Every Site Needs

Content – What every site wants, what every site needs.

We need content for our blogs. The more content we have, the more we look like an authority site… and the higher we can rank… and the more we can help fix people’s problems… and the more chances we have to monetize… and so on. Of course we’re talking Quality content.

My online work has always been to help you with your content needs. I want to see you succeed! And getting paid to help make your way easier – that’s icing on the cake.

* I started out offering quality PLR in various niches at AllstarPLR back in 2008. That’s still the backbone of my online presence today.

* Then I began PLR-Packages.com where I could offer you full packages – ebook, optin report, sales page, email series, full graphics – so you could set up shop quickly with a product of your own plus all the supporting cast.

* From there Pat Graham and I decided to go deeper into specific niches so you could have so much more PLR than a mere 5 or 10 pack could give you. We started with Internet Marketing, and added Wedding and Baby Boomer as fast as we could. Next came Baby. This site started as a membership site but after 9 months of headaches with the membership software, we changed it to ala carte. It’s evolving again as we’re doing a massive cleansweep.

* EDIT – I totally forgot to mention How To Rewrite PLR! Questions and more questions about how to rewrite PLR lead to this highly successful ebook. How could I forget this?

* After several emails from peeps who were interested in starting their own PLR business, I was happy to share all my thoughts and launched Become a PLR Writer, and then a specialized newsletter for these new business owners called Professional PLR Provider. Helping others do what I do certainly made me bring my A game and I learned along the way too!

* My next idea to help people with their content needs came about after I saw how long it took some, including new PLR writers, to write articles. It’s not that they were terrible writers, they lacked confidence or couldn’t come up with ideas. Easy Article Starters were born (they’re kind of like outlines and half-written articles) and have been helping people since then.

* The more I learn about marketing and the more the whole online world evolves, the more opportunities I find to assist other marketers. After hearing “I have a Facebook page for my small business, but what do I post?” several times, I saw a reason to create Fresh FB Content. These packs are 50 posts each in specific niches. I limit these to just 10 licenses each. At the time of this writing, there are House, Home Interior, Landscaping, Crafter, Foodie, Hair Care, and Gardening available. I will be adding more and I do listen to requests.

* Since I’ve become interested in photography and I started a separate physical business with that, I figured I could spread that craft into my business of helping with others’ online needs. So I’ve been slowly putting together some graphic packs with images you can use on your blog, on Facebook, in your emails, in your Squidoo lenses, etc.

I know this post looks like it’s all about ME ME ME, but my intention is to show that my successes come from creating what people want and need. Where are the holes in your area of expertise? What can you do for your online world that comes easy for you and is oh-so-helpful for others?

Jimmy Brown, the father of PLR (I’d say grandfather but he’s younger than I am), has found ways to plug some holes that I haven’t touched. He’s got this big Package o’ Help called Contentaire. Besides helping with the usual articles, ebooks and reports, this package gives assistance on some of the trickier things:
webinars
press releases
affiliate tools
sales letters
newsletters
power point presentations
emails
landing pages
podcasts

Providing what people need is very rewarding in more ways than one. Have you ever created a product based on questions or requests?

Choices and Risks

Choice /CHois/ Noun. An act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.

Every choice comes with a risk attached, wouldn’t you agree?

It seems like a new year propels us to rethink what we’re doing, what choices are available to us, and what risks are involved. Sometimes we choose to step out with baby steps and sometimes we feel forced by circumstances to take make big choices for hopefully big rewards. Other times we don’t make any choice at all, which is really a choice too.

I rarely do this, but I’d like to send you to a post of mine from March 2010 where I share my experience with choosing. The pictures are pretty too.

http://www.peggybaron.com/blog/skiing-or-internet-marketing-are-you-afraid-to-take-risks

Then come back here and leave a comment!
What do you choose to do this year, this month or this week?

Working Smarter With Your Niche Site

 

Are you ready to get going in a fresh niche? I can hardly blame you, the idea of starting something new and making it wonderful is very appealing.

But honestly…

if you’ve been here before, you know what starts as a good intention often falls short of its mark.

You research niches, hunt around for the perfect blog theme, try to find good keywords, and look for products to promote (or create your own). By the time you write a couple articles to slap up on that blog, you’re exhausted. And then nothing happens with your content-thin site so you decide it’s not a good niche after all and you abandon it.

Sound familiar? It does to me too.

Now fair warning, I’m coming off a Christmas cookie sugar buzz and I’m hoping this post doesn’t sound too cranky, but what I see is a lot of hard work and time spent on the parts that could be left to someone else. I’m not talking about hiring someone to do all your niche and keyword research, to find you products to promote as an affiliate, to write you blog posts and product reviews, and create you a product because that would be REALLY expensive. I’m suggesting you take a look at a PLR business-in-a-box as a way of working smarter.

Stay with me here and I’ll walk you through how I do niche sites now.

For example sake, I’m going to pull everything out of the “box” that Sue Fleckenstein is offering with her latest package. She’s already done the research on what’s trending and has come up with a beautiful package for the Yoga niche. She knows that yoga is a 42 billion dollar industry and it’s grown 87%  in the past 5 years. Sue has 2 upgrades available but I’m just going to add in the first one, the Silver upgrade, to show what all can be done here to get you jumping ahead and help you get a share of the profits in this industry.

#1. Pick a niche.
Done. Although I would probably narrow it down within the broad niche. But you’re not stuck with it; there’s no reason why you can’t go off in a different direction with your content now and then.

#2 Map our your plan of action.
Do this first! Or you’ll be jumping around, disorganized, and not getting things done. Make a list, do a mindmap, or whatever gets you to write out your intentions, your steps, and follow through.

#3 Decide what affiliate products you want to promote.
The whole idea of niche marketing is to monetize the niche by promoting affiliate products, right? Make a list of the products you can promote and the affiliate links for each of them. Sue has already done this for the yoga niche with 11 affiliate products and the links to their affiliate programs, plus 10 Clickbank products, and a link to the top 100 yoga products on Amazon. Already having these goodies saves lots o’ time.

#4 Pick keywords.
Anyone who knows me online knows that I hate to do keyword research. This PLR package comes with the keyword research done and shows exact match searches per month, average page rank of the competition, cost per click, competition, ad count, keyword rating, and more. That’s a big time-waster/headache, er…. necessary keyword research done for me. Boy do I feel special.

#5 Create your own product.
You can do this the hard way or the easier way. Sue’s package comes with an ebook you can call your own. There are over 10,400 words already written for you. What I do is take each chapter, one at a time and make it even better. I’ll add images, give a tip in a tip box, include a small story example, explain some of the bullet points further, and maybe add an action plan at the end of the chapter. Yes, this takes a little time, but you end up with something you’ll be proud to put your name on. If you need further help, check out my How To Rewrite PLR.

#6 Create several months of content.
No way!
Yep.
Again, the easy way is to use PLR articles. This yoga pack comes with 10 articles you can use right off the bat. But don’t just slap a PLR article up as is; you’ll want to add your voice, reword some of it, or add additional info to it. Always rewrite the conclusion paragraph so you can tell them to take action. That action might be to check out a product, check out a site, comment, or read another one of your posts.

Since your blog’s job is to educate the reader, provide helpful resources, and make you money, it’s a good idea to include product reviews in your content lineup. Just think what you could helpfully promote! Yoga mats, clothing, DVDs, retreats, membership sites, etc. It makes me smile just to think about it. If you get the Silver upgrade, Sue has included 15 reviews of quality products you can use.

Here’s where I recommend you do it differently than you probably have been – get 2 months worth of content ready to go right now, not piecemeal. Do your rewriting and make a list of what articles you have, the order you’re going to post them, and the posting date sequence. It’s much easier to do it all at once and have a master list, rather than go back and try and figure out which article you’ve rewritten, when was the last time you posted, etc.

#7 Create a lead magnet.
This is to get names on your list so you can promote products to them via email. You can take the time to make your own optin product or just use the one available in the box. It’s a PowerPoint video. Use the audio provided or do it in your own voice. Another choice, with the upgrade, is a 2000+ word report which also comes with a squeeze page.

#8 Write at least 7 autoresponder emails.
You want your list subscribers to get to know and trust you. The autoresponder emails do this job. There are 10 pre-written emails in the Silver upgrade package that are included for this yoga niche and they only need some of your story and your recommendations (product promotions). I do not promote in every email but I always give some helpful info.

#9 Set up your blog.
Did you notice how many things I put ahead of this step? That’s because I want you to have your stuff – your content, product, lead magnet, and affiliate products ready first [Step 5 is the only thing that you could leave til later]. You’re setting the stage for success this way.  Now it’s GO time! Set up your WordPress blog and get it live. You can use the default twentyten theme or go with a premium theme, your choice. I’m getting long-winded with this post so I won’t get into theme details here.

#10 Set up a Twitter account.
Start tweeting and following (to get followers back). This PLR comes with 50 tweets. What I do is look them over, tweak any that I want to tweak right away, then save them to my niche folder. The ones in the yoga pack are a little dry so I’d add my personality by putting most of them in my own words. This is easier than having to think them up myself. As I tweet them, I cross them out so I know what I’ve used.

#11 Get social and market it.
Join yoga forums and Facebook groups. The yoga package has suggestions for you here too. Get involved so you can become the expert. Don’t say you are not an expert because I’ll just retort that once you’ve looked over all the material provided in this package or in the upgrades, you already know more about yoga than A LOT of people. If you’ve never taken a yoga class, now is the time. It’s good for your body and your expertise-ness.

This is where people tend to give up with their niche. It takes some time! You have to turn your efforts to marketing now, while continuing to add content (which is why you got a lot of content ready to go in the beginning).

Yes, this is a niche site, but it’s also an authority site. Build relationships with your readers and other bloggers. Do some guest posting and some interviews to get your site in front of others. Set up a Facebook page and do some quick and easy FB ads to get followers. I purchased Amy Porterfield’s FB Ads product and quickly amassed 369 followers for one of my niches running inexpensive ads like she taught me. Amy is one of the good guys and she’s so darn pretty in her videos.

Marketing is where the majority of your time should be spent. Everything up until now should not take up all your energy, that’s why I recommend working smarter with a PLR package. Sue’s yoga package is only $9.95, and the Silver upgrade is not more than $17. This is obviously a lot less than hiring someone to do all this for you.

If the yoga niche doesn’t speak to you, I’ve got a few PLR packages too – Home-Based Income Stream, Writing an Ebook, Family Holiday Memories, and 411 on Outsourcing.

Don’t stop! This is where it starts getting interesting, fun, and profitable!

photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Update on the Empty Nester Thing

In my last post I talked about becoming an empty nester and how peaceful it is. I mentioned that I was doing a lot of thinking and I was going to reinvent myself somewhat. Well, it’s more like I decided to take advantage of all the time I now have and I went exploring.

Yes, I traveled near and far!

I also started another business, but I’m not going to tell you about that here. Instead, I wanted to blather about all the fun I’ve been having getting to know new and old places.

Cripple Creek, University of Colorado, Red Rocks, Vail, Breckenridge, University of Denver, School of Mines, Golden, downtown Denver, Wash Park, Starbucks everywhere, downtown Seattle, Pike Place Market, Mt Rainier, Gig Harbor, Sequim, University of Washington, Snoqualmie Falls, Issaquah, Whidbey Island, Dungeness Spit, Ballard Locks and more!

I was going to post pictures, but I threw them all together in a short (around 1 minute) video instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you been to any of these places?
What are your next travel plans?

All The Time In The World For _______

I’m in an insightful mood having just become an Empty Nester. Yep, we threw our youngest to the wolves… I mean, took him up to college. He is now crammed in a dorm room along with all his things and a roommate he just met. Fun times are to be had, and hopefully he’ll find time for studying as well.

Me? There are a lot of thoughts and emotions working their way through my noggin right now. But at the moment I’m enjoying the quiet – all I hear is the clacking of my keyboard and birds out my window and it is PEACEFUL.

Will I get more done without all the interruptions of kids home during the summer? I sure hope so because I’m all out of excuses.

And that’s a little scary.
No more excuses.

I also had another birthday and that also is a little scary.
Both events cause me to look at what I’m spending my time on and how I can enjoy life more.

I will be reinventing myself a bit in the coming months.
And that’s exciting!

Believe me, I know that I’m extremely lucky to be able to do the kind of work I want to from home. I want to make the best of it.

So here’s my question to you:
If you had ALL day (with no distractions) to do something that brings you income, what would you do?
Or if you’re ready to reinvent yourself, what path would you take?
Please leave your answer in comments!

photo credit: xornalcerto

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