I had always been open to the thought of accepting guest posts from fellow bloggers on StandOutBlogger but surprisingly I never seemed to get than many offers.

This shocked me, because I saw newer blogs such as Famous Bloggers get a lot (and  I mean a lot!) of guest posts on a regular basis.

The reason for my lack of guest post requests alluded me until the launch of my new blog design.

You see, in the header of my redesign I included a link in the navigation titled ‘Become An Author‘ (but hadn’t actually created the page to go with it).That was about a week ago – and already I have had 2 requests for guest posts!

Then I Realised…

I’d Never Said I Accepted Guest Posts

The reason I wasn’t getting people asking if they could write for my blog was because I never made it know that I wanted people to!

It is definitely a lesson learnt.

If you want your visitors to do something then you can’t expect them to be psychic – tell them what you want and you will get what you want (and make it easier for those who are looking.

So what do you want from your visitors but aren’t telling them?

Oh, and by the way, I’ve updated the ‘Become an Author‘ page, so if you are looking to guest post head over and check it out!

I have been testing and tweaking different money making strategies on one of my blogs because I wanted to see if I could make some more money from it.

FranchiseBuzz is an Australian blog that I started late last year, worked for a couple of months and it grabbed some nice search positions and hasn’t had a new post in a couple of months – yet it has still be bringing in consistent income on a monthly basis.

Now since about February it is comfortably been making about $100 a month through Google Adsense. I had a very ugly theme with a lot of ad’s – but it was converting well.

$100 was nice, but at less than 5% of my total online income – I wanted more.

What I Did To Increase Blog Profit By 50%

1. Changed from the BlueSense WordPress theme to a much cleaner Librio theme (which was inspired by Mac OS X Leopard).

2. Placed a simple Clickbank review at the top and bottom of each post.

I spent a lot of time browsing the Clickbank marketplace to find what I thought would be the perfect product for the target audience and seems I was right with 4 sales in the last month.

So one month on from implimenting these simple changes this blog is now making:

• Adsense: $61
• Clickbank: $103

I just wanted to show why we need to be constantly be tweaking our blogs for maximum profit! There is still more tweaking to be done with this blog but I am happy with a $150 a month for a blog that I don’t post to any more.

Question:

What simple things have you implemented on your blog to see a great result?

Seriously, what has been going on with FeedBurner over the last couple of weeks?

Is it just me or have other people been losing and then regaining about 50% of their subscriber count on almost a daily basis?

You will see from the image above (green line) that I have been dropping from 2,200 subscribers to just over 1,000 (1,040 today) regularly over the last 2 weeks.

I am guessing that it has to do with certain subscription methods not being counted but you would think that they could get their service right (I mean it is owned by Google).

Well that is all I had to add today, has anyone else experienced these FeedBurner problems? Or is it just me?

PS. I know that my subscription count has flat-lined over the last couple of months, this is due to the fact that I have stopped promoting my free ebook until I relaunch StandOutBlogger with a new design, a new direction and a new free ebook!

As I mentioned in my ‘Fat, Lazy Blogger‘ post, I have recently trimmed the amount of blogs that I subscribe to from over 300 to under 45!

What that experience taught me was to be critical on the content that I allow to enter my mind. I have always been a big believer in the quote:

‘You become like the people you hang around’

And to be honest, the majority of the blogs I subscribed to where not what I wanted StandOutBlogger to become.

This got me thinking about the type of blog that I wanted to have and the blogs that I subscribe too that have already achieved the success that I aim for. So, using that as my guide, here is a list of blogs that I admire and a few reasons why.

NOTE: You may start to realise that there are a lot of popular ‘blogs about blogging’ that I left out. The reason I did this was because I want to learn from the people who are making it work for themselves outside of my niche – so that I do not become just like every other ‘blog about blogging’ blog- because the truth is, the majority of them are not making very much money!

1. Entrepreneurs-Journey.com – (Subscribe)

Blogger: Yaro Starak

Why: Entrepreneurs Journey was literally the first blog that I ever started reading – and was in fact my inspiration to start blogging myself.

Having watched him go from just a couple of thousand a month to now making over $500,000 a year (while keeping his integrity), sees Yaro’s blog at the top of my list. He hast just posted a great video  of a presentation he made in 2009 about Website Flipping – well worth a watch. (@YaroStarak)

How Yaro Makes Money:

• Product Creation (Blog Mastermind & Membership Mastermind)
• Affiliate Marketing (List Building)
• Private Ad Sales

2. IncomeDiary.com – (Subscribe)

Blogger: Michael Dunlop

Why: While Michael does talk about blogging, his focus is on making money and one of the tips that I have tried to implement myself is his ‘No Leakage rule’. The one BIG thing that Income Diary brings to the table is inspiration – through a large selection of high profile interviews! (@IncomeDiary)

How Michael Makes Money:

• Affiliate Marketing
• List building (Check Out His Amazing Free eCourse)

read this entry »

NOTE: Now I don’t offend anyone with this post, so let me start off by saying that I am not talking about physical appearance.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been juggling a lot of things which has seen a lack of posting on all of my blogs. A lot of it has to do with fact that my wife is due to give birth to our daughter in  just over 2 weeks (view our pregnancy photoshoot) and the rebranding and re-focus of StandOutBlogger – and the launch of a new free ebook (preview new logo here – scroll to footer).

What I found was that I had become a fat and lazy blogger and when I added some addition “exercise” (other tasks) – I was too busy consuming to be producing.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not fat by any stretch of the imagination – seriously if you saw me side on you would probably not even notice me! ——–>>

What I am talking about is my diet as a blogger.

You see, a week ago if you had opened my RSS feed reader you would have found at least 300 blogs in there! (Now that is information overload). And what I found was that I was just consuming content on an insane level and it left me mentally lethargic – not to mention time poor.

Now I am not saying that there is anything wrong with readying blogs (why would be we creating them if they were not to be read) – but as always, ‘everything in moderation’. Because excess of a good thing can be bad for you. read this entry »