Almost any part of parenthood has its struggles, children cause trouble, they tend to be disobedient, and parents try to reach them, to help them develop in a healthy way, but even listening and obeying everything the parent says is a form of unhealthy behaviour. With so many things to keep track of, it is […]

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Being a modern musician can be quite trialling, and most people view other peoples’ desire to turn a music career into a reality as wishful thinking. It is true that making a breakthrough as a musician can be hard, but it is not impossible. The reason why there is such a big problem with this […]

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Everyone present on the internet knows how huge the competition is on the web. Earlier it was just the market that you used deal with but now it’s the whole world you have to fight with. Most of the entrepreneurs who are present on the internet would like to take challenges. The internet is an […]

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This article will provide you with a checklist for starting a blog – So you’ve finally made the decision to start your own blog, congratulations. So where do you start you’re probably wondering? Starting a blog for the first time is an exciting venture, but with the excitement also comes frustration, especially if you don’t […]

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At first, building a weight loss blog doesn’t seem like a particularly different task than building any other type of a blog website. So, let me be the one who breaks this to you … it is actually very different.

Okay, the technical part remains the same. That’s mainly because WordPress is perfectly capable of running any kind of blog (actually, any kind of website), and weight loss is not a challenge at all. So when it comes to getting a domain, a web host, installing WordPress, handling the initial settings, and so on. It’s all the same story.

However, the part that’s very different is the approach you’re going to take with the niche, the type of content you’re going to publish, and the type of relationship you’re going to build with your audience.

1. Getting this initial credibility

The weight loss niche is a difficult one due to one main downside.

Any wild guesses?

People interested in health and weight loss are naturally less trustful. And it’s quite understandable, actually.

Let’s take a look at a completely different industry to explain this.

If you’re in the space of “blogging about blogging” then credibility is not that important. I mean, it will surely help you attract more visitors, but when it’s all said and done, if you can craft good enough advice and share it with people, they will pay attention.

In weight loss, things are a lot more difficult. Weight loss advice usually involves doing something specific to our bodies, which is very personal.

The best way to gain credibility is to get featured (via a guest post, for example) on some semi-popular or popular blogs and then list them in a custom “as seen on” block. That way, anyone visiting your new weight loss blog will immediately notice that other sites in the niche are already paying attention to you.

2. Careful on the affiliate products

Affiliate marketing is one of the top methods for bloggers to make money. Even though I’m not here to undermine the power of the practice itself, I do advise you to take it easy in your beginning months of weight loss blogging.

There’s a ton of affiliate programs in the weight loss niche, but there’s also a ton of scams. This poses two dangers:

1. If you’re just starting out, you don’t know which products are quality yet (and they all have great marketing materials). You simply don’t want to end up promoting something crappy by accident.
2. If you promote too much stuff, your readers will get the impression that you’re only about making affiliate sales. This has bad impact on your credibility and can result in losing your audience.

Affiliate products work great in many niches, but in weight loss, it’s best if you build a relationship with your audience first, and only then start to mention some promotions here and there.

3. Share your own story

If you’re going to be the main writer of the blog, you need to make things personal and not hide behind any nickname or the overused plural form “we.”

First of all, use “I” a lot.

Secondly, share your own story related to weight loss. If you don’t have any, get in touch with someone willing to provide articles for you and get personal articles from them.

Weight loss is a very personal niche by default. Essentially, no one cares about some brand talking about this or that. What matters are people and their own methods/tricks/approaches at successful weight loss.

4. Be careful with email marketing

Email marketing is often treated as the holy grail of building a website-based business. In theory, all you need in order to succeed is a website with some search engine traffic coming in, and leading to a landing page where you convince the visitors to sign up to your email list. And then you have a never-ending possibility to constantly nag them through email.

It’s actually quite scary how many marketers still attempt to monetize their sites this way.

Anyway, there’s a much better method, and it’s called planning out your approach in advance and delivering real value up front. Here’s how it’s done.

First, divide your newsletter messages approach into four types:

• (a) Pure content delivered on a regular basis. This is about your standard newsletters – full of usable content – sent out manually whenever you have something interesting to share.
• (b) Promotion delivered on a regular basis. Similar to the above, but this time it’s about promotion sent out manually whenever you have something to share that could benefit your audience.
• (c) Pure content sent out at pre-defined intervals. This is content designed to resonate with a fresh subscriber – someone who subscribed this week.
• (d) Promotion sent out at pre-defined intervals. Promotion designed to resonate with a fresh subscriber.

Then, create your newsletter delivery sequence. Here’s how I like to align it myself, but feel free to make your adjustments:

• Day 0 (when the person subscribes): (c).
• Days 1-4: (c) each day.
• Day 5: (d).
• Day 6: (c).
• Day 8: (c).
• Day 10: (c).
• Day 11: (d).
• Days 12 and up: (a) and (b). Make sure to send at least five (a) messages for every (b) message.

The next step is to create all those (c) and (d) messages and put them through an autoresponder sequence – a mechanism that will send out those messages automatically at set intervals.

The technical side of things is really simple so you don’t have to be a web expert to make it happen. Luckily, there are many tools available that you can take advantage of here.

If you’re on a tight budget, check out SendinBlue, which is the only major email newsletter service offering autoresponders as part of their free plan. As far as I can see, everywhere else (MailChimp, AWeber, GetResponse) you have to pay to get the feature.

There’s one more crucial piece of the puzzle here. If you want to make email effective, you need to create a valuable and enticing enough incentive for people to join your newsletter. But that’s a topic for whole other post, so let’s not get into it here.

5. Follow multiple paths

This sounds a bit vague, so let me elaborate. What I mean by multiple paths is multiple angles at weight loss.

For instance, I’m sure you’re doing a lot of keyword research if you’re in a big niche like weight loss. In such a case, you might end up with a range of keywords like (mind this is just an example and I have no information regarding the potential value of these keywords):

• “how to lose weight fast”
• “weight loss in the new year”
• “weight loss for beginners”
• “weight loss advice”
• “weight loss tips,” and so on.

The worst thing you can do is create individual posts for each keyword, but provide the exact same information in all of them. For example, it’s really difficult to make a post titled “Weight Loss Advice” significantly different from one titled “Weight Loss Tips.”

A lot better approach is to tackle this from multiple angles, focusing on different aspects of weight loss, such as:

• dieting,
• working out,
• weight loss programs,
• calorie counters,
• weight loss equipment,
• kitchen appliances,
• weight loss friendly meals, and myriads of other things.

All of the above are your different paths to take.

6. Use diverse content types

Weight loss is such a big area that you can easily incorporate different types of content into your offerings. Here are some possibilities and remember to stay consistent:

• standard text posts,
• infographics (and other visuals – you can create those with a tool like Visme pretty easily and quickly),
• tutorials,
• recipes,
• videos (workout instructions, etc.),
• audios (e.g. podcasts),
• interviews (if you’re having trouble finding experts, you can sign up to MyBlogU – one of the modules there is designed to help you get input from other people in the niche),
• pictures (before and after, etc.),
• news (whenever something new gets released),
• reader stories (whenever someone emails you and shares their own weight loss adventure).

I’m positive that there are much more possibilities waiting for you out there than what I’ve mentioned here (in terms of content types), but this list should be more than enough to get you going.

This actually concludes what I have to say, so now I encourage you to take the floor.

Is there anything you’d like to ask? Are you planning to launch a weight loss blog in the near future?

The post 6 Things to Keep in Mind When Launching a Weight Loss Blog appeared first on ComLuv.

     

Why your business must go Social — since last few years, Social media has been emerging a main key factor to grow your business. It allows you to build highly-engaged communities of followers and customers which help in driving traffic to your e-commerce portal and boost your sales. In 2006, Facebook and Twitter opened their doors to […]

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SEO is a vast topic, it require many tasks to be done by the webmasters to rank their site or blog higher in the search result. SEO is basically divided into two parts OFF page SEO and ON page SEO. In this post I will share some On page SEO tips which you should follow […]

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Every girl wants to look the best she can, especially in the summer time – the time for short skirts, summer dresses, and, of course, bikinis. Making your body look great for the summer may take some time and effort, so the perfect time to start doing something is right now! Follow these simple tips, […]

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We all try to look our best, and the same way you want to dedicate some time and visit a dentist, you should consider investing a bit into some proper wardrobe. But remember, fashion is a delicate thing, and you can easily buy some items that will ruin your style, and this is particularly important […]

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I’ve read many a bunch of bad blogging advice; and have even seen much more in practice – on a daily basis. However, none beats updating your blog daily… it is one of the most silly – and wrong advice you’ll ever receive. Ever.

If you are a newbie and are considering updating your blog daily, you must stop, immediately! If you are a Problogger or have been blogging for any reasonable amount of time and believe blogging daily is the key to success, I have a shocker for you: IT ISN’T. So, for both the newbie and professional alike, why is the daily routine such a bad fix?

There are many reasons blogging daily doesn’t produce great results. Let’s look at them one by one:

Updating Your Blog Daily Leaves You Little Time For Anything Else

Whosoever said writing (great) blog posts was easy was certainly being very economical with the truth or was outrightly lying. Brainstorming, drafting, crafting, editing and possibly rewriting (and then editing again) is one of the biggest time sapping ventures around. There are some epic blog posts that may take 15 or more (tedious) hours to craft – and publish.

This may mean almost 95% of your waking hours!

Now, if you really want to awe your audience (like all serious bloggers should), how exactly can you publish such epic content, share on social media, get it across to your social networks and possibly boost it on via commenting? That would be close to accomplishing the impossible!

Daily Publishing Means You Run The Risk Of Running Out Of Great Blog Post Ideas

Ideas are funny things – very funny.

There will always be days when you’ll have an abundance of ideas and you’ll be wondering what to do with them. Personally, some good days come along and on such days, immediately I wake up, I get an idea for a great blog post.

And, as my wife and I settle down to breakfast, I get yet another idea and before the day is half spent, yet another idea strikes…can you imagine? Yet, there has been days when it is almost next to impossible to even develop those excellent ideas into blog posts (even though the ideas may have been carefully outlined.

And, before you imagine that this is my problem, it isn’t. Infact, all writers and real bloggers face it…it’s called writer’s block!

So, if you’re the ‘update-the-blog-daily’ kind of guy, how exactly do you propose to go about it? Manufacture ‘excellent’ excuses?

Your Readers Would Find It Difficult To Keep Track With Your (Amazing) Content

A blog, though kept in reverse – chronological order, is still a blog and that means you do not write it for yourself… it is written for an audience. Sadly, the audience that it is written for is a super busy one with more than enough distractions…

Or, do you imagine that your readers read every entry you put up? Few do.

So, as you rush to update daily, it would be apt to remember that your audience also has many other things that are begging for accomplishment in their lives. Great chances are that most of your readers may in themselves have blogs and would also need time to craft compelling content for them. Also factor in the reality that your readers need time enough to be allowed to visit other sites too… (something that they must do).

Or, does it pay to talk to an empty room without an audience?

Updating Your Blog Daily Means You Risk Going Off Niche – Or Point!

There has been many a point you landed on a blog you knew too well and the content you saw confused you. What exactly was the blogger thinking? You imagine…the post is completely off niche!

Sadly, this is becoming the norm, rather than the exception. When such happens, be rest assured that such a blogger had the task of updating his/her blog daily and because of the fact that something had to be on the blog – by all means, off niche material ended up landing there.

When such happens, an unsubscribe is close by. Often too, such a visitor may not bother to come back to such a blog…Can you imagine an opportunity thrown away? Such a reader would have converted brilliantly – if given the opportunity.

It’s not usually a great idea driving away readers and prospective clients. Don’t you think so?

Your Content Goes Stale – Steadily (And Without Notice)

Content gets stale – and once in a while, links get broken. Usually, this impairs user experience and severely hurts search engine rankings. When such happens, you’ll most likely imagine that you were hit by something greater than Panda and Penguin combined…

And you’ll be correct. You would be hit by your own decisions and their effects!

On the other hand, if you take things gentle, update at comfortable intervals and keep an eye on older articles, you’ll certainly be running a blog that would overall, be more productive, alive, relevant and user friendly – without any stale content.

Can you give up the above for the temporary pleasures of updating daily?

Importantly, Updating Your Blog Daily Makes You Imagine It Makes Money!

The last ‘sin’ (but obviously the most important) is that updating daily makes a blogger or information marketer assume that he/she is making money that way. Or would.

Nothing is further from the truth!

While updating daily may work for newspapers and newsmagazines (sometimes multiples times a day – because of their niche), great chances are that if you are not in the news niche, the opposite may even be the case – especially if you use PPC programs like Adsense.

In the blogosphere, bloggers and other webmasters recognize an ad when they see one. Now, if such a ad does not really capture their attention, the possibility of clicking on it is really slim. So, how exactly will more content (especially one produced daily) help you out?

What You Should Do Instead

It would be right to ask me at this juncture what exactly you should do – afterall, I just condemned all that you may have believed in arguing that updating your blog daily is an unpardonable mistake. So, what’s the ideal posting frequency?

Once in two days? Three days? Once a week? Twice a week? Once a month?

NO!

The ideal posting frequency is one that allows you enough room so that you can carry out all the money making activities (successfully) that a daily posting schedule may prevent you from…the very activities listed here.

The twist to this post is that if you can blog daily and not fall into the pitfalls enumerated here, congrats! You’re a genius – and super blogger. It is however doubted though – especially if you’re doing things solo!

But, if you can, updating your blog daily may present other fringe benefits you may actually enjoy.

Closing Thoughts

I did not always hate updating daily and wasn’t so vocal against it. As a matter of fact, I (like many other bloggers and webmasters), was a strong advocate of hitting the publish button daily. However, I grew older in the business of blogging and learnt some secrets many do not know even exist.

Fortunately, I now make more money as a result of failing to publish daily via such ventures like the Amazon Kindle Platform and other numerous online efforts. I thus (in advance), understand completely with my professional friends who will unfailingly disagree with me.

Addendum – What Should You Do With The Extra Time?

This is certainly a million dollar question: so, what’s the answer? Use it more productively to make more money. For me, this involves bettering user experience, publishing more titles on Amazon and writing best selling eBooks and guilds to be sold on my site.

Be creative – and have a great day in the process!

The post Why Updating Your Blog Daily Is A Waste Of Time – And Energy: 6 Solid Reasons To Back Up! appeared first on ComLuv.