It’s important to give people a reason to sign up to your email list. A lead magnet is a short ebook, checklist, resource list, etc. to encourage people to subscribe. Pat Flynn offers advice getting the most out of your lead magnets. 1. Make it visual. Show them what they will get. 2. Sell it. Convince people that it is worth their time and email. 3. Experiment. Try different kinds to see what works. Shorter lead magnets are working better. He is getting a 60 to 70% conversion rate on his landing pages. Pat provides lots of examples and value in this video. Lead magnets are something I need to work on for IdeaEconomy.net.
Writers Explain How They Earn Enough Money to Do Nothing Else
Can you make money as a writer? Tim Denning shows 11 examples of writers who are making a living with their craft. Writing is an essential skill to master if you want to be successful, so in a sense, we are all writers. I think the best advice is to avoid starting with a blog. There are better places to start earning attention. This article is on Medium. If you are past your allotment of free articles, open it up in a new browser.
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Content Marketing Unlocked: Complete Blogging Course
SEO expert and blogger, Neil Patel has a new, comprehensive blogging course at no charge. Neil Patel is the founder of UberSuggest and has a multi-million dollar consulting business so it is safe to say that he knows what he is talking about.
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No, I Won’t Give You My Email for a Downloadable Ebook
Everyone talks about how popups, browser notifications, splash pages, etc. increase newsletter signups. They work. You will definitely get more signups if you annoy people enough.
However, the other side of the argument is never presented.
How many people are so annoyed that they never return to your site again? The world is in a race to the bottom to interrupt as many people as possible. How about just focusing on good content that people want to read? There have never been any popups on Seth Godin’s website.
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The Story of Humans of New York in a Twitter Thread
You’ve probably heard about Brandon Stanton and his project to photograph 10,000 people in New York City. This Twitter thread tells the full story.
He has gone on to raise millions of dollars for charity.
This is a great lesson in the power of consistency and how opportunities will come if you just persist long enough and adjust.
Marketing Idea: Telling the story in a Twitter thread like this is also worth noting. This is a good way to get more attention on Twitter.
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21 Mistakes Bloggers Make (and How to Avoid Making Them Yourself)
Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.com identifies many of the key mistakes new bloggers make. I think I’ve made most of these mistakes myself in the past, but I’m trying to correct for them on IdeaEconomy.net. I recommend picking a couple of the items and going deeper to see how you can improve. I’m focusing on #13. New subscribers don’t magically appear, so I’m trying to become more active on forums like IndieHackers and on Twitter. Reddit and Linkedin are next. I’ll be sharing more of my process of building this newsletter in the future.
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How to Write an About Me Page for Your Blog in 2020 (Introduce Yourself and Tell a Story)
Many new visitors to your blog will check out your about page if they liked the first content they saw. Having a good about page will help convert visitors to subscribers. Ryan Robinson of Ryob.com has a comprehensive guide with examples from his site. Of course, he has an amazing about page. I need to implement more of his advice on the IdeaEconomy.net site. By the way, Ryan Robinson earns tens of thousands of dollars per month from affiliate commissions promoting website hosting and other services. He is a good person to learn from.
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Building a 7 Figure 1 Person Business (How to Build an Audience in 2020)
Brian Clark of CopyBlogger, Genesis WordPress Themes, and the Further personal development newsletter has a simple free course called Next 7 that he says “can lead to a 7-figure business without employees or investors.” It is delivered by email after short quizzes for each lesson. I find the process a little annoying, but it might be a good strategy to encourage people to complete a series of emails. It ultimately leads to information on his upcoming course on the subject. Despite the promotion, it’s still interesting. The main idea is that email newsletters of curated content are a big business opportunity in our world of information overload. Obviously, that is the premise of starting this IdeaEconomy newsletter so I’m biased on the topic. 🙂
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How to Write a Blog Post That Attracts Backlinks
By now we all know that having quality backlinks is critical to ranking well in search engines. Ahrefs shows a process for writing posts that are likely to attract backlinks in this 3-part series. The first short video shows exactly how SEO tools like Ahrefs can be used to help you create content that is more likely to rank. Ahrefs is expensive, but it is a very powerful tool for content marketers.
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Republishing Content: How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO
Ahrefs has a comprehensive article on updating old blog posts to improve search engine rankings. This is a great way to give new life to old content. SEO is a critical skill to master so it’s worth keeping up with how the professionals do it.
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A Founder’s Guide to Writing Well
Dave Girouard, CEO of Upstart, stresses the importance of developing writing skills in business with specific lessons and examples of how to improve. We are all writers, so this is a great article to review, regardless of your current skills. “Of the many skills attributed to successful entrepreneurs — vision, execution, persuasion, perseverance, grit, resilience — effective writing inevitably fails to make the list. Yet I submit that the quality of your writing contributes to the outcomes you experience as a founder and executive day in and day out.”
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Conversational Copywriting with MarketingExamples
Copywriting is a critical skill to growing a business. MarketingExamples has short guide with before and after examples to improve your copy. This is a quick read and well worth your time.