Keith Goodrum

This Post has an ulterior motive for me. I’d like to introduce the many benefits of guest posting. Hopefully you’ll see the benefits & get excited about the of guest posting… Then take me up on my offer to guest post on this blog next week…

Guest Posting is a great way to get yourself in front of targeted traffic…

One of the best methods of marketing is finding targeted traffic. Birds of a feather flock together… and that is so true with blog readers. They are interested it the same subject, and are a sympathetic ear.

Steven Snell at Pure Blogging makes a great point about how guest posting is get past the advertising defense by demonstrating your expertise…

The Best Blog Advertising is Free - Are You Using It?

Despite the title of this post, I do realize that guest posting is not really advertising. However, it allows you to accomplish many of the same objectives that an advertisement would, and in most cases it’s even more effective. …

Darrin Rowe over at Problogger makes a powerful case why guest posting is a effective way to find new readers…

Finding New Readers for Your Blog with Guest Posting

Perhaps one of the most powerful ways of exposing your writing to a new group of people is to put some of your best content on other peoples blogs - and not your own …

Jason at The University Kid goes over how to make sure you are putting out quality guest posting content. You can get a leg up on your competition if you remember to follow these steps with your guest posting…

How To Annihilate Your Competition With A Guest Post

A lot of people get sucked into the whole guest posting spree and churn out posts for various blogs in their niche… and then neglect their own website. Remember, people are notoriously fickle – their views about how good a writer you …

So, how can you take advantage of what you’ve learned at these blogs?

Simple… I’m taking a week’s vacation starting Sunday. I’m looking for some guest posters. If you would like to guest post for me next week head on over the my about me page. fill out the contact form, and submit it. I’ll get back to you, and see if we can make arrangements.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Popularity: 83% [?]

I saw this comment left on an earlier post titled The Shortest Survey You’ll Ever See.

Hi Keith, I couldn’t think of anything to say lol, but wanted to ask you if you have seen Skribit.

A very cool widget enabling you to get “consistent” feedback from readers as they type it in themselves…I just installed it yesterday, very cool.

Dennis Edell
6 May 08 at 12:56 pm

Hey Dennis,

I have heard of Skribit. In fact I 1st read about it from Darren Rowe when he wrote about it on his blog here Skribit - Find Out What Your Readers Want You to Write About. It seems like a great way to find out what information readers are really looking for. By using the widget in the sidebar you can answer the question asked. Then through voting readers can prioritize which topics they would like to see covered here.

To answer the question “Why Are You Using Skribit?” 

It looks like a powerful tool to gain feedback from readers. It can be a way to provide content

I noticed Darren did something that others didn’t do with their Skribit widget. Most people just popped up the widget, and it sat there with no answers to the question. Darren went to his Twitter account and asked people what they would like to see covered on his blog. He then took some of the answers and added them to the Skribit que. He put up the widget and it looked busy already.

This was a smart thing to do because it seems to be human nature to not use something that’s not busy. It seems like no one likes to be first. It’s almost like the mentality of not eating at a restaurant that has an empty parking lot… If no cars are there, then something must be wrong.

So, I followed Darren’s lead. I set up a quick survey here on the blog. I took the answers I got and added them to the Skribit widget. I did see answer several times like; how to get traffic, conversions and such. In that case I just took one of the answers and added it to the widget.

I invite you to look at the Skribit widget and answer the question, or vote on one of the answers.

Popularity: 73% [?]

Looked at the dashboard today and saw this was the 100th post. It’s a cool milestone, and a chance to look back at the short life of this blog. Here are a few of the numbers:

• In 117 days there has been 100 posts.
• The last 2 weeks of January there were 694 unique visitors, and through the 1st 8 days in May there has been 1072. (Knock on wood that the numbers keep growing)
• Unranked in Alexa in January, and today 148,868.
• Zero page rank in Google, and PR3 today.

These numbers are fun to watch because they are fast improving. This is a new blog, and the numbers will make big jumps. And that’s always fun to track. Eventually the numbers will level off, and at best will see incremental moves. This is just the normal course of action as a blog matures.

The big question is what’s the reason behind this growth?

The easiest answer is… action.

Pretty simple, and not overly complicated. I’ve worked hard to get up 100 posts in 117 days. I remember reading once that a new blog should get up a lot of good content fast. And I figured blogging 5-6 days a week should be a way to get that much content.

Publishing this many blog posts a week was not easy. There were many days I got up with no idea what to write about. But I wouldn’t let myself off the hook. I made myself sit down in front of the keyboard and write. I would write 2 maybe 3 paragraphs not like what I wrote, and start over again. Many of those early drafts I deleted.

Sometimes I would write a complete post, and decide not to publish it. I was not happy with the way it turned out. It either got way off point, didn’t read good or the timing didn’t feel right.

So, I would start all over again. I was not going to miss my personal commitment.

Another curious thing happened because of this hard work…

It put me in position to receive a little luck. A couple of big name bloggers linked to my blog… I was lucky to have them do that. But if I wasn’t adding content on a regular basis would they have linked to this blog? I don’t know, but probably not. I got to interview copywriter Stephen Dean. That interview has generate traffic, and back links. If I wasn’t actively involved in the blogsphere I would have missed this opportunity. I got asked to participate in a Marcus Hochstadt blog contest. Would I have been asked to participate if I wasn’t blogging on a regular basis? Probably not.

I guess it boils down to this… Luck and hard work go hand in hand.

Here’s how I’ve always felt about this. It seems like when you are working hard you tend to be in the right place at the right time. You find luck out on the playing field. You have to be in the game. When you are out there working hard, making the plays, you will find yourself standing in the right place at the right time. If you are standing on the sidelines when luck happens by, you will miss out, because luck will pass you by.

I think that Will Wheaton, and Sam Adams make great points about luck & hard work. They both write that you need to be working hard to be in position to have good things happen.

Will Wheaton sums up about hard work and luck in his post yet another post about writing… and stuff

Finally, an important note to all artists: nobody in the world will work as hard as you will to promote your work, nobody will care about promoting it as much as you do, and your work will be as successful as you work to make it. Hopefully, you’ll get lucky like I did and get some good word of mouth and connect with a passionate group of people who will tell their friends about you, but that’s never going to happen if you don’t work hard — really, really hard — to make it happen.

Here is what Sam Adams says in his post titled Luck and hard work go hand in hand:

Luck is about being there. Luck is about showing up. I tease my kids all the time that it might be true that it is better to be lucky than be good; but I also tell them that you can’t get lucky if you are not prepared to accept it.

Every champion, in sports or industry, can look back over the course of competition and see places where they were fortunate, opportunistic and sometimes just downright lucky.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, gets lucky. What we all want in life is a shot. What we do with that shot, that’s the story we want to tell.

What do you do with the luck that falls your way?

So, what are you going to do to make sure you are standing in the way when luck comes along?

Popularity: 70% [?]

“Anything you actually know about is fine…”, is one of the suggestions I received from my survey. It gave me a good laugh. Then I thought about it… How many people blog about stuff they don’t know anything about? How many are posers? They act like experts, and pass out advice about making huge bucks online, traffic strategies or marketing tactics and have no knowledge or experience using these tips.

I would like to think that most people who blog this way get found out. Probably not in a public way, but in a loss of readership. Most folks have a good ‘B.S. detector’ (aka common sense), and can sniff out junk a mile away.

There are 2 ways you can write about topics…

First you should write about what you know… yeah I know you hear this advice all the time. And there is a reason - It works. Writing about subjects you know comes through in your writing. You have a level of confidence, and comfort that surfaces. Credibility builds as you write about topics you know.

Do you have to be a screaming success to write about something you know? No… I think that many people believe this idea. You can write about your experience with a particular subject. Did you have some success? Moderate success? Or fell flat on your face? Then let everyone know about your experience. People can learn from your success, and your setbacks. You will also find that people gain valuable information from your experience… good or bad.

Writing about your experience is a great way to weave your knowledge into the story. Mohamed over at Internet Business Opportunities writes about how some bloggers do this…

Write About What You Know

Hi, When I first started this blog, I was in a bit of a dilemma. I mean, how would I write about something new everyday? I mean, I know full well how to do research and get ideas. I can sit down and push out articles pretty quick, …

You can write about something you don’t know if you do it this way…

Be up front and tell readers you don’t have any experience or knowledge when you started. Let them know you are not an expert. Then tell them what you did. Give the steps you took, and how you found the information.

Then tell the story… what happened, how it went, any hurdles you came across and how you overcame them. Then give the results… good or bad. Everyone knows that not all experiences are a success. Most people become suspicious if all you have are victories. When Babe Ruth retired in 1935 he held the career home run record of 714 dingers… he also held the career strikeout record of 1330.

Another great way to write about something you don’t know is to write a tutorial. Raj Dash over at Performancing gives a good tip on how to do tutorials..

Bloggers: How Do You Learn Something New?

You’ve probably heard/read the age-old advice to writers: write about what you know. Not to be contrarian, but there are ways to write about what you don’t know - or at least don’t know very well - and it’s a good way to learn a topic …

Transparency is a buzz word making the rounds lately. It’s a fancy word for honesty. Just be up front with your readers and I bet they will give you a lot of leeway.

Popularity: 65% [?]

Could you do me a favor please?

I’m taking a quick one question survey about what topics to cover on this blog. The best way is to ask you what you would like to see covered.

Take a second and answer the question below. You don’t have to leave the page, or take more than a few seconds to answer. You can leave a quick answer like… how to get traffic, How to improve Alexa or How to set up a blog. I’m just looking for what you would like to read about.

I would appreciate your input.

Thanks,

Keith

Popularity: 60% [?]

10 Minute Blog Post

An easy to duplicate blog writing process will make posting a breeze.

Writing blog posts is one of the best things you can do to help bring traffic to your blog. Having a consistent publishing schedule lets people know they can stop by and get plenty of original content.

Some people seem to be gifted with the ability to write fast, concise and with ease. I often picture people like Darren Rowse, Michel Fortin, or James Brausch cranking out pages and pages of prose effortlessly.

I on the other hand use to struggle with my writing. Taking hours to write a simple 300-350 word blog post or article. It was agonizing and slow process. I would get easily frustrated, and give up. I had a blog that had what I would call a streak publishing schedule. I would go through spurts of writing posts with great effort. That would last for a very short period of time, and then it would be weeks before I would write again.

I always felt guilty not keeping a consistent publishing schedule. In fact that was one of the reasons that would get me to sit down and write a several posts at once. But that would take practically all day to produce 2 or 3 posts. And the blog suffered because of this erratic publishing schedule.

It was time to learn how to produce original content on a consistent basis

After doing a lot of research I could not find a good system that would work for me. I studied material about writing articles, books, copywriting and blogging. The end result was combining several methods to come up with a system that worked for me. And that is how I came up with 10 Minute Blog Post.

Because of a delay getting the DVD ready 10 Minute Blog Post will be available as a digital download

I’m not the most technical oriented person around. But my mistake is your gain… I was going to delay the release until I figured out the problem. However I’ve decided to release this as a downloadable product. And for this weekend the price will be $29.95.

So, if you want to get instant access, and a great price head on over to http://10minuteblogpost.com/ to get a copy. This special price will only last until Monday May 5th at 9am. Then it will be available only as a DVD, and at a price of $100.

Update Due to some recording issues I’ve temporary pulled “10 Minute Blog Post”. It will be ready to go in about a week. Thanks - Keith

Popularity: 55% [?]

Now is the time to start a blog. Many people have discovered that they are a great tool to get your ideas out to promote you and your business; it builds a relationship with your readers, and the platform simpler than ever to get your message out. For this reason they are more popular than ever.

Here are three reasons why you should start a blog.

1. It’s the best form of marketing and branding you can do for your online business - One of the easiest ways to market your business is to build trust with your market. Relationships and trust build a sense of community. And when you have a sense of community there is no need to use hardcore marketing to make sales.

2. You can use a blog as a direct line of communication - Ryan Healy in his post titled Copywriting Is Not the Most Important Skill said: “It’s my belief that communication is the most important skill you could ever learn.” A blog opens a direct line of communication between you and your readers. This is a great platform for communication. In fact many times you start getting feedback within hours of posting… priceless information.

3. A blog is easier than ever to start - The tools to start a blog are easy to learn & use. You can have a blog started within minutes if you choose to use one of the free services like blogger.com, wordpress.com, or typepad.com. If you wish to host the blog on your own domain, you can be up and running within a couple hours. Where else can you start a business so fast, or so inexpensive?

One of the complaints I hear is people hesitate to start blogging because they believe it would take huge amounts of time to write a blog post everyday. Many people abandon their blogs because they cannot find the time to write blog posts. They are caught up in a busy life, and it tough to carve out the time.

It would take me hours to write a simple blog post…

I had the same problem. It use to take me hours to write a simple 300-word post. It was agonizing, slow and frankly became a drag. I would go through spurts of writing several posts at a time…. then go weeks, even months without posting. My blog looked like it was abandoned at times.

I finally made the decision to figure out how to write faster. After trying many methods without much success… I finally figured it out. I found a speed writing technique, and modified it to make writing blog posts. I can now write a regular blog post in 10 minutes or less. It has been working great, and producing great results.

I’ve recorded this technique, and will be releasing it as a new product called “10 Minute Blog Post”. In it I show you how to write a blog post in 10 minutes. You get to see how I prepare, write and edit a blog post. You get to look over my shoulder as I write one of the posts I wrote for this blog.

Tomorrow Thursday May 1st “10 Minute Blog Post” will be released…

Of course there will be special pricing. Now, I have to warn you these recordings are not pretty. I’m not a professional presenter, and my Camtasia skills suck. It ain’t going to win any awards… it ain’t even going to be nominated.

So, if you are looking for pretty, flashy recordings with fancy graphics… save your money. This is not the product for you. But the information is valuable, and that’s what’s important… how to write a blog post in 10 minutes.

Popularity: 59% [?]

Sam Carrara Over at Sam Carra’s Marketing Education made a post today asking for guest posters. He is going Sao Paulo to help build a church. It sounds like he is going to work hard, but I bet he’ll have fun.

Pray for a safe trip for everyone, and that nobody gets hurt on the construction site.

Sam I would like to be a guest poster for you while you are gone. If you still need someone let me know.

Anyone else looking for a guest poster? You can contact me by filling out the contact on the about me page here.

Popularity: 53% [?]

Stress! Writers block can bring on stress like few other things in life. Many bloggers experience this at one time or another. I know I’ve experience my share of writers block. Stress, frustrations and panic are some of the emotions that seem to go hand in hand with writers block.

Now, there are people who claim they’ve never experience writers block. This post is not for them… but for us mere mortals who have an occasional bout of writers block here are a few tips I’ve found useful:

1. Take a break - Sometimes I’ll reach a point of frustration, and have to get up and take a break. I just need some time away from the computer. I’ll take the dog for a walk, or do some reading. Any distraction will do to that lets me escape for an hour or so. Find something you enjoy, and go do it.

2. Have Posts Ready To Go In Reserve - Having a few posts ready to go is a great safety net, just in case you can’t get one done. A post in your back will help maintain your publishing schedule.

One thing I’ve found is if I know there is one in the bullpen, I’ll relax and find it easier to write. Just having it there makes me feel better, and that will often get the writing juices flowing.

3. Switch Projects - Another way is to be working on several projects at once. If I get stuck, I’ll switch and work on a sales letter, or an article or another blog post. A change of perspective can many times spark new ideas. And that is usually all I’ll need to rekindle my writing.

4. Just Start Typing - I learned this one from Gary Halbert. He said to just start typing. If you have nothing to say just type the words… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought this was the stupid, and resisted it for a while. Then one day I was desperate and shut the door, unhooked the phone and disconnected from online. I started typing blah, blah, blah… and after a while I started writing! It was weird… it worked.

5. Do More Research - Sometimes I’ll get stuck because I’m not sure what to write about. This is a sure indication that I’ve not learned enough about the subject. At this point I’ll know its time to learn more about my subject. Remember you can write when you have information flowing out your ears.

6. Write in small chunks - This one is good. Break your writing down into smaller chunks. I’ll make a goal to just write one paragraph, or one point. When I’m done I’ll move on to the next one, and the next… before you know it you’re done.

7. Schedule your writing time - Scheduling a regular time for writing gets your brain into the habit of writing. We are creatures of habit, and like to have routines. Get your brain use to writing at a certain time… and it will comply.

I hope you find these helpful, and put them into action. What are some of your favorite ways to cure writers block?

Popularity: 71% [?]

Tomorrow is the last day to join the One Page A Day contest. Eric Giguere over at MEMWG The Unofficial AdSense Blog is running a contest for the month of February.

The rules are simple… all you have to do is publish one new page of content for each day in February. A page counts as a web page, blog post, article, comment and even a video. And this month only only need 29 pages.

Now you don’t have to create something everyday, but at the end of the month you need 29 pages. Eric is giving away prizes to anyone who can complete the challenge.

My goal for the month was to create a blog post Monday - Friday. So, that meant I would only have to come up with 8 more pages for the month to complete the challenge.

I figured that would be a great way to motivate me to reach my goal for the month… So I joined. I chose to make my plans public because it creates accountability.

I know for me this is an excellent tactic to get me off my duff and do the work. It’s still tempting to check email, surf the net… I mean research. So, I needed something to help me stay focused.

It’s also a way to get me to push across the finish line.

I also know that I might be tempted slack off at the end, and would rationalize it by saying: “At least got I 80, or 90% of my goal accomplished.”

That’s a conversation I didn’t want to have with myself.

So, what tactics or strategies do you use to get yourself motivated to accomplish a tough goal?

Let me know.

Popularity: 20% [?]