Become a Blogging Wizard - 6 Lessons from Harry Potter
This is a guest post by Joshua Clanton, a freelance web designer who blogs about web design, creativity, and productivity.
Humble beginnings, a long arduous struggle, and ultimate triumph… The story of a young wizard? Or the story of a beginning blogger? How about both? Here are six lessons from Harry Potter on how to become a blogging wizard.
1. Everyone’s an outsider at first
When Harry first entered the wizarding world he felt like an outsider. Despite his fame, he knew nothing about how the wizarding world worked, and often made ridiculous mistakes. But with time, Harry learned how things worked and began to fit in. (At least as well as the Boy Who Lived could fit in.)
When you first start out in the blogging world, you’ll probably feel like a bit of an outsider too. This is normal. No one starts out knowing everything there is to know about WordPress, RSS, and the time-tested techniques for writing good content. But all you have to do is stick with it long enough and eventually you’ll learn what you need to know.
2. What you need most are friends
What Harry really needed most as he tried to navigate in his strange new world was someone to show him the ropes. Fortunately, he soon met Ron and Hermione. Harry didn’t choose them because they were well placed and had great connections. Despite Ron’s poverty and Hermione’s half-muggle ancestry, they were the two best friends that he could have made, because they were willing to stick with him and help no matter how bad things seemed.
Bloggers need friends, too. I don’t mean contacts you can network with. I mean people who are willing to help you out just because they like you. If you can find one or two people like that, you’re well ahead of the game.
3. Watch how others work their magic
Despite his natural talents, Harry never did do all that well in formal classes. Instead, he made most of his magical progress by watching others casting spells and trying it for himself.
When you see someone succeeding at blogging (however you define success), watch them closely. Study how they write, how they engage their readers. Then, once you’ve found something that you think ontributes to their success, give it a try!
4. Don’t be afraid to break the rules (but beware the consequences)
In Harry’s struggle with Lord Voldemort, there were many times that he had to decide what was more important: keeping the Hogwarts rules or making progress in the fight against the Dark Lord. Harry almost always chose to break the rules, and this usually turned out for the best, but sometimes it backfired.
In blogging school, as at Hogwarts, there are a lot of rules, especially about writing good content. But sometimes it’s worth your while to break them. The key is in remembering why the rules are there in the first place, and weighing whether the potential advantages outweigh the risks.
5. Shun the dark arts
There is, of course, a much more important set of rules in the wizarding world: the rules forbidding the dark arts. In this there is very little leeway. Use of the dark arts is what separates the followers of Voldemort from the rest of the wizardry world. And though Harry does succumb to the temptation to use them a couple of times, it is something shameful.
In blogging too certain things are forbidden. Things like plagiarism and black hat SEO will not only hurt your reputation, but may bring down the wrath of the Ministry of Magic, er… Google on your head.
6. Give without expecting anything in return
What helps Harry to triumph in the end isn’t his outstanding abilities. Though he is talented, both Dumbledore and Voldemort are more skilled. Instead, it is his willingness to help others, to give his life without expecting anything in return, that really makes the difference.
Giving to others isn’t just a technique for making yourself popular. Though it may help, if that’s your goal, there are probably better uses of your time. But if you want to become a blogging wizard who is not only successful, but also makes the world a little bit better, you need to learn to give without expecting anything in return.
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Monetizing Your Blog with a “Posts From Our Sponsors” Section
When I wrote 28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website, one of the mentioned methods to make money from a website was the “Posts from our sponsors” section on the sidebar or somewhere else on a site.
Techmeme, the famous tech news aggregator, bases its monetization strategy almost exclusively on this method. If you visit the site you will notice a prominent “Techmeme Sponsor Posts” section on the sidebar, where posts from the sponsors get featured.
Techmeme charges $5,000 monthly for each sponsor spot. Most of the times they have 6 sponsors, so you make the math.
What always made me curious was the fact that virtually no other website was leveraging this monetization method, despite the success that it has on Techmeme. One could argue that a news aggregator is particularly favorable for such type of “post based” advertising. That is true, but what about blogs?
Blogs also work around posts and articles, and most designs include sections on the sidebar that highlight the “Most popular posts” or “Recent posts.” That means that the model could work just as efficiently on them.
I can’t say for sure though, and that is why I decided to make a small experiment. If you take look at our sidebar, right below the “Popular Articles” section you will see a new one called “Articles from our Sponsors.” Basically that section will feature posts from other blogs that decide to sponsor Daily Blog Tips. I am not sure about the rate yet, but I will kick start it at $100 monthly.
Benefits for the sponsoring blogs
Most advertising on blogs today is either Google Adsense or banners. These formats work well for online companies that want to promote products, services, and to create brand recognition at the same time. For other blogs, however, placing a banner on a website will not be a very effective promotion strategy.
Having your posts featured on the sidebar of a popular blog on your niche, however, might be a better investment. First of all because there will be an endorsement factor in place. That is, the readers of that blog might get encouraged to check your post because they feel that the author of the blog is recommending it.
Secondly, the quality of the traffic should be higher. The visitor will only click on the article if he is interested on the topic, and should he find good quality and useful content on the other side there is a higher chance (when compared to a banner click) that he will end up becoming an RSS subscriber.
Benefits for the hosting blog
The “Posts from our sponsors” section could be used in parallel with other banners or Adsense units that you might already have in place, so it is another revenue source.
Secondly, if you accept posts and articles only from sponsors that have high quality content and are relevant to your niche your readers might find that new section useful as well.
Technical aspects
If I am not wrong Techmeme pulls the posts from its sponsors directly from their RSS feed. Every time a sponsor publishes new content the section gets updated, therefore.
On this blog I will try to do something different. That is, each sponsor will be able to select what post he wants featured, and he can also switch the featured post anytime he desires. The reason is quite simple, if the sponsor wants to maximize the number of clicks that he will get and the conversion rate into RSS subscribers, probably he should showcase only his best articles, and not necessarily the most recent ones.
The links will carry a no-follow tag because we all love Google, right?
If you are interested in getting your posts featured on the sidebar of Daily Blog Tips (on all the pages) for $100 monthly, therefore, just contact me through the Contact Form and we’ll talk about it.
I will also keep you guys updated on how effective this monetization strategy turns out to be.
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Daily Blog Tips WordPress Themes Page
If you take a look at our menu bar now you will see a page called “Themes.” Basically it is the place where we will put all our released WordPress themes, with screenshots and direct links to the demo page and to the downloads.
There are seven of them there right now, and more will come shortly. Also, if you have any suggestions or ideas for a WordPress theme that you would like to see released just let us know and we will consider it for the coming projects.
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Most Popular Articles February 2008
Below you will find the most popular articles of the past month. Check them out if you missed any.
- StudioPress WordPress Theme Released: We have another WordPress theme ready to go. StudioPress is a very clean theme, and it comes with the possibility to integrate several AdSense units.
- Open Discussion: What is Your Favorite Web Hosting?: Like it or not, web hosting is a vital part of any website. Reliable and fast hosting will give your readers a much better user experience, and they will be more likely to return in the future. Slow hosting with frequent downtimes, on the other hand, will not only annoy your visitors, but it might also harm your search engine rankings over the long term.
- 28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website: There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.
- Is Technorati Going Downhill?: I used to visit Technorati very often. Almost daily, now that I think about it. Not anymore. I can’t identify one big factor that contributed to that lost of interest, so probably we are talking about several causes. Here are some that come into into my mind.
- 10 Important Facts of Blog Promotion: Almost every blogger aims to grow their blog and reach a larger audience. Unfortunately, most new bloggers don’t know much about promoting a blog when they are just getting started. The good news is you will learn pretty quickly if you are consistently involved and working at promoting your blog. Here are ten things that I have learned to be true from my experience.
- Daily32 WordPress Theme Released: It is time for another WordPress theme. Daily32 was designed to offer a professional layout with three sub-header sections and three sub-footer sections. Bloggers often want to display special content and links on their blogs, and these sections will allow you to do exactly that.
- Freelance Bloggers: 12 Tips to Promote Your Work With Social Media: There are growing numbers of bloggers making money by writing for other blogs. With the popularity and success of multi-authored blogs and news-related blogs, this appears to be a trend that will continue as there is a considerable need for valuable, well-written content that draws attention.
- Are You Excluding Beginners From Your Blog?: Over the past holiday season, I spent hours discussing my sites and monetizing schemes with relatives and friends. I must have explained the whole system dozens of times. To the point where others where filling in things I left out. Anyway when I got time to show them the actual product, some found the topic interesting, while others acted like they were reading another language. I was usually met with the response: “I’m sure this would be great if I knew about stocks.” For the record, my main site is a finance blog.
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Hold Tight, It Will Only Get Easier
Most bloggers that get discouraged and decide to abandon their blogs tend to do so on the first three to six months. Sometimes the traffic is not growing as fast as they would like. Other times they are not happy with the money that they are making.
Personally I think that quitting after such a short period is a mistake.
There are two situations where quitting would be a smart move. One is when the blogger consciously decided to try out a new niche. In that case he must have some previous experience with blogs and websites, and he should know what numbers to expect and how to evaluate if this new blog has potential or not.
The other case refers to blogs that get stuck. If after six months you are still struggling to receive a couple hundred unique visitors daily then you probably are doing something wrong. Under this scenario you should probably stop to rethink your strategies (niche selection, content creation and promotion strategies) and try again.
On all other cases, however, the best idea is probably to hold tight and keep working hard until your blog or website achieves some critical mass. It does not matter how small or big your traffic is, as long as it is growing month after month you are on the right track.
The first three to six months are the hardest, and after that period you will notice that things will flow more smoothly, for several reasons.
First of all your content will achieve a bigger audience, improving the chances of receiving backlinks and traffic. Suppose two blogs, one with 200 daily unique visitors and the other with 2,000 daily unique visitors, publish the exact same article. The second one will have much higher chances of receiving backlinks, because more people will be exposed to its content.
This means that as your audience grow you will be able to spend less time promoting your content and more time actually producing it and making sure that it has quality.
Secondly, the credibility of your website will grow with the time, both for human visitors and search engines. Suppose again that two blogs, one that has been online for 1 year and has a Google PageRank of 5 and the other that has been online for 1 month and has a Google PageRank of 1, publish the exact same article. Even if we disregard the backlinks that each article will receive, the page of the first blog will appear first in the search results because that domain has more trust in the eyes of search engines.
These are just two examples of how allowing your blog to grow and mature will benefit you. The are several others: over the time it will be easier to monetize it, to get favors and support from your readers, to create a network of contacts, to receive freebies and so on.
If you are considering to quit, therefore, my advice is to hold tight a little longer, and then take that decision.
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