6 Blogs Every Blogger Should Read

If you’re a blogger looking to increase traffic, monetize your blog, or improve your content or design, there are quite a few blogger resource blogs that can help. As a start, we’ve put together a list of six essential blogs every blogger should read on a regular basis.

Hot Blog Tips – Keith Bloemendaal’s blog covers a wide range of topics and is updated regularly. Having started several businesses both off and online, Keith (a regular commenter on Blogtrepreneur) could be described as a serial entrepreneur and really knows his stuff. Hot Blog Tips topics include social media, SEO, Wordpress, and general blogging. It’s a great resource to learn about any of these topics from a guy who lives it every day.

ProBlogger – No list of blogger blogs would be complete without Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger. This blog is packed full of information to help bloggers make a living online. As Darren (also the creator of TwiTip.com) puts it in his recent post welcoming new readers, “ProBlogger is a blog that is devoted to helping bloggers improve their blogging and explore ways to earn an income at the same time by writing about topics that they love.” If you’re new to blogging, be sure to check out his post, Blogging Tips for Beginners.

CopyBlogger – Another no-brainer when creating this list was CopyBlogger. Promoting successful online marketing through improving your copywriting skills and content marketing strategies is the aim of founder Brian Clark’s blog. With posts like 10 Secrets to More Magnetic Copy, The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging, and 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter, it’s no surprise CopyBlogger has attracted over 106,000 subscribers and nearly 50,000 Twitter followers. If you’re not one of them, click over and see what all the buzz is about.

Weblog Tools Collection – This site’s name says it all. With tons of articles, videos, and news on everything Wordpress, WTC is a complete collection of tools for Wordpress bloggers. Whether you’re interested in the latest WP widget, or theme, skin or template, you’ll find it on this site. Not using Wordpress? In addition to Wordpress-specific information, the blog posts cover a wide range of other useful topics, from web ethics to the business of blogging, so check it out.

BLogic Think – Offering lots of free Wordpress plugins and themes, and some great blogging tips, this blog, started and written by Yunike Puspita and Satria Nugraha, has a lot of solid content. Because English is a second language to the writers, it takes a little more effort to read the posts. Because Yunike and Satria are full-time bloggers who make a living doing what they write about, it’s worth the effort. Be sure to pay particular attention to their posts on making money online.

Daily Blog Tips – A blogger and web developer since 2005, Daniel Scocco is the founder and writer of Daily Blog Tips, a great resource for anyone looking to make a living through their blog. Looking to get started with affiliate links on your site? Check out 15 Affiliate Marketing Questions Answered. DBT offers some outstanding content from guest bloggers, like Henri Junttila and Amit Banerjee as well. If you’re not already there, join Daniel’s other 40,000 subscribers and make the most out of your blogging efforts.

Whether you’re new to blogging or a full-time veteran blogger, we hope this list will help you to optimize your blog’s content, design and income. Obviously there are a lot more great resources out there. What’s your favorite? Join in the conversation below and share your thoughts.

Tweeting For Clicks

Like any other business or marketing tool, Twitter works well only when it’s used properly. But what does that mean? If you’re using it to drive traffic to your site, it means using some simple, specific techniques to improve Twitter’s effectiveness. Overall, the key is to stand out from the crowd. The problem is, Twitter’s greatest attraction can be its greatest flaw – it’s free. So it is flooded with millions upon millions of people, all screaming, “Look at me! Look at me!” With just a couple of simple guidelines though, you can stand out from the crowd. With patience and the right approach, people will not just follow your tweets, but click through when you post a link – and better yet, re-tweet it.

Offer value

Take a look at the screen shots of two Twitter timelines below. Both post links in pretty much every update, but with very different results. The user on the left probably wonders why his/her Twitter marketing efforts aren’t paying off, while on the right, Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki), with over 200,000 followers, gets thousands of click-throughs every day. The big difference is that the person on the left posts links that are entirely self-serving. In other words, however cleverly disguised, there is little doubt that when you click on one of those links, he/she is getting something out of it. On the other hand, Guy posts links to useful information. Yes, the information lies primarily on his site, so he benefits from your clicks, but he’s not trying to sell you something at every turn. He has set the expectation of his followers that he’s a resource, not a snake oil salesman.

The lesson to learn is that when you have a reputation for helping, people will respond favorably to what you have to offer. That of course is true everywhere, not just Twitter, but with all the scammers and spammers on Twitter, it’s especially applicable. We don’t recommend posting a link every time you post, and when you do, link to a helpful article, funny video, or cool new site more often than you post to what you sell. That way when you do direct followers to your own site, people will gladly click away!

Mix it up

Social Media is all about building relationships. It is a great opportunity for your prospects, readers, and customers to get to know you better. Even online, people do business with people, and even more so with people they like. So regardless of your industry, don’t make your Twitter feed all about business. A combination of personal posts about yourself, posts about your business, informational or general-interest posts, and re-tweets keeps your feed interesting and therefore worth following. Pam Moore (@PamMktgNut) with FruitZoom, Inc., a Florida-based marketing and Social Media consulting firm, does a great job of this. Her last 24 hours of posts, as of the time of this writing, included a link to a poll she created using PollDaddy, a few re-tweets, some @-replies, a link to a useful Social Media guide (on a site other than hers), a link to a blog post on her company’s site, and a post that she accidentally left her Blackberry at home today. Her 15,000+ followers know Pam’s feed is going to offer a variety of usefulness, entertainment, and personalization. So when she posts that link to her own site, her followers gladly click through.

Using Twitter effectively is part art and part science, and it takes time and patience to perfect it, but if your aim is to drive traffic to your site, we hope these tips will help. If you’ve got other advice, join in the conversation by leaving a comment below. We’d love to hear what’s worked well for you!

Avoid Planning Paralysis with the One-Page Business Plan

What’s the first thing most everyone says you need to do if you’re going to start a business? Write a business plan. But what if you’ve never written a business plan? Or what if you have, and the plan for your last business idea took you three months to write – and you haven’t even looked at it since you wrote it?

Depending on what you read, you might think you need to come up with 30-50 pages of meticulously thought-out, detailed material, including comprehensive financial projections, market studies, contingency plans, and more. So it’s no surprise that the very idea of having to write a formal business plan has kept some would-be entrepreneurs from taking the leap into business ownership altogether.

Of course you do have a lot of options for help if you buy into the conventional wisdom that a formal business plan is an absolute necessity. For starters, there are several hundred books on the subject, ranging from the “For Dummies” version for about fifteen bucks, to Bankable Business Plans for Entrepreneurial Ventures for $95.00 ($52.78 a pound!). Or you can download some slick software, like Palo Alto Software’s Business Plan Pro for $100-$200. If you want to go all out, you also have the option of hiring a firm like Portland Oregon’s MasterPlans to create a plan for you, for an average of $1,500-$4,000.

Let’s be clear: if you’re in need of start up financing, you will need a more formal business plan, and it might even be worth shelling out hundreds or even thousands of dollars and spending plenty of time to create one. Even then though, some bankers will tell you less is more, at least initially. When it’s time for your proposed loan to go to committee – or whoever the decision makers are – they want to see everything. But when you first present the idea to your financier, they’ll probably just want enough to help them decide whether it’s worth taking it to the next step.

If you don’t need major financing to get your business going, even if you might need it down the road, and if you’re dreading the idea of creating a formal business plan, take heart. A study undertaken a few years ago by Babson College has some good news for you. The study, entitled Pre-startup Formal Business Plans and Post-startup Performance, looked at 116 businesses started over an eighteen year period, from 1985 to 2003. Here’s what they found:

The analysis revealed that there was no difference between the performance of new businesses launched with or without written business plans. The findings suggest that unless a would-be entrepreneur needs to raise substantial startup capital from institutional investors or business angels, there is no compelling reason to write a detailed business plan before opening a new business.

Does that mean planning is unimportant? No, it does not. It means you can actually start planning to run your business… planning to do business, rather than planning to plan to do business. It has been said that a goal with out a plan is just a wish. We definitely advocate putting together a written plan. But for most businesses, that can be as little as a single page.

Welcome to the world of the one-page business plan! We believe your plan should have the following elements, all of which should be able to fit on one page:

Vision – Your vision talks about what you’re building. Whether it’s to dominate your market or simply be the best at what you do, this one to three sentence statement tells your company’s future.

Mission – While your vision tells the end result of your efforts, your mission statement talks about why your company exists. It talks, in a general sense, about how you will accomplish your vision.

Objectives – This section can simply be a list of bullet points stating your business goals. These items might be, “Generate $X in revenue this year,” or “Hire two employees by the third quarter.” Don’t worry about specifics in this section; just list end results.

Strategies – Your strategies tell how you’ll meet your objectives. Without going into great detail, list bullet points, such as, “Build a strategic alliance with Chamber of Commerce and other service organizations to increase local visibility,” or “Maximize gross profit by utilizing co-op advertising with select vendors.”

Action Plans – You’ll still use bullet points here and won’t be overly descriptive, but these list items will have dates tied to them and offer more specifics than your strategies. Examples are, “Move to Greenway Business Park office – May 1,” and “Negotiate bulk rate pricing with XYZ Supply beginning March 15^th.”

This one-page plan, like any good business plan, is a fluid document and will change as your business changes. If you do go for financing at some point, this plan will provide a starting outline for a more formal plan. And even then you don’t have to fret too much. (Check out GrowThink’s innovative Ultimate Business Plan Template software for an easy-to-use, effective way to create a professional business plan to take to any financial backer.)

Unlike the kind of plan you put together for financial institutions, the one page business plan is light, practical, and easy to refer to. You might even consider keeping it posted on the wall above your desk to remind you where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there!

When the Bank Says No, Where Do You Go?

Not long ago, if you had a need for financing and your business finances were in good shape, it seemed banks would line up to get the funds in your hands. Those days are all but gone now. Small-business lending has declined sharply in recent months, with Bank of America, the largest US small-business lender, cutting their lending in this sector by 6.2 percent during the seven-month period ended in November. Overall, US banks reduced their lending during the same period by $12.5 billion.

What this means for some small business owners can be a scenario that would keep anyone up at night. Imagine having to turn down an order from Costco or Wal-Mart because you don’t have the funds to produce the products they’re requesting. Even if on a smaller scale, it is disturbing to say the least to turn away any business due to lack of working capital for production. The good news is that, for many businesses in this position, there is a solution. A growing sector of the financial industry is saying yes to small businesses where banks are saying no.

What is Purchase Order Financing?

Companies such as Hartsko Financial provide financing to companies that have a purchase order from a creditworthy customer. The PO financer is more concerned with the financial strength of your customer than they are with that of you or your company. They will request a Letter of Credit (LC) from your customer and issue an LC on your behalf to the producer of your products, whether domestic or international. In this way, your finances aren’t as much in play, because they are facilitating the transaction at both ends. Basically, if you can prove you’ll get paid, they will send a letter of credit to your supplier. When you complete the order, the customer pays them, and they send the proceeds to you, less a percentage for their efforts.

The Price Tag

PO financing doesn’t come cheap. At Hartsko and other established firms, like Dallas-based King Trade Capital, Expect to pay as much as 3.5 percent for the first 30 days, and 1.25 percent for every 10 days thereafter. The quick math points to an annualized percentage north of 40 percent, which is obviously significant. So be sure your ducks are in a row and the order process is short enough to be able to pay the PO financer back quickly. If it’s going to take more than 60-90 days, this might not be the solution for you.

While pricey, this sector of the financial industry has grown significantly over the past year, largely because, for many small businesses, it’s the only solution that will allow them to fulfill large orders, expand into new markets, or start up in the first place. If you think it’s a good solution for you, do your research, solicit feedback from others who have tried it, and let us know how it goes.

Template or No Template? What You Need to Know About Web Design

Your site is your handshake. It’s the first impression many of your clients will have of your company. If your site looks sloppy, amateurish, or unprofessional, people assume your business is sloppy, amateurish, and unprofessional. For most entrepreneurs, this is not big news. We know the importance of our web presence. What many may not know is how to have a great site without spending a fortune with designers and developers. If your website’s functionality is your business – like with membership or gaming sites – you might not have much choice. On the other hand, if you use your website as a way to present your business, products, and services to the world and don’t require advanced development, you might want to consider web templates.

It used to be that a template site could be spotted a mile away. These days, templates are more sophisticated, and the sheer number of template designs available makes it possible for you to create a site that’s unique, individual, and far from cookie-cutter. In fact, for as little as $50.00, you can even get a full flash site, at template sites like FlashMint.com. Another template provider, Allwebco Design, has some of the coolest non-flash site designs out there for around $120, as well as some good information for the newbie website creator.

Words of Wisdom

The design of your website is not something to be taken lightly, and there are some things to look out for when choosing a template provider. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Free is a relative term. If you’re really bootstrapping it and looking for a free template design, there are plenty of sites where you can find good looking templates at no cost. Just be sure the site you choose isn’t more trouble than it’s worth. Open Source Web Design (OSWD.org) boasts 2,080 free template designs. Take some time in choosing one though. OSWD has three important features to look at. First, users give designs star ratings; secondly, people are able to comment on the designs; and last, they show the number of times a template has been downloaded. Look through the comments. You’ll find that many are just commenting on the look of the design, which is less helpful than those commenting on its functionality. The comments you want to look for are those, for example, telling you that the design looks great in IE7 but not so good in Firefox, or that the tables only line up at certain screen resolutions. You’ll want to be sure your chosen design hasn’t been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times too. You might still be unique within your industry, but the fewer downloads, the less chance you have of looking just like someone else.

• Expect to support yourself. Don’t expect any technical support when choosing a free template. For the most part, they aren’t difficult to implement, but you’ll want to have at least a basic understanding of HTML, or know someone who does and can help you if you get stuck. Even sites where you pay for a template are notorious for a lack of customer support, so do your homework. Most sites, like Template Kingdom, will tell you the format of the source files being provided with your download. If the source files are in Dreamweaver or Photoshop, you’ll of course want to have those programs and know how to use them before choosing that template. Or you can use the template, knowing you’ll be limited in the amount of customization you can implement. One bit of advice, regardless of your level of expertise: Always keep your originally downloaded files in a safe place, and create a separate copy you can work to perfect. That way, no matter how badly you mess something up, you can always start from square one if you have to!

• Memberships, buyouts, and template tweakers. Some template sites offer a membership price for unlimited downloads. Unless you are designing sites for a living, it is unnecessary to join them. Many of the customer complaints out there have to do with memberships not being cancelled upon request and other issues surrounding recurring billing, so again, do your homework. You will also find several sites, like Template Monster, offering quality designs for download, but also offering templates with a “buyout” option. This option will cost you as little as $800, up to over $5,000, and it only ensures they will remove the template from their site going forward. It does not guarantee the design hasn’t been used before or even downloaded thousands of times. For that kind of investment, you can find a designer to build a comparable site and provide one-on-one support. The same goes for sites offering to customize or “tune-up” an existing template. With the number of designers hungry for work right now, browsing Craigslist, Guru, or Elance might just render you a better deal.

So the bottom line is that you don’t have to spend all your startup capital to have a cool site. Templates are a great alternative to costly custom sites, as long as you take the time to make sure you’re getting what you need. If you’ve used a template site, join the conversation, and let others know about your experience – good, bad, or ugly!

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