Lesson #10: Just Ask, it works!

Blogging is a great way to hide behind a hidden persona. Many people love it for that exact reason. You can sit happily at your keyboard without anyone telling you any different & live happily ever after.

I can personally say that I used to fall into this category, but over the years I’ve learnt that the only way to get what you want is to ask for it & pursue it.

Too many people will analyse what everyone else does instead of taking a stand & really getting your hands dirty. Especially with “making money online.” 99% of people would rather see what everyone else is doing than to come up with an original idea & test it out. Because that would be too much effort?

Getting into this frame of mind, whilst it’s non evasive is not doing you or your websites any good. You will be losing out on:

1. Exposure
2. Links
3. Friends
4. Revenue
5. Joint Ventures
6. Advertisers
7. Feed Readers
8. Email List Subscribers
9. Conversions
10. Traffic

It’s time for a wakeup call….
For example:

Jess writes an article, it’s the best article in the world. She puts it up on her blog (that no-one reads) & waits, hopes even prays for lots of people to come & read it, link to it & comment on her blog (she’s really excited). Then a week later Jess sits by the computer, hands in her head wondering why no-one has read her article or even dropped her a comment.

Bob on the other hand, writes a similar article. It’s not quite the best article in the world but it’s linkable & has original content. Once the article is finished Bob makes a shortlist of 50 blogs that might relate to the article. In turn he hand emails each blogger one by one using the following email:

Hi Blogger, my name is Bob & I run a fairly new blog on Bobs Things. I’ve been reading your blog for a while now & it has given me a lot of inspriation to share my knowledge & contribute in different ways.

I’ve written an article on Bobbing which addresses a number of themes that you discuss on your blog & I was wondering if I could possibly get some feedback or even a mention on your blog. In return, if I ever get a good audience I will make sure to return the favour

Kind Regards

Bob

What bob has achieved here has maybe taken an extra 20 minutes of his time. But in doing so he has potentially grown his blog readerbase by 50 people. Thousands more could follow if the article gets published on more blogs.

Don’t be afraid to ask for things. If you don’t ask you don’t get.

This can be applied across a number of different verticals:

Link Exchanges

Do not be afraid to ask sites that are relevant to yours for a link. If they value your website & think the content is linkable then they’ll do it. If you have a rubbish site that is clearly MFA or recycled content then don’t expect a link.

Affiliate Offers

If you’re promoting affiliate offers with reviews then ask for the business at the end of the review. Don’t expect the user to just click the link.

Thanks for reading my review of blah, if you enjoyed the review & want to purchase or find out more about the product please click here.

Affiliate Managers

If you’re running CPA campaigns & pulling more than 20+ leads per day consistently than you should really be asking your affiliate managers to do more for you & increase your CPA. They’ll usually be more than happy to bend over backwards for affiliates pushing “consistent numbers.”

Feed Subscribers

Ask people to subscribe to your feed, don’t just expect them to click the feed button & add you to their feed reader. Have a call to action at the bottom of each post:

Enjoy this post? Then subscribe to my feed for future updates!

Email List Subscribers

Again, if your plan is to get people to subscribe to your email list don’t just plop the box up there & expect people to put in their details. Either ask them to or make a call to action that will make them do it (i.e. giving something free away). Aweber allows you to have autoresponders that will email the free gift to the subscriber straight away.

Social Networking

If you want your readers to digg a story, just don’t plonk the button at the bottom of the post, encourage them to digg it. 15-20 initial Diggs can really get an article moving quickly.

Development Staff & Designers

Don’t expect them to churn out superb work off their own bat. Have goals & objectives for each site that you want them to work towards. Tell them when someting isn’t working the way you want it, get their opinions & work together.

Conclusion

Be proactive with your blog or your website, don’t sit there & analyse everyone else then expect your blog to do really well. It takes hard work, patience & the ability to take a few knockbacks here & there. But it’ll be worth it.