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14 Benefits of Business Blogging for your Brand

Blogging is often seen as an individual’s journey where he documents either life activities or talks about a specific category where he is an expert. There is nothing wrong with that concept and it works great for personal brands or making money from niche blogs. However, blogging is much more than just that.

For most businesses, blogging acts as a base from where all marketing channels starts. If a blog has enough content, that same content can be used in multiple channels of marketing and a lot can be gained out of it.

Here, in this article, we will discuss several benefits of blogging which will inspire you to start your business blog.

1. Best source of content: Blog content is usually more in-depth. If you compare it with any other form of content then you will find that not only blog content is longer and more detailed, it also takes more time to prepare. That way, when you write a piece of article for more than a day, you will be able to include most things that you can think about. This content can be further shared on social media, parts of it can be repurposed on your newsletter and even video scripts can be created out of your blog articles.

2. Build your community: Do note that when you think about your blogging community, most people start thinking about social media. None of the social media profiles where you are building your community is actually yours. Those social profiles are owned by their networks and you can lose your profile at any time. The best place to build your online community is in your comments section, which is the safest place for building long term engagement.

3. Capture email leads: Email marketing starts with your list. The best place to catch those email ids to boost your email marketing list starts with your blog section. Anyone who has taken out their time to read your post, then having successfully consumed your content, leaves their email ids on your subscription form is perhaps one of the best kind of lead.

4. Guest Post and link to Blog Posts: If you have an active blog section with quality content, you will get approved for doing guest posts on plenty of blogs. Also, when it comes to linking from within content, many blogs won’t allow you to link to your product pages, but they do allow you to link to your content pages. That way you will be able to make the most out of guest blogging.

5. Feature products and Members: When you have a good blog section with plenty of readers, you can write entire blog posts on your own products or users. If you want to highlight a user who deserves to be mentioned, you can do so in your blog section.

6. Publish Testimonials: When you ask for feedback from your users, you will often find that some users are very happy with your service. If you ask them to give you a testimonial, they will be happy you help you. This testimonial usually ends up on your testimonial page where no one checks, but if the same is published on your blog section, it will be well received by your audience.

7. Collaborate with other Bloggers: Bloggers have a common bond, if you as a blogger reach out to other bloggers and ask them to do a collaboration of some kind, which can be guest blogging or pretty much anything that brings in mutual benefit, most bloggers will agree to it.

8. Place yourself as a niche leader: If you consistently deliver valuable niche content in the form of actionable and long form articles, your authority as a niche leader will start to grow. Other bloggers and your readers will soon consider yourself as a niche expert and start taking your advice seriously.

9. Boost your SEO: It is easy to optimize for search engines when you have a lot of high quality blog posts. Pushing product and sales pages by doing excessive link building is not just aggressive, at times the search engines sees it as a black hat SEO tactic and start putting penalties on it. On the other hand, ranking quality content is easy and it does not requires a lot of link building or other unwanted SEO activity.

10. A way to earn more: Blogs with a lot of content and traffic can be monetized by a variety of methods that includes contextual ads, sponsored and paid guest posts, affiliate and product marketing, getting more sales from your own services and products. Simply put, a blog provides an additional stream of income.

11. Post guides and helpful content: One can explain their products and services in great detail by publishing blog posts explaining how their service, product or website works. These guides can be used as a reference material for future enquiries or even linked from the FAQ section.

Business Blogging

12. Leverage the Power of Influencers: Influencer marketing can be done with deep pockets, but if you want to do the same on a budget then you need some high quality blog content. From your blog posts, mention and link to influencers and then tweet them to let them know that you have mentioned them. This process will not just earn you some social media push, it will give you a head start on an influencer networking path.

13. Chase more Keywords: When you start writing and publishing a lot of content, you will be able to use long tail keywords directly into the article titles. The more deep and through your content is, the more long tails you can include in your articles. This will boost your search engine organic traffic with very minimum efforts.

14. Research and understand your niche better: When you actively start blogging, you will find a lot to your niche than you knew earlier. You will be able to research your competition well and know more about them. The smaller details like how they write their articles, send newsletter content, share it further on the social media etc. will be more clearer.

Blogging has many benefits and once you start to actively blog, you will find many more benefits of blogging.

13 Social Media Marketing Tips for 2023

The social media space is getting competitive with more and more brands trying to tap into the social audience for their business promotions. While the social space is huge, it too isn’t infinite. Every brand needs to understand the various social media networks, trends, and audience requirements etc. to make the most out of social media.

Social is very different from search where there is almost no option for evergreen posts that brings in passive traffic. One needs to take every day in social media marketing as a new challenge and work hard to keep the social traffic busy and flowing.

Here, we are going to discuss several social media tips to get the most out of the social space.

1. Be Consistent: Social media isn’t a onetime effort. Most social networks are heavy feeders where posting several updates a day is a normal thing. However, whatever posting consistency you choose, you need to keep it going. The bottom line is that your social media feed should never run dry. Keep enough posts scheduled so that you don’t have to worry for weeks or even months in the future.

2. Make a content plan: Social media content is very different from normal blog content. Here, you need to create specific content for the micro blogging platforms, catchy images for image first social networks, your old content has to be socialized and you need to share other people’s content as well.

A good social media content plan needs to include a lot of things, keep promotional content to a bare minimum and provide more value in a eye catching way.

3. Optimize older posts for social: If you are blogging for a very long time, chances are that your older posts aren’t as optimized for social media. Update those posts; add catchy images of various sizes that are compatible with the popular social media sites. Adding social media snippets, tweetables and shareables are helpful because most people who want to share your content, won’t do it unless you make it easy enough for them to share the content.

4. Post more valuable content: On social media, when you create content specifically for the socials, it works even better. Look for your older posts, find relevant images and videos and form them into shorts, stories and status updates and then share them on the various social media sites. If the content is valuable, actionable and has real world usage, it will be received well on the social media.

5. Ask Questions: Let your users interact with your social media updates. Post picture and videos asking your audience for answers and feedback. Run some polls and ask your followers to take part in it. The more your followers get involved with your content, the greater reach it will achieve.

6. Keep an eye out for trending topics: Something or the other keeps trending on the social media. The key here is to look for topics that are relevant to your niche, or at least those topics that you can tweak and include in your content. Whenever you find something relevant, try to incorporate it into your content while posting.

7. Use relevant hashtags: Hashtags are important across all networks. If you include relevant hashtags in your updates, the entire social update goes to the content stream of that hashtag. Anyone checking that hashtag will be able to see your content, that way you will be able to catch some new and highly relevant users.

8. Respond and Connect: When you as a content creator respond to comments, you build a very strong connection with your audience. Most people value your time and response on the social media, which is the reason why they are commenting in the first place. This connection or bond that you have with your audience goes to a whole new level when you start responding to the comments and questions on the social media.

9. Learn from your competition: If you are wondering what kind of social media content might be helpful for the niche and space that you are in then the best place to find it out is the timelines of your competitors. Whatever they are doing, if it is working for them then it will work for you. However, blindly copying does not help, one needs too research and find out what type of content works best and create more of it.

10. Prioritize one Social Network: Most of the bigger social networks are always useful no matter what niche you are in. However, every niche has a much targeted social network and that is where you should put all your focus. Utilize all the social networks that your time and resources allow and focus all your extra energy on the one network which works best.

11. Keep social profiles updated: With time, plenty of things change and new things becomes a priority. Your social media profiles should be updated to show that change. That way, everything stays relevant and your social media marketing is focused on the correct direction.

12. Host Giveaways: Contests and giveaways are one of the most useful methods to grow your followers. This is also a way to keep your followers engaged and reward your loyal users. If your audience feels that you value them then they will, in-turn reward you with more content shares, likes and tweets.

13. Network with targeted influencers: If you browse your timeline or even search for something or look up hashtags and trending topics, you will see that plenty of posts are shared by people who have a huge following. This is because most social networks consider them as an influencer and shows more content from their profiles.

No matter how much you try, you will still find that those influencers are able to trend their content far easily than you can. But this isn’t bad as you can network with these influencers and once in a while, manage to get your content shared by them.

Social media marketing is all about staying fresh, catchy and consistent. If you are able to bring value on a regular basis, social media will work for you.

12 Actionable Blogging Tips for 2023

There’s no limit to blogging tips online, every blog on the internet, even those that have a different niche, once in a while write about blogging tips. However, not all tips are made equal. The blogging tips that are truly helpful are the ones that are actionable.

If you come across an exciting and new blogging tip and when you finally get down to implementing it, you realize that it can’t be done. Those are the tips that aren’t actionable; they are simply waste of time.

Here, we are going to discuss several blogging tips that can be implemented right away.

1. Make an Evergreen keywords list: Long tail keywords are sometimes so long that they become an article title. Search for at least a hundred such, really long tail keywords on your niche. The trick here is to find keywords that are evergreen, that is they are searched at all times.

Once you have more than a hundred such keywords, start writing articles on these long tails and make sure to write one such article everyday without failing.

2. Edit old posts and make them readable: Readable posts are easily scanable and makes human consumption of content easy. But this step isn’t just for humans, this is an SEO benefit. When you make your paragraphs shorter, especially at the top of the post, people bounce less and start to read more. This helps greatly in search engine optimization.

3. Start writing Guest Posts: There are many ways in which you can market your content, however guest blogging is one such method that everyone should do. Don’t outsource your guest blogging, do it yourself. There are many benefits of guest blogging and building links is only a small part of it. The main benefit of guest blogging, if you do it yourself, is the fact that it makes you an authority figure in your niche.

The readers consistently start to see you everywhere which makes you a niche brand that they can trust.

4. Add Tweetables in your Old Posts: Edit your old blog posts and add some Tweetables to it. The best way to do this is to mention some hashtags, refer some bloggers you know well in the tweetable and code and design it in a way that it stands out and draws attention.

5. Hire a tech to speed up your site: Not all tips are for DIY. If you aren’t good with coding then save up a small budget and hire a good technical guy and get him to speed up your website. A fast loading website will automatically start to rank for several keywords without any extra effort.

6. Understand your Niche: Everybody is an expert in something, there’s got to be something that you are best at. Identifying your exact niche is the most important thing in blogging. Once you figure it out, it is time to re-shape your content in such a way that it aligns with your core niche topic.

If you have a broad niche blog or a general content blog then the best way to get your focus back in your niche is to dedicate your new blog posts to this exact niche of yours. Older content can be edited at any point of time to make it niche relevant.

7. Hire a proof-reader: Most people hire editors to fix grammar issues on new content, but to make your blog flawless you need someone who can go through every post that you have and fix grammar and structure issues of old posts.

This can be implemented in a step by step order where you make sure to fix ten of your old posts every month. Very soon your old posts will be perfect and ready to be re-published.

8. Check rankings and optimize: Check your rankings and see what type of content is ranking on your blog. One might have hundreds of posts on their blogs but not everything ranks. Check what content is ranking and write more of the thing that ranks.

9. Develop a community: Random people from search engines will always come finding good content. They will consume your content, take action and leave. But such type of traffic isn’t loyal. If you have a loyal reader base on your blog, then this is the type of traffic that will comment, share your content and even link to your posts if they are bloggers.

A community is always an asset but it can’t be built overnight. It takes time to develop a loyal community in your blog and it starts from your comments section.

10. Take one social network at a time: A social network can only be truly leveraged if you have a strong profile with plenty of friends and followers in it. Being active on every social network is possible, but using it to its full potential isn’t possible. Take one social network at a time and build a strong following on it. Once you are done with it, take another network and give it your full focus.

11. Don’t Blog Solo: Blogging isn’t a solo activity, don’t do it all alone. Right from the start where you create your content, get some influencers and niche bloggers to collaborate with you for the content. Take their quotes, link to their content, make Tweetables out of their feedback etc.

This is basically the ground work, once your content is live, they will be your first few people who will share your content and link to it.

12. Work on your images: Start using a tool like Canva, there’s plenty of options out there. Every post that you publish should have plenty of images of various social network compatible sizes. Focus on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc. and make catchy images. Use your creativity to make these images stand out, for example add quotes and headshots of influencers directly into the image. This will increase the number of social media shares that the image will get.

Reading and finding new actionable tips is important, but when it comes to implementing, it is always better to try one idea at a time. Trying to do too many things will slow down the progress and nothing will be done properly.

12 Tips to Make your Content go Viral

Viral content does not really need to be accidental; they can be created on purpose.

Over the years, with the rise of social media, going viral is rather rampant. There are algorithms to make sure what type of content goes viral, what content is promoted and what needs to be buried. However, everything ultimately depends on what users are sharing and if the readers like certain content, they will share it and it will go viral.

Several factors will determine the spread of your content, many of which can be used in your favor and many others can be tweaked to make it work.

Here, in this article, we will cover several tips to make your content go viral.

1. Google Hot Trends: Google trends has always been a great feature from Google. With the passing of time, new upgrades have been done for the trends section. Hot Trends was one such feature introduction which was very helpful. At this moment, hot trends can also be seen as a visual display where text is displayed in a more visual and eye catching way.

2. News Search: Most bloggers don’t realize that there is a search section which is totally dedicated to the news search. Not all content reaches the news search and even relevant content from unlisted news blogs don’t reach the news section. For your content to be displayed in the news search, you have to get your site listed in Google News. This step is difficult but not impossible. With hard work and some luck, one can get their sites added to the news search section.

3. Twitter Trending hashtags: On Twitter, if any hashtag is getting mentioned a lot, it starts to trend. In such cases, if you tweet something relevant and mention the viral hashtag in your tweet, then your tweet will be visible on the hashtags thread. From there, your tweet and any links in the tweet has a great chance of going viral.

4. Shorts: Times are changing and TicTok is growing. Shorts have suddenly become the most favorite of content types for a wide variety of people. Most people who are going to consume video content on their cell phones mostly open their timelines and start scrolling the shorts.

This, small thirty seconds video format is now everywhere, from Instagram to YouTube, you will find shorts being watched on all popular platforms. TicTok might have been the original short video platform, but the format has grown way bigger and now it is everywhere.

5. Utilize Niche Social Sites: While going viral, one cannot go outside their niche or the benefits of going viral might not come. If you want to stay on your niche and become viral at the same time, you need to expand your presence on the various niche social media sites. Every niche has some social sites where you can build your profile and your following. These followers will help you to boost your chances of going viral and staying on the niche at the same time.

6. Infographics and Catchy Images: Visual content grabs more attention and reduces bounce rate. More people consuming content will result in more social media shares which will raise the chances of going viral. With tools like Canva around, creating a self designed infographics and catchy images is easy.

There are social media sites like Pinterest that values images far more than text. If you have good images of Pinterest friendly sizes then this social media site has the capability of making your content viral on its own.

7. Influencer Marketing: Some people have more followers than others. When such people share your content, it spreads quickly. When you write good content, tag relevant hashtags and promote it well, chances are that some influencers will share your content organically and it will get more views.

This process of getting influencers to share your content on a regular basis is possible via. two ways. The easier option is to look for influencers who charges money and pay your way to virality. The other option is to make genuine relation with niche influencers and get your content shared for free.

8. The Quality of your Content: One of the biggest factors for becoming viral is the quality of your content. List based posts are shared more, catchy titles matters, relevant keywords and hashtags need to be integrated in the post to improve the quality of the content.

The article body needs to be easily scanable, so lose the large paragraph chunks and write in small and catchy sentences only.

9. Make the site load faster: The content pages needs to be in-depth, image heavy and yet load fast. The easiest way to fulfill this requirement is to lose the unwanted java scripts and get a programmer to fix the site loading issues. If you get rid of some of the plugins that you no longer need then the loading speed will improve greatly.

10. Invest in YouTube: This video platform has the userbase to make any video go viral. However, one needs to trend on YouTube first, so that the video is seen by more people. Build a strong profile on YouTube, get as many subscribers as you can manage. Once the basics are doing, focus on creating really good videos and add them consistently on your channel.

Once your channel becomes popular, most videos from your channel will start to go viral.

11. Make Sharing Easy: Content sharing is normal part of browsing and consuming content. However, this sharing that should happen anyway, does not really work that way. Put some social media sharing buttons on your website, add tweetable quotes, add pin-it buttons on images etc. to make sharing easy for your readers

12. Keep an eye out for festivals: Not all festivals or events fall on your niche. However, there are plenty of events that can be utilized by creating content that covers the festival in such a way that you’re content stays on its niche.

Viral content, if done properly, can bring in all sorts of benefits like traffic, revenue, email subscribers, social media shares etc. With consistent hard work, such content can be created and utilized.

How to Get 1000 Visitors to Your New Blog Every Day

As a new blogger, setting traffic goals and growing it slowly day by day is an exciting journey. Just like any other blog, yours too will start from zero. The process of reaching your first daily thousand visitors is often difficult for most new bloggers. However, with regular and consistent hard work, one can slowly grow their blog and reach this target.

The best way to reach this target is to make use of multiple traffic sources rather than focusing on a single traffic source. Thus, one has to work on several channels at the same time.

Here, in this article, we will discuss several tips to reach the thousand daily visitors target.

1. Focus on Evergreen topics: For consistent traffic, where you can be sure that the thousand visitors you got today will be available tomorrow as well, can only come from search engines. This is the main reason why one should focus on writing content that is searched at all times. Every day some people will search for these topics and keep reaching your website.

2. Build links from the start: Most new bloggers do this mistake of not building enough backlinks. Whatever be the other search factors, links will always be a priority factor because this is one metric which is difficult to fake. Building relevant and high quality links is difficult but if you keep at it then every article that you write will have some good backlinks pointing at it and helping it to rank on search engines.

3. Setup email marketing from Day one: Even huge websites with a lot of loyal visitors send their content by email as most people will forget to check the blog regularly. When you send out an email to all your subscribers, many of them consume your content and take further action of sharing the article on their social timelines.

4. Look for referral traffic sources: Certain sites with a lot of traffic can send you referral traffic. This mostly happens when a popular website with organic traffic on their content pages links to your website. Such linking mostly happens naturally but if you keep an eye out and search for such opportunities, you will get lucky often.

5. Build a social media following: With sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc. around, social media is not just an option; it has become a necessity for online traffic. However, getting traffic from these sites isn’t easy. Build a good profile to get started, then consistently share content and follow relevant people to make the most out of social media.

6. Actively do Blog Commenting: Commenting on relevant blogs can be a good source of referral traffic. While the linking value from blog comments have gone considerably low, their ability to send referral traffic is still the same. Think on it, if a blog post from a relevant content based title is ranking on the search engines, some of that traffic can be easily sent back to your website by posting a good quality comment on the target post.

7. Network with Other Bloggers: Blogging isn’t a solo activity. If you network with other bloggers you will get content, links, social media shares and much more. Do note that you can get all of these things without networking if you have a marketing budget, but it will won’t be as effective because some bloggers will mark your content and promotions as sponsored.

8. Focus on Guest Posting: Guest blogging is a power full tool for promoting and building links for your blog. When your post gets published on a popular and relevant blog on your niche, you get a strong backlink, loyal readers, email subscribers and much more. As you get published on popular and established blogs, your credibility goes up and soon you start to get more such opportunities and your readers start to consider you as an authority in your niche.

9. Actively share your content on social media: Social media can send you consistent traffic if you share your content regularly on social media. Setup a posting schedule by using social media scheduling tools and space your content so that your social timeline is busy throughout the day.

10. Speed up your loading time: If your website loads quickly, your search engine rankings for the keywords you are targeting will improve considerably. Fast loading of website is a ranking factor and depending on the speed of your website, this can be a huge factor.

11. Improve your Site Design: Getting people to land on your website is only one part of the puzzle. You need that traffic to stick around and for that you need a really good website design. If your site looks good, people won’t hit the back button; they will explore your blog further and get involved.

12. Start a YouTube Channel: Youtube has been sending a lot of traffic to bloggers. As a blogger you already have articles on several topics, now diversify that content type by making videos on the same topic. Then embed those videos within your blog posts. This will serve as a two way traffic system where your video view and watch times will improve and having the video in your article will improve its ranking too.

13. Make your website mobile friendly: Mobile has become a necessity now with more and more people preferring to using cell phones instead of laptops and desktops. If your blogs and websites aren’t mobile compatible then it is good time to make it mobile friendly. Simply hire a programmer to make your blog look good on the smaller screen and see the difference in the search rankings.

14. Spend time on Quora: This question and answer social site has topics from all niches and categories. If you spend time on Quora and reply answers to various relevant questions, you will be able to start generating enough referral traffic. Since Quora ranks for a lot of terms, this kind of referral traffic is very consistent.

As a new blogger, feel free to take smaller targets if you wish, for example a monthly target of thousand visitors isn’t bad to get started. But slowly, raise your targets to higher numbers as you start to achieve the smaller goals.

21 Places to Promote and Sell your Digital Products Online

Digital products are perhaps some of the easiest assets to create and sell online. For bloggers and marketers, such products have always been an option to increase and supplement their income over the years. With very little time and effort and perhaps a small budget one can easily create and market such products.

However, digital products are a niche in itself and if marketed properly, it can serve as a long term business as well. There have been businesses that have sold and earned a fortune out of digital products alone. There is no limit to how many and what types of digital products one can create.

To make this process of selling and marketing digital products easy, we are covering some places where you can sell, promote and share your digital products.

1. Your Website: Your own website is the first place from where you should start selling and promoting your digital products. Get a targeted and custom website ready and live is not just easy but it is quick and cost effective as well. All you need is a domain and a webhost and your site is live.

2. Instagram: When it comes to branding and promoting your products online, Instagram is a great platform to get started. Post regular updates of your product and the process of how you are working on it. People like to see your efforts, how you are working on your products day by day and especially if you can provide catchy and informative videos and photos, your instagram following will get a boost.

3. Pinterest: This social platform is image centric, so if you are able to create some large size images and make them catchy using tools like Canva then you can utilize this platform to the fullest. Other than that a large portion of the audience is women who like to shop. If your product looks good and targets women then this platform is great for you.

4. Quora: Look for questions that are directly on your niche. Whatever purpose your product is going to solve, those questions and relevant topics are most certainly already covered on Quora. Feel free to add your thoughts and answers to those questions and link to your product at times as an additional source for further help.

5. ProductHunt: Over the years, product hunt has grown into a huge network. Almost every startup and business is trying to get listed on product hunt and is trying their best to get more involved with the platform. Do the basics of listing your product on this platform and make a good profile and fill up all the fields. Then, just like any other platform, start following the people who are relevant to your product and business.

6. Facebook Groups: Facebook has groups on every niche and there is a good chance that you will find some groups that is not just relevant but also allows you to share your products and content in those groups. Join those groups to get started and share some relevant non promotional content to get started and get familiar with those groups.

7. Linkedin: Not all social networks has the same kind of audience and depending on the nature of your product, LinkedIn can be a great help in selling and promoting your digital product. If your niche is anything related to business, career and jobs or slightly related to these core niches then you have a great chance to leverage this network.

8. Reddit: Just like Quora, Reddit too is a question and answer site, but here the focus is mostly on the sharing of content rather than creating content. They are very strict on self promotions though and if you do too much of self content sharing then it can get you restricted.

9. Podia: There are certain platforms that are built for selling your digital products, courses etc. online. This is one such platform where you can start for free and sell your digital products and courses online without having to pay anything to get started. There will be transaction fees once people start to buy your stuff.

10. Sellfy: Here one can sign up for as low as $19 a month and get started. This platform not just allows digital but also lists physical products like tshirts etc. for selling.

11. Email Marketing: Selling digital products and delivering them is easy when compared with physical products because your digital product can be sent by email. This is where email marketing becomes very important and one should start using email marketing, lead generation, setting up your list and auto-responders from the very first day.

12. Affiliate Programs: There are some affiliate networks that allows the sale of digital products. Simply choose a network that best suits your product and budget, then let the users of that network sell your product for a small percentage of commission from the sale.

13. Your Blog Section and SEO: If you have a website, then you have a blog as well. Now it is up to you to give that extra effort and start writing some content and rank them on search engines for extra SEO traffic and sale.

14. Influencers: Every niche has some influencers with a large audience already built on their social channels. Try to leverage that audience for selling your product in a way that is accepted by the influencer.

15. YouTube: Create a YouTube channel on the side and keep adding regular videos of your product and business.

16. GumRoad: This is an easy platform to get started with your digital product sales as it does not have monthly fees, they only take a small cut from every sale that you make. The idea here is to sell small things and get started easily, rather than build a costly product and get delayed in the process.

17. E-Junkie: Over the years, this platform has consistently improved and made a brand name in the space of selling digital product. One can get started on this platform for small monthly fees of $5 a month.

18. SendOwl: This is another popular platform where there are all sorts of pricing options to fit your budget. One can start with the free plan with per sale fees, or pay a monthly fees where the per sale fees is lowered.

19. CreativeMarket: If you are on the niche of creativity or graphics then this is a top platform to get started with your digital sales.

20. MemberPress: If you are on wordpress and planning to sell digital memberships then this is one plugin that you should absolutely check out.

21. Etsy: For handmade products, stuff related to crafts etc. can be easily sold on this platform.

Creating the product is only one part of the process. Unless one has a proper sales plan, getting the most out of digital products isn’t possible. Fortunately, there are many platforms online that speeds up and boosts the sale of digital products, several of which are mentioned in this article.

9 Tips for Creating Digital Products Online

Digital products have always been the most favorite thing for online marketers. You can create a digital product and send it to your customers when they pay for it. Your customers will receive the product as a download link in their email and you will have the money in the bank right away. Imagine shopping from the comfort of your inbox.

Now compare this with a physical product where creating it is a huge effort in the first place. Then you will have to package it and send it by transport. Even after this, your work isn’t complete as there will be the problems of handling returns. The issues are limitless when you work on actual physical products.

With the digital life going in full swing, the creations of various digital products are on the rise. At times like this, it is important to know the basics so that one can get started with digital product creation in the best possible way.

Here, in this article, we will discuss some tips to get started with digital product creation.

1. Research enough before you get started: When you are too excited to begin, patience is the last word you want to hear. All you want to do is to quickly turn your idea into a product and start selling. While this excitement is good, it still won’t help if you don’t do enough research before getting started.

Check the competition and find out if similar products are already in the market. See the feedback from their customers, check testimonials on neutral platforms because most marketers will only show the positive feedback on their own site. Even if the product does not take much time and money to get started, still don’t start a product that does not really have a great future.

2. Don’t go alone: At times, when we see an easy idea that does not really require the involvement of too many people; we want to do it solo. However, do note that marketing a digital product isn’t easy, there’s way too many people trying to earn that digital dollar, making this space very competitive. Influencer collaboration from the start can make a big difference.

Ask for inputs and quotes from influencers who are working in the niche of your product. This will interest the influencer and they will be involved with the product before the product is even created. Take their help when launching the product and you will see some sales coming, right on the day of the launch.

3. Think small first: If you are planning on a huge product, then it is important to note that getting started is often so difficult that a lot of people simply quit, rather than reaching the final product. An eBook is simply enough to get started.

4. Lean is always good: It is exciting to get started with a customized membership site, having so many features and plans and designs and setup. However, all this will eat up the budget and you will find yourself with a great product, perhaps half built and no money left for marketing it. Rather start with an easy to sell product and make some sales before upgrading the product.

5. Hire and Outsource: When it comes to product creation, depending on the nature of the product you will find that some skills you already have and for some you need help. For example, you can be a great writer and you might be able to write down your ebook with ease. However, for the front cover, you will require the help of a designer to help you create it.

6. Giveaway: Give your product in exchange of reviews and feedback and testimonials. When you get genuine feedback from your loyal customers then you can tweak your product and fix the things that have been suggested to you. When it comes to marketing, getting reviews in the form of YouTube videos, blog posts etc. are the best types of free online marketing. Finally, when you get testimonials, you can publish those testimonials on your own product website and let your customers read those before they make a purchasing decision.

7. Create a selling plan: It is important to plan your sales. A digital product, depending on the niche and the nature of the product, can be sold on various online platforms. For example, an eBook can be sold on Amazon and a digital photo graph can be sold on stock photo sites that allow selling of photos by users.

8. Create a waiting list: A waiting list shows the demand for the product. If your product is good, people are queuing to buy it, then you have a good chance of selling more copies. Make sure to display your waiting list and the number of copies left and the time with a countdown timer on how long is the wait. Don’t make a huge wait, people are excited when they have to wait for a few days at most, but if you make it months then people will likely forget about it.

9. Start Email Marketing: Emails are perhaps the best way to sell a digital product. If you have similar products on the same niche then it is easy to sell from the same email list. However, the first step, when starting with email marketing, is to setup a system on your website from where you can catch email leads. From the first day, setup an auto-responder series so that your very first email subscriber start to get the newsletters and they get involved.

eBooks or any other digital product can be easily sold by sending emails, but it won’t work if your subscribers aren’t involved enough with the product. To keep them excited and interested, the best way is to start an auto responder series and keep them hooked in.

Digital products take less time and money to create. One can easily have a minimum viable product ready in a few days time, then tweak it along the way and make it better.

17 Ways to Boost your Income on the Side – Along with Blogging

As a full time professional blogger, most of your time and effort goes into blogging. This sets up a time limitation where you are unable to focus on other things.

However, if you plan your day properly then you will find that there’s plenty of time still left in the day, after completing your everyday blogging work. If you have an off line business on the side, it will take up your day time. But the good thing about blogging is that it can be done at any time of the day. One can easily wake up early in the morning or stay up late into the night to complete the blogging duties.

In such an arrangement, your entire day’s time is left free where you can explore other business opportunities. Here, in this article, we will cover several off line businesses that you can supplement with your full time blogging work:

1. Become a Tutor: As a blogger, you have been writing content, editing other people’s articles, working as a freelance writer for quite some time. All this effort has improved your English writing abilities. Use some of these English writing skills and start teaching others the same.

2. Food Truck: If you can finish up your blogging work during the morning hours, you can easily dedicate your evenings to a food truck and making some money on the side. Hire some cooking and cleaning help, you might require an extra kitchen to get the food prepared as in the truck, most fast foods are only heated and served, the actual cooking happens during the morning hours some place else.

3. Gift Shop: If you are planning on an off line shop then selling gift items might be a good idea. Such shops aren’t really busy and if you are able to get at least one staff then you can easily work on your blogging activities while sitting on the cash counter of the gift shop.

4. Personal Trainer: If you have less time on your hand and your blog demands a greater share of your day’s time, then opt for being a personal trainer. All you have to do, is to dedicate a few hours of your time everyday and the rest of your time can be utilized for your blogging work.

5. Farmers Market: Most villages have this sort of setup where farmers from the village bring in their produce and sell them in this farmer’s market. One can easily sell their home made stuff or even fruits and vegetables that they have grown in their back yard or their farm.

6. Vending Machines: If you have access to a commercial or a busy place, either you own it or you can manage it on rent, then setup some vending machines in that space. Such arrangements does not really take up much time and you can check it from time to time, making sure it is working properly.

7. Cooking Classes: Cooking and teaching others about how to cook is fun. It might be slow at the start but once you start to get enough students, you can easily run multiple classes, host workshops etc. and even start a YouTube channel or a food blog. As a blogger, if you think that cooking food can be your thing, then you should surely consider a food blog.

8. Computer Training Center: Everyone knows the basics of computer and if you take up some computer courses yourself, you should be able to teach others the basics and certain technical courses that might help them to do real world work.

9. Organic Farming: Taking the point of farmers market further, if you are able to grow something then you should be able to sell more, on the farmer’s market and elsewhere. Farming does take a lot of time, but it will still spare you enough hours in the day which can be invested into blogging.

10. Tiffin Services: People like to make their life as easy as possible. Why worry about cooking when you can simply order Tiffin and take your lunch in peace. At times like this, all you need to do is a little bit of hard work, build a small setup, perhaps hire a chef and a few delivery people and get a Tiffin service started.

11. Laundry Shop: When you talk about laundry business, you don’t really need to wash clothes. Most such businesses are just the front end where they collect the clothes and send them to a third party for having the clothes cleaned.

12. Candle Making: Getting wax, colors, frames etc. for candle is pretty easy. It does not really take much time to start making candles. Such types of work are best suited for online marketers and bloggers who have limited free time. Such activities like candle making does not take dedicated time, as any amount of free time can be easily dedicated to such work.

13. Restaurant: If you are looking to build something worthwhile off line to supplement your online business then setting up a restaurant might be a good idea. Just like any other business, there are chefs, waiters and manager to run your restaurant and all it will take from your end is to carry your laptop, take up a corner and start working on your blog. Simply being then will make sure that your restaurant is running smoothly.

14. Poultry: Raising chickens and selling eggs is an easy way to earn some money on the side. It does not really take much of your time and from the peace of your farm, you can work on your blog as well and dedicate your free time cleaning and feeding your chickens.

15. Start a Boutique: Several off line clothing stores have started to buy clothes online and start selling them offline from their own stores. There are many ways to run a boutique successfully, it might not take a lot of time, but surely there’s a bit of an investment in the clothing business.

16. Nutritionist: An easy one or two year course can make you a dietician or a nutritionist. One can start their service off line or even online depending on whatever they feel best

17. Juice Shop: If time and money is limited then consider opening a juice shop and start selling fresh fruit juices. This is a healthy way of earning money where you will serve healthy juices and make some money on the side.

Blogging is surely a full time job and if your blog is making good money, then giving it more time makes sense. However, if your blog isn’t making enough money or you are still able to manage some free time, then consider doing some work off line and make some extra income.

12 Tips to Blog away in the fun way

Bloggers come in many shapes and sizes. Not everyone blogs for the same reasons. There are niche bloggers who keep searching for the long tails, there’s brand blogs that wants to rank for premium keywords, there’s news bloggers who are keeping an eye out for trending topics and yet there are some bloggers who are in it, just for the fun of it.

The vast majority of bloggers on the internet are people who do not wish to monetize their blogs. They just want to grow a following so that more people can read their content and in time their content gets consumed more and more. Such bloggers aren’t in it for the money, so monetization tips do not apply to them.

Here, in this article, we will cover tips to grow a blog and have fun along the way.

1. Plan your content schedule: As a hobby or part-time blogger, your time is limited. Still, your blogging schedule matters, as posting consistence, no matter how rarely you post, is still going to be an important factor. Check how many articles you published in the last year. If your number is 12, then you must select a day of the month, for example 1^st of every month you should post an article.

2. Go deep into your Niche: As a blogger who is blogging only as a hobby, your niche must be something that you truly value and your knowledge of your niche is genuine. Take this as a positive thing and start digging deep into your niche. Learn new topics which are directly in your niche and start covering them in your blog.

3. Start Video Blogging: The state of blogosphere is changing fast. Text is still important, but if you compare it with video blogging, making videos is fast and easy compared to writing articles. People like to watch a video instead of reading a lot of text. Making a slight move towards video blogging and supplementing it with your text content can be a productive move.

4. Engage your Following: What aspects of blogging is fun is a totally personal question. However, for most people, creating every green content, long form content, flagship and detailed tutorial type content etc. mostly falls under work, and communicating and chatting in the comments section sounds like fun.

Spend time in your comments section, have fun while doing so and in the process build a loyal following.

5. Invite your Niche Leaders to Guest Post: When you have limited time and you don’t want to write too much then it is time to introduce guest bloggers. Lately, with all the weak and spamy pitches that guest bloggers keep sending, most people have started to associate guest blogging with poor quality marketing activity. But that isn’t the correct impression of guest blogging.

Look out for bloggers who are established and have an influence on your niche. Network and build a connection with them and when they start to know you send them an offer giving them an opportunity to write for your blog.

6. Set your Goals Accordingly: When you aren’t into blogging full time, having a difficult goal that requires way too much work will naturally eat up all the fun that blogging provides. Tweak your goals accordingly and adjust the success you want to achieve under the giving time. Lower the targets so that with fewer efforts you can reach your planned goals.

7. Share content on the Social Media: Social is fun, let us keep it that way. Write short and catchy messages for social media; schedule them along with the links to your relevant blog posts. This process takes less time, engaging and socializing on the social media takes even less time. Make sure to give a very limited time for social media else it will waste a lot of productive time as social media is very addictive.

8. Write less but it must be Actionable: When you have limited time then it is important that you choose your article titles carefully. Your content should be actionable, it should solve a problem and it must be searched a lot. This way, your content might come out rarely, but whenever it does, it will be worth it.

9. Get a Custom Theme: Personal or hobby blogs must have a unique design. Readers should be able to recognize your designs so that they remember your blog. A good design will inspire you as a blogger to write better content as you will feel a sense of uniqueness and pride in your blog.

10. Read Books: It is always important to constantly upgrade your knowledge. Find books that are directly on your niche or its sub niches. Read them in full and keep asking for more books from book readers communities.

11. Write from your Heart: When you write articles for the sake of completing a deadline, it isn’t a great piece of content; it is usually just an article meant to keep your posting schedule going.

Instead of doing that, write articles that you truly want to write. Get a notepad to write down your ideas and slowly, turn it into a good piece of content. This process might take several days but your article will be worth it. This advice might not work for professional bloggers who are trying to churn articles as quickly as possible. But for the hobby bloggers who are looking for some fun while blogging, one can easily take more time and write better content.

12. Tweak your Tools and Setup: The desk, the office setup and the laptop is mostly the entire tool and stuff that you need to keep your blogging going. This might seem simple but the view from your chair, the look of your desk and the speed of your laptop does matters a lot.

If you are too tired of your setup, feel free to move around your home when you write content. Consider moving to the park or anywhere your heart desires to get some change, which might get rid of the regular boredom and make working on your blog more exciting and fun.

Back in the days when we had started blogging, there was a spark. If you feel that way and you miss your spark, your special initial blogging magic, then it is time to stop thinking too much and start blogging, just like the old days, for fun!

12 Affiliate Networks to Monetize your Blog in 2023

There are several ways by which a blogger can monetize his blog. The popular options include affiliates, contextual ads, sponsored posts and paid guest posts.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, there are many ways to approach it. Almost every site on the internet that sells something has a built in affiliate marketing option. All it takes for a blogger is to sign up, get approved and then start displaying their banners, links, reviews and ads which will convert in a sale and give a commission.

While there is nothing wrong with this process, it will just takes more time registering on individual platforms and then wait for payment which will be slow as you will only get paid from a single source of sale.

To scale this process, there are networks where on one side there are merchants with their products and on the other side there are marketers and bloggers with reach and influence who are able to make a sale.

Here, in this article, we will discuss several affiliate networks where one can sign up and start selling products:

1. Amazon Affiliates: Amazon is perhaps one of the biggest market place available today. Their affiliate program is easy to use. There are so many products that are listed on their site, simply get their affiliate link and start referring it to your audience and get a sale.

This is ideally great for YouTubers and Bloggers as they can easily mention a relevant product with their affiliate link and get quick sales.

2. CJ.: Popularly known as Commission Junction, this is perhaps one of the oldest affiliate network with a huge amount of digital products in their inventory. The joining process if fairly easy and if you get approved then all you need to do, is to show their affiliate links and start selling products.

3. ClickBank: If you are looking for more places to find affiliate products then this is a great network to get started. Be a bit more careful in selecting the products to promote here.

4. JV ZOO: If digital products is your main goal then this is another network where you can find good products. However, do note that bigger networks have a more strict policy which isn’t the case with smaller networks like this. On one hand it becomes easy to get started, but one needs to be extra careful in case you end up promoting a product that isn’t as good.

5. Rakuten: This is a fairly established network and gaining popularity at a rapid pace. The overall feedback for this network is good and people who are using it, is giving it a very good rating. Last year the network completed 25 years of working, which shows how much it has grown over the last two decades.

6. ShareASale: Another popular network which has been a favorite of all online marketers for the past few decades. If you are looking for a network that sends timely money, has several options to send money, has plenty of niche products and merchants to promote then this is one network that you shouldn’t skip.

7. PepperJam: When it comes to transparency, there’s none other than PepperJam. One can easily communicate with merchants and partners to discuss and plan the promotions. Other than that, they offer a quicker payment as their minimum payout is just $25. Additionally, they support paypal which makes it further easier for people to use this network.

8. Shopify Affiliate: Shopify is the market leader when it comes to setting up eCommerce websites. Their system is fairly easy to use, all you have to do is to buy a plan, and get your site ready and start selling products. These paid plans can also be further sold by being an affiliate partner. The commission percentage isn’t huge, but if you can get a lot of sales then it will make more sense.

9. Studio Press: There are many networks that provide premium wordpress products for re-selling and thus earn a commission. Studio press is a very popular wordpress theme platform. Back in days when they used to sell their revolution theme packages, this network has been a huge success.

Their strength lies in the very loyal and huge customer base which speaks volumes about their product. When the product is a success, selling it becomes fairly easy. This is one of those reasons why marketers like this network a lot.

10. Partner Stack: For business to business partnerships, especially in the field of digital tech and SaaS business models, this network has proven to be a success. With payments starting from as low as $5, anyone who can sell something can get paid easily. The recurring payments can go for a lifetime if the client sticks around.

11. Awin: If you are looking to sell some real world items, preferably from popular platforms like AliExpress, then Awin is your number one affiliate network. It does have enough merchants in every physical and digital niche possible.

They have acquired sites like ShareASale and commission factory which makes their network stronger. These companies operate separately, but they are still under the ownership of Awin.

12. Flipkart Affiliate: Just like Amazon, every eCommerce platform has an affiliate system. Most of these places are easy to join and get started. Flipkart too has a huge range of products that cover almost every niche. All one needs to do, is to find products that fit their audience and then start selling and recommending those products using the affiliate links.

Every time there is a sale, you earn a small commission from it. This amount is fairly smaller compared to most other networks, but if one can scale it, then eventually the numbers will add up.

Surely, there are way too many networks out there where one can find more merchants and increase their sales. At the same time, certain products who are great but isn’t part of any network can be joined individually and time allows.