The iPad is one shiny, powerful tablet. It can be used as an entertainment device, a gaming tablet, or an e-book reader. Apple has already sold hundreds of thousands of units, and it is expected to sell millions of more in the near future. What does that mean for you as a blogger? It’s all simple really. The iPad is going to be another channel for you to connect with your readers in and gain more followers for your blog. If you own a small blog, chances are you are not going to have enough resources to build a killer iPad app for it. Those of you who do have a strong team behind your blog and have the resources to focus on yet another channel should not ignore iPad.

When you build an iPad for your blog, you don’t want to offer just the same old content through your app. You need to offer extra value for iPad owners to truly care about your app. If your app is going to be a paid one, you better give people a reason not to regret their purchase. Here are 7 ways to do just that:

• Offer High Quality Content: this goes without saying. If your content is crap, for the lack of better term, people are not going to use your app or read your blog. It’s really a no brainer. That’s why I talked about having a resourceful team. iPad is a tough channel to master. You’ll need to have your “A” game to have a chance.
• Interactive Content: Wired.com’s iPad application shows exactly how iPad is different from all other e-book readers. Developing interactive content can be costly, but if you have a paid iPad app, you are better off offering this type of content.
• Don’t Forget Multimedia: this is much easier to do than the previous item. Exclusive videos and audio commentary is not that hard to add to an iPad app.
• Exclusive Content for Loyal Followers: don’t forget to link your blog to your iPad app. Your iPad app should help your blog become more successful. That would not be possible if you are not leveraging your app properly to achieve that goal. Providing exclusive tips and content to your loyal blog readers is a good start.
• Convenience & Usability: forget about the bells and whistles. Not until you have an app that is easy to use and does not confuse your readers. Give your readers the tools they need to share your content with others on their iPad. Don’t try to be too fancy with your app.
• Performance Matters: nobody likes a sluggish iPad app. If your app is paid, you should double your efforts to make sure your app performs well. Crashes and bugs are annoying too. So work them all out with your team.
• Aggressive Pricing Strategy: you can monetize your app properly and make a decent chunk of profit if you play your cards right. You will have to focus on content and value for your readers if you expect them to pay for your app. There are so many useless paid apps in iTunes. Don’t let yours be one of them. Don’t be too greedy either. If it makes sense to offer your app for free, don’t hesitate.

What are your suggestions on how to build a killer iPad app for a blog?

Throwing a giveaway on your blog is a powerful way to attract new visitors and increase your traffic. People love freebies, and you’d be surprised how far some people will go to get their hands on them. Each giveaway that you host on your blog is an opportunity for you to get more traffic and links to your blog, so you shouldn’t waste any opportunity. I have seen many bloggers who give things away without getting the most out of their contest. Sure, you want to keep the rules simple and easy to follow. That does not mean you shouldn’t reward those visitors who are willing to go beyond everyone else and do all kinds of things to win something on your blog.

There are plenty of ways one can supercharge a blog giveaway. It really depends on your creativity. The below 6 methods should give some ideas though:

1. Do not forget social media: if you have a Twitter profile or Facebook page, the least you can do is ask your visitors to join you on those sites. If you must, you can make it an optional entry. There are hundreds of people who have gained thousands of visitors by giving away iPads and other top gadgets. Don’t miss your chance.
2. Ask Your Visitors to Blog: giving away things is a great way to gain incoming links to your blog. So ask your visitors to blog about your giveaway and share their link with you. Give them extra entries as an incentive.
3. Encourage Video Shout-Outs: creating professional quality videos and posting them to YouTube can take a lot of your time. Why not use your giveaway as a way to have you readers create some additional videos for you? These things add up after a while.
4. Don’t forget social bookmarking: StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Reddit can all bring you more visitors. It never hurts to ask your visitors to add your website to those services. Just make sure you tell them not to spam.
5. Spread your button (brand): banner advertising could cost you money. There is no reason not to do it. You can bring your costs down by asking your contest entrants to post your banner or button to their sites for additional entries.
6. Reward Referrals: this is my favorite way to throw a killer giveaway. Create exclusive links for each visitor and give them additional entries for every person they refer to your blog. This affiliate-type model can bring you lots of traffic!

What are your suggestions? How would you go about throwing a killer giveaway?

Blogging is a very risky business, especially if you put all your eggs in one basket. Your risks are even higher if you are a pro blogger and do not have a backup source of income to get you through in case things go wrong with your blog. When you go to business school, they teach you about the importance of risk management for large businesses. Most top companies have solid risk management plans in place to help protect them against uncertainties in their market. The same concept does apply to bloggers as well. The market is changing all the time and no matter how smart or dedicated your are, things can go wrong in ways that you could never anticipate. So it always pay to have a plan just in case you are faced with a nightmarish scenario.

Pro blogging is not as easy as it sounds. Writing content and promoting your content are only a part of the story. There are many moving parts that could potentially go wrong and halt your business operations. That’s why you should have a risk management plan for you blog. If you have no idea where to start, here are 7 ways you can manage risk for your blog:

1. Have a backup plan: it’s never too late to write a risk management plan for your blog. It does not have to be something formal. But you want to make sure you are ready to take the actions necessary to save your business when faced with an unanticipated situation. For instance, your database could fail on you or you can get kicked out of your favorite affiliate program. If you have planned for these situations ahead of time, you won’t have to worry about going completely out of business.
2. Diversification: never put all your eggs in one basket. I see so many bloggers who talk about how their affiliate partner makes them a lot of money each and every month. Would that partner stick by you if Internet tax is legislated in your state? Would you go from hero to zero without your affiliate partner? If you haven’t planned out your escape, that could happen.
3. Keep Your Eyes Open: just because you spend hours of your day coming up with content for your blog does not mean that you should forget about what is going on in your industry. It’s so easy to fall behind and miss some of the major developments in your industry if you are too obsessed about content development. Let’s take Internet tax for instance. A few states have already passed the law, and it could be coming to a state near you. You can easily track such legislations if you are following the news in your state. But if you keep your eyes closed, you are going to get sucker punched.
4. Grow Your Business: I do not make my living from blogging. I never intended to do so. But there are a lot of people who do. If you are relying on your blog to make money and have no other source of income, you are going to get burned badly when something happens to your blog or your niche. I am not suggesting that you should forget about blogging and focus on other endeavors. But this business is not predictable, so you should always take time to grow your business and never sit on your past success.
5. Expand To New Areas: going back to the previous point, it always pays to be involved in multiple markets and have multiple businesses. In that case, you are always going to be prepared when one of your businesses fails. Let’s say your blog is bringing you lots of revenue through affiliate advertising. You should also take time to identify other ways to bring revenue to your business just in case your affiliate partners go away. Being involved in multiple niches would help as well.
6. Build Layers Of Competitive Edge: your goal as a blogger is to build assets that will last your business a long time. Your content is one of those assets. Your domain and brand are other assets available to your business. The same can be said about your membership website, your book, and your videos. You get the point. Being involved in all those areas makes you more prepared for the tough times ahead.
7. Never Burn Your Bridges: sometimes your business is not going to work out no matter how hard you try. It’s tough to accept, but it happens. Never burn your bridges with your contacts if you want to have an escape plan in that scenario. In fact, you should focus on building long-lasting relationships as a blogger just in case. You never know what doors your contacts can open for you.
8. Be Optimistic: the only thing to fear here is the fear itself. Don’t let your risk management process stress you out. Remember, you are preparing for those worst case scenarios, but that does not mean that they will happen. When you are faced with those scenarios, you are going to be more prepared to handle things without making rash decisions.

Blogging may sound simple on paper. But it is far from it. Plan ahead and you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches.

Credit: twvogel

There are three types of bloggers out there. In one group, we have a bunch of people who know how to come up with original blog posts on a consistent basis. These bloggers have mastered the art of grabbing an idea and looking at it from a unique angle. In the second group, we have a group of bloggers that come up with original ideas once in a while but mostly rely on other bloggers to do the job for them. The third group, which I happen to dislike a lot, are copycat bloggers. These bloggers not only steal your ideas but sometimes don’t even bother changing your posts enough to differentiate themselves.

There is nothing more frustrating than working so hard to come up with an original blog post, only to see someone else still your idea and run with it. To be frank, you can’t really complain about someone grabbing the idea behind your blog post and coming up with a unique post on the very same topic. But it is frustrating when someone copies you and your points and only changes the words around (we are not even going to talk about blog thieves).

I happen to believe in free competition. There is nothing wrong with someone looking at a blog post and deciding to write a better, more powerful post on the very same topic. That’s fair game. After all, your post idea is not that important. What you do with it and how you build your content around that idea is what matters. Copycat bloggers are more frustrating to deal with. These are folks who pick up your post, spin the words, add some nonsense to it, and post it to their own blogs. I wouldn’t go as far as calling them content thieves, but their approach is certainly unethical.

Many new bloggers worry about their blog posts being lifted by copycats. Some folks are good at writing posts and some are good at lifting them. While I do encourage bloggers to mark their content and let people know that their content is copyrighted, I wouldn’t worry too much about copycat bloggers. You can obviously use services such as CopyScape to find out who’s plagiarizing your content. But you can never stop unethical people from doing unethical things.

Thankfully, there are ways you can keep yourself ahead of your copycats and expose them for what they are. Your audience is not stupid, so as long as you put your best effort forward with your content, they’ll know who’s for real and who’s just a copycat. In fact, here are 5 tactics you can take advantage of to stay ahead of those annoying copycat bloggers:

• Unique Content: as long as you are coming up with content that is unique to your blog on a consistent basis, you have an edge over copycats. They can lift your content and copy your ideas, but they can’t copy your approach and blogging process. I do encourage you to link to your own posts often to make the process more difficult for copycats.
• Unique Voice: copycat bloggers can duplicate your blog and steal your ideas, but they can not duplicate your voice. If you have found your unique blogging voice, you are one step ahead of content thieves.
• Frequency: one way to make things difficult for copycat bloggers is by writing unique content on a more frequent basis. So instead of writing two times a week, you can write 4 times a week. You should also distribute your content in the social media (with the help of your readers) just to brand your content before content thieves can grab it.
• Outdo The Pretenders: sometimes you are not dealing with content thieves but people who are trying hard to beat you in your own game. These are people who copy your idea and try to outdo you in your own game. To beat these people, you are going to need deeper, higher quality content. Now this is something that can make you a better blogger.
• Change Your Code: while you can’t stop people from copying your content, you can always make the process more difficult for them. You can take advantage of action-based coding to disable hot-linking or right-click copy function on your blog. Your .htaccess file can be another place to add some of these limitations.

It all comes down to how much effort you put forward towards creating high quality content on your blog. The more research you put in and the more deep analysis your blog posts contain, the harder it will be for others to duplicate you. Your blog’s look and feel and your ideas can be duplicated but not your thought process.

One of the best ways to get more popular in the blogging world is by giving people what they are asking for. In fact, that’s the recipe to success in any business. If you can identify what people need and give them exactly what they are looking for, there is no reason you can’t make it big in blogging. Now, I am not suggesting that you can become a super-blogger by answering questions on your blog all day. At the same time, there are plenty of blogging ideas that you can dig up by doing your homework online.

Regardless of what niche you are involved in, you can always find people who are asking questions online that are probably being asked by many others. By identifying those questions and the needs of those people, you can write blog posts that people eat up and want to share with others. Not complicated on the paper but it does take some work. If you are looking to take advantage of this tactic to develop more ideas for your blog, here are 5 places you should look at:

Yahoo! Answers: still the best place to dig up ideas for blogs. There are plenty of questions in the database, which means you are going to have plenty of opportunities to develop ideas for your blog. You can also become an authority by participating and answering questions here.

Askville: a community by Amazon that doesn’t get the recognition that it deserves. If you are running a technology blog or have an audience that is hooked on Amazon products, Askville is a great place for your research.

Linkedin Answers: Linkedin is already one of the top social networking websites on the market. The quality of questions here are often much higher and the questions much more targeted. But if you are writing a highly technical or advanced blog, you are going to love using Linkedin Q&A.

Wordtracker Keyword Questions: a cool tool by WordTracker that lets you find out what people are searching for through search engines. It can be pretty useful at times.

Facebook Groups: Facebook Groups and fan pages are other places you can look at to find out about what people are asking and what you can provide to them. These social networking websites are data gold-mines as long as you are there to take advantage.

What’s been your experience with the above websites?

When you get started with your blog, you only have a handful of posts for a while. So you don’t really get too much traffic from search engines. But once you hit those magic numbers (500, 1000, …) in posts, you are going to get a lot of passive traffic from all kinds of places. Some people may digg your blog posts. Others may submit your posts to Facebook, Delicious, or even Twitter. So you are going to get traffic from different sources. Now the easy way to deal with your traffic is to do nothing. Just sit and watch as people come and go. But that’s not very smart. Perhaps the smarter way to approach your traffic is by figuring out where its coming from and treat each source differently.

WP Greet Box is a cool plugin for Wordpress bloggers that makes it easy to track your visitors and show them customized messages based on their referring URL. Essentially, the plugin lets you treat your Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon traffic differently. You can give your Facebook visitors an incentive to tweet your posts and vice versa. This process can be implemented for other blogging platforms as well, though you’ll most likely need a 3rd party script to get the job done. With WP Greet Box, you won’t have write a single line of code, which is a big plus.

So why is this approach important? As someone who has worked on a lot of landing pages in the past, I can tell you that people often take the actions that you ask them to when they are faced with the call to action. And if you give them an incentive to distribute your content, as long as your content is of high quality, they will most likely take you upon your offer. What you don’t want to do is go overboard with WP Greet Box. Thankfully, you have got access to a series of settings that you can customize to avoid annoying your readers (e.g. Visitor Timeout).

Overall, you can’t do everything by yourself when it comes to blogging. So if you are getting ranked on search engines and your content is distributed on social media sites, why not ask your readers to help you take your blog to the next level? WP Greet Box lets you do just that.

As someone who writes for multiple blogs on a daily basis, I am always looking for ways to become more productive with my blogging and get more done in less time. Running a blog is a very similar to being in a marriage. You need to work hard to make it all work. If you think running one blog is difficult, wait till you see how much effort it takes to run multiple blogs. If you add in the amount of time that you will have to spend promoting your blogs, preparing content, brainstorming, catching conferences, and reading books, you are going to go over 24 hours of work each day.  So it’s essential for anyone who’s planning to run multiple blogs to plan things ahead of time to keep the momentum going on all of them without slaving yourself 24/7.

Recently, I came across an article on Pro Blogger about how using color-coding on a calendar has helped a blogger become more productive and effective in managing multiple blogs. The approach was certainly interesting, but it’s not something I would recommend to “multi-bloggers.” It’s nice to be able to look at a calendar to figure out where you are with each blog, but there are better tools out there. Calendars may have been effective in the 90s but not these days.

I use To Do List widget on my desktop to manage my daily posting and find out what I need to do on a daily basis to keep the momentum going on my blog. To Do List is a Yahoo! Widgets Engine plugin that makes it so easy to manage daily tasks and become more productive. It uses Yahoo! or Outlook to help you manage your daily tasks.  Since it uses color-coding as well, it’s very similar to the approach suggested in the above mentioned article, but it’s easier to manage.

While we are at it, you can just use Outlook to manage your blogs more effectively without forgetting about them. So as you can see you don’t need a paper calendar to go about managing multiple blogs more effectively.

All in all, you should go with the method that works for you the best. Some folks still prefer tracking things on paper calendars, and there is nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, using the latest technologies out there may give you better results. Running multiple blogs can be challenging for most of us, so I’d take any help I can get.

We have all heard of the 80-20 rule before. The Pareto principle applies to the field of blogging as well. Not just content wise but also how one can go about becoming a star in this field. I truly believe that talent is only 20 percent, if not less, of the equation when it comes to reaching superstardom in the blogging world. If you look at all the top guys in this field, you will see a bunch of folks who are not only very talented but also passionate about what they do. But even people are not particularly blogging geniuses can become stars by outworking and out-hustling their peers. At the end of the day, you can’t pick up talent but you can always work harder and smarter.

The key to success in the blogging world is having the willingness to try new things and innovate. If you are just getting started in this field, it could be discouraging to think about how many advantages top bloggers have over you. But anybody can be beat in any game. That’s been my philosophy since the start, and that’s the only way you can go head to head against the big guns without getting discouraged and disheartened. My favorite blogging strategy is what I like to call Guerrilla  Blogging. Guerrilla tactics have been used throughout history by folks who were willing to take on much stronger opponents. The same concepts apply to the field of blogging. If you intend to dominate a market, you need to find out how you can outplay and outsmart other bloggers in your field. It’s not just about having the best content, but by being great in areas that your competitors are weak in.

Weekend blogging is my favorite Guerrilla blogging tactic. A lot of bloggers don’t like blogging too much on the weekend, but depending on your niche, you may have a great opportunity to grab more market-share by dominating the weekends. The demand on the weekends may not be as high as regular week days, but if your competitors are taking time off, it’s a great opportunity for your to differentiate yourself from them and stand out.

Many super bloggers blog on weekends as well, but they don’t pod-cast or post video-casts on these days. If that’s where they are weak in, that’s what I would go after. You want to focus on providing quality content to your readers and viewers all the time, every single day. Now I am not suggesting that you should forget your social life and focus 24/7 on blogging. You can always hire a few interns to take some load off of you and help you build a 24/7 content factory.

Guerrilla Blogging may not be enough to beat the best of the best, but it does help you dominate most of your peers. Besides, nothing happens overnight. If you keep doing it and picking the right strategies, over time you are going to pick up more followers and join the elite. Once you are there, you are going to have a more realistic chance of going head to head or form partnerships with other top bloggers in your field. Guerrilla Blogging tactics are not easy to implement, but they do make a challenger out of a heavy underdog.

Blogging is one of the funnest careers to have these days. After all, you are going to write great content, and they will be found by your audience. Your audience gets a lot of value out of your posts, and you make decent money from your sponsorships. Everybody wins, right? Wrong! In order to get any decent sponsorship deals these days, you need to find a way to drive lots of traffic to your website. And I am not talking about driving traffic from pay per click marketing. Pay per click marketing can easily make you go bankrupt if you don’t know what you are doing. That’s why you should focus more on free or almost free ways to promote your blog and drive traffic to your website.

BlogCatalog is a social blogger community that helps you get the word out about your blog and attract new visitors each and every day. I was at first a bit skeptical about it. I thought to myself, “yet another blog directory. Big deal!” But I was mistaken. You’d be surprised how much traffic you can drive to your blog by getting involved in the BlogCatalog community.

The first step is to claim your blog on BlogCatalog. You have to create an account and submit your blog to BlogCatalog to have it listed on the site.

You want to pay close attention to category and tags section. Use BlogCatalog’s front page to find out which tags are more popular and which one gives you the best chance to drive more traffic to your blog.

Another great way to get involved on BlogCatalog is by creating a widget for your blog. There are many to choose from. You can add a widget that shows you your recent viewers. You can add a group widget to bring the BlogCatalog community right to your blog.

Speaking of groups, there is no better way to drive traffic to your blog than getting involved and ask and return favors on BlogCatalog. That includes ranking other blogs and leaving comments on them.

Overall, BlogCatalog is a great community to be a part of. It’s made just for bloggers. If you’re hoping to get more traffic for your blog, why not ask others to help you out? That’s what being a part of this community is all about.

It’s surprising how many people come to believe that you can make money from your blogs with just ads. Just put up a blog and put Adsense on them, and you are good to go. But that’s a Hollywood story. You are not going to make too much money with ads. There are people who claim they do, but you don’t have to look too far to figure out their strategy. All these folks have other avenues to earn money online. They are writing books, creating premium products, and doing all kinds of things to make money online. I am not suggesting that you should stop putting ads on your blog. That’s ultimately between you and your readers. If they don’t prefer to see ads on your blog, that’s probably something you should consider. But ads may pay your hosting bills, but they shouldn’t be your only source.

Blogging is a great way to gain exposure online. If you keep providing value to your readers, you are going to gain more of them, and that will allow you to build a larger, tighter community. But at some point, you’ve got to stop looking at your readers as potential clicks and more as folks who are interested in knowing more about what you have to say. If you spend your days researching online and sharing your thoughts with people, you might as well try to give them more in exchange for some cash. And in order to do that, you’ve got to work on your branding. You’ve got to brand yourself and work on complimentary products that provide more value to your readers and make you some revenue on the side. The more value you provide on your blog, and the more trust your build with your readers, the more powerful your brand becomes, and the better chance you have of making money from your premium works.

With that in mind, here are a few ways to make money from your blog, besides using Adsense:

• Premium Video: premium videos are a great way to make money online. Take SEOmoz. They have free videos available to their members, but they also sell premium SEO courses. And why not! They have one of the best brands in the SEO world.
• Membership: depending on your niche, you may be able to monetize your blog by creating a premium membership service for those who are interested in getting more information and are willing to pay for it. Make sure you provide real value before charging people for your content. Create tools, reports, and even software programs to create an effective membership site.
• Podcast: creating your own podcast may not generate instant revenue for your blog, but you can always sign up sponsors. And you can also create audio courses from your Podcasts. You can also provide your podcast archives available to your fans for a free.
• Book: you can also take a page out of Darren Rowse’s books and write a book. Not everyone can do that. And Darren has one of the best brands in the blogging world to back his book up.
• Product: any other type of product that provides your customers with some value can generate you revenue. Some folks have started teaching people how to start a video blog. Others are selling courses on the basics of promoting blogs on the Internet. The sky’s the limit here. Think outside the box!

There you have it. You don’t need Google Adsense to make a killing online. If you have had a blog for a few years, you probably have enough content to create a product of your own without having to start from scratch.

Your take: when are you planning to offer your first product online? Please share!