By Alice Seba

You’ve done your keyword research, you diligently wrote your blog posts and you got the traffic. Some people were even nice enough to leave you some comments.

Problem is, you log into PayPal and you still see this:

Not much to write home about. What’s gone wrong?

Here’s the thing, you not only need to know what you’re going to do, but WHY you’re doing it. And until you know the WHY of each and everything you do, you arenít going to get the results you hoped for.

See, it’s not enough to say, I want to make $100,000.

And if you’re a typically modest 30DCer, it’s not even enough to say I want to make $1, or I want to make $100.

You’ve got to break it down and start looking at each blog post you create and figure out their purpose. And I’m not necessarily talking about the purpose the post serves for your readers, but how the post will serve your BUSINESS.

Because without purpose, you’ve got nothing. Sure some posts will be just for fun or just because you felt like it, but if you’re looking to get results from your blog the majority of them need to be strategically planned.

Blog posts can serve a number of purposes and let’s look at some of them, breaking them up into traffic purposes and conversion purposes.

Traffic Purposes for Your Blog Posts

We all want traffic to our blog. Without traffic, we have nothing and no opportunity to convert our readers into prospects so let’s talk traffic.

Search Engine Food: You already know this and it’s what you’ve been working on. You research keywords, make content for those keywords with the goal of good rankings for those keywords.

Word-of-Mouth: Good content gets people talking as does entertaining and controversial content. Well-crafted content can generate plenty of buzz and translate into traffic.

Establishment of Expertise: Content can improve your reputation and allow people to see you as an expert in your subject area. It’s a traffic booster because people will come to you when they need advice on a certain topic.

Reader Satisfaction: Your regular readers have certain expectations of you and to keep them coming, you’ve got to keep delivering.

Certainly traffic is important for your business, but the good news is you don’t need a ton of it to make good money. In fact, if you’re getting a decent stream of traffic to your blog right now you can start making a lot more money from the traffic you already have.

So, let’s take that traffic and talk about converting it to sales.

Conversion Purposes for Your Blog Posts

Traffic is great, but if your visitors aren’t signing up for your mailing list and buying stuff, there’s not much point is there? Here are two common conversion purposes for your blog posts.

New Subscribers: If you’re providing great information on a topic and your mailing list offers more information, make sure you tell your readers about it. Don’t let them look for information about your mailing list because the fact is, most won’t bother. Instead tell them about it directly, give them a reason to sign up and tell them how to do it.

Mention your mailing list frequently because your mailing list gives you the opportunity to:

- Contact your readers more directly
- Contact them more frequently
- Make them more product offers

Pre-Sell: Content is a great way to warm up your readers to buy a product. You can review products, talk about your experience with the product and even other people’s experiences with the product. You can talk about the problems your readers have, to which the solution is the product.

If you prefer to stay content-focused on your blog, do so but you can still make recommendations that make sense and that fit the topic of your blog post.

Start by thinking about your recent posts and the purposes they served. What was the traffic purpose? What was the conversion purpose? You do that and I’ll be back soon with Part 2, when we talk about reaching your conversion goals.

About the Author: Alice Seba is the creator of Contentrix.com and one of the first to get Ed interested in growing organic search traffic. But what good is the traffic without the conversion? Click here for your free Profit with Content guide.

People ask me all the time,

If you were starting from scratch and needed to make a thousand dollars quickly. What would you do.

This is my answer….

Starting From Scratch

The cool thing is dozens of thirty day challengers have already figured this out. It works.

Ed

P.S. This course costs less than a night out, but for the next couple of days you can get a further 20% off by using the coupon code “tellmeyoursecreted“

Ask anyone.

The Thirty Day Challenge is the most popular Internet Marketing program on the web.

The Stat’s speak for themselves. No Internet program has higher satisfaction ratings or a better community.

It’s success is based on you.

Everyone LOVES it!

BUT

I’m not happy.

Not happy at all.

I love that people use the Thirty Day Challenge to inspire them onwards and upwards.

I love that we were the first Internet Marketing program to provide high Definition content at a quality level that still is the best this industry has seen.

Like I said EVERYBODY loves it.

Like I said - I’m not happy…

You see as much as I love the people who say kind words about the program and put up with my sense of humour. For me, there is only one stat that matters.

How many of you COMPLETE the challenge and make your first dollar.

That number has been falling.

It’s appalling.

We have better training, Way better tools, WAY better strategies.

But all that means BUPKISS.

The only stat that matters is how many successfully complete the challenge and that number has SUCKED.

Entering the Grand Hotel here in Essendon on Tuesday I knew in my gut things had to radically change if we were to INCREASE the completion stats.

I had a team of awesome people who flew in from all corners of the world to workshop the next challenge. I suspect they thought that after the complete redesign of the training in 2009 and the AWESOME set of tools the three days would be all about “tweaking” an Internet Phenom that everyone loves.

I had come into the room intent on KILLING it.

Five years ago everyone thought I was insane to attempt this. My closest friends tried to talk me out of it. I ignored them.

If you can’t trust your own judgement in a marketplace why are you there? Take input, take feedback but you need to make a decision and move on.

The first day of the workshop was all about working out what was working and what was not working. We use a process called PEQ (which I learned from Chet Atkins and Jay Abraham) every time I use this process it blows me away. (30dc Plus members - we have a video from last years session showing how it works in the archive.)

By the end of the day, we had a comprehensive list everyone contributed to.

I had the feedback, I went walking that night (Scientifically proven now to help you think) when I walked in the Front Gate.

The Thirty Day Challenges fate was sealed.

To make it better,

I had to risk everything…

I had to kill the Thirty Day Challenge.

To Be Continued

I want to nail a $100 dollar day.

You’re brain is such a funny fellow and very protective too.

The thing your brain most want’s in this world is to see you safe and most importantly, not fail.

FAILURE = FOOLISH

Sadly, through the harshest conditioning at your most vulnerable time - HIGH SCHOOL, you were taught this most damaging little formula and it effects you in so many ways it’s ridiculous.

(Stay with me People - i’m not going “WOO WOO” on you - everything here is hard scientific fact)

One of the “Super-Cool” ways it protects you is in the area of Internet Marketing.It works like this…

You’re pumped and excited - this Internet marketing thing is for you, I mean look at the glamourous lifestyles these people have.

Side Note - For an excellent reality check on “The Glamour” on this - read Michelle McPhersons blog post about her brother “Why I Couldn’t Help My Brother at Internet Marketing”

But it’s not the lack of glamour that gets you.It’s the results in your first thirty days that will do you in. The criminal part is 95% of y’all have no idea this is happening to you.

(Remeber Scientific Fact - Not “WOOWOO”)

Pretty much every sales letter gives a TRUE example of the success of their owner.
I made $100,000 last month….”Look at this payapl check for $233,000 I got last month”

“I made a million dollars in a day…”

ETC

ETC

ETC

Now here’s the thing - the rational , conscious part of your brain totally gets that these people had to work hard for it, it didn’t happen over night, even they had to make a dollar…

What a shame your conscious brain is not in charge all the time…

When things go well our lizard brain (the one responsible for the four F’s Fight, Flight, Feed and F… procreate) is happy to take a back seat. Hey - Your Happy, I’m Happy…

But subconsciously, its expecting that big paypal cheque to come through the mailbox stat!

Newsflash - No one I know went from cold start to $100k a month in 30 Days (Happy to meet the exception to the rule…)
It took them ages to build to that. To build a LIST

Which is why in the thirty day challenge we talk about making a single dollar.

We would get a lot more takers if we promised riches…but it would be bull.

If you’re starting out, job 1 is to make a dollar.

But I have to tell you a secret.

My Favourite day - and the one that is the true signal of success…Is the $100 dollar day.

Rack up a few of those in a row and you don’t have an accidental business any more - you’re in this thing for reelez…

There’s a good reason that the first step in alcoholics anon is to admit you have a problem.

IF you can focus on and CELEBRATE the $100 dollar day.

So many more of you would have the chance to celebrate the $200 dollar day.

By Focusing on the 100K paypal cheque (Even if you don’t know your doing this - YOU ARE!) you’re DRAMATICALLY affecting your chances of making a go if this.

Ed

Coming Home Seminar with Ed Dale | Irene Denver

A lovely review of Coming Home 2. Just an indication of what you can expect when we come to the USA.

Details will be released VERY VERY VERY soon.

Ed