10 Tactics To Make Your Blog Stand Out
One of the things I enjoy the most about blogs, especially blogs that are run by one individual, is analyzing why the blog is successful.
What is the magic ingredient that makes this blog succeed, when so many others fail?
Based on my observations, here are some of the elements you can apply to make your blog something special. Note you don’t have to apply all these ingredients, one could be enough, though of course if you apply more than one you increase your chance of success.
X-Factor Video: Gideon Reveals The $13,000 Webinar Formula
The “X-Factor” is a term Gideon and I applied to blogging, where you use multimedia and/or social media to enhance your blog’s growth.
The idea is that “standard” blogging practices may not be enough to make your blog stand out, and since it’s so easy today to make use of multimedia and social media, why not leverage these technologies to increase your traffic and blog performance.
The latest X-Factor training video was just released for free on the Become A Blogger blog, which you can go and watch right now here -
X-Factor Video: How To Make Money With Online Webinars
This video shows how Gideon recently used Webinar software to create an entire product and generate over $13,000 from literally just a few hours work. Webinars are great teaching tools, which can be recorded and distributed on your blog.
If you don’t know what a Webinar is, have no idea what software you can use to make one and how they can be turned into a product creation tool to generate a nice income as Gideon did, go watch the two videos on the Become A Blogger blog and Gideon will reveal everything to you.
Make sure you leave a comment there too, as Gideon loves to get your feedback.
Become A Blogger Premium Opening This Week
Gideon Shalwick and I are opening our very popular Become A Blogger Premium video training program this week.
We’ve had over 2,000 people take this course during the past year, so it is by far the most successful program I run in terms of raw number of people who have joined.
If you’ve not participated before, then as a special incentive for you to give it a go when we open it for the first time in 2010, we’re going to offer a $1 trial, but only if you join within the first six days.
The doors will open for the $1 trial this Thursday at 10AM Eastern US time and the offer will expire on Tuesday, February 9th at midnight.
If you’ve never heard of Become A Blogger Premium before I recommend you do two things first, which are completely free -
- Check out the ten videos Gideon put together to teach you how to set up a blog. You can find these at www.becomeablogger.com
- While you are there, opt-in to get your free copy of the Roadmap To Become A Blogger report.
The Roadmap Report is a very thorough document that takes you through two core areas -
- It lays out my system for building a successful blog, which has now been tested, implemented and proven successful on blogs in all kinds of niches.
- A full explanation and case study examples of Gideon’s X-Factor marketing techniques. The X-Factor techniques use a combination of social media and multimedia (things like video, audio, twitter, facebook, youtube, webinars, ustream, etc) to give your blog an extra boost.
We’re very proud of this report because it focuses on both the fundamentals of good blogging, but also teaches you how to leverage the current exciting online trends in social and multimedia, which can give your blog a real edge.
You can read Roadmap Report, or listen to it (we provide a free MP3 version too), by downloading your copy after opting in here -
www.becomeablogger.com/roadmap/
If you enjoy the report and like the style of teaching in the ten free videos, then you are a perfect candidate for the Premium version of our program. The training is all done in very clear and easy to follow video demonstrations, so you just have to repeat what we recommend you do.
If you don’t want the stress of figuring out how to build a successful blog, like your hand held throughout the process as we lay out a clear path to follow, and video is your preferred learning method, this is the course for you. There’s nothing else like it.
In the next couple of days I’ll publish some great videos from inside the premium program so you can sample our training, and then on Thursday the program opens.
In the meantime, make sure you study the Roadmap Report today or tomorrow.
Personal Theme Review: A WordPress Theme For Bloggers Who Get Personal
Joel from BlogTechGuy.com is fast becoming one of the best WordPress experts around. He has already reviewed two premium WordPress themes on my blog, so when Kevin Muldoon offered a review copy of his theme, Joel was happy to check it out and then write this review. Here’s what Joel thinks of the “Personal Theme” for WordPress…
What is the Personal Theme?
Personal Theme is brought to us by Kevin Muldoon of Blogging Tips.
Themes that are paid for are often called Premium Themes, and usually offer distinct advantages to free themes available. They may have different color schemes and/or design layouts built in. They usually have an options admin menu that allows you to add, remove or change features of the theme without the need for any HTML, CSS or PHP knowledge.
As the theme author is getting paid for their work they will often spend more time fixing any errors or problems that get reported with their theme, there is often documentation, and in a lot of cases support forums in case you get stuck or need to solve a difficult layout problem.
Some free themes are well supported and have similar features to some premium themes (Atahualpa and Thematic come to mind) and there are many free and premium themes available, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, so let’s take a look at what makes this theme unique.
What Is Under The Hood?
This WordPress theme was designed specifically for personal blogs and comes with 10 color schemes to choose from, though users can easily change the background image or background color.
Installation is a straightforward as possible for a premium theme. It can be done by uploading the zip file in your WordPress dashboard via Plugins > Add new, or you can unzip into a folder and upload to your wp-content/themes folder via FTP if you prefer. You don’t need to do anything further besides activating it, no file permissions need to be messed with.
Personal Theme comes with an admin options area in which you can do many things. This short video I put together for you below will take you through most of these options, so watch it now for the details…
Headway Theme Review – This Makes Changing Your Blog Design Easy
This is a review of the Headway WordPress theme, written by Joel Williams from BlogTechGuy.com.
Joel is the person I refer to the most when people need technical changes done to their WordPress blogs. Given Joel’s strong knowledge of the WordPress platform he’s perfect to review this premium theme.
Note this post contains affiliate links, so when you buy the Headway theme after clicking a link in this article, you are passing a commission on to us, so thank you. Joel of course remained as unbiased as possible while writing this review despite the potential to retire young thanks to massive affiliate payouts 
. Over to Joel…
What Is Headway?
Headway is the new kid on the block in the world of premium (aka paid-for) WordPress themes.
It’s different to a lot of other premium themes in that it attempts to do away with themes only being customizable by designers or coders, and provide a theme that can be altered quickly and easily by just about anyone.
