Big Manta » Blogging

Using the 80-20 Rule to Maximize Your Productivity & Income

BigManta — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:35:49 +0000

Working on things that produce the highest returns in terms of productivity and income is vital to the rate at which you grow online. You may have heard of the “Pareto Principle” (often referred to as the 80-20 rule) and why you should be applying it to the way you tackle projects and your overall business.

What is the 80-20 rule?

The 80-20 rule as it applies to being successful - simply states that 80% of the results arise from 20% of the effort. It’s not exact, but you will find your numbers to very often correlate with the 80-20 rule.

80% of your income will come from 20% of your work
80% of your complaints are from 20% of your customers
80% of your time is spent on 20% of your projects

As you can see, many of these numbers will probably ring true for you in several facets of your work. Whether you’re writing, selling, marketing, or providing customer service, understanding this principle and applying it to achieve maximum results is crucial to your success.

How can the 80-20 rule help me?

You can maximize both your income and productivity by understanding how the principle affects your everyday actions and results. We often get caught in the trap of spending the majority of our time on things that tend to have very little impact overall on the results we get – when we should be spending our time on the 20% of things that produce 80% of our income or the headway we make.

Once you have identified your core/key areas that provide the most return, you need to then start focusing on those as much as possible. In addition to simply revenue or income numbers – you can look at:

Customer service
Income and revenue
Marketing and advertising
Content creation
Promotion of your services
Time spent on graphic design

The list can really go on and on. When you are working, think about whether or not it’s worth the time and effort to spend 3-4 hours working on a footer design that really won’t enhance or build upon your current offerings. However, it may be worth it to spend a week on product pricing because it can have a huge impact on your business.

I tend to focus on the things that can provide immediate or long-term results relative to their time commitments. The key is to identify the most profitable and results-producing parts of what you do and pour your energy into those things.

Adapting the mindset

Probably the hardest thing about integrating the 80-20 Rule into your daily routine is making it a habit to continuously focus on the things that provide the largest return. While there will be some aspects that you may not enjoy about some of the things that you know you need to focus on (but you don’t really want to) – it will help propel your business, productivity, and income – very rapidly.

Trackbacks & Pingbacks Explained: What They Are and How They Work

BigManta — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:00:59 +0000

Trackbacks (often referred to as “pingbacks”) are a method that most major blogging platforms use to notify other blogs when they have been linked to from another site. In simplest terms trackbacks enable content creators to notify other sites when they have linked to them – a way of kind of cross-referencing blogs and sites.

How do trackbacks work?

If you are using WordPress or another popular blogging platform like Movable Type, trackbacks are built-in and automatically notify other sites and blog when you link to them. If the site or blog that you link to has trackbacks enabled, you will then see a link on their site (often with some surrounding text displayed to give context). You don’t need to do anything other than link to the article, page, or post, and WordPress or your blog program should handle the rest.

Here’s an illustration of how trackbacks work:

Why use trackbacks?

Trackbacks are excellent to notify other people that you have linked to their content. In addition to acknowledging your linking to others – trackbacks are an excellent way to help cross-reference different sites and blogs.

How to enable trackbacks in WordPress

In order to automatically enable trackbacks when you link to someone (or be notified when someone links to you) simply:

Under the “Settings” section in WordPress select “Discussion”
Make sure the first two options are selected:
- Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article (slows down posting.) Make sure it has a check mark in the box
- Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.) Make sure it has a check mark in the box
You’re finished – pretty simple

Cross-Selling Your Content With Related Posts & Pages

BigManta — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:00:47 +0000

An excellent way to market services, products, or articles on your site or blog is to display related content on your posts or pages. Often referred to as cross-selling – you are providing your site visitors with information or products that are (hopefully) something they might be interested in learning more about. Since you already have them on your site, the goal is to get them to stay longer, dig deeper, and become more connected and informed with what you offer.

Whether you are promoting content or products, cross-selling or cross-promotion can be invaluable to your visitors.

How to Cross-Sell

There are a couple different ways that you can cross-sell on your site or blog:

WordPress

If you use WordPress to power your site or blog, then you are in luck. There are several plugins that will automatically display related posts and pages on your site. Here on BigManta, I use this strategy to provide useful information to my visitors as well as show off content that they might not have otherwise found. The plugin I use is called Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) – and use it on several of my other sites as well. YARPP automatically combs through your content to find posts that are relevant to each other, it then displays a list of links at the bottom of your post.
Manual Linking

Whether you run on WordPress or not, manually linking items that are mentioned in your pages are an excellent way to bring value to your content. Simply choose words or display a list of related pages that are linked at the end of your page of content – and you will see immediate results.

Great for affiliate marketing

A great way to convert people into buying is also by using text links to promote affiliate products. If you’re interested in increasing conversions (and making more money), you can check out my post on how to maximize your earnings here: Using Contextual Links to Boost Your Affiliate Marketing Income

A Case Study on Guest Posting: The Results & Stats

BigManta — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:30:58 +0000

Guest posting is new to me. I have always simply created the content on my own site or blog and promoted it myself. However, after doing some reading about the potential benefits and upsides – I decided to give it a shot. The results so far are extremely promising and as a result – I am sure that I will do guest posts in the future.

I wanted to share my results so far from my guest post on Dumb Little Man with the article I wrote: 7 Free or Cheap Ways to Effectively Promote Your Business Online

What is guest posting?

Guest posting is when you write an article or post for another site or blog. It not only gives the blog owner content for their site, but allows you to fuel the growth for your own site by driving traffic and creating awareness about who you are by exposing your content to their readers.

Choosing a site or blog

While there are many sites that accept guest posts, I wanted to choose one that had a large audience to help bring exposure as much as possible to my site. Since BigManta.com is only a little over a month old, any exposure or awareness I can create at this stage can be extremely beneficial and helpful to gaining readers, subscribers, and visitors. After looking at various sites I decided to choose one that I felt could reach a large number of people and one that related to my topic of becoming successful online. My researching led me to Dumb Little Man (because of the reasons I just mentioned).

Writing your post or article

The next step was to determine what type of article to write and submit to the site. Dumb Little Man writes about a variety of different topics and is a site that provides useful tips on how to improve your life. Since the readers are so diverse in their interests I needed to write something that had wide appeal but was still relevant to my site’s topic.

This led me to the idea of writing an article about cheap or free ways businesses can promote themselves online. There is a wide audience for this topic because whether you own a business or you work at one (a huge audience) the tips can be helpful. Everyone always wants to save money advertising – so the appeal of “Free or Cheap” helped to gain a wider audience. Had it been “7 Ways to Advertise your Business Online for Under $1,000″ – the audience and appeal would have been much smaller.

My next step was to write the article -which took about two hours from start to finish. I then emailed my article along with a quick little introduction of who I was and asked if there was anything I need to do from there. After receiving a response back with a few revisions to the article – I was told it was going to be posted!

Now it was a matter of simply waiting for it to be posted.

Roughly a week later – I saw that my guest post was published

The results of my guest post: Facts, figures & numbers

I want to share the immediate results that were due to the guest post:

RSS Subscribers – I picked up a few RSS subscribers (5-10) during the first day. This is not something that is too surprising because I believe subscribers sign up on sites where connections have been made or established (and this site is still very much in its infancy)
Newsletter Subscribers – This one was actually surprising, I saw about 10-20 additional newsletter subscribers and several more have signed up as I write this.
Visits - In the article, there was only one link back to my site in the author box at the end of the article. Although it was not displayed prominently, it drove about 20 visitors to the site and has already sent another 15 today.
Twitter - For me, this is one of the most uplifting and encouraging signs that my content does interest other people. As of this writing, my guest post has already been ReTweeted almost 200 times! This lets me know that my content is interesting and helpful – and the perseverance will be worth it.

Would I do it again?

After seeing these results, I would definitely do more guest posts. What is surprising is that the second day seemed to have more interaction and will drive more visits and subscribers than the first. There will also be the residual effects of the guest post for many months and years to come.

If you’re beginning to blog or even have an established site, I think that guest posting can help you really distribute your content and exposure your name to people who may not have heard of you before.

Useful resources and links

If you’re interested in learning more about guest posting, you may want to check these resources out:

What are your thoughts or experiences, or do you have any questions?

If you have guest posted it would be great to share with others your experience so they can learn further as well, simply leave a comment below. Or if you have any questions, please feel free to ask

Big Manta’s Guest Post on Dumb Little Man

BigManta — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:50:57 +0000

I just wanted to let everyone know that I wrote a guest post that was released today on Dumb Little Man, so be sure to check it out and let me know what you think!

This was actually my very first time writing an article or guest posting on a site or blog other than my own so I would appreciate everyone’s input. You can check out the article here: 7 Free or Cheap Ways to Effectively Promote Your Business Online

Tomorrow I’ll be diving into somewhat of a case study and overview that covers my first experience with a guest post to hopefully give you some insight on the process and what results to expect.

Creating The Perfect Business Card: The Essential Elements

BigManta — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:43:13 +0000

I’m sure there have been times when you have given (or been given) a business card and had to scratch out the old phone number, scribble a new email address, or add your website address because you forgot to include it. I know – I’ve been there and it’s frustrating and a tad embarrassing to have to take a minute to update your information on your card.

Sometimes, we simply overlook something or forget to add something that we wanted. In these instances you then have to go reprint your business cards with the updated information, spend more of your money to have them printed, and sometimes (aaarrgghh) something changes on the brand new cards you just printed… and you’re off to the printer again. It can be a vicious process, but if you plan ahead – you can sidestep some of the major problems that arise.

To help any of you getting ready to print your first (or next) set of business cards, I’ve put together a quick checklist so you can be sure to include all of the ways someone can contact you if they need to and the information you might want on your business cards. I want to note that you should only include information or contact methods that you actually use and try to keep it simple as the goal of a business card is to give people a way to easily contact you.

The Essential Elements of a Business Card

Below are a list of the things that you may want to include on your business cards:

Your logo
Your name
Your company
Your title
Tagline or slogan
Physical address
Website address
Email address
Phone number (local)
Phone number (toll-free)
Fax number
Social Networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
Brief description of what you offer, sell, or do

As you can see, there’s not a whole lot of information that you should (or can) include on your business card. It’s not meant to be a report or brochure and you shouldn’t include everything listed above. Your goal is to give a brief overview of your company and provide someone with the necessary information you would need if they needed to contact you.

Don’t overdo it and stuff every possible bit of information on your card – keep it clean, simple, and professional.

Design Inspiration: The Logos of the 40 Most Popular Blogs

BigManta — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:41:25 +0000

Having a good logo or design can work wonders for your blog. Normally, I have a difficult time trying to decide what type of logo to use and what elements it should incorporate. It often helps to see what others are doing and learning from the leaders in your field – or the most popular companies. In this case, I’ve rounded up the logos of the 50 most popular blogs so you can have a little insight into the designs of some of the world’s most-trafficked sites.

While these are great ways to start getting the wheels spinning – use them simply as a source of inspiration for your logo. You need to be different and creative to set yourself apart from everyone else and give your blog a unique look and brand.

I hope this collection gets your creative juices flowing and inspires you with your own site or blog.

Looking Back on The First 30 Days of Blogging – Stats & Insight for BigManta.com

BigManta — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:11:53 +0000

Today celebrates one month of blogging for BigManta.com! As with many things, the getting started and taking your first steps are the keys to becoming successful. Looking back on the first 30 days I am very pleased with the results and look forward to growing the site further as each day progresses.

Since this blog is about how to make money or grow your business online, I thought sharing my results would help others who might be interested in the types of results to expect when you’re just starting out. After looking through my stats I have found that BigManta.com’s progress so far is similar to other sites or blogs I have started in the past.

An overview of the first 30 days of BigManta.com

While there are many things that tool place during the first month of blogging, I wanted to outline some of the major steps I took to get BigManta.com to its current state:

Purchased a Premium WordPress Theme

This site is powered by WordPress and one of my first steps was to purchase a premium theme in order to give it a professional design. There are dozens of premium theme designers and sites that you can choose from – but I purchased a theme and then modified it to suit my needs.

Set up plugins, social profiles, RSS, and mailing list

I am running about a dozen different plugins that allow me to have various features and functionality on my site that make administrating and managing my content easier, as well as optimizing for SEO and promotion. In addition to the plugins, I also set up a Twitter account, Feedburner (for RSS subscribers), and MailChimp for building a newsletter.

Content & Features

As the first month always tends to be the hardest to push through – I forced myself to push out a lot of content to get started (113 posts in the past month), I may have gone overboard on the content creation – but I’m pleased that the site has a lot of content when people come across it. Also, I integrated two daily features: “Quote of The Day” and “Tip of the Day.”

Looking in my Google Analytics reports, the 5 most popular articles by views are:

Some of the most popular content was a little surprising and it’s interesting to see what people are visiting the site are interested in.

Promotion & Socializing

For promoting BigManta.com I have become somewhat active in a couple internet marketing forums that pertain to the subject that this site revolves around, as well as done about $20 in StumbleUpon advertising (which I will post on later), and have tried to interact with other bloggers and sites in my realm.

BigManta.com by The Numbers

Alright, on to some of the numbers and statistics. Since I am not currently focusing on monetizing the site, we’ll take a look at some of the traffic statistics and other performance indicators.

Visitors - 976
Page Views – 1,781
Referrals from other sites – 568
Search Engines – 231
Direct Traffic – 177
RSS Subscribers – 5
Blog Posts – 113
Comments - 71

Wrapping up the first month

So far, I am extremely pleased with how the site has come along in the first 30 days. As each week and month goes by, the results should get better and better in terms of revenue, visitors, and overall performance of the site. I would like to thank those of you who have helped promote the site and please feel free to tell your friends, subscribe to my RSS feed, or join my newsletter to stay up-to-date.

Going forward there are a few things that I’m working on to enhance the site (a professional logo, enhanced features, etc.), so be sure to check back often!

Additional resources

One of the main reasons I put this post together was to share with others a little insight into what they can achieve in a month’s time. I’ve also collected a few other posts of people that recapped their first month of blogging. Hopefully, with these examples, you can see the type of results that you might be able to achieve in just one month’s time. But please keep in mind that each site and topic is different, so your results can vary wildly compared to mine and other sites:

Let me know what you think, and if you have just started out it would be great to hear how you’re coming along as well. Leave a comment below so that others who have just started a blog might benefit from hearing your results, or if you have any questions – please feel free to ask.

Use Photos in Your Content

BigManta — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:00:25 +0000

An often overlooked strategy that will make your content really stand out is to use photos in your posts or pages. While it does take a little extra time to find an image that works well with your content, the extra effort will bring some life into your writing.

Capitalizing on Successes

BigManta — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:00:53 +0000

Whether you’re an affiliate marketer, blogger, or business owner, one of the keys to growing your income is by capitalizing on the successes that you have. If you find something that is working for you, try to make it better and build off of that success. The idea is very similar to business models built around scalability that allow you to expand rapidly to gain more visitors, revenue, or business.

There’s no success too small

When attempting to capitalize on your successes, there is nothing that is too small. If there is even a glint of hope or promise shown in something that you are doing – you can build upon that to reap larger rewards.

Imagine you ran a promotion that gained you only 5 new RSS subscribers, newsletter signups, or customers. While you might think that this might be too low of a number to spend your time trying to improve – it is exactly these instances that can propel you towards success.

There is one product in particular that I was promoting on one of my sites, that was making a few sales a month. After forcing myself to sit down and put some effort into scaling that success, I now sell 1-5 products every single day with a commission payout of about $20. This isn’t a boat load of money, but it now adds up to an extra $500 – $1,000 per month in passive income.

Even a glimmer of hope can be successful

Sometimes even the tiniest glimmer of something that shows hope is worth trying out. The top affiliate marketers will tell you that with many campaigns, you will lose money in the beginning promoting an offer. However, after tweaking and testing you can turn that offer into a cash-making machine that almost feels like you’re printing money.

You simply need to capitalize on any successes you have – no matter how big or small.