How to Publish Your Blog on Amazon Kindle

This guest post is by Ali Abbas of thenextgenwriter.com.

Have you published your blog on Kindle?

If not, you should do it, pronto! It’s easy, it’s productive and it’s free.

We’re not talking about publishing ebooks or PDFs, but your dynamic and regularly updated blog.

Rather surprisingly, not a lot of bloggers have considered this option hitherto, but some big guns, including The New York Times, PC Magazine, Amazon Daily, Huffington Post, and others—that realize the potential—are already there.

On a positive note, that means less competition for you.

Kindle publishing for blogs has already opened the doors to myriad opportunities for many businesses that have a blog.

Amazingly, all you need to do is invest just five minutes of your precious time. Here’s what you get in return:

Millions of people use Amazon Kindle as their ereader.

So, by publishing on Kindle you’ll pull in people who might never hear about your business otherwise.

As per the International Data Corporation report, Worldwide and U.S. eReader 2012–2016 Forecast, new models of Kindle Fire are more than likely to disrupt the market once again.

So, will people really pay to read your content?

Yes!

There are several reasons, but the main ones are that it costs only 99 cents to subscribe to a blog on Kindle, and it offers added handiness. Obviously, not all the Kindle owners want to be reading ebooks all the time when they can access more vibrant and au fait weblogs.

How on earth can kindle publishing help your SEO? It does not. Apparently, it doesn’t improve your blog’s ranking in SERPs.

But it can raise your profile.

Amazon is an authority even in the eyes of Google, and having your blog there gives you more exposure.

So even if nobody subscribes to your blog via Kindle, you’re getting free publicity and people searching for relevant keywords will surely be tempted to take a look at your blog after seeing it listed on the largest online retailer.

It’s free money. You get 30% of the total price, which is set by Amazon and can be anything between $0.99 and $1.99. So if you get, say, 1000 people to subscribe to your blog via Kindle, and the price is $0.99, you’ll make $297.

It may not be that lucrative for large publications, but it’s still a decent choice for solopreneurs and bloggers who don’t want to clutter their blogs with ads.

Kindle readers are paying to read your content and conversion rates are always higher for paid subscribers.

Unfortunately, the JavaScript and ads are stripped off Kindle-displayed blogs, and only text content, links and images are displayed. So if your Call to Action involves more than just clicking a plain link, make sure you encourage your Kindle subscribers to view the page on another device.

If your blog’s available for Kindle, people will be able to rate it, just like they rate any other product on Amazon.

If your blog features high-quality content (which I am sure it does), this is the easiest, and arguably the most efficient way to get endorsement and feedback.

Ready to get your blog onto the Kindle platform? Great!

Note that this functionality is currently available to the residents of the USA and the UK only.

The standard Amazon account won’t work, so you’ll need to sign up for the Kindle Publishing Account if you don’t already have one.

When you log into your Kindle publishing account, click Add Blog, and fill in the signup form.

Once you’re done adding all the info, hit Generate Blog Preview.

If you get the blog preview, cool. Go to step three!If you get an error as shown in the image below, don’t get teary. Just click the Save button and then hit Return to Dashboard. Here, you’ll see your blog has been saved as a draft. Open it and try again, and this time there will be no error.

Now go ahead and click the Publish button.

Don’t forget to add a screenshot (choose the most appealing page on your blog), as it will be displayed on the Amazon sales page.

At the end of the day, it should look something like this:

You’ll be redirected to a page where you can enter your address, business type etc. and choose the desired payment option. After that, your blog may take 48 to 72 hours to appear on Amazon.

To make a long story short, this is a quick self-publishing tool to help you sell your blog on the Kindle store.

Its working is similar to RSS: your updates are auto-delivered wirelessly to the Kindle and updated throughout the day.

The only difference is that instead of just the headline, your readers can access the full text content plus most images on your blog. Moreover, the updates are downloaded to the Kindle and can be read even when the device is not connected to the internet.

On a 70-30 revenue share, the bossy retailer walks away with the lion’s share and the publisher gets the smaller piece for all his hard work. That sounds cruel, but your blog is available freely on the internet … remember?

The more annoying aspect is that you can neither regulate the price, nor give away your blog subscription for free.

And in addition to the advertising, the useful social networking links for Twitter, Digg, Reddit, and Facebook are also removed> I don’t have much respect for that!

Maybe. Maybe not.

Yes, you can reach out to a sizeable readership through the Amazon Kindle, but don’t expect to make big bucks out of it. However it goes along, it’s a fascinating idea and part of the constant move to mobility.

Do you have any questions or suggestions about Kindle publishing for blogs? Let’s discuss them in the comments.

This guest post is by Ali Abbas. Check out his Blog if you want to: improve your writing skills, land better-paying writing gigs or learn some ‘kinky’ ways to drive traffic to your website. Ali is a young, enthusiastic freelance writer and blogger. Click here to learn more about him.

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Why Twilight has Such a Massive Following—and How to Apply This Concept to Your Blog

This guest post is by Allison Boyer of NMXlive.com.

I’ve never actually met a fan of Twilight.

It’s true. I’ve met people who say they kinda-sorta-maybe like the books, but can’t stand the movie. I’ve met people who say they’re reading the series because they’re curious. I’ve met people who say they just watching the movies for a laugh. But I’ve never met, face-to-face, a hard-core, die-hard Twilight fan.

Yet they exist out there. I see message boards and fan sites brimming with excitement over the latest film or gossip about one of the actors, and when they show snippets of the premiers on the news, there are always lots of screaming fans. So why won’t anyone actually admit to me that they are a huge fan of Twilight?

The answer is exactly why I believe this series has such a massive following in the first place—and it’s an extremely important lesson for any blogger trying to grow a community.

The protagonist of the Twilight story is a teenage girl named Bella who is forced to move to a new town, where she finds that one of her classmates (and all of his siblings) are actually vampires and that her best friend is a werewolf. Two of the vampires fall in love with her, fight over her, and constantly save her from other supernatural beings.

Bella, as a character, is nothing special. And that’s the point.

At some point, we’ve all daydreamed about a hunky man or beautiful woman falling so deeply in love with us that they’re willing to fight off other suitors and even risk their lives on our behalf. We all know what it feels like to deal with unfairness in life, like having to move to a new town. We all know what it feels like to be unsure of our feelings, like Bella is with both potential partners at some point or another. And the supernatural element is just fun. We all have the child inside, who remembers how much fun it is to play pretend.

Bella is an empty shell, so the reader (or viewer) can image being in Bella’s shoes.

That’s why it’s so hard for people to admit liking this series, even if they have every special edition DVD at home. It’s embarrassing to admit that you just want to be like Bella, living in this fantasy world with two hotties fighting over who gets to save you this time.

(Of course, few people actually want that for real, but it’s a fun little escape from life for a few hours.)

This isn’t the only time an empty protagonist, or an “everyman” type of character, has shown up in a book or film. Ishmael in Moby Dick, Winston Smith in 1984, and Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy all have these qualities. It’s a common technique used to help you relate to a specific character.

All of us would love to have a massive following like Twilight, right? So how can we take the concept of an everyman character and bring it to a blog about food or social media or fashion (or whatever your niche may be)?

The answer isn’t an easy one, but the solution is to suck your audience into a story they can relate to, using that to support the thesis of your blog post.

Take this blog post for example. I’m writing about how to build your community, but I started by talking about something everyone knows—Twilight. My first line, about not knowing anyone who actually admits to liking the series, was designed to make you think, “Huh. I don’t either!” or even “Wait, I know someone!”

Either way, you’re internally having a conversation with me and this blog post now, rather than just passively reading a list of tips.

Many bloggers do this extremely well. Check out Elizabeth Potts Weinstein. Read a few posts from Erika Napoletano. Browse the archives of Man Vs. Debt for posts from Adam, Courtney, and Joan.

On all of these blogs, with almost every post, you learn something, but only after they suck you into the story, making your nod your head and completely relate to whatever they’re talking about. Even if you haven’t been in their specific situations, you understand what it feels like.

You can put yourself in their shoes.

And that is the key to make people come back again and again. It’s slow at first. People know they like a post you’ve written, but they aren’t quite sure why. So they read some more and then some more, and soon they are subscribed to your RSS feed and signed up to your mailing list and sharing every post you write with their social media followers.

This is obviously not the only way to build a community on your blog, but if you’re struggling to find your place, think about using this technique on your blog. How can you pull readers into your post by using an everyman story? How can you keep your fans coming back for more by helping them relate to you? How can you entertain and inspire instead of just educate?

For more tips on building a community, check out the “Three Very Unique Ways To Build A Massive Community” panel at New Media Expo (NMX – formerly BlogWorld) in January. It’s a can’t-miss session if you’re looking for new ways to find your fans and keep them coming back for more.

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6 Things “Saved By the Bell” Taught Me About Blogging

This guest post is by Chiara Mazzucco of TheIndieChicks.com.

There are hundreds of thousands of articles written on being a successful blogger and driving traffic to your website or blog .

Bleh.

You can sit down and read each one, leading you to write your first blog post in about 4 years, or you can pick the gems (on sites like ProBlogger) and choose to drive inspiration from the world around you, instead.

Let’s take popular 90s sitcom, Saved by the Bell, for example. Would it blow your mind if I told you that watching just one episode could lead you to become a better blogger? Yup.

Here are six lessons I learned from Zack and the gang.

Screech stood out, without shame.

While thousands of other bloggers, known and unknown, write about the same thing, the only guaranteed way you’ll stand out is if you stay true to who you are and know your voice—without shame.

Start typing, without worrying about grammar, sentence structure and keywords. Thought flow is a unique process and it needs to be respected. If you worry about what others will think, how many sentences should be in a paragraph and whether or not you’re SEO optimizing your text, you’ll never actually write what you’re thinking.

Be unique. Readers appreciate honesty and individuality. Stick out.

Lisa was oh, so stylish.

You need to be blogging about things people actually want to read about.

The first step is to find your niche. The tighter the niche, the easier being trendy will be. Write on a popular topic that people care about, from a different perspective, with your unique voice.

And don’t forget, you pick the trends you want to follow. Don’t write about politics because #election2012 is trending when you know little about the presidential candidates and your blog is focused on Irish bagpipes.

Let’s be honest, Zack was a charming, trouble-making stud—and he was completely irresistible.

You may not be the most confident person at a social gathering, but the beauty of blogging is that it’s done behind a computer screen (and, more recently, any type of tablet or smart phone), which means, you are able to be anyone you please.

The key is to establish yourself as an expert. You want readers to be attracted—smitten, even—and to want to know your every move.

Even if you’re blogging for business, you can portray a sense of charm and confidence that immediately sets you up to be seen, and respected, as an expert in your field.

Remember Kelly and that sweet, snuggle-inducing smile of hers?

There is something to be said about the need for your readers to be comfortable in your home (blog).

Whatever you blog about, welcome your readers with open arms—even if you blog about hating your readers. It’s important you make your website easy to navigate, aesthetically appealing, and user friendly.

End your posts with a question, encouraging your readers to engage, and please, allow comments.

Deep down, we all had a thing for the girl (or boy) next door. Don’t you want your readers to have a thing for you, too?

A.C. Slater was a bit inappropriate… and it worked.

This particular lesson has to be taken with a grain of salt. You don’t have to be sexist to make it work for you—but you do have to be bold.

In order for a post to be a success it has to solve a problem, be controversial or be generally entertaining.

You can’t entertain or trigger controversy if you’re afraid of making a statement.

So be bold. People won’t be able to resist the urge to comment.

Jessie was a pain in the backside, even when she got addicted to caffeine pills. Putting her small indiscretions aside, it’s safe to say that Jessie always knew what she was fighting for, she had the knowledge to back it up and she was always vocal about what she believed in.

These are qualities, in my opinion, that are absolutely crucial to the success as a blogger and I’m grateful Jessie taught me about them.

First of all, being able to write something incredible and have it go live in front of the world without relying on a major newspaper to publish it, is truly a gift that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

The second quality I cannot stress enough is to be educated on the topic you’re discussing. Whether you’re writing about a celebrity love affair or the complicated matters in the Middle East, make sure you have your facts straight … and convey them without spelling or grammar errors.

Does this mean each characteristic has to be vibrant in every single blog post in order to make it a success?

Absolutely not.

Use the popular 90s sitcom to learn your strengths, your weaknesses and what you need to work on as a blogger.

You don’t have to hover over old Saved by the Bell episodes to learn anything new about blogging, either.

Look around you and be inspired. I happen to (shamelessly) love television, so I can tactfully take a CSI episode and learn that a blog post is like a murder mystery; pieces to a puzzle lead to a conclusion that solves a problem. Boom!

Chiara Mazzucco + is CEO and Editor over at TheIndieChicks.com – an online magazine for the badass independent woman – where she devotes her time to inspiring anyone who’ll listen. She wrote a book on dating and relationships, The 9 Mirages of Love: How to Stop Chasing What Doesn’t Exist, and can be found handing out free nuggets of inspiration to new badass subscribers.

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The Value of Comments to a Profit-making Blog

We’ve talked about the issues of blog comments before on Problogger.net, but never from a point of view of profit-making.

Image courtesy stock.xchng user lusi

But as I was looking at the stats on dPS last week, I found that this short, helpful opinion post from 2010 was still attracting a steady stream of readers—and comments. I explained on Google+ why I think that post’s still so popular, but today I wanted to look a bit more closely at how comments can help a profit-making blogger.

So let’s step through some of the ways blog comments can—directly and indirectly—add to your bottom line.

Posts that engage readers are more likely to be shared, which draws more traffic back to those posts. Commenting is a very strong kind of engagement. That lenses post really does stimulate discussion, and at the same time it’s very helpful to those trying to work out which lenses to buy.

So if someone comments on that post, they may also be more likely to share it, which would boost traffic and ad impressions. And if your blog has a “most commented” or “most popular” list in the sidebar, an ongoing comment stream could push the post into that as well, drawing more attention to it from users on other pages of your blog.

Imagine if this post had included affiliate links to actual products. So long as I’d kept the links up to date, I could still be making affiliate revenue from a post we’d published nearly three years ago. Not bad!

This post obviously draws strong attention from my readers. It’s been shared on Facebook nearly 1,000 times, and pinned to Pinterest more than 17,000 times.

This could give me good reason to approach brands that make the types of lenses covered in that post, or mentioned by users in the comments themselves. I could contact them to see if they’re interested in buying paid sponsorship either for that post, or an updated version of it.

The comments on the post are really insightful. Have a read and you’ll get a feel for the experience levels of the users, what brands they prefer, what they’re shooting, how they use their equipment, and so on. They’re also tagged by date, so they provide some insight into the way my audience has evolved over time.

By spending a little time going through these comments, I might easily come up with a couple of ideas for new products to try with my readers.

There’s nothing worse than clicking through from a search result to find the article you’ve chosen is old and outdated.

Comments really do keep your evergreen content fresh and alive. This is a short post, but the scroll bar indicates there’s a lot more on the page. Any new visitor who scrolled down would likely be surprised by the number of comments, and the fact that the discussion is ongoing.

They might be encouraged to comment themselves, or at least to look around the site a bit more. Best-case scenario? They subscribe to the RSS feed or mailing list, prompted by the strong evidence of a passionate readership, as indicated by these comments!

In short, comments:

attract attentionkeep the discussion growingare helpful to other userscan solicit on-site engagement in a range of wayscan excite users to share, driving more traffic to the post.

But there’s a catch: not all comments are good comments—especially for those with a profit focus. So let’s look at the characteristics of comments that will help you achieve the goals we’ve just talked about.

The kinds of comments I want to keep on my posts are those that:

add to the discussion, rather than just repeating the article’s main pointscontribute insight or personal experienceare clearly writtenhave a username, email address, website or avatar attached.

These are the kinds of comments that potential post-sponsors will want to see, as will any advertisers or others who are considering investing marketing budget into your blog.

The kinds of comments I try to catch before they’re published are those which:

criticize without contribution: I love respectful disagreements in comments, because often they’re a great way to learn. But criticism that doesn’t add value is usually pretty unhelpful.aren’t clear, or don’t take the post or author seriously: Again, this doesn’t really add value to the discussion. it certainly won’t inspire potential ad-space buyers about your readership.simply promote their own products: Sometimes, this can be a fine line, but if a commenter simply suggests readers look at his or her own site, and doesn’t add to the discussion in any other way, I tend to send their post to the trash.

On that basis, I don’t necessarily delete comments that:

include offsite linkstalk about other (or the commenter’s own) productscriticize or disagree with the authorare short or informal.

If I did that, the comments could end up feeling fairly stilted and contrived—and that’s not going to encourage further comments over time. But also, the presence of any of those things doesn’t mean the comment’s no good. Each comment really does need to be judged on its own merits, and in the context of the post and other comments that haven been made.

Taken with the post itself, the comments should ideally provide real value that encourages sharing, bookmarking, repeat visits, and more commenting—that’s where the greatest profit potential for comments lies.

Do you treat comments as adding to the overall monetization potential of your blog? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Blogging the Festive Season: The Blogger-Consultant-Speaker [Case Study]

Tara Gentile is a blogger and business strategist whose online presence underpins her thriving consulting business at taragentile.com.

As part of our Blogging the Festive Season series, we asked her how the festive season affects her business and blog.

What does preparing for the festive season mean for your business?

For me, preparing my blog and business for the holidays means preparing for time off. I try to produce extra content to fill blog posts and email updates for sporadic publication but I go easy on myself. If I don’t get the content created, I still rest.

My goal for this season is to clear the way for momentum and inspiration in the New Year. This year, I’ll be taking stock of a few new ventures, including my microbusiness accelerator Kick Start Labs, and setting the stage to hit the ground running with a few new projects which include beta testing a mastermind program and beginning serious work on my book.

I also launched a complete redesign (and refocusing) of the site. Since the holidays are a slow time for me, that gives me leeway in discovering any flaws or missed opportunities.

What usually happens to readership and traffic on your blog over the festive season, and what happens to your consulting and speaking schedules?

Readership and traffic tend to be low during the festive season. That said, sales are often brisk at the end of the year with people making last-minute business expenses before the US accounting year closes. However, the real work doesn’t need to be done till January or February, so I make a point to take about four weeks off between December and January. Why work for work’s sake?

I’ll write, think, and read. But I don’t answer much email, execute programs, or do calls during that time. It’s a chance to recharge my personal and business batteries.

I’ve found that it doesn’t pay to try to change sales trends. Instead, I try to amplify sales trends. If it’s normally dead, then I take time off, regroup, and enjoy the downtime. If it’s a busy time of year, I ramp up my activities and do the work that allows me to take advantage of buying seasons. For this year, that will mean taking lots of time off, but providing a few key offers right at the end of the year.

Plenty of solo operators would be worried about being away from their businesses for so long. Are you worried about missing opportunities in that time?

My customers are doing exactly the same—or at least, I hope they are. I’m not going to send out a lot of content they can’t use at this time of year so what work I do is focused on the future—both mine and theirs.

Future-focused work includes doing research or reading that inspires me to create the kind of work that will serve my customers well in the next year. I’ve noticed that when I take time off at the same time my customers are taking time off, no one really notices my absence!

Sure—consulting and speaking aren’t exactly seasonal purchases. You mentioned key end-of-year offers. Is that how you keep revenue coming in the door during the festive season?

Aside from providing a compelling offer or two at the end of the year for those who are looking for add-on business expenses at the end of the year, I don’t worry about keeping revenue coming in the door.

Just as a family plans big purchases or budgets for daily expenses, it’s important for entrepreneurs to plan their revenue. When you plan for the natural ups and downs, you can feel good about letting your revenue flow naturally instead of trying to force sales when they are difficult to come by.

So, even now, I have a good idea of what my revenue plan for 2013 is. I know what’s launching when and about how much I can expect. Of course, that plan will change and evolve as the year goes. But this way, I know I can feel comfortable about taking the summer off or taking family time in December.

Your site at taragentile.com has been has been going for a while now. How has your approach to preparing for the festive season changed in that time?

I’d say I used to approach each month of the year as if it were the same as any other month. Now, I try to be keenly aware of how each month is different, bringing with it its own challenges and opportunities.

As the years went by and I started noting trends, I could predict what would be important each month: more content vs. less content, more offers vs. less offers, more events vs. less events, and so on. Now I can use that information to effortlessly create a plan for the season months in advance.

Are there any special preparations you’re making for the time you take off?

December 16-January 10 are marked off for family and fun time on my calendar. During that time, I’ll work if inspiration strikes me and I’ll certainly be making reflections on the year past and journalling on the year to come, but I don’t worry too much about making sure my blog keeps going.

There’s little reward in expending energy just for the sake of continuity, especially if no one is paying attention.

My readers have their own work to do and their own families to attend to. I don’t worry that they’ll forget about my site or that the dip in traffic will last forever. We’ll all find our way back into the groove in mid-January.

My only goal is to have great content, new ideas, and a compelling offer waiting for them when they return.

And when you do return in the New Year, what will you be focusing on?

For early 2013, my attention will be split three ways.

First, I’ll be continuing to up the value at Kick Start Labs, a microbusiness accelerator community for entrepreneurs making difference through commerce. We’ll be releasing a new series of practical business learning resources.

Second, I’ll be beginning the next serious stage of work on my book. That means lots of research, interviews, and writing. My favorite things! Finding the time and energy for this project has been difficult to say the least, but it’s work that I enjoy immensely and I’m very excited about who the book will reach and how it will encourage them to take action in the You Economy.

Third, I’ll be beta testing a mastermind program. I’ve spent the last two years really getting clear on my process and how I work with clients. It’s time to put it to the test. The goal of the program is to free business owners from the day-to-day execution of their businesses and create the space that’s necessary to see their businesses from 10,000 feet up.

I’ll first be rolling it out to those who have worked closely with me already and then later in the year, I’ll roll it out publicly.

Sounds interesting! So what’s your advice to other bloggers who sell consulting services alongside their blogs to make the most of the festive season?

Take time off! Recharge! Unless you are coaching or consulting in the wellness industry (the classic New Year’s products), this is an off time of year. Make the most of it. Don’t make appointments with others, only yourself. Mark your calendar with appointments to address difficulties in your business, plans for the new year, or loose ends that need tied. Set aside time for writing, thinking, and research.

But set aside the most time for family fun, quiet evenings, and personal introspection.

Sound advice! Thanks so much to Tara for giving us her insights. If you run a consulting or contracting business that’s supported by your blog, let us know what your festive season plans are in the comment!

Next in the series, we hear the festive season plans of a digital publisher.

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Blog Design for ROI Rule #3: Shower Attention and Appreciation On Your Community

This guest post is by Gab Goldenberg, author of The Advanced SEO Book.

This is part 3 of Problogger’s Blog Design for ROI series. Today we’ll talk about integrating your community into your design. Since a blog is a form of social media, even if—or especially if—it’s a business blog, it only makes sense to design the blog in a way that will maximize interaction.

Let’s address the importance of interaction, though, before we delve into the details of design.

The skeptics amongst you may ask, “What are the benefits?” Heck, giving attention to others may attract trolls and other negative behaviour!

One of the great benefits is that an engaged community promotes your blog, providing word of mouth marketing. This includes social bookmarking and sharing, as well as regular links from your community members’ own sites. So you increase your social and SEO traffic. Plus building community is more enjoyable than manually requesting links and attention…

I could go on, but check out Richard’s post on techniques to measure online communities’ ROI in dollars, or my own on the intangible ROI of social media such as better hiring, partnerships, and more.

There are a number of ways to visually reinforce the importance of community on your blog, and they center around giving your community visual prominence and rewarding (“gamifying”) their behaviour.

One easy way to do this is to use avatars—thumbnail pictures of your members that appear alongside their contributions.

If you accept guest posts, why make your guest authors anonymous? Instead, show their profile picture at the top of the posts they publish on your blog. (We’ll discuss this more in the next article in this series, on post design.) My friends at SEOmoz were some of the first people to do this:

Of course, this idea isn’t limited to post authors—most people comment and they are in fact the bulk of your community, so you should offer avatars to your commenters, as well.

Here’s what you want your blog comments area to look like:

What do you do for people who haven’t provided an avatar?

I’d suggest something generic that reflects your brand, perhaps with the text, “User hasn’t yet uploaded a profile picture.” The idea is that users will realize what they need to do to get the avatar to appear. (Note: avoid using the word “avatar” since not everyone knows what it means. “Profile picture” is clearer.)

SEOmoz gets this partly right by using their logo’s starshape icon, but they omit to specify why that’s appearing instead of human picture like other people’s. It’s a missed opportunity.

It is nonetheless a step up from the generic-and-distracting images provided by certain blog commenting/avatar systems.

Why limit yourself to just showing a person’s photo and name, though?

Since you want to encourage high quality participation, as well as helping people understand why they should visit a particular member’s profile page instead of clicking elsewhere, give your members titles (or “badges”) and display these alongside members’ profiles.

When I was in high school and really into hiphop, I used to frequent a forum, NobodySmiling, that did a good job of this, placing badges (in the shape of various trophies) for various achievements alongside members’ posts. In the screenshot below, you can see an excellent example of a site that recognizes user contributions.

The moderator MetiphOracle has his title, Moderator, displayed as well as multiple stars indicating his veteran-contributor status. Additionally, his post count, win-loss record (in hiphop battles), “Vicious rating” (how frequently other members clicked his Praise or Smite links, a pre-Facebook Like function), and two microphone awards are shown.

It’s also worth highlighting that most of the awards were accessible on the basis of merit—win ten rap battles and you got a bronze mic, for example. This is important, because if the awards are only hierarchical—that is, only one person can hold an award—then it can reduce motivation for newer members.

The site admins realized that this was a very popular feature and quickly added other awards for a variety of achievements.

That being said, being #1 (or in the top five or ten) is also very motivating to senior members—especially so if you make the achievement of that status a contest. That was the idea behind the belts, like the Vet Tourney award in the screenshot above.

You can take the idea even further though, and reward the best collaboration.

The crown award in the screenshot above went to the best crew—the group of rappers who beat other top crews in rap battles.

As someone who competed for (and won!) the crown, I can tell you that my friends and I spent hours talking on instant messenger about how we were going to do it. So the result of this kind of gamification of your community is that its members are no longer dependent on their interaction with you—they’re brought back to your blog repeatedly to interact amongst themselves, and the friendships they build.

You don’t specifically need different images for your reward badges though.

An easy way to start is to have some kind of general-purpose image on which you can overlay people’s titles. Below, SEOmoz have a gold-colour ribbon that appears below members’ answers in SEOmoz’s Q&A forum.

A simple way to do this without a lot of up-front coding work—and to see if you have enough traction in your blog’s readership to warrant the coding work—is to begin with a monthly community contest.

Offer prizes for different forms of interaction—the most comments, the best comment, the best comment by someone who never won before, and so on. Then, you can have a monthly announcement for the winners, and a page where you list current and past winners.

Another thing I recall being rather practical and popular on NobodySmiling—and which is now found everywhere from Skype and MSN messenger to Facebook (though not yet Twitter)—is the list of members online. Essentially, this is an invitation to members to chat or private message with each other.

Where does the “members online now” block belong?

I’d venture to say that it’s becoming conventional to list a similar block—the Facebook Page Likers list—in the sidebar, so it’s probably a good idea to place this here. Using conventions on your blog requires less effort from your visitors.

A further way to help encourage the contact via your blog’s design is to make member contact information readily accessible. You can see this done on SEOmoz member profiles:

Another tool that’s not pictured there is a button that lets members send each other private messages within SEOmoz, similar to the way forum software handles membership interaction.

An even better way to display this is to make the person’s contact information available at the end of all their posts and comments. You can see in the screenshot from NobodySmiling that MetiphOracle’s accounts—MSN and others—were all linked below his posts.

The following excerpt from an Inc. magazine article discusses how popular review site Yelp made a point of inviting its top members to exclusive parties.

This achieved a few things: it rewarded high levels of participation, provided recognition, and helped the members meet each other and interact.

“Without the cash for a national rollout, [Yelp co-founder Jeremy] Stoppelman decided to focus on making Yelp famous locally. With the help of a buzz-marketing guru he hired on a whim, Stoppelman decided to select a few dozen people—the most active reviewers on the site—and throw them an open-bar party. As a joke, he called the group the Yelp Elite Squad.

“[Yelp investor Max] Levchin thought the idea was crazy—”I was like, ‘Holy cr*p: We’re nowhere near profitability; this is ridiculous,’” he says—but 100 people showed up, and traffic to the site began to crawl up. Because the parties were reserved for prolific reviewers, they gave casual users a reason to use the site more and nonusers a reason to join Yelp.

By June 2005, Yelp had 12,000 reviewers, most of them in the Bay Area. In November, Stoppelman went back to the VCs and bagged $5 million from Bessemer Venture Partners. He used the money to throw more parties and to hire party planners—Yelp calls them community managers—in New York, Chicago, and Boston. The company now employs 40 of these people.”

Perhaps the most unique—and clever—form of tying a blog into a community that I’ve seen comes from the comic, Least I Could Do (NSFW Warning: sexual humour and scantily clad cartoon women).

Instead of using a common commenting system like Disqus, Least I Could Do (LICD) gets people to go to the forum to comment on blog posts.

The way the blog and forum are tied together is that blog posts are forum excerpts. In the screenshot below, you see that the Read More link (same as the Comments link) takes you to LICD’s forum.

The advantage of this approach is that forums comfortably hold longer discussions that are typically uncommon on blogs. Also, many of the community-oriented details described in this posts exists by default with forums (including easy member registration, avatars, recognition, member praise and thanks, and contact info links).

The disadvantage is that you need custom code to get your members’ avatars and other details to appear alongside their guest post author credits if you publish guest posts.

Show avatars and usernames alongside contributions: Help people stand out as individuals. The more you do this, the more likely people will be to remember each other, and members will become friendly with one another faster.Visually recognize members:When people achieve certain contribution plateaus, when they get acknowledged by other community members, when they gain seniority, and when they outperform others, let them brag with badges that are visible on their member profiles.Pro tip: Make these badges embeddable on other sites so that members who are proud of their achievements can link back to your site to show off their badges.Encourage members to interact: Provide links to as many contact methods as they want to provide—Skype, MSN, social media profiles, personal sites, and so on. Also, show who’s online at the moment so it’s easy for people to draw their friends’ attention to particular discussions they want others to participate in.
Pro tip: Offer a chat room. It’s old-fashioned, but it works! Before there were live webinars, people had live events in chat rooms.Use forums for comments: Encourage a community to build around your posts by putting the spotlight on members, allowing longer discussions, and more.

What design techniques do you use to recognize and reward your blog’s loyal users? What other ideas have you seen on the web? Share your experiences with us in the comments, and check back next week for the next part in our series!

Gab Goldenberg wrote The Advanced SEO Book—and you can get a free chapter here. Gab and Internet Marketing Ninjas, the folks behind the Blog Design for ROI series here on Problogger, are offering to mail you a free print copy of the Blog Design for ROI guide as a small book. Get your free copy from seoroi.com/blog-design-for-roi/ .

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5 Ways You Can Become A Blogging Philanthropist

This guest post is by Stephen Pepper of Youth Workin’ It

Why should Bill Gates have all the fun?—Al Andrews

There are all sorts of reasons you may own a blog—to enhance your business site, to share ideas, to earn an income, or perhaps you just enjoy writing.

Imagine the impact you could have, though, if you harnessed the power of your blog to make an even bigger difference to mankind by becoming a philanthropist.

This may sound far-fetched, but it’s not at all. Here are five ways you can become a blogging philanthropist.

“How can I be a philanthropist if I have no money?”

This is the question Al Andrews asked himself. Instead of just giving up, he came up with a plan to make money. He’d write a book and donate the profits to projects around the world.

And thus, Improbable Philanthropy was born. His first book, The Boy, The Kite And The Wind, has already raised tens of thousands of dollars that he’s been able to donate to projects that benefit others.

You don’t have to write an illustrated children’s book. Many blogs sell ebooks, so why not write one whose profits you can donate to a charity that’s close to your heart? The readers of your blog will be more likely to buy the book if they know it’s going towards a good cause. And it means you’ll get your ideas out to more people, even if you’re not benefiting monetarily yourself.

Adam McLane and Rachel Rodgers are both bloggers who also own their own businesses. Adam owns McLane Creative, a web development and design company, while Rachel owns Rachel Rodgers Law, a virtual law office.

Both Adam and Rachel offer microfinance loans through Kiva. These loans are used to help alleviate poverty and to enable entrepreneurs around the world to start up their own businesses.

Adam also makes a new loan for every new client he receives—check out some of the beneficiarieshere.

Although Adam and Rachel offer these loans as an extension of their businesses rather than their blogs, that doesn’t have to be the case. How about making a loan every time you receive x number of new email subscribers, or when you hit a benchmark of y extra monthly visitors?

At the 2012 World Domination Summit, Chris Guillebeau gave $100 to every single paid conference attendee.

Why? He was investing the money in the attendees so that they could in turn invest the money themselves, whether that was through community, adventure, or service.

As Chris said, “Freely receive, freely give.”

Don’t worry, I’m not saying you have to give $100 to each of your readers! Instead, you could set aside some money and have your readers decide on how it should be used.

Similarly, you could allocate a certain percentage of each ebook you sell to be donated to different charities. When selling the book, offer the buyers different purchasing links depending on which project they’d like to support.

You may not have any money, but chances are some of your readers do. On his Stuff Christians Like blog, Jon Acuff set out to leverage his readership by raising $30,000 to build a kindergarten in Vietnam. The only thing is, he didn’t raise $30,000.

He raised $60,000. So his readers were able to build two kindergartens!

Set up a fundraiser, ideally for a project that has some kind of link to your blogging niche. This will encourage your readers to support the initiative.

Also, be ambitious! Jon’s readers raised the original $30,000 in just 18 hours, which is why he set a second target that doubled the original amount. Even if you don’t meet your fundraising target, you’ll hopefully raise far more than if you’d set the bar too low.

In addition to Youth Workin’ It, we own a number of other (non-blog) websites. These earn a somewhat modest income of a few hundred dollars a month through AdSense, Amazon Associates and similar affiliate schemes.

As my wife and I both have full-time jobs, this income is a bonus. It therefore means we’re able to use some of this extra money to bless individuals and organizations that we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

Do you earn any revenue through your blog via advertising or affiliate schemes? If so, why not use some or all of this income to make a difference in the lives of others?

There are five ideas on this list. What others can you think of that can help other bloggers become philanthropists? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Stephen Pepper is insurance administrator by day, youth worker & blogger by night. He and his wife run Youth Workin’ It which includes a youth work and youth ministry blog. They also produce their own youth work resources, the most recent of which is 52 Scavenger Hunt Ideas.

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