25 Tips You Can Learn From Daniel Scocco

1. Create something you will be proud of

In an interview on Problogger, this was the tip he would ive for bloggers starting out today.

Practically speaking, create value for other people, publish unique and useful content, network with fellow bloggers, give before you ask, and have fun along the way!

The blogosphere is so crowded. It can be really hard to stand out an be remarkable. If you focus on creating something that you are proud of, other interested people will follow.

2, Start with a blog.

Daniel participated in a detailed interview on Income Diary, and was asked what he would recommend to someone wanting to start a membership site. He provided the following answer:

I would recommend him to start with a blog. In order to launch a successful membership site, you need to understand the needs and wants of your market, and a blog is a great tool for that.

Secondly, you also need some authority and a good reach, and again a blog is the easiest way to achieve both.

Once you have authority and an established audience, it will be much easier to launch the membership site. For the matter of fact it will be much easier to launch any kind of project, and that is the beauty of blogs, they give you leverage.

A blog is really useful for launching many products and services. But, if done incorrectly, can actually serve to damage your brand. I will be covering this in a future post.

3. Have regular blogger face-offs

Daniel features regular face-offs between bloggers, and lets the audience vote on who they prefer. This type of post has been replicated successfully across other niches.

4. Make your comments funny

Another tips that Daniel gave was to leave a funny comment. This may not lead to a huge influx of traffic, but may make your comment and link stand out.

5.. Get rid of the monthly archives:

In his post on creating timeless content, Daniel likened the monthly arhcives to the calender widget:

Unless it makes sense for your readers to search blog posts by month (for example if you are blogging about a long journey or about the World Cup) you should avoid using monthly archives.

People rarely read the archives by month. It can be just as simple to click 'previous posts.'  This will free up your sidebar to direct attention to more valuable posts.

6 When blogging about news or current events make sure to add value:

LAter in that post, he recommended you try and make your posts on current events stay relevant:

When you do post something that could not be relevant a couple of months ahead make sure to add some value to it so that a future reader will not lose his time completely by reading it. Value could be added through your opinion on the matter, a deeper analysis, a cross reference and the like.

I agree about this. When people visit your archives, they may get distracted by the articles that are no longer relevant, and will seek the information elsewhere. Not all news articles have to be relevant, but it could be a method of retaining someones attention.

7. Ask for feedback

If  you are curious about what your readers want, why not ask them? Thats what Daniel did with his post, What Topics Do You Want to See Covered on DBT? You can increase the amount of feedback by giving the readers multiple ways to contact you.

8. Add a tweetmeme button

Daniel tested this button, and found it increased his retweests by 100%. It is definitely worth experimenting with on your blog.

9.  Send thank you emails

I try to be very thankful when people help, and that includes sending frequent 'Thank You' emails. So many people appreciate this, especially those that have gone out of their way to help you. You can go a step further by sending a small gift or thank you card if you live in the same country.

10. Write before other online activities

I struggle with procrastination, and Daniels recommendation of blogging first has been really useful. It is extremely tempting to check email and social media sites first, but they can distract you and just create extra tasks.

11.  Be humble

People really respect those who are humble. Have you ignored this trait?

12. Use peoples names in emails and links:

I have read so many tweets, comments and posts from bloggers who have mistakenly been referred to by the wrong name, or have been ignored in a pitch.

If you really want to get someones attention, take care to address them by their correct name. They will really respect this.

13. Use Above The Fold Images

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/10-ways-to-improve-your-readers-experience/

It is often quoted that an image is worth 1000 words. Well, by placing an image “Above the fold” in your blog posts, you can quickly relay to your reader what a particular post is about. They won’t have to read the first 3 paragraphs to know if they are interested or not. If they find your image interesting, they can keep reading, otherwise they can continue on to a different post. I think you will find that if you use images earlier in your posts, you will tend to intrigue more readers.

This tip has been repeated by many bloggers who have since gone on to have awesome careers.

14. Have a functional footer.

Daniel discusses this further in his article,  Create a functional footer for your blog.

15. Offer Email subscriptions.

I initially dismissed this tip - until one of my friends emailed me, asking me to set up an option for email subscriptions. It is definitely worth trying to make your content as accessible as possible.

16.  Write monthly roundups

Monthly roundups have waned in popularity, but it may be a useful way to spark the interest of the casual reader.  You can change this idea by writing weekly, fortnightly or even yearly roundups.

17. Start with the right mindset

Daniel talked about this further in his interview on Inside the Webb.

First of all you need to start with the right mindset, which is: creating a successful blog and making money with is possible, but it will take hard work and it won’t happen overnight. For most people it can take up to two years before they start making signficant money with their websites.

Many others have echoed this statement. They have also said that it can take less than a year to make significant money. However, these people had the right mindset long before they entered the blogosphere.

18. Do Interviews for smaller bloggers

I was very, very impressed when Daniel agreed to be interviewed here. Most of the other interviewees were friends of mine. This tip isn't relevant for all bloggers, can be a great way to build buzz.

19  Use your free content to build a sales funnel.

Daniel discussed this in his Problogger post debating the amount of free content one should put on their blog:

henever you create free and high quality content, and publish it on your blog (or on other blogs and websites), you are both building your credibility and making prospects enter your sales funnel. That is, they are getting in contact with your material and ideas, and over the time they will become more inclined to take that relationship to another level (by purchasing your eBook, for instance).

Many people do this. You can expand on this by creating free information products in return for email addresses, exposure or just links.

20.  Let other people promote you

Daniel expanded on this in his post about letting other people do the talking.

If you are a real expert or guru, other people will do the talking for you. They will let others know the depth of your knowledge or abilities. They will call you with these terms, and the praises will be genuine and valuable.

I have found this happen quite a lot during the launch of my blog. While I've been working, other people have been sharing my content because they genuinely believe in it.

21. Put your ego aside

In a problogger guest post, Daniel wrote a fascinating article about whether to focus on your personal brand or the blog brand. This is an issue that I'm still struggling with, but this post was so helpful.

22. Launches will be crazy

In his interview on Internet Business Path, Daniel spoke about how busy he was during the Online Profits launch:

The main thing that I learned is that any project that deals with hundreds of customers takes a heck lot of work. The launch week was crazy for me, especially because I was handling most of technical aspects like members management and payment issues myself. The tip here is therefore to delegate as much as you can and get help from people.

I have watched so many launches, and even the most organized person has struggled. Delegating wont make the launch easy, but it may reduce a lot of your stress.

23. Use testimonials on your “Subscribe” page

Daniel gave this tip on his post to gain RSS subscribers.

You probably have seen how most product sales pages on the web use testimonials, right? That is because a personal recommendation from a third party goes a long way into convincing a prospect. If that is the case, why not use testimonials to convince people to subscribe to your RSS feed?

Try to get testimonials from people in your targeted readership. See if you can do a favour in order to get one.

24.  Offer category feeds.

Later in the post ,

If you have many categories on your blog, you could offer an RSS feed for each of them individually. This would enable visitors that are interested only in specific topics to subscribe to them and not to the whole blog. At the same time this granularity could increase the overall number of RSS subscribers you have.

This can especially work if you produce a large amount of content.

25. Spending Money on Advertising

In his post detailing 10 brand to brand your blog or website efficiently, Daniel wrote about the benefits of advertising:

It is possible to create a strong brand without spending money on advertising, but paid promotional efforts can certainly make you reach this goal easier and faster.

If you don’t have a big budget, you could consider spending money only during the launch and on the first few months. Use the money to kick start your brand, and after that work with the content and free methods.

I'm not advertising my blog because I have had the time to build the content and explore the free methods. However I agree with Daniel, and will be exploring paid methods of advertising as this blog progresses.