This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a fantastic tool that gathers and organizes the world’s best blog posts). – Darren

While Darren and his family are on a well-deserved holiday, he has lined up enough pre-written content and guest posts to keep ProBlogger readers supplied with plenty of quality reading in his absence. So it makes sense that, this week, we’ll be focusing on the art of the guest post. The most vital thing to remember is that guest posts are a win-win situation for the host blog and guest blogger. Keeping that in mind as you send pitches (or review incoming pitches) will take you far.

Regator has, as always, provided a list of the ten most blogged-about tales of the last seven days, and we’ll use posts about those hot trends to learn about what makes a fantastic guest post:

1. Iraq
Example: A Traveler’s Library’s “Baghdad in War Time”
Lesson: Have a strong understanding of the blog you want to write for. What topics are covered? Who is the audience? What tone is used? Preferably, you’ll pitch your thought to a blog you read regularly, but even if you’re trying to expand your niche by writing for a blog that is new to you, take time to skim posts dating back two to three months to ensure that your thoughts are in line with the blogger’s vision. Pitching an thought or post that is not in keeping with the blog you’re targeting shows a lack of respect for the host blogger’s time. In this example, the guest poster has a history of writing about topics from health and science to environmental news, but this post shows a clear understanding of the tone, theme, and audience of the host blog.

2. Emmy Awards
Example: Plus Size Plum’s “Plus Size Beauty Goes to the Emmys”
Lesson: There are several reasons you might solicit guest posts for your blog: They provide fresh voices and content, allow you to take breaks without leaving your readers hanging, and as this post demonstrates, guest posts can be used to provide a unique point of view. This guest poster wrote about the Emmy Awards from the perspective of an attendee whose spouse was nominated for an Emmy—a vantage point that few, including the host blogger, would have been able to provide.

3. Glenn Beck
Example: Religion in American History’s “Beck Plays Prophet”
Lesson: As a general rule, bloggers do not want recycled content. When you pitch a post or thought, it should be something that has not been published on your blog or any other blog. But as this example demonstrates, there are times when a blog sees fit to use a guest post that has already appeared elsewhere. The vital thing is to be honest and up front about the post’s history. Unless you explicitly state that a post has run elsewhere, most host bloggers will assume you are delivering original content.

4. Apple TV/iPod Touch/Ping [It was such an Apple-heavy week, that I’m combining the three so that they don’t take over the trends list. Apple fever is an epidemic.]
Example: Silicon Alley Insider’s “Apple Just Killed MySpace Even More Dead”
Lesson: When relevant and appropriate, link to other posts on the host blog. It’s excellent for their SEO, it shows the blogger that you are keeping up with the blog, and it’s helpful for readers.

5. Hurricane
Example: Sociological Images’ “Racial Violence in the Aftermath of Katrina”
Lesson: Don’t save your best material for your own blog. Place your all into every guest post. After all, the key word is “guest.” When you’re in your own home, it’s fine to place your feet up on the coffee table if you want, but when you’re a guest in someone else’s home, you should be on your best behaviour and respect the rules of their home.

6. Paris Hilton
Example: Clusterstock’s “Senators Are Pushing To Cut Taxes For Paris Hilton”
Lesson: Once your post is published, your work is not finished. You’ve got two more jobs: 1. Help with promotion. Share the link so the host blogger receives new visitors from your network. Remember the win-win rule. 2. Check back to answer questions and follow up on comments. This example received several negative comments but when the guest poster didn’t return to address them, they got out of hand. It’s the internet, once the negativity starts, it has a terrible habit of snowballing. A simple answer can show that you’re engaged and open to discussion.

7. Afghanistan
Example: The Best Defense’s “How to get kicked out of Afghanistan without really trying — too hard”
Lesson: Before pitching a post or thought, question yourself what you’re offering and how you’re adding to the blog. You should, as always, be solving a problem or providing a solution with your post. This post by a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve offers an insider’s perspective.

8. Ground Zero Mosque
Example: Pagan + Politics’ “Guest Post: Islamophobia”
Lesson: Include a brief bio with your post. If the host blogger wants to write his or her own intro for you, as has been done with this example, he or she will do so, but a brief, well-written bio provided by you may save time on the blogger’s end and will give readers an thought of your expertise and background.

9. Discovery Channel
Example: Watts Up With That?’s “Stop the Hysteria”
Lesson: Stirring controversy in a guest post is risky business, particularly if the host blogger disagrees or the comments get out of hand. As Chris Garrett said in a ProBlogger guest post from 2008: “If you are going to be snarky, hurt your own brand.” This example, but, is opinionated but clearly backs up the host blogger’s opinion. You’ll need a pretty excellent sense of his or her ideologies before you can do that though, so know where you stand before you take the plunge. As always, be sure to take the blog’s tone into account. Darren has fostered a positive, helpful vibe here on ProBlogger so my posts are still very “me,” but tend to be a bit less snarky and opinionated than posts I might do elsewhere.

10. Oil Spill
Example: Naked Capitalism’s “Guest Post: Scientists Say Dispersants May Delay Recovery of the Gulf By Years … Or Decades”
Lesson: In addition to building your reputation and expanding your audience, getting backlinks is one of the main reasons many choose to guest post. This example shows subtle promotion. Don’t go overboard and make the entire guest post about you and your brand. It’s content, not an ad.

Do you accept guest posts? What advice would you give those who wanted to guest on your blog?

For further reading on ProBlogger, check out:

• “How to Guest Post to Promote Your Blog”
• “How to Maximize the Benefits of Guest Posting”
• “Finding New Readers for Your Blog With Guest Posting”
• “9 Ways to Become and Exceptional Guest Poster”
• “How to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog Exponentially”
• “How NOT To Get A Guest Post Published On A Blog”

Kimberly Turner is a cofounder of Regator.com and Regator for iPhone as well as an award-winning print journalist. You can find her on Twitter @kimber_regator.

This Post is from: ProBlogger Blog Tips.

Blogosphere Trends + Guest Posting

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Today I’m continuing with answers to the questions presented to me by my customers and readers. And question we will work with today is equally vital to the blogs of every size because it deals with most vital aspect that determines blog success – Targeted Traffic!

In the image above you can really see the less common variant of problem from a blogger who already gets decent amount of visitors and simply need to expand and continue with the growth. Overcoming traffic plateau is EXTREMELY vital as each and everyone of us will have to deal with it, at one point or another…

How To Overcome Traffic Plateau And Get More Targeted Traffic?

First I want to say – Congratulations!

If you are facing same “problem” as a customer who submitted question above – you have managed to achieve already more then many blogs ever will. 1800 unique visitors per day is nothing to sneeze on and quite an accomplishment! In fact in some niches it might be close to maximum of what you will see, unless you start taking more direction actions…

Step 1 – Evaluate Where Most Of Your Current Traffic Coming From

This will be the most vital step as we need to know exactly What Works for you right now! And in order to get this done – we need some form of Stats Tracking implemented that provides us with honestly detailed information.

I personally prefer and teach my Expert WordPress customers how to integrate Google Analytics, as it is free, simple to add to your blog (just insert their javascript before the </body> closing tag in footer.php) and provides decent level of stats.

If you haven’t been using Google Stats before – you need about a month worth of stats to get more or less accurate picture on where most of your visitors are coming from. Once you identify your traffic sources – go to step 2

Step 2 – Isolate 3 Traffic Sources And Identify What Promotion Associated With It

Time is precious and for us to increase amount of visitors coming to your blog we need to identify which of your promotional efforts or perhaps SEO strategies work right now and concentrate more effort on it.

Implement Rinse And Repeat Strategy!

If something is already working for your blog it only makes sense to do more of the same to get even more traffic. Couple examples could be:

• Search Engines show up as major traffic source but when you look at what content brings most of the traffic you find that you have many posts deliver a bit of traffic each but combined make a large Volume!
  Conclusion – Your SEO Efforts work and each post properly optimized for search engines delivers traffic even though only just a bit each post individually.
  Action Plot – Do a long tale keyword research, write more posts optimized for ranking for long tale ranking.
• eZineArticles.com shows as one of the largest Direct Referrals.
  Conclusion – your article marketing works as designed and article directory delivers you not only the traffic you need but also new loyal readers and blog subscribers.
  Action Plot – Continue your article marketing efforts and simply increase number of articles you submit. If you simply double the number of submitted articles you should effectively double the number of new visitors from that source.

And same principal can be applied to ANY traffic source. All you have to do is Identify The Source, Associate Promotional Effort Responsible for it, Rinse and Repeat but increase intensity!

In my personal experience 80/20 rule applies perfectly to the traffic driving strategies – 20% of your efforts will deliver 80% of your traffic and in this part I simply question that you identify what 20% of your Traffic Driving Effort produce results, cut out the other 80% and then…

Double Your “Proven To Work” Efforts – Double Your Traffic!

Now you still left about 60% of promotional efforts left unused after you cut out what is not working and doubling what does. So lets place this effort into…

Step 3 – Finding New Sources

While strategy above should help you overcome the traffic plateau and effectively get a lot more of visitors, it is based on thought of simply taking advantage of what already works and ignoring the fact that these sources might have their own limits.

Reality is – if you don’t branch out and continue to search for new sources of traffic – you will eventually hit the plateau again. Unique Visitors number might be a lot higher but problem will still be same – luck of growth.

You simply must continue to grow, don’t settle on any single strategy and when you find one that works – add it to your 20% of the “working efforts” and continue to search for new ones. This will obviously be different for each blogger as it will be determined but what you currently do that works. Here are some of the more common:

• SEO
• Article Marketing
• Social Marketing
• Forum Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Blog Marketing
• Link building
• Your own strategy here…

You get the point!

And here is what I have found other bloggers say about Traffic Plateau and How to Overcome It:

• Darren Rowse in 6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It] stated: “While we all want to see our traffic rise the reality is that every blog has days, weeks and even months where traffic levels out or even decreases. This can be quite distressing for bloggers who have huge hopes and dreams for their blogs.”
• Tibi Puiu in Get Your Blog Moving: Break The Plateau! writes – “And just like life a blog will pass through several stages of existence from birth, to its moment of climax, to its inevitable death. During its lifetime, if it’s long enough of course, a blog will fluctuate numerous times on up-down scales and ever so often you’ll find that for a limited time it doesn’t go up, nor does it go down, but just stagnates. This is called a plateau.”
• Daniel Scocco in 4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic shares – “Just make sure to do the 4 steps as plotted and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally)”

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After a tough 2009, the majority of small businesses have high hopes of emerging from the sales doldrums in 2010. Some 86% of small business owners expect 2010 revenues to be equal to or higher than 2009 figures,

according to research firm Ad-Ology. But, despite that glimmer of confidence, most small business owners don’t plot to increase their marketing budgets in the near term. In a February 2010 survey of small business owners called the Merchant Confidence Index, 46% of respondents said they expect their marketing expenditures to remain stable over the next three months, while just 29% expected to increase marketing spend.

Just because you don’t have a lot of extra money to spend on marketing and advertising doesn’t mean you have to sit back and hope for the best in 2010. In fact, there are many free online marketing methods small businesses can use to connect with potential customers. Below are eight proven marketing strategies you can use to boost customer acquisition and increase sales in 2010 – which will cost you only your time.

1. 1.       Make a simple, clean website. There are dozens of self-service website creation services, such as Weebly, BlinkWeb, and Squidoo, which allow non-technical users to make simple, functional sites for free. Your site should include key words about your business so that people looking for your products or services can find you. 

1. List your business on all free directory sites available to you. MerchantCircle, Google Local Business Center, Angie’s List, Yahoo! Local, Yelp, YellowPages.com, SearchLocal, and SuperPages are some of the online business directory services that allow businesses to make a free listing. If the site already lists your business, you can “claim” it by adding more details to the listing, such as your company website URL, a map, phone numbers, or business hours.

1. 3.       Use email to stay in touch with your best clients/customers. You likely already have the email addresses of your best clients or customers, so use them! An email newsletter is a fantastic way to connect with your loyal customers. Make an email that includes a quick update on new products or services, and perhaps a printable coupon or promotional code. You can also add an image, a link to your website or a video you’ve posted on YouTube, or a link to you’re a business directory page that includes lots of positive customer reviews. 

1. 4.       Make business pages on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites. Social networking is here to stay, so your company needs to join the fray. Start by making a Facebook business page and a Twitter account in your company’s name; both are free. If you have video content about your business, make a free “video channel” on YouTube, while B2B companies should also make a LinkedIn profile that details your business profile, lists key contacts, and provides information about your products and services. Make sure to encourage customers to sign up for your pages by printing your Facebook address and Twitter handle on all business materials. 

1. 5.       Get creative with promotions. Everyone likes a bargain, and people are increasingly price sensitive after recently living through one of worst recessions in decades. Try offering different types of promotions: downloadable and printable coupons people can bring into your store or office; online coupon codes redeemable for a one-time discount; a 10%-off coupon for signing up for your email newsletter or Facebook Page; a refer-a-friend discount; or a discount for writing a review of your business on a directory site like Yelp. You can promote these discounts via free or inexpensive advertising options: your email newsletter, in-store banners, Twitter, and Facebook.

1. Search online for all businesses like yours. Use Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other search engines to find similar businesses in your city and in other areas to get a sense for what marketing tricks your competitors are using. Check out their social networking pages and their websites, and try searching for their latest promotions. Sign up for their email newsletters. Armed with this free competitive intelligence, you can see what’s worked for companies you admire, and fine-tune your own marketing strategies to compete with them.

1. 7.       Show your expertise. There are many sites where experts can provide answers to people asking questions about anything under the sun. Yahoo Answers, MerchantCircle Answers, and LinkedIn Answers are some of the most well loved question-and-answer sites. Search all of these sites for questions related to your business or service expertise, and then provide answers to them. Offer thoughtful, expert advice people can really use; that’s fantastic PR for your business in and of itself.

1. 8.       Make some online marketing videos. Most people prefer to 'see' something rather than 'read' something – so make some videos for your business! There are several sites, such as Jivox and Spotzer, where you can make simple marketing videos for free using stock footage, then add your company’s URL, phone number, address, and clickable coupons. You can also shoot marketing videos yourself using an inexpensive hand-held camera, and then polish them with free online editing tools like JayCut. Post your videos on your Facebook Page and on YouTube, and use them on your website and in your email marketing campaigns.

Small business owners are a creative and hard-working bunch, used to doing a lot with few resources. In 2010, take the time to invest in the growth of your business, implementing a few creative marketing strategies that deliver real results in return for just a small elbow grease.

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For the beginner, the blog learning curve can be steep. As well as all the technical and blog visibility issues, there are questions about focus, content types and research, and of course reaching readers.

You’re plugging away, day after day, and getting small in the way of recognisable success. How can you stay motivated during what can be a very trying time? Here are the techniques I use.

1. Do what you like.

Staying motivated is a whole lot simpler when you’re constantly thinking about, and dealing with, the topic you blog about. If you like your topic, you’ll find it simpler to reckon up content thoughts, engage with readers, and establish a warm and welcoming voice that encourages rapport and develops readership.

2. Take it one step at a time.

When you start a blog, it’s simple to be overwhelmed by all the things you feel you should be doing to help it grow. Realise up front that your blog isn’t likely to be an overnight super-success and pace yourself. Instead of focusing on what you haven’t done yet, spend time each week assessing the things you have done, and considering ways to build on those results.

If you’re going to avoid burnout, you need to be kind to yourself. Otherwise, it’s all too simple to tell yourself it’s too hard, you don’t have time, and to give up.

3. Plot, plot, plot.

If you haven’t already, develop a flexible, but clear plot of attack for building up your blog’s content and reach. A focused plot will help you to keep your expectations of yourself in check, and to test and assess the results of what you do.

This kind of periodic review will give you information that you can feed back into your efforts to make each new promotional approach more successful, and helps you avoid the must-do-everything-now, scattergun approach that quickly exhausts even the most motivated blogger.

As you plot, you’ll likely identify some simple wins — things that you expect will be fulfilling or gratifying on some level. Perhaps these are tasks that will pull in a lot of readers, or maybe you just know you’ll really delight in doing them. Try to space these jobs so that when the going gets tough, you know you have a favourite task just around the corner. This can make a huge difference to your motivation over time.

4. Allow for downtime.

Once you’ve got a plot, fit some downtime into it. Make sure you’re not always operating at breakneck speed, or that if you are, it’s only for a small, manageable period. Be sure to build in time out for family and friends, and to be flexible about your schedule.

Above all, let yourself really delight in that time off — don’t spend it guiltily obsessing about all the things you should be doing to build your blog.

5. Realise that everyone has terrible days.

It’s right. Some of us even have terrible weeks! And months. It doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel or that you don’t have what it takes. Of course you have it — the thing is, you need to manage it to get the most out of it. If you have a terrible day, don’t beat yourself up. Accept that this is part of life.

If you feel like giving up, let yourself feel it. Stare your discomfort in the face and see if there isn’t some way you can overcome it, or work around it, and make your blog better in the process. After all, necessity is the mother of invention. Sometimes, it’s the thin end of the wedge that gives us the impetus to innovate solutions that make our blogs — and our work on them — infinitely more enjoyable.

These are the main ways I keep motivated about blogging. What kinds of techniques do you use?

This Post is from: ProBlogger Blog Tips.

Avoid Blogger Burnout: 5 Tips to Save Your Sanity

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Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that as this post goes live I’ll be heading to the airport to head to warmer parts of Australia for a couple of weeks break. The bags are packed, the house sitter has the key, the tickets are bought and most importantly….. the blog is scheduled to keep proving you with fantastic content.

Everytime I go away for a break I’m confronted with the choice of either letting the blog sit idle for a couple of weeks or to work hard for the week or two before going to make sure that content keeps flowing. I’ve never really been able to bring myself to let things stand idle – so this week I’ve worked hard at getting enough posts up and ready to go (across ProBlogger and dPS I have 60 posts scheduled – it was a huge job!).

The vast majority of them are guest posts. While a few of you may be disappointed that you’ll not be hearing from me for a week or two – I really reckon it’s a massive opportunity for the ProBlogger community to hear from some fresh voices on some topics that I would never have come up with myself.

Here’s a screen grab of the upcoming schedule (including a few that already have gone up). Some of them are a small cryptic as I wrote them more for my own benefit and didn’t intend to share this – but hopefully it gives a small insight into how I prepare for a break – I did this for dPS also.

I hope you delight in the next couple of weeks of content here on ProBlogger – having read all the posts I’m sure you will!

This Post is from: ProBlogger Blog Tips.

ProBlogger is in Guest Posting Mode

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Guest Post by Ross Hudgens of Billy.com.

Making money as a freelance content writer isn’t simple. If you aren’t running your own blog or website, turning content into cash can be a hard thing. But there’s opportunity out there – you just have to try a small harder than normal to find it.

One of the best places to look is the Problogger job board. Here, potential employers are looking for people like you – writers serious about their craft, with a strong content-creation skillset that often develops from reading a website like this.

Because of these potential employer’s high standards for Problogger readers, this won’t be the kind of cheap, outsourced content creation you’ll have to scrap up pennies and quarters from – it’ll be real, well-paid writing gigs with some of the best and largest websites and content hubs on the internet.

Of course, with better gigs come higher standards – so you, as a potential applicant, need to spice up your resume and take note of the intimate details that’ll make your application pop.

How I Found a Content Writer on Problogger

My friend at another company recently made a posting for a content writer on Problogger and told me about his success. As a Marketing Manager at a new company with many quality content development needs, I chose to make a posting as well.

Overall, I was rather impressed with the quality of applicant, but what also shocked me were the glaring problems with many of the resumes and cover letters in my inbox. Similarly, I was equally impressed with some of the ways the better applications “stood out” in ways I wouldn’t have previously thought of.

Both of these revelations made me realize the necessity for this post – since I know the plight of a job seeker who often wonders – “Why wasn’t I picked?”—I thought I could help improve your application process in some way, and also, the chances you get picked up as a content writer on your next application go-round.

Common Application Mistakes Writers Make

1. They had zero attention to detail. One of the classic ways to weed out auto-applicants is by using a “use this” subject line. For example, specifically requesting that the applicant include the job description as the subject. Amazingly, by including this simple detail in my job description, I automatically weeded out 15% of the applicants. Similarly, other applications would announce they were using a templated cover letter due to the appearance of two different fonts, or that they had found my application on Craigslist.

C’mon, really?

How can I possibly rely on you to complete a content piece with exact specifications if you can’t do it for a simple, straightforward application?

2. Their application was too bland. Yes, employers are hiring you on your content writing skills, but when I get 200 applications in my inbox for a position that isn’t full-time, it would be an immense waste of effort to scroll through 600 content pieces to find the best writer. I, like most employers, have a sifting process that involves automatically disregarding many of these applications.

If your cover letter was too brief or non-personal, this implies a disinterest in the job. Although you might have been aware of enough to post the “use this” subject line, you were also not with it enough to customize your application to look anything different than 5 million other similar ones that have made their way into employer’s inboxes.

3. Their content samples were not specific to the application. Although you may be a fantastic writer, I would need to be extremely impressed with your prior history to choose you if you had not written about the subject I was asking for. Again, by disregarding many of these applications that don’t have a specificity, potential employers save a lot of the hassle, and to be blunt, being a “fantastic writer” does not mean that you are cut out to write about green technology, fashion, or marine biology. Sorry.

When businesses come to Problogger looking to hire, it’s not because they want to find a generic person who can pump out articles about anything – they want expertise in an area. The cheap, bland kind of content creation can be found elsewhere.

If you’re really interested in a position that makes content green technology, write a sample article about it for submission. That’s the only way you’re going to get hired unless you’ve got a stacked history of making viral, incredible content.

4. They only linked to their own blog. You might be able to write well about stuff you care about, but are you skilled enough to reckon outside the box and also meet the specifications of a certain job description? By linking to just your blog, you’re telling me you don’t have experience writing according to other’s specifications. It’s fantastic that you’re a excellent writer, but there’s more to the job description than that. Ability to follow directions, attention to detail, and domain expertise are all things that can place an average writer far above a excellent one.

5. They lacked effort. Some people just flat out didn’t try, asking for payment information, more job details and etc. before supplying additional details. Don’t waste your time making these kinds of pitches! Employers have to pay $50 to get on the job board, and they do it for a reason – there is a wealth of quality potential writers that read the site. By making this kind of inquiry, you are not only wasting the employer’s time, you are wasting your own.

In this way, applications work like the below graph. At a certain effort level, the chances of being hired are rather low, not because you’re a terrible writer – but because everyone makes that level of effort. Once you’ve hit an imaginary line – somewhere between 10-20 minutes of effort when applying, your chances jump dramatically. Before that, every second added does small to improve your chances.

How to Make Your Application Stand Out

Beyond the failures in the application process, there are also plenty of application “pluses” I stumbled into that made me stop and say “let’s talk”. Getting an interview among 200 applicants is more than just not being terrible – it’s about being really, really excellent too.

1. Make a Customized, PDFed Resume. As a freelance writer, there’s a excellent chance you’re going to be applying for lots of these positions. As such, if applying is something you’re constantly doing, you should take steps towards investing in this process – and that means making an incredible, aesthetically pleasing resume. One applicant sent me a PDF with their work history, a professional photo, and content examples, all in one aesthetically pleasing package. I was immensely impressed with the time and effort they place into this package, even if it wasn’t customized directly for me. Showing an immaculate standard for quality and fantastic presentation is something I want to see reflected in writing, too.

2. Be Creative with the Cover Letter. You’re a content writer, right? This shouldn’t be too hard. If your opening line says “I saw your BLAND JOB position at BUSINESS posted at X and I was extremely impressed”, you’re telling me that yes, you do care enough to change those custom fields in your template, but you’re also telling me that no, you don’t care enough to try any harder.

If you know the company, find some fascinating detail about it and open with it. If you’re lucky enough to know the name of the person you’re applying to, you can go even further to pique their interest. Not only will you likely stroke the ego, you’ll also show you possess the creativity and wherewithal to make quality content.

3. Have content specific to the application. This is straightforward, but the more focused the content is on what the job description questions for, the more likely you are to be seriously considered. The better this content is, the more likely you are to get picked up.

4. Tagging your application e-mail as “High Importance”. This is a minor detail but I found myself opening these e-mails first, and any time you get seen first in a batch of 200 e-mails, that’s a excellent thing. This function doesn’t work in Gmail, but there’s a excellent chance you’re sending your application to a business address – so there’s a high probability they’re using Outlook.

5. Be a fantastic writer – everywhere. Again, a rather straightforward thing, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night not mentioning it. Every piece of text in a content writer’s application is vital, so make sure every bit of it is a direct reflection of your ability to make fantastic content.

If you can’t properly format paragraphs in the cover letter, you’re not getting hired. If your punctuation is shoddy, you’re not getting hired. If your presentation is subpar, you’re not getting hired. You’re a fantastic writer – why not be one all the time?

Get Applying!

Now that you know how to get hired, get to the job board, check out those job descriptions and start applying! If you have any other tales, tips, or suggestions on how to get hired as a content writer, please share them in the comments!

Ross Hudgens is a Marketing Manager at Billy.com. He also blogs over at his personal website, Authentic Marketing. You should follow him on Twitter here.

This Post is from: ProBlogger Blog Tips.

How to Get Hired on the Problogger Job Board

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These days, it has become very hard to get an Adsense account
approval. It was not the case there three to four years back when we
were able to get Adsense account approved with free blogs even made
on blogger.com. So today’ I’m going to suggest 5 tips that will help you
get your Google Adsense account approval very quickly:  

1. Apply with your owned domain

You must have your own domain name when you apply for a publisher
account with Google Adsense. You can see more benefits of having your
own domain name compared to a free domain here.

2. Provide quality content

Always provide quality content on your blog and never thought of
copying content from other websites and blogs as no one likes a copy
paste blog like Google. Also make sure that the content on your blog is
as per the policies of Google Adsense. You should publish 30-40 articles
at least on your blog before applying for Google Adsense. If you apply
with a blog with 3-4 posts only, chances of your Google Adsense account
approval are very low.

3. Domain Age Matters

Domain age also plays a huge role when you reckon of applying for an
account with Google Adsense. You should apply for an Adsense account
with the most well loved and aged blog. Your chances of being accepted into
Google Adsense revenue sharing program gets very high if you apply with
a domain having age greater than 6 months.

4. Excellent traffic blog

Lots of blogs gets rejected because they don’t have any real traffic.
So your blog chance of being accepted into Adsense is rare if the blog
you are applying with does not have decent amount of traffic.

5. Some other issues

You must use a valid email address and name when applying for Adsense
account. With this, your blog should have professional looking theme
and should not contain broken links, page under construction, HTML or
grammatical errors.

Do you thing I missed any key point that one must keep in mind while
applying for an Adsense account, please share in the comments section. 

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