How to Promote Your Blog on TV for Way Less Than You Think

The idea of advertising a blog on TV is just plain crazy. Right? Well, it used to be. But with the introduction of Google TV, that crazy idea isn’t so crazy anymore. Google TV is part of Google AdWords, and it works much the same way. It’s an auction-based system where you choose the price you want to pay. Obviously, the more you pay, the more people you’re likely to reach. But it’s possible to run an ad on network television for as little as $20 . In the old days (back when I worked as an NBC TV producer), placing TV ads was a big deal. You had to go through individual television stations or hire ad buyers who had special relationships with the networks. But now with Google TV, just about anyone can create and run TV ads that will air on national TV shows. You can search to find TV programs that match your keywords, target people who are likely to want what your blog offers, and you can even see what ad placements deliver the best results and make adjustments to optimize your strategy. Why would you even consider advertising your blog on TV? The average American watches anywhere from 3 to 5 hours of television every day. That means people spend around 13 years of their life in front of the tube. That sounds a bit sad, but one thing the statistics don’t mention is that more and more people, especially bloggers, spend a lot of that time multitasking. They’re sitting on a couch with the TV on and a laptop open. You’ve probably noticed that more and more TV ads show web addresses. That’s because advertisers are finding that television is driving people to websites to buy products or find out more about items of interest. Despite some of the junk, TV is a highly respected medium. It reaches a wide audience. And with more and more cable channels, many shows are now targeted to specific audiences. No matter what your interest, there’s a show about it out there somewhere. Plus, ads on TV are visual and easy to digest. TV ads work for the same reason that video works online. It’s an effortless way for people to take in information. So why wouldn’t you at least experiment with TV ads? If you can target the right audience and get the ad fairly cheap, you might find a great payoff. Then again, like anything else, it might flop. You never know until you try it for yourself. This is a pretty good time to try. Since TV ad buying is down right now, there’s always the chance that your little ad could fill an otherwise empty commercial slot on a major TV show and reach more people than you ever could with the typical promotional tools. How Google TV works There’s a lot more to Google TV than I can explain here, but the process is pretty simple. Log into your Google AdWords account and create your campaign. You select the audience size, set your bid, choose your budget, and select a start and end date. Choose the programs, networks, or times of day you want. If you have a blog about pets, maybe you want to run your ad on Animal Planet. If your blog is about the arts, perhaps you want A&E. Upload your TV commercial just like you would upload any other video. There are specifications to follow, but it’s not rocket science. Track your ads and adjust as needed. You can see where your ads run, the estimated number of people seeing it (called impressions), and other statistics. If all this sounds familiar, it should. It’s almost identical to running a Google AdWords campaign. How to create effective TV ads Okay, you’re a blogger, not a TV producer. So you probably don’t know much about advertising. But let me clue you in on something. A lot of people who create TV ads don’t know squat. So you really can’t go too far wrong if you just follow some simple advice. If you’re going to promote your blog, and you don’t want to spend a fortune, you need to keep your ad simple and direct. No fancy stuff. Your goal is to get people curious enough to go to your blog. So follow this simple formula . . . Get attention. Present a problem. Offer a solution. Direct people to your blog. Let’s say you have a blog on amateur photography. Here’s how you might write a script for a TV ad to get people to your blog. You’d have both visuals and audio, but here’s just the audio portion. Are you an amateur photographer? Are you fed up with blurry photos and poor lighting? Frustrated with those great shots you missed? Now CoolPixBlog.com has released a free report that reveals 101 tricks professional photographers use to snap perfect pictures every time. How to get crisp photos with a cell phone camera. The secret of clear nighttime shots without a tripod. How to be ready and never miss a great picture again. Go to CoolPixBlog.com and download your free report now. That’s CoolPixBlog.com. Pretty simple, huh? Notice how this script follows the formula to get attention (Are you an amateur photographer . . .), present a problem (Are you fed up with blurry photos . . . ), offer a solution (Now CoolPixBlog.com has release a free report . . .) , and direct people to your blog (Go to CoolPixBlog.com . . .). Google TV offers a tool called SpotMixer, where you can use a library of images, audio, and video, or you can upload your own materials. There’s also an Ad Creation Marketplace where you can find producers, actors, voice over professionals, and other resources who can help create your ad, depending on your budget. Frankly, I’d suggest mixing something on your own just for a test. As long as you target your ads and follow that formula I gave you, you don’t need anything fancy to work. If this all still sounds a little crazy, I don’t blame you. But just to show what’s possible, watch this video on Google TV ads to see how a guy who works for Slate.com created a simple ad and ran it on network TV for about $100. And he did it all from his laptop. If you like, you can also visit my copywriting blog for more details on writing TV commercials , specifically direct response commercials. The formula is a little more detailed here, but the idea is similar. If anyone has the guts and initiative to try Google TV, please let me know. I’d love to hear your story. About the Author: Dean Rieck is a recovering NBC TV producer who now writes copy for direct marketing clients coast-to-coast. He shares copywriting tips for smart copywriters like you at Pro Copy Tips .

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Walk Dogs for $105,000 a Year (Or Make a Living Doing What *You* Love)

I recently put out the word that I wanted to interview small business owners for an upcoming project, the Empire Building Kit . These were the criteria: you had to net at least $50,000 a year with two or fewer employees, you had to be willing to talk about money in specific terms, you had to share your biggest mistakes as well as your greatest successes, and you couldn’t be a professional blogger. (Obviously there’s nothing wrong with professional blogging — I just figure that bloggers get enough attention already. Besides, if you want to create a business , there are much easier models.) I heard back from 300 people with all kinds of different backgrounds, but Lisa’s email stood out from the rest. I have a dog-walking business in Minnesota. Can I contribute my story? I’ll be honest: I didn’t think much of it at first. A dog-walker? Shouldn’t we be talking about affiliate marketing, information products, and Facebook ads? Walking dogs around the park for cash isn’t really my thing, so I assumed I’d say no. But then Lisa told me how much money she makes: $88,342 in 2009, and now on track for $105,000 in 2010. That got my attention. She makes six figures as a dog-walker? Wow. Now that’s a story. And in marketing, of course, story is everything. If you can build a real business around something you’re passionate about — in this case, Lisa loves dogs — I think that’s worth some attention. Follow your passion? Yes . . . sort of The thing about following your passion to the bank isn’t so much overrated as it is incomplete. Finding a way to get paid for doing what you love is both feasible and sustainable. The trick is to construct a lifestyle business around something you’re passionate about that other people are willing to spend money on . The difference is crucial: I can be passionate about eating pizza and playing video games, but so far I haven’t found anyone willing to pay me for it. Therefore, I have to orient my business not only around my own interests, but also around what other people are willing to pay for. I built the rest of the Empire Building Kit around conversations and insights from people like Lisa. The photographer, the triathlon coach, the translator, the guy who makes baseball art, the murder mystery host, and so on. You’ve probably never heard of most of them, but they’re doing very well doing something they love. Last month I released the product on board a 44-hour Empire Builder train from Chicago to Portland. It was a huge success, with rave reviews from our inaugural group of emperors — and a freaked out merchant account that wanted to know why so many sales were rolling in. Long story short, today I’m doing it again. It’s for 24-hours only, before I get on a plane and head overseas as part of my quest to visit every country in the world. If you’re interested in joining the inaugural group of new emperors, I’d love to have you on board . All the details The goal of the Empire Building Kit is to help people build a business in one year by doing one thing every day. To that end, I’ve compiled a truckload of resources and hand-holding to make sure that happens. The Kit includes: 15+ Case Studies. From 300 initial respondents, I narrowed it down to more than 15 thriving emperors from at least as many different backgrounds. I asked for their stories, their secrets, what they wish they had known before they started. The case studies come in a variety of formats: video interviews, MP3 files, PDFs, with complete transcripts. So you can get the most out of them no matter what your learning style. 365-step Email Series. You get one mini-lesson today, one tomorrow, and 363 more over the rest of the next year. According to the folks at Aweber, it’s officially the longest follow-up series in their history. The key is: if you do one thing a day, it will be much easier than trying to do everything at once. But you also have to make sure you’re doing the right things, so we help with that too. A 52-step Product Launch checklist. Even if you’re not launching from the “bloggers’ lounge” onboard an Amtrak train, something always goes wrong with a product launch. Use this checklist to avoid big mistakes, and dramatically increase revenue. One step produces an average revenue increase of 30% every launch, no matter the price of the product. Another step ensures you can sleep at night by not screwing up the confirmation emails. And so on. “Show Me the Money” module. All the details from behind the scenes of my own Unconventional Guides business. You’ll learn how much money each product brings in, where I’ve screwed up, where I hit it big, and so on. Ok, so I could go on about all of that for a while. But what you really get is insight and context from people who have successfully cracked the code of following your passion. They all talk about money, they are all extremely candid, and they’re all real people doing fun things while getting paid. Care to join Lisa and the rest of us? You can find out all about it right here , but it’s only available for 24 hours, ending Wednesday morning at 9am Pacific Time . And if it’s not a good fit for you, of course, that’s fine too. Most importantly, I hope your business is as enjoyable as Lisa’s — and as enjoyable as mine. About the Author: Chris Guillebeau travels the world and writes for a small army of remarkable people at chrisguillebeau.com . Follow his live updates from every country in the world at twitter.com/chrisguillebeau .

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Johnny’s Copyblogger Wrap-Up: Week of May 3, 2010

Earlier this week, I was driving down the road with my family and we saw this chicken on the berm. Suddenly, I realized that it was about to cross the road. I had an opportunity to answer one of mankind’s biggest quandaries, like the time I planted those cameras in the forest to see what happens when a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it. “Why do you think that chicken is crossing the road?” I asked my wife, Robin. “I want to go back and see what he’s up to.” “You’re going to hit that mailbox,” Robin said. So I swerved, and in the ensuing confusion, I forgot all about the chicken. So yes, I blew our chance… but I think I know the answer. He probably dropped his iPhone on the other side, and was crossing so he could catch up on this week’s Copyblogger posts. This one is for all you metaphysical chickens out there with lost smartphones. Here’s what happened: Monday: 17 Easy Steps to Brilliant Blog Posts I like what Jill Chivers did here with this post, because sometimes we’ll see “3 keys for this” or “5 ways to do this,” but rarely do we venture above 10. (Unless it’s a “101 ways” post, but that’s as cliched as ending the price of your product in a 7 — something I would never, ever, ever do, except for last week.) So we don’t just get a chincy 5 or 6 steps to brilliant blog posts here. We’ve got SEVENTEEN steps. Seventeen juicy ways to make your posts sparkle and sizzle. And this isn’t Ivory Tower gospel either, coming from some jaded old blogger who lives in Texas and is into Mitch Hedberg and William Gibson. It’s coming from a gal who is a student of blogging, learning as she goes. Which makes it even more useful. Speaking of seventeen, remember that Winger song called “Seventeen”? It went like, Her daddy says she’s too young… but she’s old enough for me! I wonder if those guys are out of prison yet. Read the full post here . Monday, part deux: Gravity Forms Review: Powerful WordPress Forms Made Simple No joke here… Gravity Forms provides the quickest, easiest, and most powerful to collect all sorts of information on your WordPress site. You can even enable people to submit guest posts and create user-generated content for your site. But what you really need to know if that until the end of Sunday, May 9, 2010, you can use the super-secret code contained in Brian’s review and get 1) 25% off, 2) lifetime support, and 3) lifetime updates. Hurry up and read the review here before the joke’s on you for missing this deal. Tuesday: The Myth of Beautiful Website Design Aaaaaaand it’s official: With one little blog post, Pamela Wilson has totally squashed my plan to remove all substance from my business and bluff my way to billionnairehood by filling my site with lollipops and rainbows. Thanks a lot, Pamela. Ever hear the old expression “You can’t put makeup on a pig, because pigs don’t like it and doing so will make PETA put pipe bombs under your hot dog carts”? Yeah, me either. But you should probably fix your offer and improve your content before you focus on finding a web font that truly completes you. Read the full post here . Wednesday: Why You Shouldn’t Write for Other Writers First, I write about personality marketing for tailors here on Copyblogger. Then I get a call from bespoke tailor Martin Stall in Spain, who makes beautiful suits and wants my help to attract buyers. And now Hugh McLeod is on Copyblogger, writing about tailors who blog in order to sell suits. Hugh’s point is simple: Are you writing for other writers, or are you writing for the people who will buy your stuff? Because writing to impress creative directors probably isn’t going to get you any more money. It’ll just get you more enmeshed with the tailoring industry. If you want to actually sell more stuff, you definitely need to read this one. Just don’t try to become yet another blogging tailor. The market is apparently totally saturated. Read the full post here . Thursday: How to Sell Without a Sales Pitch This post by James Chartrand is a “must” for Third Tribe marketers . Remember, sales isn’t about pushing a product so much as it’s about matching a problem with a solution. Raising awareness of that problem and solution is a great way to sell without pushing, and James has tips on how to do that. And actually, the kids in the lemonade stand at the top of this post are very Third Tribe. They’re doing it right. They’re selling a solution to the problem of thirst, while relieving the inherent guilt that comes with snubbing cute little kids on a hot day. Smart marketing, boys. I just hope they don’t get complacent, because that’s the way for any Mom and Pop shop to get subverted by Big Lemonade. They should dress it up a little. Those kids could go far if they were decked out like ZZ Top and had those hot chicks from the videos leaning against the stand. I’d pay a dollar to see that. Read the full post here . Friday: Beyond Motivation: Getting to What Really Drives You I was just thinking about this concept today. I totally believe that the #1 key to success is persistence , and the truth is that you’ll persist automatically if you’re motivated enough, and if you don’t just fold under the pressure. This post by Steve Errey is all about how to find your motivation and keep it stoked. (And by the way, that’s “stoked” like how you’d “stoke” a fire — i.e. prodding it and adding wood to keep it burning. I’m not talking about how a kid outside of 7-11 might talk about being “stoked” to skate the half pipe later… which actually doesn’t make sense because said excited skaters are seldom on fire. Although that would make for a totally rad trick now that I think about it.) Anyway, Steve Errey has packed this post with ways to stay motivated, and therefore persist, and therefore succeed, and therefore end up living in Hawaii with bikini girls. Or Spandex guys. Or many, many squirrels. But never gnomes. Read the full post here . About the Author: Johnny B. Truant has a dumb blog at JohnnyBTruant.com and is one of the guys behind Question the Rules . You should also really check out his Jam Sessions with Charlie Gilkey, because they’re filled with tasty informational nuggets that will make your business better.

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Johnny’s Copyblogger Wrap-Up: Week of May 3, 2010

Gravity Forms Review: Powerful WordPress Forms Made Simple

People ask me all the time for recommendations on premium WordPress plugins, and I often have nothing to say. With people like Chris Pearson, Sean Jackson, and Tony Clark as partners, if we want WordPress to do something it doesn’t, we build it. Many times the things we build for ourselves end up becoming products and services for you, like Thesis , Scribe and the upcoming Premise . If we have a need for it, we figure odds are you do, too. Luckily, the premium WordPress market has matured to the point that excellent developers are building things we happily buy rather than build. Gravity Forms from Carl Hancock of Rocket Genius is one such product, and that’s why I’m doing my first ever WordPress plugin review for you – I’m that impressed. What is Gravity Forms? In their own words: Gravity Forms for WordPress is a full featured contact form plugin that features a drag and drop interface, advanced notification routing, lead capture, conditional logic fields and the ability to create posts from external forms. Got that? How about once more in English? Basically, Gravity Forms is software that makes WordPress way better by allowing you to empower people to send you any sort of information, and even publish directly on your site in certain circumstances. The plugin adds a “Forms” section to the left sidebar of your WordPress admin area, from which you can quickly access the multitude of things Gravity Forms allows you to do. Let’s look at four of those things: Contact and Support Forms The most basic use of Gravity Forms is your general contact form, which just about every WordPress site has some form of. Whatever the reason people need to get in touch, Gravity Forms makes it easy. But it’s the versatility of what you can do in terms of contact and support forms that makes even this seemingly mundane use of forms exciting. You can create any variety of form, collect any array of data, allow for file uploads, set up notifications to route to different email addresses based on rules you define, and place the form on any page or post at the click of a new button that shows in your posting interface. So think about it. Instead of a lead generation call to action that requires the click of a link to reach a form (2 steps), you place the form itself at the bottom of the post. Conversions go up when the number of steps go down. Plus you can include hidden fields that transmit data like IP address, use conditional form fields that appear only if the preceding responses are a certain value, dynamic pre-population of form fields, and lot of other stuff that opens a world of possibilities beyond the boring old contact form. Surveys and Polling That versatility goes way beyond contact and support forms. Gravity Forms allows you to quickly build surveys and reader polls with open-ended text fields, drop down menus, checkboxes, numerical fields, and multiple-choice questions. You can create lengthy reader survey forms in minutes that provide feedback on a regular basis. Even cooler is simply popping in a quick multiple-choice poll at the bottom of your post for instant data in a format that in many cases will be more useful than free form blog comments. And don’t forget the conditional form fields. If someone chooses a certain option from a drop down or multiple-choice question, you can then ask follow-up questions based only on that response. Pretty cool functionality that you usually have to buy separate survey software to get. Guest Post Submission Guest posting is one of the best methods of building quality back links for bloggers and other content creators. The win for the publisher, of course, is additional quality content from other sources, but it can become a management pain to keep up with the submitted content, much less format it and post it. With Gravity Forms, you can create a guest post submission page that allows regular and prospective guest writers to “post” outside of your WordPress admin area. You create a form that contains all the regular post fields (title, image, body, excerpt, category… you can allow all or just the areas you want), and the content submission become a draft post inside WordPress. You get instant guest content organization while also reducing the normal workload that accepting guest posts involves. For many busy bloggers, this feature is worth the price of admission alone. User-Generated Content Okay, here’s where things get really interesting. Using the exact same functions that allow you to accept guest posts, you can allow user-generated content on your site that goes way beyond comments. Or you can build a review, Q&A, or wiki-style site using nothing more than WordPress. This is an amazing site-building breakthrough in my opinion. For example, using Thesis and Gravity Forms, you could build a local hotel review website without writing a single line of code. The layout of the site and the user posting mechanism would all be built point-and-click, drag-and-drop from inside your WordPress interface. Time to kick your imagination into high gear. And Gravity Forms allows you to do much more than what I’ve highlighted in this review. Lifetime Support and 25% Off I bought Gravity Forms with my own money for my own personal use, with no intention of promoting it. As soon as I understood how powerful it was, however, I asked Carl Hancock if we could become a marketing partner. Carl said sure, but he also told me that they were changing their support offer as of April 1, 2010. The original deal was Gravity Forms came with lifetime support at no extra charge, but they were changing to an offer that limited the initial support period to a year, beyond which you’d have to pay more to continue to get support. I asked Carl if he would consider extending the deadline to May 1st so I could get you all in on the better deal. Carl again said sure. Then because I’m a slacker busy person, I missed the May 1 deadline too… and had to plead for another extension. Carl not only said sure once again, he threw in a 25% discount for Copyblogger readers who use a special promo code. So here’s what you do: Go to the Gravity Forms website and explore all the features and details. Select the plan that’s right for you – the 1-site, 5-site, or Developer option. Use the promo code LIFETIME when you check out. Get this done before May 8, 2010, or the deal goes bye bye. Do a happy dance. Seriously, I think you’ll get a lot of value out of Gravity Forms . About the Author : Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and wants you to know that Thesis + Scribe = SEO Made Simple. Get more from Brian on Twitter .

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Question the Rules to Create a More Remarkable Business (and Life)

Every once in awhile, someone asks me why I have pink hair. (You ever notice that no one asks why anyone has blonde hair, or red hair? But pink, it seems, requires a good reason.) There are a lot of ways I could answer that question, but the simplest is probably that I don’t really buy into the standard set of rules about what “success” or “professionalism” look like. As it turns out, there are a lot of things I don’t buy into. I don’t buy into the idea that the best way for me to make a living is to work in a box from nine to five every day. Even a really nice box. I notice that Brian didn’t buy the notion that being a lawyer (which he had put a lot of years and dollars into) was a wiser career choice than starting some blog about copywriting and social media. And come to think of it, from hearing Darren Rowse’s story, I understand that his wife didn’t think that his notion to do that problogging stuff, whatever that was, would be anywhere near as logical as getting a nice steady job at a gas station. If you spend enough time around entrepreneurs, you’ll quickly begin to realize that the vast majority are . . . (hm, searching for the polite word, here) eccentric in some way. (OK, let’s tell the truth. A lot of us are basically nuts) But even if you find one person who seems totally normal, you can bet that she made at least one giant, ridiculous decision in her past that seemed crazy at the time, but ended up getting her to the great place she is today. I have pink hair because I like the way it looks, because it makes my kid smile, and because I happen to rather like tweaking ordinary expectations. But here’s the important part: What I do with my hair doesn’t matter at all. But if I lived a mousy-brown life — where I did all the things we expect of a “normal” person — I wouldn’t be as successful or as happy as I am today. Entrepreneurs question the rules The nonconformist thing is on my mind because I’ve been trading email lately with one of our regular writers, Johnny B. Truant. You might have seen that Johnny has partnered with filmmaker and Huffington Post writer Lee Stranahan to create a course called Question the Rules . Their tagline is: The nonconformist’s punk rock, DIY, nuts-and-bolts guide to creating the business and life you really want, starting with what you already have . Basically, if you’re starting your own business, you’re breaking a rule. (That’s true whether or not you keep your day job.) It’s a big rule, too — the one that says: Other people should be in charge of how much money I make, how hard I work, and what I should work on. When I went out on my own, everyone praised me for being such a risk-taker. Including all the people who were out of a job after an ugly round of layoffs, and who were answering those monster.com ads with an increasing sense of desperation. I had a different rule: No one will ever care as much about my financial security, or will work as hard to improve it, as I do. To me, it was risky to stay with that day job. But to a lot of my more “normal” colleagues, my decision made me look like a downright daredevil. All entrepreneurs are punk rock That’s how Johnny puts it, anyway. I just use the word “nuts.” Entrepreneurs are nonconformists, whether we’ve realized it and embraced it or not. We challenge a lot of rules and norms that are very deeply engrained in this culture. The problem is that a lot of people who decide to start their own business just know that “normal” isn’t working for them. They know what they’re not , but not really what they are . They don’t really own their punk rock nature (quite possibly because they have no interest at all in dyeing their hair pink). So they end up like feeling fish out of water. Which is not, of course, a nice feeling at all. They’re rule-questioners, but they live surrounded by rule-followers. They know what they don’t want, but can’t always translate it to what they do want. They don’t know who to ask for advice, because they don’t know any other people who are odd like this. They’re not “normal,” but they end up judging and measuring themselves by normal standards because those are the only standards available. I took a sneak peek at Johnny and Lee’s course, and it really speaks to those punk rock entrepreneurs, including the ones who live in lovely four-bedroom houses in the suburbs. They talk about the stuff to actually do , the tactics. They talk about how to get our heads in the right place – the mindset. (Which is, in my experience, the part you really do need to get right.) And then just for giggles, they throw in fifteen or so meaty interviews with rock-and-roll entrepreneurs who owe their success to questioning rules. Folks like Chris Guillebeau, Naomi Dunford, and Jason Freid from 37 Signals. Our own Jon Morrow has an amazing interview where he talks about the power of working with a gun to your head. Oh, and some pink-haired chick from Copyblogger is in there, too. Here’s the link to check out the course . (And yep, that’s our affiliate link. We think Johnny and Lee did a great job with this one, and we’re proud to recommend it.) Johnny and Lee took a page from Brian’s playbook and they’re giving a really, really attractive price on this — but only for a really, really short time. The punch line is that the price is going to quadruple on Saturday . So if you want to check it out, don’t dawdle. How about you? Do you consider yourself a nonconformist? Do you think that it takes a certain measure of “punk rock” to get out on your own? And what does “punk” even mean for you? Let us know in the comments. About the Author : Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication .

pink hair Question the Rules to Create a More Remarkable Business (and Life)

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Question the Rules to Create a More Remarkable Business (and Life)