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Create a Logo for Your Blog with LogoJoy ($20 Off Coupon!)

When you’re first starting out with your blog, paying a designer to create a logo is probably out of reach.

There are already expenses like your hosting plan, a domain, a sweet-ass blog theme, and maybe some things like Tailwind to grow your social media accounts.

But, having a professional-looking logo makes your blog look like a BUSINESS.

That’s really important if you’re trying to make money blogging or turn your blog into your job. #goals

I’m still in the “lean startup” stage over here, so I haven’t spent a lot on design for this blog (#spoileralert I know 🙄).

In this post, I’m gonna walk you through creating a pro looking logo online, with no tools other than just your web browser, with LogoJoy!

Create a Blog Logo on LogoJoy

Mmkay, so for this post, I’m going to create a logo right alongside you… I’m gonna make a logo for my first Really Big Thing: a course called Blog SEO Bootcamp.

Eeeeeeeeeeeek.

I’m working on it now, so it won’t be out for a few more months, but I’m super excited about it, and about teaching more of my SEO skillz, yo.

Anyway. Let’s make some logo magic.

AND, using this link, you can save $20 off the Premium logo package!

Step 1: Go to LogoJoy

Head over to LogoJoy . You’ll see this message. Type in your blog name and hit the blue button.

Create a Logo on LogoJoy

Step 2: Pick Logos You Like

LogoJoy asks you to pick at least 5 logos you like so it can get a sense of your style.

Just scroll down and click on the ones you like, even if they’re not exactly what you want your logo to look like. It’s just to get an idea of your overall likes/dislikes.

Create a Logo on LogoJoy

Step 3: Pick Some Colours

Choose as many colours as you like for your new logo!

If you hover over each colour, LogoJoy will tell you a bit about what each colour means when it comes to branding and design.

Certain colours are associated with certain moods or feelings. For example, blue inspires trust, loyalty and stability. Think IBM or Microsoft, right? There’s a reason people pick blue…

Create a Logo on LogoJoy

Click “Continue” when you’re done.

Step 4: Name & Tagline

Add a slogan to go with your biz name if you like.

You don’t have to, but if you want something included in your logo, now’s the time to add it.

For example, instead of just “Blog SEO Bootcamp” for my logo, I could add a tagline of, “SEO 101 for bloggers, all in one place.”

Or something better than that, whatev.

CONTINUE READING

How I Made $3,130.99 in 1 Month With My Blog (August 2017 Income Report)

I made $3,130.99 with my blog in August 2017.

Pretty crazy, right?

I’ve only been taking this blog seriously for about six months.

I remember reading income reports from other bloggers a long time ago and thinking it was insane. How could they make a full-time living by running a blog?!

Make Money Blogging: August 2017 Income Report

I thought I had blogged before. I’ve had websites in one form or another since I was in the eighth grade. I just liked building them, but eventually I got bored of them and abandoned them. I estimate I’ve created over 20 blogs in the past 15 years…

So why hadn’t any of them made money?

For starters, I wasn’t trying to make money. I blogged because I loved writing and meeting other people. I’ve made some pretty cool friendships online with people I would have never met otherwise.

Fast forward to 2017, it seems like everyone and their cat has a blog. (And yes, some cats do blog.)

It’s never been easier or harder to make an income online.

I say that because it’s easy in the way that starting a blog is easier now. You can setup hosting, get a beautiful theme, and start writing in like half an hour. (I even wrote a step by step tutorial to start your own blog right here!)

It’s also harder because there are SO many more people blogging now.

If you’re trying to stand out online, you have to compete with BILLIONS of other people. Legit, billions. There are over 1.2 billion websites online right meow.

make money blogging

At first, I wasn’t trying to stand out very much.

I started this blog in February 2016 as a fun side project to complement my day job as a Digital Marketing Strategist at an ad agency. I love marketing so I wanted to write about it and learn new content marketing tips with this blog that I could use for my clients.

By the end of 2016, I started to take the blog more seriously, though my posts were sporadic and not really cohesive.

In January 2017, I decided I wanted to turn this blog into a profitable business. I did a bunch of research and long story short, realized that research is nothing without action. #preach

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How to Double Your Email Subscribers with a Welcome Mat (Leadpages Tutorial!)

Wanna grow your subscribers like crazy?

Want to get people to subscribe to your list before they even see your blog?

The answer is a MAGICAL welcome mat!

By that I mean… well, this. See how one of my biz-crushes Allison has this super cool landing page right when you visit her homepage?

grow-your-blog-welcome-mat

What if I told you it’s super simple to set that up so it’s automatically the first page your visitors see?

Aaaand that it’s also super easy to change it or remove it at any time with NO coding needed?

AND that this one little change could boost your opt-in rate by up to 535%?!

(Did I just blow your mind?)

It’s possible thanks to Leadpages. 🙌🏼

Today I’m going to show you step-by-step how to combine your WordPress blog with Leadpages to make an email list building MACHINE, mmk!

Grow Your Email List with a Welcome Mat Using Leadpages

Okay, and maybe everyone else knew this, but I’ve been a Leadpages customer for 6 months now and literally just found this feature yesterday. YAH.

So I want to share it with you.

But First, What is Leadpages?

If you don’t already know about Leadpages, it’s a landing page creation tool that makes it dead easy and quick to setup targeted, fun landing pages. You don’t need to know how to code or anything: it’s all drag and drop AND they have beautiful templates to pick from.

It’s how I created my free content strategy course page!

grow-blog-email-list-welcome-mat

Lots o’ pro bloggers use it. And for good reason: it’s affordable and saves SO MUCH time. I thought it might be overkill when I signed up months ago, but I can’t picture life without it.

So yeah in a nutshell, it makes pretty landing pages effortlessly.

AND, with this exclusive link, you can snag a 14 day free trial to check out Leadpages for yourself.

Mmk, Now What’s a Welcome Mat?

The example from Allison I featured at the beginning of this post is what’s called a “welcome mat”.

It basically means a call to action that you’re putting on your site as the first thing people see. They can either sign up and convert, or choose a “No Thanks” option and continue viewing the rest of your site.

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My Biggest Business Mistakes From the First 6 Months (And How I Fixed Them!)

I’m writing this post on a Saturday night after doing 13 straight hours of work, with only one break to inhale a few pieces of peanut butter toast.

It was a beautiful sunny day outside, and I didn’t see any of it.

This is not how I want to run my business.

All hustle, no balance.

It’s taking a toll on me.

Luckily, I am smart enough to realize when I’ve made some pretty awful mistakes and how to fix them. Today I want to get a lil’ personal with you and share my biggest struggles and failures over the past 6 months and how I’m overcoming them to become a better blogger and business owner.

I hope you can learn something from this post. Here goes.

Biggest Business Mistakes

 

1. No time for fun.

Talk about overscheduled.

Even my husband knows that if it’s not on my Google calendar, it’s not happening.

I’ve lost touch with several friends. Some of them understand, and others don’t. I even feel bad with how little time I’m spending with my dog.

It’s super depressing.

I ended up getting so burnt out, I didn’t want to do anything.

And that was my solution.

I realized that I procrastinate a lot. Not because I dislike my work, I love it, but because I’m too much of a perfectionist and I want “the perfect idea” before I start working.

Well, that just doesn’t exist.

I’ve learned to just start, and edit shit later. I’ve learned to be more productive with my time so that I can get more done in less time.

Ya know what the big magical secret to all that is?

CONTINUE READING

How to Start an Online Clothing Business for $0 with Printful and Etsy

I did something crazy about a month ago. I started an online clothing business.

And it’s actually going really well.

Am I a designer? No.

Am I an Etsy pro? Nope.

Do I even know what DPI is, or what the difference is between CMYK and RGB? Not really.

But if there’s anything I’ve learned over the past year as a serious blogger, it’s that sometimes you just gotta try new stuff and do it. Jump in with both feet. Don’t overplan. Just follow your heart and see where it goes.

Easier said than done, especially when following your heart could cost thousands of dollars in upfront costs.

Not so bueno.

But, I really wanted to do this. So I found a way of getting started that was totally FREE, and in this post, I’ll show you how to do the same thing.

Create an Online Clothing Business Free

I create t-shirts, iPhone cases, leggings, skirts and other small items, and I don’t have to pay a single cent for inventory or expenses until someone buys one of my products. aka guaranteed profit! Isn’t that amazeballs?!

For example, here are a few examples of my humble creations. 😬

Wanna win an item of your choice from my shop? Just enter the contest at the end of this post! 👇🏼

 

It’s really easy to start your own biz this way. So let’s jump right in and get started…

Create Your Free Etsy Store

For this post, I’m going to assume you want to sell your stuff on Etsy! It’s a great choice. Etsy is a solid network of handmade sellers, and a trusted shopping destination for millions of people around the world. You can’t go wrong.

So, if you don’t already have an Etsy account, sign up for free here.

When you’re all signed up, click on the You tab to go into your settings. From there, you can choose to open a new shop.

Create Online Clothing Business Free

Once you’ve created your shop, you’ll be taken to the Shop Manager area. It’s pretty straightforward, but you’ll want to go into Settings on the left-hand menu to ensure everything is set up.

Create Online Clothing Business Free

Here you can set things like your tagline, top image banner and logo. Here’s what my shop looks like with all those things added:

Create Online Clothing Business Free

Go through all the Settings fields and make sure everything is filled in. Don’t worry about making it perfect right now. You can always change it later.

Remember: DONE is always better than perfect. ✌🏽

 

Create Your First T-Shirt

Mmk, switching gears to product creation now. Woo! This is where the magic happens, people.

Already have a good idea for a t-shirt, mug, or other product? Great! If not, just think of a silly saying and follow along with this tutorial. You can always redo these steps when you have a “real” product idea later on.

Not sure if your idea is good or not? Let the market decide! Remember, this is all free so you’re not out any money by testing your ideas.

To create your first product, you’ll need to sign up for Printful.

Create Online Clothing Business Free

Printful is a print-on-demand dropshipper, which means they print your designs onto merchandise and ship it from their location to your customers. It’s worldwide, and the products look like they’re coming from you, not Printful. Basically… it’s awesome.

Once you sign up, you’ll be taken to your Dashboard. It’s your order portal.

Creating a product on Printful isn’t like an actual thing you create on there. You create your artwork files in a design program, like Adobe Photoshop, and then upload those files to Printful to store until you’re ready to print them.

I use Photoshop, but you could also use Illustrator, or a free option like Canva.

For this example, we’ll make a simple text-based t-shirt, but you can get as crazy and colourful as you like. If you can draw, go wild! I… can’t draw.

I’m going to make a shirt that says, “I Work So My Dog Can Have Nice Things”.

(It’s true. 🙄)

Printful has a template for everything on their site so you always know how to size it. The t-shirt print area is 10 in x 12 in, so all you need to do is open up a new Photoshop file at 150 DPI sized 10×12. Also make sure you’re using RGB colour.

If you’re using Canva, open up a new file that’s 1500px x 1800px (or larger).

Create Online Clothing Business Free

Then add your text to the file. Make sure your background is transparent. This can be done in Canva as well, but I’m using Photoshop in the screenshots below.

Create Online Clothing Business Free

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5 Easy Blog SEO Tips to Skyrocket Your Traffic

Blog SEO is a big deal.

It goes beyond just optimizing your posts for a single keyword, although that’s important too. I’ve been studying SEO for over three years now and have a pretty foolproof system for growing organic search traffic easily and quickly for my blog and websites.

5 Easy Blog SEO Tips: Grow Your Blog Traffic

Google is always changing their algorithms, so you need to be aware of what’s new in the world of SEO. But, these tips are universal, despite any new mega-update from the Google overlords.

Read on to discover my 5 best blog SEO tips you can do today!

 

#1 Verify Your Blog with Google Search Console

Google Search Console used to be called Webmaster Tools. It’s basically the place where Google verifies your site’s identity, keeps track of changes to your site (i.e. new blog posts), and controls how your site appears in search results.

It’s free and super easy to setup! Once you verify your site, it will stay that way.

I recommend logging into Search Console and checking your stats every month, just to make sure your website is indexing properly and all systems are go.

To verify your site, login to Search Console with a Google account (either a @gmail.com email, or your G Suite account email).

Easy Blog SEO Tips

Enter your website URL in the white box. ☝🏼

On the next screen, you’ll see different verification options. The easiest one is to verify with Google Analytics, which you can find on the Alternate Methods tab. If your Google Analytics account is setup with the same @gmail.com email address, it will verify your website right away.

Or, you can download an HTML file and upload it to your site to get verified. You can upload the file via FTP, or through your web hosting company’s CPanel/File Manager area. (Psst, this is where you would login to manage your hosting account – like on Bluehost or Siteground!)

There are lots of tools within Search Console, but the most important area to monitor for your SEO is the Crawl tab.

Easy Blog SEO Tips

Click on Crawl Stats to monitor how often Google comes to crawl your site. This is the number of times Google’s algorithm is scanning your content, looking for new changes, and adding those changes to Google.

aka… how your blog shows up in search results! Super important.

Easy Blog SEO Tips

More crawls per day = good!

Another key area to check in monthly is the Sitemaps tab under Crawl. Here, you can manually submit a new sitemap to Google. Many WordPress plugins do this automatically, but it’s a good idea to do it manually once in awhile too.

You can see how many pages of your site are indexed here. To add a new sitemap, click on Add/Test Sitemap at the top.

Easy Blog SEO Tips

Then, type in “sitemap.xml” into the box and press Submit.

Easy Blog SEO Tips

If you want to learn more about Search Console and all it can do for you, I recommend reading this article from Moz.

 

#2 Use SEO Keywords in the Right Places

It’s not enough to stuff your SEO keyword everywhere you can find a spot anymore. Google is cracking down on “spammy” keyword stuffing practices and shady over-optimization.

What does that mean?

CONTINUE READING

How to Decide What to Write a Blog About When You Love #AllTheThings

I get it. You are passionate about a few, or a lot of, topics and you don’t know which one to focus on for your blog.

It can be hard to narrow down to just a few topics if you’re used to writing about #AllTheThings.

How to Decide What to Write a Blog About

Or, if you haven’t started your blog yet, how on earth are you supposed to pick just a few topics?

My free blog strategy course can turn you into a quality content posting machine, buuuuuut you do need to know what you wanna write about first, right?

Have no fear. Today I’m gonna walk you through how to pick a profitable blog topic that you love writing about.

I wish I did that like five years ago. 🙄

Start a Blog: What to Write About?

 

How to Pick a Profitable Blog Topic

Unless you’re a one dimensional cartoon character, you probably have at least a few hobbies and interests. And if you’re like 99% of beginner bloggers out there, you want to write about them ALL.

You’ve read how important it is to choose a niche to monetize your blog, or gain real traction from blogging.

But HOW do you pick one?! GAHHHH.

It can feel impossible but I’m here to tell you it’s not. I used to be just like you!

Long story short, a great way to find your ideal topic is to just start a blog, and start writing. Just DO IT ALREADY. When I started my blog, I wrote about marketing from an agency perspective (since that’s my background) but quickly discovered I liked writing with an entrepreneurial mindset instead.

Meaning, instead of helping the big companies succeed, I want to help YOU succeed.

CONTINUE READING

How to Do SEO Keyword Research for Your Blog

I’m passionate about SEO for blogging. You could say obsessed. And for good reason: mastering SEO is the ultimate free way to market your business.

Yes, there’s paid search (AdWords), Facebook advertising, networking, lead generation and all that stuff too… but those strategies are made even better with a solid SEO foundation for your blog.

It can be a tough thing to learn if you’re just starting out. I used to think it was just for the pros, or something techy marketing wizard types did to “growth hack” or disrupt or whatever other marketing buzzword is hot right now.

Until I became a techy marketing wizard type. 🌟

Okay, before we get to my awesome lesson (including awkward video walkthrough) showing you how to do SEO keyword research for your blog, I’m gonna tell you my SEO story. Buckle up.

how to do blog seo keyword research

About five years ago, I got a job in an ad agency. It was all very exciting for 25 year old me. They had leather couches, rum hidden in cabinets and worked with huge national brands that I was a fan of. What’s not to love, right?

Well, the truth about the downside of agency life would come crushing down on me years later, but at that moment, things were great. I was the fresh meat, the eager young intern-type ready to learn about the industry and take it by the horns.

I am marketer, hear me roar! Or something.

Why Bloggers Need SEO

I got the job because I wrote well (and hopefully still do in the present tense). But, I had no idea about SEO. I’d heard of it, but again, filed it away in my brain into a folder called Wizard Land: Do Not Attempt.

I had to learn SEO for my new job, and I was nervous. My boss at the time took me under his wing and promised me it was really easy, I’d learn it in no time. The first week of my new job, I eagerly read everything I could find on the internet about how to do SEO keyword research, write for SEO, get higher rankings, get Google to like me, etc.

The articles I found were good, but I was left with a feeling of, “So now what? What do I do with all this information?”

Well, my boss showed me in like an hour how powerful SEO can be. How it can help businesses, how to write for it without sounding like a total tool, and why keywords are only one small part of SEO.

“Whoa, what? There’s more to SEO than keywords?!” you might be asking.

YEAH. There is. It’s a big topic with lots of shady shit in it and some really stellar strategies too.

I wanted to cover just keyword research today because it’s the easiest place to start if you’re new to SEO, and it’s especially important for bloggers.

I’ll show you exactly how to do SEO keyword research below…

CONTINUE READING