Blogging

If you're new to the term 'Facebook like gating' and probably wondering what it would be, then you're on the safe edge already. 'Like Gating' is when you as a blogger/webmaster would lock out a certain content, that may be a premium content, some blog widget, an ebook or a contest, with Facebook Like Button.

Some examples of like-gates include:

Entering a Contest by Like a Facebook page
Giving access to coupons or promo codes once someone likes your Facebook fan page.
Liking a Facebook Page in order to watch a video
Giving access to PDFs or eBooks after someone likes Facebook page.

That is you only provide access to the stuff when people would 'like' your Facebook page. There are tons of free widgets out there that you can use to Like-Gate your content, but the question now is that is it really worth Like Gating a content?

Facebook recently announced that it would ban Like-Gating from November 5th 2014 which is a call that is received with mixed views all around the net.

Facebook mentioned:

You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app�s Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

People who grew their Facebook fan bases with by like gating an iPad giveaway back in 2009-2010 would probably the most worried notch out there.

While other experts believe it's one of the most sound decisions made at Facebook Headquarters as it would promote the idea of gaining loyal Facebook likes rather than a bunch of people who signed up just to get what you were giving away for free in response to a mere Like-Gate.

In the worst case, people would 'unlike' your page once your contest is over or when they get the content delivered.

Below is how a typical Facebook Like Gate Looks like:

Intelligent marketers know how less valuable could an un-targeted Facebook like can be in comparison to other data that you could gather instead of forcing someone to 'like' your content.

I hope that you don't really make use of Facebook like gate already, though if you had done it in the past, it is time to up your marketing game and go after collecting more wise data that would help you better engage with your followers in the long run.

#1 Email Form Gate > Then Facebook's 'Like' Gate

As I talk about capturing email as much as I can and published a list of cruel mistakes that I did that you should avoid. 4.5 Blogging Mistakes That Would Hit You Back Hard - And Solutions

You can tremendously grow your email list by asking people to signup via emails to get access to the content. Though, these people won't be as targetted and interested in the content that you might want to sent in later, still you have a 'better' chance to engage with them, far more than if they converted into a Facebook fan.

With email subscribers, you could get to know their interest and feed them content as to what they like.

You can also later send these subscribers similar premium content or solve their problems with a specific product that you would make. They would be far too interested to checkout in comparison to if they were your Facebook fan.

#2 Use 'Share' / 'Engagement' gate instead of 'Like' gate.

This technique is already being used by major brands that offer giveaways and promotions. They would actually hold a contest on their websites and users would be able to enter the contest by submitting their art work, videos, content etc.

For example a photography blog may be holding a contest. Fans would be asked to share their version of the best well taken photographs with certain hashtag (e.g #takeapic) and the winner would get rewarded.

This way, you'd be creating massive engagement on your Facebook page and viral traffic would be your destiny.

Later, you can drive that traffic to your site and pass it along other funnels to make use of that. And if your website/blog is well setup, that traffic could be later converted into email subscribers too.

Sara at sociallystacked published a very comprehensive post on creating great Facebook ads:

3 Tips for Designing Around Facebook's 20% Ad Text Rule

#3 Manipulate The News Feed With Facebook Advertisement

Alternatively, if you have an advertising budge at your disposal, you can setup Facebook Ads (Which actually what Facebook wants), and promote your contests, content or email gates setup at your landing pages.

With Facebook ads, that are pretty easy to setup you can reach the exact audience that you want. Promoting your landing squeeze page, may that be promoting your mobile app or just giving your website more exposure in front of targeted demographics.

#4 Utilize Likes on Fan Page as an Entry Scheme

You can setup a contest where people could enter by commenting on your fan page. The best comment or idea that gets most likes wins. The same can be ported over to a landing page with Facebook comments plugin.

Obviously you would want to drive traffic towards your landing page to later convert that into email subscribers or convert those leads directly into sales, may be.

#5 Using Facebook Tabs

Making use of the online tools such as Shortstack you can create mobile/desktop friendly Facebook tabs for free.

You can setup an email sign up box with in that tab before you let the fan get access to the content. For such email subscription boxes, you would have to make use of popular email marketing tools like Aweber.

You can read: 6 Reasons to Get Started With Aweber - You'd Be Foolish Otherwise to learn more about how Aweber could help you in this regard.

I hope these alternatives to Facebook like gating would prove to be rewarding to you if you're looking forward to grow your fan base and drive some viral traffic towards your landing pages.

Till next time,
Peace.

Facebook Tutorials , Top Lists

5 Highly Rewarding Alternatives To Facebook Like Gating

Featureso Wednesday, 8 October 2014

Starting a blog, coming up with enticing ideas to write regularly is for sure a difficult task in it's own sense, though I would say setting it's income streams on Autopilot mode is even more challenging. As many believe, a blog is never passive in nature where many believe your hard work in the early days would help you live a life of your dreams with out putting in efforts later on.

No way! I wish it was like that though it's the other way around. Blogging is generally a platform that lets you launch other passive income opportunities, though the core of blogging, that is the pouring in audience towards your income streams never gets fully on Auto Pilot mode.

How to AutoPilot Your Blog to Enjoy Your Vacations To The Fullest

I recently came back from a month long off season from the blog and it was first of it's kind. I decided to stay away from the blog apart from managing the advertisers and emails. Though later into the vacations, I become lazy in that department too.

Their was a purpose behind the off season and I'll let you know in a bit. I learned a lot.

You, reading this at the moment might be running your blog's on any form of online business or you might be one of those friends who are looking forward to setup their blogs and haven't yet come up with an idea of your dreams. We're all on the same boat.

Today, I'll talk more about how can we equip our blogs on auto pilot so that we can take advantage of vacations and spend more time with our family.

Before we proceed, I'd take a moment so that we know what to expect from a blog that is on autopilot and why not to over expect.

What to Expect from the term "Blog on Auto Pilot"?

A blog on Autopilot doesn't mean you would never have to work on it again and it would keep giving you fruits till eternity.

That's not possible. As a founder of the blog, you have to keep a keen eye on the blog even if you have fellows to assist you along the way in content creation and other managing and financing stuff.

How to Achieve a Blog on Auto Pilot Mode?

#1 Content Workflow

To keep visitors flowing in to your blog, you need to have a consistent flow of posts being published to your blog. No matter how popular your blog's name is online, the core relationship between you and your audience is fresh content for which they come by every day.

The moment you take of few days of your blog, you'll notice a serious drop in traffic. It's not about posting daily, it's just to stick by what ever your posting frequency have been since you started the blog and to serve your audience as to what they expect.

Though surely the more quality stuff you'll post, the faster your traffic will rise and it all depends upon how much time you're willing to put into your content strategy.

To put your blog on auto pilot, you could either pre-schedule blog posts before going on vacations or another off season, or manage the guest writers so that they keep deliver content in your absence.

Absence from content is not an option and you've to find a way around for that. You could also hire some quality content writers so to fill in your gap.

#2 Email Marketing & Relation Building - All on Autopilot

Thanks to some of the powerful email marketing tools out there like Aweber, that I use personally too for building a relationship with my audience, you can be stress free and manage your email list fully on autopilot.

A clear question here is, "How would an email marketing tool help in putting your blog on auto pilot"?

Well, it actually plays a major role in setting up your blog on auto mode. As a blogger, you have binding upon you to maintain a strong relationship with your readers.

You should know their problems, their personal progress, where they are lacking and what not. The more the better.

With Email marketing tools like Aweber (there are bunch of such tools though Aweber is hands down the best in the Industry for it's power and simplicity. Read these 6 Reasons to Get Started With Aweber - You'd Be Foolish Otherwise.)

Aweber would help you to capture email leads while you're off the vacations and collect your visitors into subscribers list at the back end. This would ensure that the visitors and audience that search engines throw at your blog is not wasted and you actually tend to convert those one time visitors into long term fans.

This is the power of email marketing.

You could then set automatic follow up messages that you can set easily in Aweber which would further strengthen your relationship with the subscribers.

For the first email that I sent to my email subscriber, I would introduce my self in depth and let him know how I got started and How we both are on the same journey.

That makes the subscriber more comfortable and he/she then looks up to more content from your end.

Which is great and what we want at the end of the day. This all happens automatically without you having to put a single second into while you're on vacations.

In case you're already using Google's Feed burner as an email delivery source, trust me you're loosing a lot. You can read out this guide to switch over easily: How to Migrate from Feedburner to Aweber Seamlessly

#3 Income Funnel

Income is the major aspect and the reason behind me writing this post. You need to find a way to make your blog's income stream on auto pilot so that you don't have to worry about money being flowing into your bank account while you're on vacations.

It is totally possible but requires a concrete base of your well established blog.

While I was away for a month as you know, the blog wasn't compromised on the income part and I'll let you know why in a bit.

As BloggingeHow's major source of income is now it's email list followed by the banner ads via BuySellAds marketplace, the income was only effected to some extent and that was due to drop in search traffic via Google.

Though as other income streams were stable enough, the blog didn't got a set back while I was off.

So to lay down your blog's auto pilot strategy, first consider what income streams have you explored yet. What are your major sources of income via your blog.

Is it banner ads, is it a product that you sell, is it an affiliate product etc.

Setting Products Sale on AutoPilot

Having to sell products online is the best way to make your income streams on autopilot. Electronic products like eBooks, CDs, Videos or any tool that is downloadable after purchase can be easily integrated with email marketing tools like Aweber.

Once the visitor buys the product via a cart based cashout system, your bank account or PayPal (What ever you have set), gets loaded with the sale, and on the other hand, the customer gets his product via email or is redirected to a downloadable copy of your product.

That's amazing and doesn't require you to be their online to overlook the sale to take place.

Selling Affiliate Products

Quite a while back I wrote a comprehensive guide that helps people make their PayPal accounts in the unsupported states. Also, they get to make a free Payoneer account.

7 Steps to Get a Verified PayPal Account In Pakistan [UnSupported Countries]

The post made up to first page of Google then and made me a decent amount of affiliate sales for the Payoneer card. That's great and is totally on auto pilot.

Visitors apply for a Payoneer account and I get paid 25$ for each card that reaches it's first 100$ mark. Though very few people reach that mark, still one ends up making quite a bit knowing that the post was on fire for being on the first page of Google then.

Next up, as I promote Bluehost's hosting, I get paid affiliate commission for each time someone gets an hosting account via my affiliate link.

That's all on autopilot.

The person wants to start a blog, he buys hosting for his WordPress blog, I get paid. Win-Win situation it is and doesn't require me to be online at that moment.

Selling Banner Ads

Selling banners ads had never been quite easy before the launch of a popular Marketplace named BuySellAds.

You're able to create Ad Slots on BuySellAds that you wish to put on sale. Advertisers come by BSA marketplace and buys an AdSlot.

All you need to do is to accept the offer via email while you're on vacations. That's pretty much it.

There is no need to manage the Adcode by the advertisers, no need to upload the Banner Ad images and other time wasting stuff.

It's all on Auto pilot, expect having to give a green light to the Ad Offer via email. Read more about strategies to attract more Advertisers on BuySellAds.

There are couple of WordPress plugins to manage online cart systems that you can checkout in the list below:

43 Best Online Shopping Cart Plugins and Solutions

#4 Social Media Scheduling

Lastly, while you're off on vacations, you need to be relaxed about your content being pushed to social media profiles on auto pilot to drive the most traffic you could towards your blog.

How you could do that?

Well, there are tools like HootSuite to pre-schedule your posts on social media where you can set particular time for the post to get live on these platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc.

Though, you might be wondering, how come you could pre-schedule a post on social media which hasn't been published yet on the blog.

You've a way around for that too. You can push your blog posts to social media once they are published on the blog. This post would help out in setting it up in WordPress. There are tons of resources online that teaches how to do that on Blogspot or third party blogs too.

Read more: 3 Steps To Use HootSuite To Increase Blog's Social Media Traffic

Final Words & a Question

A blog can never be fully passive income nature. That is you have to consistently put in more effort into it to drive more attention and keep the process of innovation alive.

Your readers deserve more content and they are thirsty for it. Make sure you keep providing them literally for ever.

These Autopilot techniques are meant to give you a short break of the work so that you can spend sometime with your family if you feel over stressed.

I easily took off a month and I'm even more fresh than ever. My productivity level has increased and it feel like I'll accomplish stuff that have been pending on my To-do list since for ever now.

I hope the guide helped you out. Do share your blog in the comment section below and one way you look forward to make your blog on auto pilot in the future.

Till next time,
Stay blessed.

Blogging Tips , Email Marketing , Making Money Online

How to AutoPilot Your Blog to Enjoy Your Vacations To The Fullest

Featureso Sunday, 5 October 2014

It makes your life easier if you install some important mobile apps. These apps can help you to manage your blogging work in an easier manner. They will be very helpful when you don't have access to your PC or laptop.

With the help of these apps you can manage your emails, comments at your blog, your documents and much more. These apps enable you to perform all your tasks by using your mobile phone.

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Top Lists

15 Best Mobile Apps For Bloggers

Featureso Saturday, 4 October 2014

Sometimes I feel so blessed to be in a position to not worry about a 9-5 job unlike the major percentage of the current students that are going through a trauma of Joblessness particularly in the third world states.

Being a fellow Pakistani, I firmly believe that our abilities are undertaken by the employers, no matter what profession you choose to be a part of.

Students In Pakistan / India Must Priortize Entrepreneurship Over 9-5 Job?

I feel stressed seeing graduated students, with top notch grade sheets laying back unattended from the industry. It's pretty much the same in Subcontinent and in the major third world states.

Today was special. Today, I realized we need to talk more about what our elders haven't been able to portray to us. What our schooling has never taught us. This brings me to write this special motivational post that addresses specially the Indo-Pak students that are close to graduation or will be going through the phase in the future.

Brothers and Sisters, I've been reading your emails while I was off for a month vacation and your messages shout out loud the urge to find an alternative way to make a living.

You're blessed to even find Blogging in what ever phase you're. And it's your responsibility to spread the word too, to your fellow mates.

We have less Jobs...And we need to find a way around. Let's accept it and plan are way forward.

You may like to read: 7 Highest Paid SEO Jobs With Respective Cities

Not to demoralize any of the aspiring students out there, as the world is full of opportunities for the ones who work hard and are serious and clear about their aims and objectives that they need to achieve in their lives.

Though we generally know what our countries are going through and how small scale our Industries are to coop with the students graduating every single year.

There is just no ratio what so ever and in the next 5 years, considering we'll still have the retarded self centric leaders as of now, trust me there won't be many soft cushions around for the students.

Such a scenario brings me to write these few words for my fellow brothers and sisters that wish to not to go after a usual 9-5 under paid Jobs that doesn't promise to full fill the dreams you had as a child.

Understanding how wrong we are programed

In subcontinent, imagine how early in your life you start hearing from your elders as to what you wish to become in the future. You're often brainstormed to be an engineer, doctor and now days you tend to get more artistic professions.

They are great. BUT this entire career thing needs to be changed for the young kid whos been programed all these years to 'work for 9-5 for somebody else to make their dreams become a reality'. And NOT yours.

How often we hear our parents telling us to be an entrepreneur? A self made person who constructs his life from ground up. Who might work tirelessly while others party, to live a life that many just simply dream of.

Thing Logically

No profession beats entrepreneurship. Being a boss of your own, working tirelessly on your passion, and living the most lucrative life that you constructed as to how you wanted it to be.

That is life, that is freedom and that is what we need to bring our goals in coherence with.

Currently, the highest paid jobs are in medical industry where surgeons, general practice physicians, psychiatrist etc are taking home the heaviest pay checks. Though students with professional degrees
are able to bag to these lists with over 87% students finding them selves in debt once they leave the medical colleges.

In the third world countries, you can't even expect the best surgeons to achieve half these incomes as we generally experience.

It's just not the norm of this 'time-zone'; if you've watched the Hollywood movie 'In time' you could relate.

Entrepreneurship has no boundaries

Just like the adventurous mind of a kid, with no fears what so ever to achieve his/her goals, entrepreneurs a thirsty to experience their dreams become a reality.

With you reading this post, there is a hidden entrepreneur with in you that you need to explore if you haven't already. Find your passion and keep looking for it until you know it's that thing you can continue for the rest of your life.

It's not just about being a Blogger, blogging is just a minor section of the bigger agenda, it's about creating your own world and not being a slave of somebody's elses.

What Options Do You Have?

Its a world of opportunities for the hardworking fellows. If you're willing to put consistent effort in no matter what entrepreneurial journey you choose for your self, you'll eventually get the reward you actually deserve, which would never be possible if you get your self in line with the custom job life style.

If you're a software developer....

If you're a good software developer with the true passion it needs to excel, you can start small by creating your own products and apps. Sell them online on the major marketplaces. Keep building upon the initial effort and learn from other's mistakes.

Save your time as much as you can by researching as much as you can along the way.

If you're an artist...

Artists are love. Keep producing the best content of your life and share inspirational stuff that reaches to the masses. Try to bring out some message in your art and the world would embrace it like anything.

Learn how to market your self. Apple Inc is the perfect example.

If you're a technical writer...

You're blessed. Choose a perfect niche that you're inspired to write about and collect knowledge for, and setup a blog. Reach the masses and live to inspire.

If you're an entertainer...

Everybody loves you already. Cash your talent online and become huge. YouTube is the perfect platform for you to shine. Try to create short videos of 2-3 minutes and entertain the world. It won't be long before you'll gain the attention.

Why I would urge you to have a career shift towards Online Entrepreneurship?

It's simple maths.

You would have spent a decade by now on the educational system that doesn't teaches to be skillful, But focuses more on the grade/marks race. What good would your degree do even if it has a sparkling 4GPA on it, without you becoming skillful along the way?

May be you might be able to tap a job that you believe was the best around? But how far can you go with that Job working for the rest of your life for them?

The answers to these questions are thought provoking and makes one realize how much more success they could achieve with few years of hard work in building your career online.

Entrepreneurship doesn't come in easy by any mean, though with the same amount of hard work involved (specially into something that you would be passionate about), would be million times more fruitful to you in long run.

Entrepreneurship in terms of Pure Blogging

Blogging is pure love. You get a chance to build your own empire, people follow what you write and in return, you can monetize the brand value and earn more than just a living.

I know at this point, if you aren't into it, it would be like all alien to you. You might even be scratching your head, as you never believed that someone could even make a living online.

Well, people are doing it and blogging is just one way to achieve your goals.

Pure blogging is basically, you choose a niche for your blog, where you would later publish posts/articles using any of the popular content management systems available.

You can read more about how to start a blog and earn a living online.

Generally, blogging is a very effective technique that popular brands use to drive search traffic to their brand websites from search engines.

For example, you setup a product that you plan to sell online. Let's see you design a software in web design Industry.

Now you wish to sell it as much as you can. But how? How would you drive enough eye balls towards your website? That's the most obvious question one would ask.

Well, you can set an advertising budget for your self and promote your product on social media e.g Facebook Ads or choose on of those CPC campaigns by Google Adwords. There are tons of ways to advertise stuff online.

Though, if you're tight on your pocket, there is a great way around for you and is certainly quite effective,. We often see major brands now days using a blog to promote their products.

Blogging is too powerful and is certainly a great head start for you to become an online entrepreneur..

How much could you earn blogging?

There are certainly no limits as to how much you can earn. This may sound fantasy, though it's as crystal clear as that.

It's simple.

The more effort you put into your blog, drive more traffic to it, the more authority you have and more opportunities you would be having to monetize your brand name. There are bloggers out there who are bagging a whooping six-figures dollars per month!

Yes, which means, earning more than 100,000$ per month. If you're from subcontinent, I'm sure you'd automatically start converting that into Rupees.

And the best part is, such a valuable brand can be made under few years, and faster than how you can achieve that mark in offline world.

Your success in blogging is directly proportional to the thirst you have to be successful online. If you're one of those guys who would be like "Lets give it a try. Hope I succeed...", then there are a lot of chances that you'd fail!

Yes, fail! You might find your self giving up in less than 6 months.

To get to another side of the bridge, you would need to develop an attitude where you would say,

"I must and will succeed InshaAllah"..

What are you waiting for?

I hope this post gives you some motivation and a direction that could help you be the next big thing online.

What are you waiting for? Jump right into this quick guide where I share my blogging journey and how exactly you can start your blog and earn from it.

Also, later you can check out some of the tools and resources that I personally use that help me run my blogs.

My blogging Toolbox - Products I Use in Blogging

Do let me know in the comments below as to where you're standing at the moment. Do you own a blog? Are you new to this online stuff? Did you find this post helpful?

I would love to see your views in the comment section below.

Take care.

More Helpful Guides for you to get started:

Blogging Tips , Making Money Online , Motivation

Why Students In Pakistan / India Must Priortize Entrepreneurship Over 9-5 Job?

Featureso Friday, 3 October 2014

If you're a Blogger who count on his online business's success, then you would definitely be keeping a keen eye on what Google has been cooking for the Bloggers out there by tweaking it's back end Algos.

If you're knew to the show, Google, the prominent search engine that you use multiple times in a day keeps improving it's search Algorithm's 'to achieve it's business goals', as many believe it to be.

These updates would include Popular Algos like Google Panda, Penguin etc with every name having it's own task and responsibility.

Google Panda is known to be the deadliest Google Update that often brings in a huge impact on the search results. The Algo deals with web spam and aims to targeted those web properties that create illegal backlinks through black-hat techniques that are against the TOS of Google as a search engine.

27th Google Panda Update was rolled out few days ago that aims to help smaller web properties.

There is this short YouTube video that summarizes Google's Panda Update in a funny way. If you're a Blogger, I'm sure you'd love what Hitler is being going through.

Enjoy!

Blogging Tips , YouTube

Hitler's reaction to #Google Panda 4.1 Update

Featureso Tuesday, 30 September 2014

YouTube is one of the largest social networking websites. You should grow your audience here along with the other websites. YouTube has more than 1 billion users so by using it you are targeting a huge audience.

If you have good content and you are able to spread it on YouTube it is great for your career. You can easily spread something on YouTube if know the tricks.

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YouTube

7 Effective Tricks to Grow YouTube Audience Fast

Featureso Sunday, 21 September 2014

Twitter is a great tool to enhance your business. If helps the businessmen to improve their businesses by making their announcements go viral. If you want your announcements to be seen by a huge number of people Twitter is your best bet.