Power of Pinterest



In this class The Six Sisters' talked about the Power of Pinterest and how they receive 80% of their traffic and page views through Pinterest!  They've mastered the art of pinning and repinning and shared their secrets of success on how to use Pinterest to boost your blog posts and increase traffic.  Here is a recap of the class:

Pinterest Fun Facts
-80% of Pinterest users are female
-50% of users have children
-average income of Pinterest users is $100,000+

The Sisters' advised all bloggers to do the following:
-use the name of your blog as your profile 
-keep two seperate accounts a personal and a business
-put the URL of your site in your personal and business profiles
-connect Pinterest account with Facebook and Twitter

The Sisters' talked about how to utilize your boards and to do this you want to make the names and titles of your boards be creative but also try to incorporate your blog name into the board name.  For an example: "your blog name" recipes.  The more boards you have the more exposure you'll get. Did you know that boards show up in search results instead of pins?

When you're writing your post it's so crucial to make sure you have picture you can pin that describes what your post is about.  If you don't have a picture then create one!   You can do this by creating a collage by using PicMonkey or ipccy. When you do this you want to make sure there is a pin it button available on your site, so your readers can be reminded to pin your content!  When you write your posts you need to make sure you pin EVERY POST!  Make sure you put your blogs URL into each of the pin descriptions, keep these short and precise. You'll want to use hashtags to catergorize your pins.  For an example, if you pin a chicken casserole dish, here are some hashtags you could use: #recipe #chicken #dinner #maindish #poultry #casserole.

PICTURES ARE VERY IMPORTANT!  You need to watermark each of your pictures.  By doing this your claiming that this picture belongs to you. It's sad that our world has come to this but you will find that if you don't watermark your pictures people will steal them and use them :(  A great suggestion the Sisters' had is if you have pictures from older posts that aren't great.  Make it a priority to re shoot those pictures, upload them to your post, add a pin it button to the post, and pin the new picture to Pinterest. The Sisters' did this with all of their old blog posts and saw a lot of new traffic from this.  

To learn about sites to use to track the influence of your pins, when to pin, and growing traffic purchase the audio and video recordings of this class and the other eleven classes for $29! Go here to purchase them!  We would love for you to come to the Build Your Blog Conference 2014!  Make sure you sign up before tickets are sold out!  If you buy now you can take advantage of the early bird special!

How to write, publish, and market an ebook



This was a very interesting class.  At the beginning of this class I felt like creating an ebook would be way too complicated and never had a desire to do this.  After the class I felt confidence that with a good idea, some hard work and learning anyone could create an ebook!  Abby from Twist Me Pretty, Cindy Hogan from Watched series, Maria from Two Peas and Their Pod, and Heidi from Foodie Crush all spoke in this is way informative class about the ins and outs of creating an ebook!  Here is my recap from the class.

Abby started off by talking about the tools you'll need to create an ebook. She recommended purchasing or getting access to Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Word to design the interior of your book and Adobe InDesign or Photoshop to design the cover.  If you don't feel comfortable with using these programs, she recommends to save yourself the heartache and suggested to hire this part out!

She went over some important things to consider when creating your ebook: 

Resolution: Abby pointed out if a photo has less than 300 DPI (dots per inch) and it gets printed, it will look grainy.  

Distribute: Sign up for an account on ejunkie, plans start at $5 a month. Ejunkie provides you a picture of your ebook and an add cart button in html format so you can add that to your blog so your viewers can purchase your book!   

Create Space: This website allows you to distribute your book through Amazon.  When someone purchases your book through Amazon, Create Space will print the book on demand, therefore, making it a lot cheaper for you and the consumer.  Abby recommended pricing your ebook from $5-$8 and a published book from $14.99 on up.

Cindy author from the acclaimed Watched Series talked about what you need to do before you create your ebook:

-Get a business license  
-Obtain tax ID number
-Tax license
-Register with your state
-Get your local business license (get this from your city)

*Most of these items can be obtained online through your states Tax and Labor Commission, Department of Commerce, Workforce Services and Environmental Quality.

Heidi and Maria talked advised bloggers to write something you feel like you have passion and a voice for.  If you don't know what that is, write about what you talk about a lot on your blog. They gave ideas as to how to market your new ebook by doing the following:

-blog tour
-twitter blitz
-create a Facebook page and event
-host giveaways on popular blogs
-create an Amazon page

To learn more about how to write, publish, and market your ebook you can purchase the audio recording of this class and the other eleven classes from the Build Your Blog Conference here!

Build Your Blog Conference 2014 is going to be bigger and better, make sure you sign up to attend and to  receive the early bird price of $99 instead of $149

Online Photography & Editing Workshop by Photo By Emilie

Have you ever wanted to learn how to take more stunning pictures? How to use those manual settings on your camera? Learn how to create perfect lighting for your pictures? Or how to edit your pictures and use photoshop? Our good friend Emilie from Photo By Emilie who also taught our fabulous Photography Class at the Build Your Blog Conference is offering four online photography classes for $35 each! 

This would make the perfect gift for yourself!  Classes start May 7th and are scheduled the rest of the month.  If can't be physically there at your computer when the class starts, Emilie has got your covered!  She's recording each of the classes so you can watch them anytime!  Make sure to sign up!  This is a great value to you and your blog!  Go here to register!