The Art of the Blog Giveaway

So you've got a blog and now you want to engage your audience.

"I know! I'll do a giveaway!"

That's great. BUT. Before you do any giveaway you should know three distinct things:

1. What is the purpose of the giveaway? (Do you want more Facebook Likes? Are you promoting a brand?)
2. What are the specific outcomes you'd like? (This would be more specifically the # of Facebook likes/Twitter follows or the percentage of increase for yourself and/or the brand)
3. How can my giveaway put my blog in front of more people's eyes? (This should always be a primary goal of any giveaway or promotion)

In this series, we'll go into why giveaways can be beneficial, how to even get stuff to give away and how to make sure you're really benefiting in the process. I've even included two case studies: one of a successful blog promotion and one not-so-successful one, to illustrate how you can create better giveaways!

Here are the parts in the series:

• Why Give Stuff Away?
• How Do You Even Get Stuff To Give Away?
• Creating a Win-Win-Win Situation.
• Case Study #1: The Failure
• Case Study #2: The Success

The Art of the Blog Giveaway: Case Study #2 (The Success)

So this case study is of a non-traditional giveaway I have done that worked out very well, creating a win-win-win situation for me, my bloggers and multiple brands!

This one is kind of lengthy so I suggest you go through it either in parts or when you have a minute!

So here’s the basic profile of the promotion:

Promo Name:  The Bariatric Foodie Pledge (here's the abstract post I did for the promo in 2013)

Timeline:         This is an annual promotion I do every February

Sponsored by: Lots of companies (I’ll explain in a minute)

Background

As I’ve said a few times here, my main blog, Bariatric Foodie, is a monetized blog that served the needs of people who are having, or have had, bariatric (weight loss) surgery. This particular promotion was born of things I learned from social media.

One of those things came from simply paying attention to what works and what doesn’t. What works, on my Facebook and Twitter pages, for instance, is posting general discussion topics about life after weight loss surgery, as opposed to only posting topics related to food or my recipes. This keeps engagement on my page fairly high and so when I do post recipes, there are people active in my little community to click through to them.

A big need my readers identified is help with setting and keeping goals. It’s a big topic for anyone trying to lose weight. So I began to think about a way that I could make that happen through a promotion. My initial idea was that I should find a way to encourage people to make and keep goals.

My second thought on the matter was about timing. We all are great at making and keeping goals in January. But come February we are either about to give up or we already have. So I knew I wanted to do this in February. The month also provided something that gave way to even more ideas – exactly four weeks!

Thus the Bariatric Foodie Pledge was born. I won’t take you through my other thought processes BUT I will say the contest works like this.

• At the beginning of each week, people who wish to participate can “pledge” a goal. It can be any goal they want, although I do give some background education on S.M.A.R.T. goals.
• Throughout the week, on Facebook and Twitter, we encourage each other to keep up with our goals and stay accountable.
• At the end of each week, I call for people to “check-in” their goals by answering three questions: Did you achieve your goal? What challenged or inspired you? How will you keep this goal going?
•  At the end of each week everyone who pledged a goal and checked got put into a drawing to win a prize.
• For people who pledged and checked in all four weeks, there was a drawing for a grand prize.

Prizes

My first year doing The Pledge I didn’t have a very impressive audience nor did I know half the things I know now about marketing yourself to brands! So I bought all the prizes that I gave away (I would never, ever, ever recommend you do this in any giveaway you do. Bloggers are a relatively cheap and effective mode of promotion for brands and very likely they are willing to give you something. It’s just up to you to make the right ask to the right person.)

The second year, I had learned a bit more and so I invited companies to sponsor a week of the Pledge on one of two levels: weekly sponsor (providing weekly prizes) or a grand sponsor (providing a grand prize). There were requirements at each level. A weekly sponsor had to provide three prizes of at least $25 in value. They had to ship the prizes directly to the winner.

In exchange for sponsoring a week of the pledge, the sponsoring company got a free badge-sized ad on my blog for their sponsorship week and mentions in my social media related to the Pledge that week.

In the second year there was only one grand prize sponsor and that sponsor agreed to ship a prize of at least $50 in value, in exchange for a banner-sized ad for the length of the pledge.

After each sponsor’s pledge week was over, I emailed them the prize winners name, thanking them for their sponsorship and trying to entice them to buy a blog ad with a small advertising discount.

Challenges

In 2014 I’ll run this promotion for the fourth time. Each year seems to bring new challenges, many of them associated with audience growth. Here are just a few.

Logistics

This has by far been one of the banes of my existence. In my first year, when barely 100 people participated, I did it all manually. Folks could pledge their goal by leaving blog comment, posting it on Facebook or Tweeting it. From there I made a spreadsheet of pledgers. Same deal with checking-in. 

This was both time and labor intensive, especially (and this sounds bad) for something I wasn’t being paid for.

In the third year of The Pledge I attempted to use Rafflecopter to collect pledges but that quickly failed and I had to switch streams. I ended up making a form on Google Docs which folks could fill out when they pledged and checked-in. But glitches abounded! Some mobile users couldn’t see the form, others had trouble submitting it, while others still didn’t have a Google account and therefore ran into problems. About halfway through I figured out that if mobile users were able to download the Google Drive app, they had a much easier time of things.

Expectations

At the outset of this promotion, when my audience was smaller, it was easier to convey what this promotion was all about. This was mainly because most of my Facebook likes and Twitter followers came from a pool of people who actively read my blog.

Last year it became increasingly apparent that there is a generous population of people who interact with Bariatric Foodie who have not only never been to my blog but seem to have missed that the blog even exists!

All this boils down to the fact that there were mixed expectations. If you look at the way this contest works, it’s a lot. You have to make a goal, pledge it, work on it and report back. That’s far more than most blogs ask you to do for a prize. Last year  I got a lot of complaints, especially as I was experiencing growing pains with the whole desktop-to-mobile movement.

Brand Conversion

I never did do very well in converting Pledge sponsors into advertisers. This is partly because of a movement of brands toward affiliate marketing. It’s much cheaper for them to offer you an affiliate account than to constantly pay for dedicated advertising.

Last year, I began trying to incentivize advertising by making submission of a prize to The Pledge free for advertisers while there was a fee for non-advertisers. That didn’t work out so well either as I reliably call on a select number of brands that my readers love who are quite accustomed to not being charged to do this! So I faced an “either just take the prizes for free or get nothing” scenario. It was then that I decided this would be my big Good Samaritan (so to speak) act of the year. Although, it brought some successes I’ll discuss in a minute.

Limitation of the weekly/grand prize model

I figured out eventually that limiting the grand prize to one company or brand was a bad idea. Partly because with a bigger audience you need bigger prizes, but also because that meant I could only work with a total of five brands: four for weekly prizes and one grand prize.

So last year I switched to allowing multiple grand prize sponsors. As I start to think about The Pledge for 2014 (actually I’ve been thinking about it since it ended for 2013!), I think it’s also wise to open up the weekly sponsorships to more than one brand as well. I now have brands contacting me about getting in on this, which technically could give me more leverage to charge them, but again I resigned myself to this being a totally free act on my part! (Earning my way into the pearly gates, maybe?)

Successes

Where there were many challenges there has also been many, many, many successes!

Affiliate Conversions

While I don’t get paid from brands to feature their products as a weekly or grand prize sponsor, I made damn sure each of them was available through at least one of my affiliate accounts. So when I promoted their product, I was promoting it with my affiliate account link, which did, in turn, earn me money.

Google Adsense

You might remember AdSense is driven by traffic. The more eyeballs you can get on your site, the more likely they’ll click something and then you get the few pennies that result. Last year I started to pay attention to Google’s personalized tips for maximizing my AdSense returns and as a result saw much higher returns during the pledge.

Increased overall audience

This was good because I’d just published my first book “The Bariatric Foodie Guide to Perfect Protein Shakes” and the raised engagement gave me an opportunity to showcase that and bump up sales. 

Which was a plus!

Feel good vibes

Don’t ever underestimate the power of an audience that not only feels connected to you but also feels you are operating in their best interests. I care deeply for my readers and want them to be successful! This promotion exemplifies that feeling! By the end of it 13 people have won actual, physical prizes but everyone tends to express feeling like they got something out of this. That’s worth a lot.

So there you have it. One non-traditional giveaway that was a failure, and one that is working well.

My point in sharing these case studies is to encourage you to be innovative and think outside the box. It’s a critical skill for anyone who works on the web, but especially bloggers. The field changes every day. Expectations change every day. You have to stay up with, or ahead of, the curve.

To that end, if you read this blog, I’d love to help if I can to guide you toward promotions that have a win-win-win dynamic. Email me at bariatricfoodie@yahoo.com and I’ll be happy to give feedback on your ideas!

The Art of the Blog Giveaway: Case Study #1 (The Failure)

I figured I’d start off with a giveaway that, while it was not a dismal failure, didn’t go quite as well as I’d envisioned.

The Big Lesson of this Giveaway: Know what your audience wants from you and expects of you. Keep that in mind as we are going through this.

So here's the basic information about this giveaway:

• The brand:       Big Train Fit Frappe protein powder
• The prize:        A full-sized container of Fit Frappe in the flavor of the winner’s choosing
• The objective:  To get my readers to think up creative shake recipe ideas to win!

The Setup

This promotion was tied to a series of product reviews. I’d been given each of Fit Frappe’s flavor offerings at the time (Mocha, Espresso, Vanilla Latte, Chocolate and Vanilla) to try.

As I posted reviews of all the flavors, I invited my readers to think up ways to get creative with the protein powders and make them into new recipes.

What I Did Right

Now I knew up front this was a multi-component promotion (a review of many flavors plus a giveaway). In any such instance, I highly advise what I call an “abstract post,” or, basically a post that tells folks how things will work. This also serves as an advance promotion…of your promotion.

Here’s the abstract post I did for this review/giveaway.

I also promoted pretty heavily in advance on social media. A lot of folks seem to think you can’t “reveal” a giveaway until the moment you post about it. I largely reject that idea, partly because I work in communications for a living. Yes, talking about something in advance of doing it builds anticipation, but that’s a good thing! I often let my readers know when to look out for special promotions (even if I don’t tell them straight-off what those promotions will be) so they can come back and take advantage of them.

Remember, your objective is engagement, not mystery. The more people you can get interacting with you, your blog and the brand, the more likely you are to create a “win-win-win” situation.

What I Did Wrong

Remember above when I said my big lesson is knowing what my audience wants from me and expects of me. Well that’s the big mistake I made – not heeding that advice!

Although I pride myself on my tagline, “Play With Your Food” to a certain degree my readers look for ME to live out that tagline with them coming in after and tailoring it to fit their lives. So in short, I take the risk of trying to reinvent a recipe, post about it once it works, then they get to tweak it after they know it works (as evidenced by my pictures and ravings).

So…many of my readers had little interest in inventing protein shake recipes to begin with.

Add to that fact that I reviewed many flavors. In the interest of the promotion not going on forever, I did one flavor a day for five days. That means I moved through flavors pretty quickly. The nature of blog platforms can be pretty easily summed up like this (especially if you use Blogger): whatever is front and center is what gets the most attention.

Basically, I was removing former flavors from the “front page” faster than folks could (or probably would) respond to them. That, along with the fact that many of my readers were not apt to invent recipes, just meant even lower response. (NOTE: For folks who use Wordpress themes that are set up like web pages this is less of a problem as you can easily employ rotating images, etc. to keep everything front and center. We'll talk more about templates at a later date!)

Add to that, the fact that I was asking them to invent recipes for a product they’d never tasted and did not have access to (save for buying it) in order to test a recipe out. Yeah…not a smart move on my part, I know.

Finally, and this is a big one, know your product and how it relates to your audience.  In the case of Fit Frappe, it came in so many delicious flavors that folks didn’t really feel like they needed to do much with it besides mix it up and drink it.

The Result

From the very start, I began to water this promotion down, encouraging people not to give me new and exciting recipe ideas, but to give me ideas for how they already make protein shakes. That’s not a good sign.

From there I took to social media: begging, pleading, cajoling my readers to respond.

What I Learned

My readers lack of response should in no way be blamed on them. It wasn’t that they didn’t “get it” or that they “didn’t see a good thing staring at them.” I didn’t “give it to them the right way.”

Now I am committed to NOT resigning myself to simple “like and share” contests (like so-and-so’s Facebook page for a prize!) for several reasons. Firstly, to me it’s the equivalent of cattle herding with people. Go here! Now go there! Like this one! Now like that one! I have a lot of respect for my readers intelligence and I think they are informed and smart consumers. So any promotion I do seeks to not only give them the opportunity to try something for free but to get information, knowledge or services that can help them even if they don’t win.

So all that is to say I don’t think I should have done a “like and share” contest. I think I should have designed a better, more accessible contest.

I also learned that desperation reeks. If your audience picks up on it, you’re in trouble! I don’t think it got too, too bad with this promotion but here’s my big lesson: you want people to respond to your promotion because they are an interested and engaged reader, not as a favor to you. If you are seeking to build an audience around your blog or movement, it sort of needs to transcend you, and with good reason. Simply put, there are only so many people in the world who like you and it’s about 50% fewer people than you think.

So that’s a giveaway that was a bit more complex than the standard that did not work out in my favor. Next up is one that did…although it took a while to get that way! But now it’s one of my biggest events. We’ll go over it in detail in the next blog post!

NOTE: If you look at the abstract post for my Fit Frappe giveaway I made a few more critical mistakes in the design of that giveaway. See if you can identify them. If you do, leave a comment on this post!

The Art of the Blog Giveaway (Part Three): Creating a Win-Win-Win Situation

So you’ve gotten a brand to give away something. Now there are some points you should probably hammer out before you agree to do the giveaway. Here are a few of them. This list is by no means exhaustive.

1. How many of the product are they willing to give away? I’ve learned this is important. As my blog readership grew, I noticed at a point that the entries in my giveaway dipped a bit. My first clue came from a person who posted not wanting to enter yet another contest she wouldn’t win. Nowadays I usually require at least three of any given product be given away. And I can negotiate that point because…I keep analytics on my giveaways! So I can prove that a giveaway with more prizes is more effective. It’s hard to argue with the numbers.
2. Who is going to ship the prize? I am a firm believer that it should (almost) never, ever, EVER be you. That being said, you should probably put in the terms of your giveaway some sentence about having to share the winners physical and/or email address with the sponsoring company. Just to cover your butt. But big companies don’t pay that much for shipping because they ship in volume. Unless they are paying you to ship their product, don’t spend your money shipping it!
3. If your giveaway is paired with a review and/or photos, videos, etc. what are they going to do with them? And who “owns” them? You may give brands complete permission to re-share the content generated from your contest or you could limit it. On first glance many will say “why would I limit it?” Well take my blog for instance. Many people who have had weight loss surgery haven’t told everyone in their lives and don’t want to. These people probably would not enter a contest where their face might show up all over the internet as the winner of MY giveaway (bariatric as a word means weight loss surgery). So you have to judge for yourself what privacy level tolerance your audience has and decide accordingly.
4. What will does the brand need out of this deal? Are they looking for people to like their Facebook Page? Follow them on Twitter? Have your readers share their message? (This is common in niche audiences like mine.) What do they want people to do to win the prize? Of course, you have final authority.

Which brings me to my next subject. Requirements for entry. They should, in some way, be beneficial to you as well. This can happen in many different ways. You could require that people like your Facebook page along with the brands or follow you on Twitter. Just note that you cannot require any of these things ON Facebook or Twitter. Use an app like Rafflecopter to manage it. Facebook and Twitter have very specific rules prohibiting the promotion of likes/follows on their sites.

You can even use a brand’s giveaway to create income earning opportunities. Indulge me a personal case study.

I wrote a book on making protein shakes. I sell it on Amazon. As with any author, I wanted my book to sell. I also had a bunch of sample sized products brands sent me. I usually agree to take boxes of samples for random giveaways. Yes, I know this means I’m shipping things myself but follow me on this one.

So I did a contest asking people who’d bought my book to leave an Amazon review within a specified period of time. Didn’t matter if it was a good or a bad review, just leave a review. Everyone who did that in the time frame outlined was entered to win a goodie box of samples.

Well I don’t think I knew at the time how many levels of success I’d see, but let’s count them.

1. I posted the link to the book so that people could enter the giveaway by leaving a review.
2. This created a non-contrived way for me to post the link to the book several times a day, thus raising awareness about it.
3. People who bought the book, clicked through to leave their review and enter. People who hadn’t bought the book clicked through to check it out (and my book is available for preview so they probably perused it a bit).
4. Those who entered all left good comments (because the book is awesome #vanity).
5. Those good comments have caused Amazon to return my book in more search results.
6. And I gave away swag from brands that I know and love, thus giving me a chance to promote the brands I work with while promoting myself.

So that’s what I mean when I say even a free promotion can benefit you. It doesn’t have to be something you are selling. Pair your giveaway with good content people need to share or respond to. If you have Google AdSense you’ll likely watch your revenue spike and if you have affiliate accounts, be prepared for those to get some action as well.

At the end of it all I ended up making way more money off that promotion than what I charge for doing a giveaway. Enough, even, to offset the cost of mailing the prizes. So with a little brainpower you CAN harness giveaways in your favor.

I would be remiss to point out, though, that a good giveaway is measured in more than just money. With every giveaway I do I gain a bigger audience, which helps get the “big fish” to want to interact with me.

Ok I promised do’s and don’ts in negotiating a giveaway.

Do:

• Come to a mutual and explicit understanding with a brand of exactly what you’ll be giving away (size of product, amount of product, etc.). I remember once I agreed to do a giveaway thinking a company was giving away full-sized product only to have to deal with angry readers who got sample sizes. Not a good look.
• Ask the brand to ship the product direct, unless it’s more beneficial for you to ship it for some reason (there are not many instances where that is the case)
• Ask the brand to pair their review/giveaway with some sort of sale promotion that is branded to your site. For instance, on my blog I'll often pair a review/giveaway with a promotion from the brand offering a percentage off their orders from the brand's site using the discount code "BARIATRICFOODIE." Now if you can negotiate a portion of those sales, great. If you can't there's still a benefit in that this is a measurable way to demonstrate your social media reach. If your campaign is particularly successful the brand will come back again and likely pay you again to promote future products.
• Make sure that, again, there is a benefit to your readers, the brand AND YOU. This should be a win-win-win scenario. If it isn’t go back to the drawing board.

But don’t:

• Get discouraged if a company wants you to initially do a promotion for free. You can try to negotiate them into something (even more free product for you if you like it), but if it’s a company you could see yourself working with in the future, my advice is to be gracious. But the next don’t underscores how you get around that next time.
• Forget to take analytics!!!! The numbers are your friend. At minimum you should record where the brand was before you got involved (# of Facebook likes, Twitter follows, etc.) versus when your promotion ends. In my case I often employ some device to track exactly how many people visited from my audience (for instance if I were doing a Nike giveaway an entry option would be to post on the Nike Facebook page and say “I’m a Bariatric Foodie and I love Nike!”). I usually make this a bonus entry, considering privacy issues.
• Give away something you can’t stand behind. Vet your products, people. I cannot say that enough!!!

And a bonus do (and I'll do a post about this in this series): Do remember to use an FTC disclaimer on your giveaway. You don't want the Feds coming after you!

So now that we’ve negotiated ourselves a good deal, next time let’s I’ll talk about a few giveaways I’ve done and how they were structured. Some were successful. Some not so much. But either way there’s something to learn from them!

The Art of the Blog Giveaway (Part Two): How do you even get stuff to give away?

So the art of the giveaway actually begins before you’ve given anything away, before you announce the giveaway, before you’ve done a product review (if your giveaway is attached to that).

It begins with your blog and a brand.

There are two ways, that I know of, to secure stuff to give away:

1. You contact a company to ask for stuff to give away OR
2. A company contacts you to ask you to give away their stuff

This distinction is actually pretty important to you, the blogger. There is absolutely nothing wrong with contacting companies you love, whose products are relevant to your readers, and asking them for product to give away. However, going on to propose that you receive payment for that promotion (even if it includes a product review) can be generally regarded as a “bait and switch.” Not saying it isn’t done, but don’t be surprised if it is perceived that way.

If you want a company to pay you to run a promotion (and if you have the readership/marketing skills to back up that desire) you should probably put that out there up front. In the very near future (I promise!) we’ll go over blog rate sheets, but for now if you have one, include it with your pitch (we’ll go over this too…in fact I’m sensing my next series!).

But if you’re not comfortable doing that quite yet, embrace the fact that you will not be paid to do this promotion. In reality, that’s ok. Companies that run promotions on your blog can become future advertisers or sponsors for things like travel.

However, if a company approaches you this means a few things. Firstly it means that you’re “on their radar.” Someone has mentioned you, you came up frequently in searches, you have a good Klout score, but most importantly, your blog has something they want. This gives you just a little bit more negotiating power than the first scenario.

In that situation (which usually happens by email), you would also include your rate sheet, but not in a “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000” kind of way. In my case, most of the time I get an email from a company that says something like this:

Dear Bariatric Foodie,

We love your blog and think your readers will love our product. We’d love to ship you some samples to try for a review and some to give away. Please email me back if you’re interested.

Signed,

Company X

To which I usually reply:

Dear Company X,

Thanks so much for checking out my blog! I’d be interested in discussing how you can work with Bariatric Foodie to raise awareness about your products.

I’d like to do some research on your products before we talk any further but in the meantime I’ve attached my Promotions Rate sheet for your review. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Me

This accomplishes two things:

1. They are now on notice I am doing my due diligence on them (and every good blogger should. Never, ever agree to do a product review or giveaway without vetting the product first!). This means that I recognize that they get as much benefit from this as I do.
2. They are now on notice that this probably isn’t going to be free. And companies need to embrace that. They pay for newspaper ads, radio and television spots. This is another form of advertising for them and, yes, there is a cost associated with that.

And in the end they’ll say yes or they’ll say no. Many times they’ll try to negotiate and you should just use your best judgment in that. Or consult some sort of advisor (a blogger who does this stuff regularly).

Ok, so this seems like a good place to break but we’re still not at the point of announcing a giveaway yet. In my next post I’ll tell you my experience with negotiating the finer points of a giveaway, some pretty basic “do’s and don’ts” and we’ll begin to think about structure.

Until then!

The Blogger Mentality

When I read blogs about blogging, I always see this question. “How often do I have to post to my blog?”

Call me a provocateur if you’d like, but I am of the opinion that if you are asking that question one of the following must be true:

1. You are blogging about the wrong thing.
2. You shouldn’t really be blogging.

The best, most successful blogs come from people who are passionate about their subject content. Because they are passionate about their subject content you almost can’t stop them from blogging about it. The passionate blogger feels compelled to share things and draws inspiration to do so from many places. This is not to say a blogger doesn’t experience burn out every now and again (I have). But eventually “the itch” comes back.

If you don’t get the itch, you might consider why you’re in this.

Having said that there’s definitely a “blogger mentality,” from my observations. So I thought I’d speak on that. There are three distinct habits I’ve noticed. Successful bloggers tend to:

• See nearly anything as potential content: I’m a food blogger. So anything having to do with food is potential content: a trip to the grocery store, a restaurant meal, a new product I’ve heard about. Anything that is of interest to me as a foodie is potential content for my food blog. This is not just limited to food blogs, though. For fashion bloggers, people on the street, mannequins in store windows, a fashion magazine cover in the grocery store line, it can all become good content!
• Are prepared to market content in nearly any situation: I finally broke down and got an iPhone. It really is a blogger’s friend. With it, I’m a one-woman media center. But your favorite smart phone will do just fine. The point is if you see potential content you should be able to capture it. That means having the capability to take pictures, make videos and upload that content to either your blog platform, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube.
• Know how to market content as a part of their daily lives. I’ll give you an example. Even my kids know we rarely sit down to a completely new meal (home-made or otherwise) without photographing it. Further, they tend to arrange their food on their plates in aesthetically pleasing ways just in case I get the urge to snap them with their food. When I’m out and about I know how to get good shots of things that I can use later. I always make sure to shoot the fronts of products so I get the logo/branding. When making a product at home, if I have a piece of branded material to go in the picture (like a branded tumbler with a protein company’s logo on it) I use that. That way when I Tweet it, I can tag the brand and they’ll re-share.

This may all sound like a pain in the butt to someone who just wants to write. Again, if that’s the case, BSHU is probably not the blog for you! But for those looking to build an audience, if doing these things isn’t second nature, make them so!

When you open yourself up to the endless possibilities of content generation, your audience responds in kind. You become a part of their everyday lives. You start a conversation. People want to support you and they begin to!

You’d be surprised.

So…do you have a blogger’s state of mind?

The Art of the Blog Giveaway (Part One): Why give stuff away on your blog?

I know a lot of bloggers who give stuff away just to give stuff away.

And if your purpose is to simply give stuff away that’s great.

But if you are trying to build an audience, a giveaway is a great tool and you really should learn how to use it effectively. Hence, the next little series on our journey.

This is one I think I’m particularly adept to speak on because: 

1. I’ve had many successful giveaways
2. I’ve had many unsuccessful giveaways

I’m a big believer in failure. It teaches you how to change for the better. Plus, it gives a person(like me) the opportunity to share said failures with you so that you don’t fail at the same things.

So let’s begin at the beginning. Why give away stuff at all?

• Because people like getting free stuff
• Because people will like YOU for giving them free stuff
• Because contests make people happy, even though they know statistically it’s unlikely that they will win
• Because people tend to want to share “deals” (or giveaways) with other people
• Because giveaways can be beneficial for you, your readers and the company whose products you’re giving away

Wait…beneficial for me? How?

In my last series I talked about how bloggers make money. And they make money partly by doing reviews/hosting giveaways. I’m not going to speak much more about that except to say that for the average beginning blogger you’re probably going to do your first giveaway with absolutely NO payment to you involved.

And that’s ok! Sometimes your benefit is to make connections that will later garner income. Simply put: sometimes you have to scratch backs.

But if you structure your giveaway in a strategic way, you stand to also gain visibility, Facebook likes, Twitter follows, Google Adsense income. It really is up to you.

So in this series we’re going to talk about how to run an effective giveaway. But first I should go over the basic principles (in my view) that govern giveaways. I will put the caveat out there right now that most of my giveaways violate these basic principles but I’ll explain why (and how that works to my benefit) as we go along.

1. People are inherently lazy, especially on the internet.
2. People don’t read. That means they probably won’t read the rules of your contest.
3. The requirements for contest entry should be commensurate to the prize given and people expect that (translation: for bigger prizes, people expect to have to jump through more hoops.)
4. People generally don’t respond to giveaways they don’t think they have at least a reasonable shot at winning (even if it is by random drawing)

 So, how does all this apply to you, the blogger who is trying to build an audience? Stay tuned to find out!

How Bloggers Make Money: Google AdSense

(Shout out to my friend, Devin, who reminded me that...I'm sorry WordPress people, but you can't do AdSense. Don't blame me! Blame Wordpress!) But do feel free to look at my other "How Bloggers Make Money" posts, k?)

This post is going to be short because I mostly know THAT you can make money with AdSense but the rest of it kind of confounds me. I have learned, however, that there are a few basic principles that can help you out.

Let me tell you a story.

I installed AdSense in early 2012. I didn’t really get what it was but I figured if it was a source of income, I’d take it! Mind you I was making…nothing…from my blog at this point.

And I watched with disappointment as I made next to nothing on AdSense. Until about six-ish months ago when things started to change. How? Read to the end of the post to find out!

So what is it?

Google AdSense is, of course, a Google application wherein you allow Google to place ads on your website and you get money whenever anyone clicks those ads. Sounds like a great deal, right?

Well as with any income stream there are rules and strategies.

The Rules

I’ll break this down into two categories: rules, as in logic and then rules, as in guidelines to which you must adhere.

Rules/Logic

AdSense is governed by the principles of search engine optimization (SEO). When you set up your AdSense account you can tell Google what kinds of ads you absolutely do NOT want on your site (no porn, no pharmaceuticals, etc.). But from there Google uses two basic pieces of information to determine which ads will go best on your site:

• The content on your blog (as referenced by your post titles and the keywords your posts contain)
• The search history of your readers

So here’s how this plays out.

Say Jane comes to your blog post about how to sew a handbag. But she just recently did an extensive search to find a better rate on her mortgage. She’s likely to see ads about sewing supplies, home mortgage loans or a combination of both (if you place more than one ad on your site).

In this environment I learned very quickly something I wish I did not know. Double entendre seems to work to the benefit of the AdSense user!

This is especially easy to do with a food blog and our talk of “food porn” and one of my favorite recipes on my blog “protein balls” (I shiver to think what a person who enjoys online adult entertainment sees on my site when they arrive at that post!).

My advice there: Be authentic! (I say that a lot, don’t I?) Don’t use double entendre needlessly, but just recognize that if it does make sense, it can also make cents!

Rules/Guidelines

AdSense seems to be shrouded in mystery. You aren’t allowed to say much about it. Namely:

• You are not allowed to tell your audience to click on AdSense ads.
• You are not allowed to publicly discuss your AdSense earnings.
• You are not allowed to click your own ads. (Why does that sound dirty?)

Doing any of those things (and trust me, Google would eventually catch you) will get you permanently expelled from AdSense. Which would be a shame because it’s a low-risk, low-effort way to make money from your blog.

That being said.

How can you have any control over your earnings?

Good question!

To the best of my knowledge the best way to increase AdSense earnings is to increase your overall traffic. And increasing your traffic means consistently creating and promoting good content.

Use the basic principles of writing good content and Google will know what ads to place on your site. They are geniuses, people. They have this down to a science. So help them to help you! Just in case you don’t want to go back and review my thoughts on content it can be summarized in these few points:

• Speak the lingo of your people: keywords are important. They help Google know what you are writing about and to match people interested in what you’re writing about to your blog through their search engine. It also helps them to place ads that people are likely to click.
• Keep it readable: No chunky paragraphs. Use bullet points. Summarize, tell, then summarize. Yadda, yadda.
• Write about the things your readers want to know about: Use Google Trends to discover what folks are searching for in the subject matter your blog covers and then write about that stuff!

Also, attention to your times of highest traffic, both on your blog and on social media (as a vehicle to promote blog posts). Things got much better for me with AdSense when I realized that I have a strong West Coast readership and that if I scheduled Facebook posts/Tweets late at night for me, it’s early in the evening for them and they will visit the site. Pay attention to your numbers!!! (We’ll do numbers soon. I promise!)

Lastly, know the basic rules. For instance, Google will only pay you for three ads on any given page of your site. So don’t place 10 ads! That’s giving Google free ad space on your blog and, as I’ve said ad nauseum, every scrap of space on that blog is worth something!

You might also consider your Google ads against ads you can sell. You’re likely to make more on a direct ad sell then on Google ads (at least at first). So don’t occupy your prime ad space if you think you can sell an ad there. Be strategic!

So, that’s what I know. It isn’t much but it’s a start. If you know more, post about it! Let’s learn from one another.

How Bloggers Make Money: Sponsored Posts & Product Reviews

This is a realm I’m just delving into so I don’t have much expert advise but I can tell you how it works and what I personally have done so far.

Sponsored posts and product reviews are often spoken of together but they are different things. Especially to the Federal Trade Commission (ack, the Feds!).  So let’s get some terminology straight.

A product review is something YOU do independent of any input from the company whose product you are reviewing. It should be unbiased and reflect how YOU feel about a product – good, bad or otherwise (there are different schools of thought on whether one should post a negative review but we must each decide that for ourselves!). While the company can provide the product for free, the distinction is that you are writing the review yourself based solely upon your experience with the product. The FTC does, however, require that when a product has been provided for you, that you disclose that on your blog.

A sponsored post reflects the company's voice, opinions and messaging. Basically you are giving them yours space to say what they want to say – either as themselves or as you. It’s sort of like in a magazine where they have those articles with the words “ADVERTISEMENT” in the top corner. Sponsored posts, by nature, are NOT unbiased because they are written by the company who has a vested interest in the wording.

Both of these kind of posts have implications on how you must communicate them to comply with FTC regulations, which you can find here.

Now, having said that, you can make money either way. I personally only recently started charging for product reviews and it’s simply because before about a year ago I didn’t know I could/should (hence this blog!).

I will say I was a bit ambivalent about the pay-per-review/sponsored post thing (I’ve still yet to sell a sponsored post on Bariatric Foodie). Why did it feel like I was doing something wrong? I don’t know, but here’s the reality:

•  By virtue of the fact that you’ve built an audience you are now a communication “channel” through which companies can promote their products or services.
•  Like any channel, there is an inherent value in your endorsement, whether it is explicitly stated (in a product review) or implied (by virtue of the fact that you allowed a company to sponsor a post on your blog).
• Both of the above being the case, there is no reason you shouldn’t be compensated for promoting products on your blog!

Having said that there are a few caveats:  

• Anything you promote should be in the best interest of your audience. This goes without saying. For instance, I’m never going to review a Doritos product on Bariatric Foodie because to do so would not be in the best interest of my audience.
• You should seek to preserve your authentic voice in any review you do. If a company or brand starts to try to dictate what you say, that is a sponsored post and you must treat it as such by adhering to the FTC rules about sponsored posts. The companies and brands you work with know what that means: they want to go through you because you have “street cred” with your audience. If you are forced to label the post so that it’s explicit that the words are not yours they lose that! But in short never EVER let a company write a post or review for you without following the FTC guidelines! It’s not legal or ethical or fair to your audience.
• Like I said above, you must decide for yourself if you’ll publish negative reviews. This can be tricky. To determine this, it might be helpful if you wrote an overall review policy. Here’s the one for Bariatric Foodie. You’ll see in mine I tell companies right off the bat that if you send me product, I’m going to publish a review. I do this because I feel there’s as much value in knowing what I hate as what I love (for my audience).
•  But here’s the kicker: YES you still have to pay me for that review! This is the risk that companies take in doing a review with me. In turn, I adhere to some pretty strict guidelines in how I review products (I review objectively using non-slanderous terminology). Thus far I’ve never been paid to review a product I categorically hated (I’ll tell you why in a moment).

So that is to say in all things “be you.” Do you. Whatever.

Now I just said I have never had to put out a negative review. How is this possible? Well it’s mainly for two reasons.

First, I vet companies pretty thoroughly before agreeing to work with them in any fashion. I poke around their website. I Google them. Since I deal mainly with food I check out the nutritional data on the product they want me to review. If there’s any red flags, I ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. This alone is enough to help me be reasonably sure it’s an ok product, even if I don’t personally like the flavors, etc. I usually only outright reject a review if it doesn’t meet my audience’s nutritional needs.

This is especially important with sponsored posts. While you SHOULD have final approval authority on all sponsored posts, you need to be reasonably sure the company is not going to say anything that violates the values or ideology of your blog. In my experience, payment for sponsored posts comes AFTER language is agreed upon because once the company pays you, simply put, you have to publish it (or return the payment). 

The second is that I’m a pretty open-minded person. Even if I personally don’t like something, I can see the merit it may have in others. This is why my reviews rely so heavily on objective language. What do I mean by that? Say I’m reviewing a protein shake I did not like.

Objective = “The shake was bitter and left a strong aftertaste that I did not find appealing.”

Not Objective = “This shake tasted like monkey’s ass!”

See the difference? This way my readers who like bitter flavors and who aren’t sensitive to aftertastes may (or may not) check out the product.

Moving right along.

So how much should you be paid for a  review or sponsored post?

That’s the million dollar question and I don’t have a definitive answer! But I will tell you it’s probably best to standardize everything onto what is called a “rate sheet.”

And a rate sheet is just what it sounds like. It’s a sheet that goes over all the things for which you require payment from a company (ads, sponsored posts, endorsements, etc.) and the cost for them.

I can tell you that I used a formula that took me through the following steps: 

1. Calculating how much time an average review takes (be sure to factor in not only the trying of the product but also photographing the product, writing the post, promoting any accompanying giveaway, promoting the post via social media and being available to answer any questions your readers might have).
2. Then my base level for the review was the minimum wage in my state.
3. To that I started considering value added stuff. Am I producing tweets and mentioning you? Am I developing special recipes? Am I being photographed in your t-shirt? And what rights do you have to those things? Can you republish my recipe? Is the photo of me in your t-shirt yours? All of that has monetary value.
4. You should also consider how much traffic you have. I assigned a monetary value to each potential person a company might reach through me based on my Facebook Likes, Twitter followers and the number of unique visitors to my blog (we’ll get to analytics another time).
5. All of this should give you a pretty good idea of what you should charge. Ideally you should run comparables with other blogs that are similar to yours, but good luck getting them to share their rates! We’re not gas stations. We’re bloggers. And our ability to sell ourselves is important!

So I’ll stop here because this was just supposed to be a beginning primer in how bloggers make money from reviews and sponsored posts. But there’s so much we will talk about in the future. Like how to recruit reviews, how to handle negotiations, etc.

Look forward to that!

How Bloggers Make Money: Affiliate Accounts

(Click here to read part one of this series - How Bloggers Make Money: Advertising)

If you’ve never heard about affiliate accounts, this is the blog post for you because I’m going to keep it all very elementary. I am NOT going to be discussing strategy around affiliate accounts (mostly because I’m not yet that good at it so I’d be a hypocrite advising you!).

So what is an affiliate account?

Let’s say you have a blog about sewing. And you write a blog post about a bag you made. And you happened to mention that you used a particular kind of sewing machine or other piece of equipment to make it. There is value in those words on your blog.

An affiliate network allows you to create a link to that sewing machine or equipment on a website like, say, Amazon that your reader can click and be taken straight to where they can buy that sewing machine. And when they do, YOU will receive a percentage of the purchase price. And not only that but many affiliate networks will give you the purchase price of anything that person purchases during that site visit.

Now before you get too excited and go off to join every affiliate network known to man, a few caveats:

• We’re not talking a huge percentage most of the time. Through Amazon Associates I typically get about 6 - 7% of the purchase price. Which is cool if you’re selling big ticket stuff BUT on smaller purchases it can sometimes be pennies.
• Which brings us to an ethical issue and one that I face a lot. When talking about products you use, do you automatically link your readers to the most expensive offering so that you get the highest return or do you link them to the most affordable to show them that you care? You gotta think about stuff like this!
•   Having a bunch of affiliate networks can get a bit confusing especially if they all work on different pay mechanisms and schedules. Coordination is good!

Having said that, how exactly does one get paid for this? Well, most affiliate networks will offer you several payment options. You’ll be able to receive a check (and many times you have to reach a payment threshold – for example, $100 — to get a check). Some places offer you store credit (Amazon does this). And most places will allow you to be paid by electronic funds transfer, again with a minimum earning threshold.

But like I said above, having a bunch of these accounts can be something of a logistical nightmare. Many pay on different dates and based on different pay periods. For example, my Netrition affiliate account (which does NOT perform well for many reasons, some of which are not my fault!) pays you when you reach $50 in a month. My Quest account through Commission Junction (I’ll explain in a minute) pays you every month a portion of what you’ve earned (and I’m still trying to figure out their logic). Amazon has a staggered schedule so in July I’ll get paid out for my May earnings.

See how this can get wonky? I personally keep an earnings spreadsheet to try to project my monthly income and it’s not easy!

Now remember I mentioned Commission Junction? They are an affiliate network provider. This means many companies use them to attract bloggers and website owners to their affiliate networks. In turn, Commission Junction manages all those affiliate accounts in one place. This means one very important thing to you, dear blogger: all your money is coming from one place at one time every month. This is a good thing!

If you decide to go the affiliate route I highly suggest you do it through these types of services just to make management of your money easier.

But how do I get paid?

Now…let’s talk about how you get those sales. There are several ways to get your readers to buy things through your affiliate accounts.

Ads

Most affiliate networks will offer ads that your readers can click to purchase something and have the credit come back to you.

THE PRO’S: It’s a relatively low intensity way of doing affiliate sales as you just place the ad and direct people to it. The coding is in the image so people don’t have to do anything special for you to get credit for the purchase!

THE CON’S: Remember I said that every scrap of space on your blog has monetary value? Well I’d suggest you only use affiliate ads if you are selling something that can essentially “sell itself.” And when I mean sell itself, the threshold is that it should be able to make you as much or preferably MORE than your monthly charge for ad space. Otherwise you’re losing money. Also, ads are finite. There’s only so many of them you can put on your blog and, moreover, only so many you can put at first pageview.

Links

These are the more common way to do affiliate sales. You can place a link (with your affiliate code built-in) in your blog posts OR you can post them in other places, like on your Facebook Page or other websites.

THE PRO’S: Links are portable. You can Tweet them, Facebook them or post them on other sites. They are especially good because you can respond in a conversation about the product with a link to the product. For instance, I often get asked what protein powder I like. I often respond with a link to the protein powder I like to my affiliate account.

THE CON’S: Some affiliate networks are more tech advanced than others. One of my networks has me actually manually writing the links myself to get my affiliate code in there (for what it’s worth, this is a sign that maybe I want to drop this affiliate account!). Otherwise, links are a good option.

In Summary

Here’s what I want you to remember about affiliate accounts:

•  Use them organically! Don’t talk about things for the sake of selling them. But if you genuinely do use a product or service and would mention it in a blog post, by all means link it to any affiliate account you may have.
• Don’t think you are limited to marketplaces like Amazon. Many services like domain hosting companies, newsletter hosting sites (like Survey Monkey) and print-on-demand publishing sites. Heck, even my affiliate network has an affiliate network. You can get credit when other people join! Do a Google search. You’d be surprised!
• Consider using an affiliate network provider, like Commission Junction, wherever possible. They offer accounts for many brands that people know and love and you get the added benefit of getting paid out from one source at one time.
• Be advised, though, that many affiliate accounts are by application only and the company does NOT have to accept you. Some companies require a certain level of traffic or Google Page Ranking (we’ll go into that later
• Like many other forms of passive blog income, your level of earnings has to do with two things: traffic and your marketing skills. For affiliate accounts to work you have to constantly remind people (without reminding them per se) to click on the link or ad. You must decide if that’s something you want to do. And even then the return may or may not be worth it!
• Finally, just because you join an affiliate network does not mean you HAVE to use it. But be advised that companies are free to drop you if they see no activity from your account.

How Bloggers Make Money: Advertising

“How do you make money off of your blog?”

I get asked this question fairly often. And by bloggers fairly often. And I feel sort of weird answering. I mean I’m not rolling in the income here, folks. I’m very much a beginner at this whole thing. I’ve set reasonable goals (my main goal is to have my blog make an amount commensurate with a part-time job and that’s quickly coming to fruition) but I’m not rich off my blog by any means.

Still, I KNOW how it’s done. I just don’t always do it. For various reasons which I’ll not get into right now. But over the next week or so we’ll go over the various means of making money from a blog. I’ll do some reading up on the pro’s opinions of them  and I’ll ask you to weigh in.

Let’s start with the most simple to understand method. Advertising.

So you have this blog. And you have this audience. And your audience (no matter the size) respects your opinion and looks forward to your posts. These are the most basic requirements of your blog to seek out advertising revenue.

And advertising revenue is just what it sounds like. You are seeking out companies to place ads on your site for a price. What price? Good question. There are many schools of thought on how to price out advertisement. We can get into all that later. For now it’s just important that you know that there are methods.

Ok, so how does this all work?

Look at your blog. Look at your entire computer screen open to your blog. Every piece of space on your blog has potential monetary value. Some of it you can sell and some you can’t. Obviously you want to reserve space for YOUR blog posts and photos. That is, after all, what people come to you for. The rest is up for grabs.

Obviously anything in the first screen view (the view of your blog without having to scroll) is going to be the most valuable. The less people have to look for things, the more likely they are to look at things.  Bigger ads are more valuable (both because they are more noticeable and because they take up more of a finite amount of space) than smaller ads.

The pro’s of ad space

The con’s/reservations about ad space

I guess technically ad revenue is active income. You have to seek them out to get them. But they are sort of a passive form of active income. Once an ad space is sold, it’s sold. You cannot sell it again. And since there’s only so much space on your blog, there are only so many ads you can sell.

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

This is an important question to ask yourself. And the answer will in part dictate what you do (or won’t do) with your blog.

From what I've seen, bloggers seeking to build an audience fall into one of a few types. There are:

• Those blogs support a company, product or personality that they own. The blog is used as a promotional vehicle for that company, product or personality and without that company, product or personality that blog could not exist.
• Then there’s the ones who blog in hopes of gaining notoriety. The Perez Hilton’s of the world, I call them. And the reasons are endless. Maybe you want to be on Entertainment Tonight or maybe you want to meet a celeb. Maybe you want to party with them or get swag to look like them. Whichever.
• This blog is mainly for the type of blogger that blogs about what they are interested in and wonder if they might be able to make some money in the process. You are the ones who would probably blog even if you didn’t make a cent. But since you’re doing it anyway, why not get some kickback?

If anyone felt any shame or guilt about that last bullet point, stop it. Just stop. I know how you feel, though. I felt terribly guilty about monetizing my blog. I mean, I was “keeping it real” with my readers. Wouldn’t making money make me a “sell out?”

Most certainly not! Especially if you are providing something to your readership that is valuable and putting time and effort into doing so. Besides, very rarely do bloggers ask their readers for money. So you are providing something valuable FOR FREE to the people you want to serve.

So how do bloggers make money anyway?

That’s what we’re going to discuss next. I can speak on the methods but not necessarily the strategy behind the methods. I’m not perfect at any of them but, as always, I’m gonna tell what I know.

Until then, keep bloggin’!

How Blogging is Like Going to McDonald's

Okay so back to content for a minute.

I did a good bit of blog hopping over the weekend and I wanted to clarify one thing. Different blogs have different purposes and as such different blogs will have different kinds of content. But for every blog that builds a following (and builds income if that’s your desire), there is a product being offered.

For many of you,  But for every blog that builds a following (and builds income if that’s your desire), there is a product being offered. Think of content as the way you deliver that product to people. 

For many of you, YOU are the product. Especially in fitness and inspirational blogs, your experience is your product. People follow you because they can relate to you. They watch you as you do whatever it is you are doing and they root you on, give you advice, follow your advice and so on.

For others, perhaps your schtick is your product. Such is the case for me. Bariatric Foodie is about playing with your food. I would like to liken my blog as being the Alton Brown of the weight-loss surgery world. I made the choice in the beginning that I didn’t want to be the product (mostly because I am far too fallible to be anybody’s hero!).

So let’s talk about how content differs for these two approaches to blogging. Remember I said content is the good stuff people cometo your blog for. And I also said that blog posts contain content but aren’t (necessarily) content in and of themselves.

“What the heck does that mean?”

You ever been to the drive-through at McDonald’s (don’t lie). Maybe you like Big Macs. But maybe you also like the extra value meal because then you get a Big Mac and some other stuff conveniently packaged for one low price (stop chuckling).

Well blog posts are the extra value meal. Content is the Big Mac. Get it?

So for those of you who are the product of your blog, your experiences are what you are packaging. If you’re a running blogger, for instance, the first time you ran a 5k, half marathon, full marathon, did an Iron Man/Woman. Those posts contain content that you’ll likely refer to again and again. Those are your Big Macs!

For those of us whose products are our schticks, content can look the same or different. My Big Macs are posts like my tutorial on how tomake a triple thick protein shake and the most popular recipe on my blog.

“Why is this distinction even important?”

Because blog posts come and go. Blogs are set up to keep things moving. And even on sites like Wordpress, good posts can get lost in the darkness! But content rarely does. Why? Because you keep referring back to it! I link people to that tutorial and that recipe at least a few times a week.

Content also can take on a life of its own. In my case with the recipe, folks shared it and shared it and other folks made variations of it. When this happens, you know you are writing more than just good blog posts but good content.

Once we get more into monetization (I’m getting there but I am so NOT the ultimate expert so I am fact checking to make sure I give you all good info!) good content becomes the platform upon which you can build good, steady income on your blog.

But for now wrap your head around the concept of content and figure this out: what’s your Big Mac?

How to Write a Blog Post People Will Read (Part Three)

So you've figured out what "your people" want to know and you've written up a really good post about it that is both concise and well formatted.

Now what?

From what I see in my Facebook feed you bomb every possible outlet you can with your post link. And while that is one method of getting yourself out there, there are more effective ways.

First, do you have a Facebook Page? A Twitter Handle? If you do, then that's the FIRST place you should promote your post. If you and your blog are the same thing (and you're ok with YOUR personal social media profile being shared and re-shared as one would hope when trying to build an audience) then go ahead and share via your personal profile. But even if you and your blog are one and the same I highly advocate for a separate Page or Twitter account.

Once you have a Facebook Page or Twitter handle exactly how do you promote your post? Well at first you're not going to have very many followers. This makes the marketing of posts key. Here are a few things I've found that work well.

• Don't just use your blog post name and a link to your blog post! Think of when you see that. Do YOU feel automatically compelled to click it? Maybe if it's highly relevant to your day-to-day life yes, but otherwise probably not.
• Instead "create" a problem that you're solving for your reader. This may sound deceptive but it's not if you think about it. Sometimes you didn't know you needed something until somebody told you ;) In the last post's analogy about a "Top 5 blog post about running apps" you might say "Need an easy, portable way to track your mileage? Here are my top 5 picks!"
• Use a real photo Yes, Facebook will generate a photo from the blog link you provide but it will be tiny. Studies show people pause for pics! Upload a relevant picture and use your blog post call-out as a caption in the picture. Photo + compelling caption + link = click-through!

If you hang out in other spaces where "your people" are, promote there as well. So long as you're allowed to do so through the websites Terms of Service. You don't want to be getting kicked out of anyplace. Usually, though, so long as you're not selling anything you're good. 

Leave blog post comments on similar, well-trafficked, blogs as your blog. Not as YOU. Unless you and your blog are the same! (What the heck does she mean by that? She keeps saying it??? For example, I am Nikki. My blog is Bariatric Foodie. I post as Bariatric Foodie on other people's blogs, not as Nikki. Get it?) Be sure there's a hyperlink to your blog in there somewhere. You don't necessarily need to pimp a particular post unless it's relevant to the discussion.

Tweet, Tweet, Tweet! You can set up automatic Tweets when post on your blog through Networked Blogs, but I also highly suggest you do your own call-out (using similar language as on Facebook) with a shortened URL. Remember, don't just use the blog post name (which is what Networked Blogs will do). Tell folks WHY they NEED to read your blog post!

See? That wasn't very much to ingest, now was it? Simple things you can do to effectively promote your blog posts when you are ready to do so.

When is that point? I advised at the outset of this blog that you build up some content first. When you are ready to take your blog public, make sure you have links in the body of your blog posts to past posts. That will get people clicking around to see what else you have to offer. I'll go over the subtle art of hyperlinking another time.

Until now, let me ask you this. What effective ways have YOU found to promote your blog posts?