5 easy steps: How to start a successful and profitable blog

So, you want to start an online business?! I’m gonna help you make money with it. I think the easiest way to make money online is through a blog. It can be a personal blog (where you write about your personal finance and how to start an online business) like mine. Or you can make a blog about any other subject you like. I’ll walk you through it!

How to setup a blog

The first part is the hardest. You don’t need to be a techie to do this, but you’ve probably never setup the blog + domain yet. I’m gonna walk you through it step-by-step! But first, a little bit of explanation.

Hosting and domain name explained

Every website has web hosting and a domain name. The hosting is the “home” of the website. You can store your files, images and database there. The domain name is the street name for your website so other users know where to navigate to if they type in your domain name. The domain name refers back to your web hosting. Every domain name is attached to a number. An IP-address. It’s a number that leads other computers to your hosting environment.

Where to buy good hosting + a free domain name

I have more than one hundred domains which I host on 4 different web servers. Whether you’re planning to just stick to 1 website or if you’d also like to setup more websites just like me, I recommend Bluehost to take care of your hosting.

Why Bluehost? Because you can easily setup your blog on it (I use WordPress, which is the most widely used blogging software). You get a free SSL certificate. The SSL certificate secures the communication between your website and the user. It’s also an important Google Ranking factor. SPAM websites are usually associated with not having an SSL certificate. So if you have one, you immediately stand out of the crowd. Bluehost is reliable. You can get a great value plan if you choose the 24 or 36 months plan.

Before you’re ready to setup your hosting, you need to know what domain name you’re gonna use. For this blog I used my own name.

To start we need a niche

Before you can start your own blog or website, you need to know what domain name you’re gonna use. Before you can choose your domain name you need to find and choose your niche. I’ll help you through the process. This is the part that, at least I think so, is most important. This is the start of your money making journey. This will determine whether you’ll be successful. You need to choose a niche that makes sense for you.

How to choose your niche?

I don’t know what you’re good at and spend a lot of time on, so this is an exercise your have to do yourself. I’ll give you some guidelines.

  • Write down 5 things you really enjoy doing
  • Write down 5 things you spend a lot of time on

If you enjoy working out you can write down working out or lifting weights, or CrossFit. We’ll come back to that later.

What’s important in this phase of our blog starting is that we find out what you like to write about but also if there’s a market for it.

If nobody is searching for / interested in your topic we might as well not even start the blog. We need a good balance between the two. We also don’t want to write about something that has massive amounts of competitors.

Hopefully you found a topic that you wrote down twice. Once on the “enjoy” list and once on the “time” list. Let’s take working out as an example.

Drilling down to a narrow enough niche

Working out is a really really broad topic. You could still write about anything really. We don’t want that. Because in this day and age you have to focus first before you can diversify and broaden your scope. First build up authority on a topic that you know a lot about. Once you have a following you can expand your niche.

So, working out is too broad. CrossFit? Also pretty broad. But better. I’ll give you a little help. Click on this link for a tool I use a lot, but first read how to use it.

If we use CrossFit as an example keyword we’ll see that the sheet is automatically filled with queries (searches on Google) that contain the keyword.

When you open the link, click on File -> Make a copy. Once the file is copied, fill in a keyword in cell C2.

Now you’ll start to get closer to finding your niche. You could use keywords like:

  • CrossFit games
  • CrossFit shoes
  • Crossfit workouts

to select as a niche. We need to incorporate the keywords from our niche into a domain name.

I always use this table to show the difference in types of domain names you can use.

Keyword basedBrand basedName based
DogToys.comDogster.comLucyTheDog.com
RemoteControlledAirplanes.comFlyMeNow.comCaptainMike.com
BestMobilePhoneCases.comCaseMobile.comJennifersCases.com

It really doesn’t matter what name you choose. The Keyword based names have the advantage that more people will link to you with the keywords from your website name. That helps you with ranking in search engines. But building a reputable name will give you a similar boost. If a lot of people are searching for your brand name in search engines, you also get a boost to your rankings.

What’s more important: make a choice for your niche!

Do you want: OriginalCrossFitGames.com or rather CrossFitPlay.com or CrossFitWithMichael.com? It doesn’t matter what domain extension (.com, .org, .net, etc) you use. Any extension is good. Maybe .com because it’s the most recognisable. Do make sure you’re not infringing on anyone’s Trademarks. These names are purely given as an example.

One more step before we can register our domain name! We want to know for sure that there’s some interest in the niche you choose (and not too much competition). Goto ads.google.com. Register an account. No credit card required.

Cancel the campaign creation process for now. Click on Tools (top right) -> Keyword Planner (on the left). When the screen loads click Discover new keywords. Fill in one or more of the keywords you’d like to target for your niche. Click: Get results.

You’ll get a huge list (which we’ll use later on as well). Check the volumes of the keyword you filled in. Anything above 5,000 or more is fine. Don’t look at the competitiveness yet. Figure out a domain name that sounds good, is a little descriptive and start your blog!!

Ready to make some money? Let’s setup your hosting now!

Now that you have a domain name ready we can walk through the process of registering a domain name and setting up a hosting plan.

CLICK THIS LINK TO GO TO BLUEHOST WITH A SPECIAL OFFER

 

Click the green button. Select the plan you’d like. If you’re planning to start a single website, choose the basic plan. If you’re going to create multiple websites and really make some cash, I suggest you choose the “Choice plus” plan.

 

In the next step you can enter your domain name and choose your extension: thenameyoucameupwith.com.

 

Complete the form. Fill in your details. For the best value you can chose the 36 month plan. Remember: you can cancel the webhosting within 30 days. You’ll only pay for your domain name.

 

Choose a password.

 

Pick a theme for your website. You can change this at any time!

 

Once you choose your theme you can “START BUILDING”. YEEEEESSSS!!

How to find topics to write about

Now that your blog is set up properly you can start the writing process

Aim for about 10 content pieces to go live with. Never mind structure, images, etc. Just get your fingers warmed up first. Each piece of content should have at least 1000 words. Preferably more than 2000 words. I’m not even a third way through this piece and I’m over 1,3k words. Why so much do I hear you ask?

People are looking for in depth articles. They want to learn. Longer blog posts get more engagement from your audience. Google and other search engines reward your content by giving it a higher position if it has higher engagement. The higher your position in Google the more (passive) income you can gain. More visitors = more money.

Use the Keyword Excel sheet we made earlier to come up with the 10 topics.

For every topic you create, do your research first.

Enter the keywords you want to write a topic about in Google. See what comes up. Look at every result in the top 10. Do you see video’s? Images? Or only web page results? Or maybe Google My Business results? (A business name with a Google Map result)

Based on what you find you can learn 2 things:

  1. What people want to see when they are searching for the keywords you want to write about
  2. What others are already doing. You can learn (copy?) what they made and make it better. At least 10x better

If you see a lot of video results, you know that when you’re finished writing you need to create a YouTube video and embed a video in your blog post. If you see image results, you need to create images that relate to the topic you’re writing about to capture traffic.

First step is just writing and writing and writing.

What do people want to read about? Stories. Tell them your story. Why you’re writing what you’re writing. Why you’re doing what you’re doing. People relate to stories.

 

The intersection of what you know a lot about and what people want to know about is the “Holy Grail” of content creation. Use Google Ads Keyword Planner to lookup search volume so you know there’s interest in what you’re writing.

Comment below this article if you need any help writing. I’m happy to give you guys some pointers.

Once you finish your first post, find an image that says a lot about what you’ve written about. You can find free high quality pictures on sites like Unsplash.com and Pexels.com. Set that image as a featured image. You can find it in the right sidebar under Document -> Featured Image

 

But I suck at writing, I hear you say

SO DID I! It took me quite a while before my writing skills were up to par. But that’s the great thing about a blog. Just post your first piece. After a week or so, read through it again. You’ll see things that can be improved. Ask your spouse, family, friends to give you some tips. You will learn. You will improve.

How to get your first traffic (within 24 hours)

Think about your current networks. Do you have a Facebook account? Do you have an Instagram Account? Pinterest? Use your own account to start driving visitors to your domain.

Facebook

Facebook is easiest to do. Just paste the link from your blog post. Write a small comment about why you think people should read it. The first time you ever post something you can write: Yay my first post is live. But that’s about you. That’s not WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) as in What’s in it for your audience. Always write about them. What value they’ll get out of reading your post.

Ask people on your social accounts to comment on your page. Ask them to write what they did and didn’t like about it. Be open to criticism. Remember: you’re just starting out. You need to learn what your audience likes. What you’re doing well and where you can improve.

Instagram

You can do the same on Instagram. The only problem there is that you can’t add a link to your blog. You can only add a link to your blog post in your bio. So add a link to your bio before you post on Instagram and refer people to your bio.

Make sure you add a great picture and use #hashtags. Hashtags are Instagram’s way of discovering new posts.

Pinterest

On Pinterest, the best thing you can do is start a new public board. Add about 20 pins from other people that also write about the same topic you just wrote about (or about the same general topic) and add your blog post last. You need a bigger image and with a different format here. Head over to Canva.com to make your own Pinterest image.

Pinterest rewards people who regularly add Pins to their boards with more eyeballs. It’s better to add one Pin a day or a week than 10 at a time. But to start out with, you can just add the 20 pins from other people and add your own. Just make sure you keep adding Pins to your board to get more traction. More traction means more visitors to your blog.

A sh*it load of pins are repurposed (as in used over and over again). So if you add more unique pins to your board, you will get more traffic than other boards.

These tactics above should already get you some traffic to your blog and even more valuable: feedback from your audience. This will also give you new ideas to create content about.

Rinse and repeat this for the next 30 days. Get in the habit of making one piece of content every 3 days. Don’t find the time. Make time. This piece will have cost me well over 10 hours to write once it’s finished. Don’t focus on quantity. There’s too much content out there already. Focus on quality. Find the real stuff. Stuff that hasn’t been written about. The stuff that resonates with your readers. Keep in constant contact with them. Any feedback is good feedback. Even if it’s pure hatred. Just swallow it and move on. Always think to yourself: what CAN I learn from this.

Download the free Blog Promotion checklist to get more traffic now!

How to monetize your blog

Up until now, you haven’t made a dime, a penny. You only spent money and time. That’s all going to change now. You should have your 10 posts now. You should have received a lot of feedback from friends and family. You should be ready to create the next 10 pieces. But before you do that, it’s time to reward yourself.

Every month I’m giving away 25 dollars (1 dollar to 25 people) for completing the above section. If you want to participate you need to leave a comment on this page. I want you to give me some feedback on how I can improve this piece. Also copy your domain name and tell me what you found hardest to do. I want to see at least 10 pieces of content written in the last 45 days. These should be your first 10 pieces.

I’m committed to you, my audience, to make you successful. I’ll gladly give you my money so you get even more motivated to keep at it. Because this is a game of perseverance. You need to persist. I’ve been doing this for over a decade and I still need to motivate myself now and then even though I make quite a bit of money through my online business.

Commented below? Great! Big chance you already made your first buck with your blog. Now for the rest…

The real monetization…

You can make money with a few different tactics. The easiest to start is through Google Adsense. You can just add a small “snippet” of html/javascript code on your blog that will automagically create ads on your blog. I don’t use Adsense on this blog. I do use it on a number of different websites I own like fastfoodprice.co.uk.

You can register your account at https://google.com/adsense. It will take a few days to get approved. Once you’re accepted follow this little video I made for you guys (video still needs to be made…) to setup Adsense on your blog. Should be no more than 2 minutes.

Every time an ad is shown to your audience you make a little bit of cash. If they click your add you’ll make a bit more. Anywhere from 1 cent to tens of Dollars per click. The amount you receive depends on a few things. What type of ad is shown to your audience. What type of blog you have. If you’re into finance or legal stuff, you’ll make tons of money per click. But you have more strict rules to abide by.

Not anyone can give legal or financial advice. You need proper education and sometimes even a registration at the proper authorities. So every benefit has a downside. Don’t focus on the amount of money you get per click / view. Just focus on getting Adsense up and running so at least you’ll start making money.

Next up is affiliate marketing.

Depending on your blog niche you can probably make the most money with this type of monetization.

Register an affiliate account at Commission Junction. This is (at least in the US) the biggest affiliate network. Commission Junction is a website where people that own websites (you) find (big brand) advertisers. I’ll record a video soon where I’ll guide you through how to find and apply to different campaigns. Of course, it depends on your niche what campaigns will be of interest to you. If you don’t live in the US or UK, just Google “Affiliate Network” and tons of ads / results will pop up for you to choose from.

There are 2 basic ways to make money with affiliate marketing. The first is to implement affiliate links in your existing content. Look at what you already wrote about and incorporate links that relate to the content you already made. The Bluehost link for example is an affiliate link. So, I earn a little money every time someone buys something through that link.

The second way to earn money with affiliate marketing is if you write about your affiliates. If you’re into clothing, you could browse the affiliate’s website and write about the new collection or the coolest stuff people can buy that’s on sale now.

Start an online store to make money

You can always start an online store which is connected to your blog. Software like Woocommerce can be downloaded for free. It runs on top of your WordPress installation. Read the article above if you want to know how to setup your own online store. You don’t have to sell physical products in your store. You can also sell ebooks and courses.

I’ve made an extensive post how to make money with your blog if you’re interested.

A bonus tip

The audience that reaches you now is mostly through your own network. If people on your social accounts like what you’re writing about, more people (in their network) will also see your content, etc. etc. So the better you make your content the more people you’ll reach through social media. But that’s only a very small percentage of people you CAN reach.

I make 60% – 80% of my money through search engines. They give me a constant flow of visitors. I don’t need to do anything for it. They just come because I have the best content. But before you start ranking in Google you first need to gain authority. Authority in the eyes of search engines are links from other peoples’ websites. A link is a vote. The more votes the better your ranking. Getting one vote from wsj.com is way better than a link from your friends’ blog though. So  it’s very important to focus on quality over quantity.

Now for the tips… Find other blogs / websites / Pinterest Board / Instagrammers etc. that write about stuff that’s related to your blog. Start commenting on their blogs. Be genuine. Don’t comment to be commenting. It’s a means to an end. Not an end in itself. Only comment on stuff you really like. Try to add value but don’t be cheeky. Don’t be the smart ass.

You’re going to need the people you find in a later stage. So it’s good to build a relationship now. Show them you like what they’re doing. Build trust. In a couple of months, you can, maybe, just maybe get something from them.

This is how to get something from commenting

Look at their content. What did they write about? Is there something you can add? Something that matches what they’re doing? An image? Something else you created (through someone else on Upwork)?

It could be an infographic that sums up everything the blogger talked about in his/her blog. It could be a tool that you created for them. If you ever need resources, need people that do stuff you can’t? Visit Upwork. There are tons of freelancers that can help you create stuff. I’ve spent thousands and thousands of Dollars on that platform. On people who created stuff I couldn’t create. I’m not a programmer, but I can write down exactly what I want. I’m not a designer but I can look at what other designers on Upwork have already made and ask someone to make something similar.

You could do the same. Spend a few bucks on something that could really help out someone else. Here’s the cheeky part… Some people you e-mail will never respond. Even the people you think who will.

In the first email you send them only TELL them you’ve created something great for them. If they respond positively get your but over to Upwork and get a freelancer (who you’ve already briefed) the go ahead to start working on your project. They usually finish between one and two days if it’s not a big thing to make. So once they’re finished message back your blogger with the finished product.

This way you won’t spend any money unless you have a high chance to get in front of a bigger audience. Because in the same email where you show your “result” you’ll also ask if they can link back to your blog.

This tactic works great for bloggers who you already know. If you’re just reaching out to someone you don’t know, it CAN help to bring some money. Because most bloggers don’t make a lot of money. You could ask them to write about your blog for cash or ask them if you can submit a guest post and wire some money for the time it took them to post your piece / do some editing and designing.

Thank you guys for reading my basic “How to start a profitable blog”. If you want to learn more you can read my Advanced tactics to grow and monetize your blog. I’m currently working on this blog post. It should be finished within a week or so. You can find the advanced blogging tips here.

Digital marketing tips for Drop Shippers

Dropshipping has been on the rise for the past 5 years. Search volume has risen steadily over the last 3 years.

Why is dropshipping an interesting ecommerce model?

Who doesn’t like to earn money without doing the heavy lifting? The great thing about having a dropshipping business is that you can concentrate on the online marketing stuff and not on the fulfillment part of the store.

That’s also the biggest downside. You can’t differentiate with fulfillment and you’re more dependent on others to make your online store successful.

Drop shipping tip #1: clearly communicatie delivery time

Communicate your delivery time clearly. If you’re shipping from China you won’t be able to promise next day or 2 day delivery. With Amazon and other big retailers offering free next day delivery consumers are getting spoiled but also getting accustomed to quick delivery.

Your customers might go next door if they see they’ll receive their product a lot faster. Give them an option for faster shipment!

Drop shipping tip #2: always order the products you want to sell

Courtesy of Pexels

Don’t assume the products your supplier has in stoke are all great quality products. Always order them. You can simultaneously check the delivery time. Ordering the items yourself will let you experience what your customer experiences.

Did the product arrive on time? Undamaged? Well packed? As you’d expect? Try the product. Does it do what you say it does on your website?

This process will also allow you to come up with new ideas to market your product. New ideas to add to product descriptions and in marketing your products.

Drop shipping tip #3: don’t use stock product photography

Courtesy of Pexels

Once the products arrive, make pictures yourself. You can use a Photography Lightbox to create high quality photo’s of your products.

Only use stock photo’s if 1) they really look great and 2) creating your own doesn’t add anything (as in angles, details, etc.)

Remember this though: always think with the end in mind. If you want to be successful online, whether that’s with drop shipping or any other online presence… You have to build a brand.

Brands are visual and photography can be a big part of building your brand. You can add your watermark to your photo’s. You can add your “avatar” to your pictures. You can really stand out with your store with unique pictures.

And because you can’t really differentiate on the fulfillment part of the business, you HAVE to choose different parts of the business to really differentiate on.

Drop shipping tip #4: once you get a taste of drop shipping start a private label

Don’t start a private label on day one (unless you have at least 10k in the bank and confidence in the products you want to sell).

In the end, if you really want to be successful online, you need to create your own branded products. You can’t sell someone else’s products. Everyone can do that. You’ll get competition on price. Competition on every single angle you can think of. To start with you’ll be operating in a nice small niche. You won’t have a lot of competition with the standard stuff you can buy from the supplier(s), but once you start growing you also start seeing more and more competitors.

To own the market as a drop shipper you NEED to differentiate on your brand and products.

You’ll need to think about this from the beginning of your store. What will the URL be? Something like: best[insertproductname].com or CrazyUniqueBrandName.com? The latter will allow you to build a product brand on top of your store URL. It might be a little bit harder to rank in search engines in the beginning, but once you start to get some traction, having your own branded URL will only make it more easy. Plus you’ll be taken more seriously by your customers and (potential) suppliers.

Drop shipping tip #5: don’t start your shop with 100+ products

Courtesy of Pexels

Because you want to see and feel all the products you’re selling as a drop shipper, you shouldn’t simply upload a feed with hundreds or thousands of products and see what happens. You need to know what you’re selling. You need to check the quality of the product. You need to write unique product titles, descriptions and other product details.

We already talked about photo’s. While I wouldn’t call it mandatory to create your own unique pictures I would definitely put it in the top 5 of todo’s.

There’s such an abundance of online stores out there. The products you want to sell are likely already in dozens of stores around the globe. You’ll have to differentiate yourself sooner or later. Rather start a bit sooner…

Drop shipping tip #6: don’t ask other people what you should sell

If you have to ask other people what you should sell, you’re starting in the wrong direction. Don’t be persuaded by someone else to sell something. You have to be really passionate about the products you’re selling. You should be the biggest fan of your own store. You should be constantly thinking how you can improve your store and your products. What information you can add so your conversion rate will increase. What other products can be added to your store. Where the market is going and what people would also like to buy besides your main products.

  • Be passionate about what you sell
  • You should be your best customer
  • Your products and your market should be on your mind all day long
  • This way you’ll be able to improve your store every day, by:
    • Adding products
    • Creating more appealing product descriptions
    • Giving the best answers to customers’ questions
    • Knowing where you can target your customers
    • Etc.

You can follow my guide on ranking a website from scratch. You can use these tips as a drop shipper too. Good luck starting your business!

Hopin review, pricing and lifetime deal to create an online event

If you host a lot of (offline) events and are looking for a platform where you can manage everything (except the event itself) hopin is your cup of tea. In this review we’ll talk about what hopin can add to your event.

The number one reason why you should use hopin? It adds an online layer to your (offline) event. Attendees can follow your event online. Increasing your revenue without increasing your cost.

If you’re able to stream your event, you’re able to use hopin as an extra way to generate more revenue.

hopin allows you to extend your event online if you stream it to YouTube Live, Wistia, Vimeo or a custom livestream provider.

Setting up an event with hopin

It only takes a few minutes to setup an event with hopin. You add an event by entering just a little bit of info.

  • The name of the event
  • Timezone
  • When it starts and ends
  • What type of event
  • Who can register

The type of event is probably the most interesting. You can have have any 3 event types. A single stage you stream. Multiple sessions people can join. A network event. Or a combination of the three. You can stream your main stage and separate sessions.

Ticket types

You can add paid and free ticket types.

Once you’ve added one or more ticket types you can flip the switch and turn your event “on”. People can visit your event page and buy tickets.

Once the event is live you can add different stages or booths. This is one of the best things in my opinion. A partner could join the conference at a distance too. They don’t have to be in your venue. They could create a dedicated booth to livestream from and answer questions from participants exclusively via the livestream.

You can setup a direct line to the partners website and create a revenue stream for them. hopin even allows you to integrate a coupon code into the booth.

Once you’ve set up your expo area and some other minor details you can GO LIVE!

Pricing: Pay as you go versus a plan

The pay as you go plan is great if you host a one time event in the distant future. If you organize and event every month with at least 50 to 100 attendees you are better off signing up for a plan.

 

 

The Ultimate Quora Marketing Guide

Did you know that Quora receives upwards of 300 million visitors per month (in September 2018)?

Basically Quora is a question and answer platform. You can ask any question you’d like. People who think can add something answer the question. People who answer questions are encouraged to answer questions because people can “upvote” their answers. The more upvotes you get the more people will see your answer. Answers are in no way or form monetizable. You can answer 10,000 questions. You can receive a million answer views…. Quora won’t pay you a dime for your work 🙂 But if you continue reading, I’ll tell you exactly how a marketer can get value from Quora.

Quora is on the decline as of this writing

They have seen their Global rank decline in the past few months (probably due to Google Algorithm changes) but they still reach a massive amount of people.

Quora used to be a top 100 website but has been declining quite a bit lately, (probably) because of the rise of “0 click searches” / the #0 result.

If you look at Semrush data you can see that a big part of the decline was from a drop in organic traffic.

You should nevertheless not ignore Quora by any means. They’re still a huge opportunity for (smart) marketers.

Who founded Quora?

Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever founded Quora in June 2009. Quora was recently valued at 2 Billion Dollar while only raking in about 20 Million in revenue in 2018.

How does Quora Work?

As a user you can either do one of 2 things. Ask a question or give / change an answer.

In order to ask a question you need to register an account.

How do you use Quora without logging in?

You can view answers without logging in when you click a result from Quora on Google. Once you want to read another answer though Quora prompts you to register.

The easiest way to keep browsing answers? Hold shift (on Windows machines) and Command (on Mac) when opening a new question. Unfortunately you can’t open Quora’s homepage and get a “timeline” view. You need an account for that.

You NEED an account if you want to use Quora for marketing purposes

Because in order to get exposure, you need to start answering questions. Head over to Quora and register an account if you haven’t got an account yet.

Start following some topics you enjoy reading a bout or know a lot about.

I started my Quora journey a few years back, in 2011. This was the first question I answered back in June 2011.

I had no clue what I was doing. I just answered questions I thought I could answer because I knew a bit about the topic.

Quora has a Real Name policy. You need to use your own name or risk deletion of your account.

Since 2011 I’ve actually only answered about 65 questions and amassed about 500k answer views.

Once I started picking a certain niche I gained followers more easily as well as  upvotes.

Quora is actually, in hindsight, pretty easy. Answer questions you think your answer will add something to the discussion. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t add an answer anymore when more than 100 people have answered that particular question.

Some questions have amassed a massive following and have received a lot of answer views. Those popular questions can always use another useful answer.

There’s a rule some people use… Don’t answer questions that have a worse than 7:1 ratio of followers versus answers. I don’t follow that rule though. It’s maybe because I have about 2k followers and my answers get viewed a lot even though the ratio for that question is more like 3:1.

Don’t get thrown off by the ratio’s. Answer questions you know will add value to Quora.

That leads us to the first question you should ask yourself.

How do I answer my first question on Quora?

Once you have an account on Quora you can either do 4 things to answer your first question.

  1. Follow certain topics and see what kind of questions land on your timeline.
  2. Click on the topics you just followed and browse the questions until you see a good one to answer.
  3. Go to the “Answer” tab and see what “Questions for you” Quora came up with
  4. Choose wether to answer a question that has 0 or more than 0 answers.

How do I get my first upvotes?

You’ll notice that the first few questions you answer don’t get any upvotes. That’s because of these 3 things:

  1. You haven’t looked at what questions have (some) traction (not a popular question)
  2. You don’t have any followers (you’re talking in a void)
  3. You didn’t add enough value (your answer looks/is the same as the rest)

My best answers on Quora are also the longest. My most popular answer has almost 2000 words. It has received 50% of my total answer views and more than 2,000 upvotes. This article so far has about 800 words. So now you know what you’re up against 🙂

The more upvotes your answer gets the more your answer will be shown to different people. There’s also another metric, besides comments, Quora is supposedly using. The amount of people that click on the “read more” link. If your answer is less than 100 words or not bigger than a few paragraphs Quora will just show your entire answer without giving people the chance to click on “read more” to display your entire answer.

So tip #1: make your answer large enough so people can click on read more.

The second tip: use an image in the first few paragraphs. Images say more than 1000 words and on Quora really grab your attention.

This is the image size for answers on Quora

Quora uses a ratio of 16:9 and you need to use a minimum image size of 600 x 314 pixels. Preferably you should use 1200 x 628 pixels.

Use controversial images

Images that might not have anything to do with the answer, controversial images, colorful images they all work great.

I’m not saying you should (consistently) use images that have nothing to do with the answer. They can however be very “clickable”.

Scarcely clothed people (women) do very well. I even answered a question on Quora which was about what you thought was really annoying. It was the use of very attractive women who actually have nothing to do with the answer. It’s just pure clickbait.

I clicked a few of those answers and my timeline was just being flooded by the same type of answers. It took me a lot of work to get my timeline “back to normal”.

This is probably a question that is asked a lot when doing Marketing on Quora:

Why was my answer deleted?

Because someone flagged your answer as SPAM and a moderator decided it is SPAM.

Mostly Quora moderators go where there’s fire. The reported answers.

Every answer has 3 dots on the bottom right. If you click that you can click report to report an answer.

Why was my answer flagged as SPAM?

In your heart you already know the answer. You were just too focussed on your own business. On the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). You didn’t focus enough on adding value to Quora. That’s the short answer. Read this if you want to know how to appeal a moderation decision.

The long answer:

Don’t talk about your business. Don’t tell people how great you or your business is. Don’t JUST link out to your website.

I’ve had quite a few answers flagged and deleted by Quora moderators. In the years I’ve been on the platform I’ve honed my appeal skills and I’m now able to successfully appeal almost all of the moderators’ decisions.

It helps a lot if you answer the Spam guidelines and answer guidelines before you start answering questions that you want to drive leads from to your website.

You can find Quora’s Spam policy here and here you can find the general answer guidelines.

There’s one easy guideline: Don’t answer your own questions. That’s always considered Spam. Ask someone else to ask the question for you 🙂 But don’t make it too obvious and keep answering the questions that “total stranger” keeps asking.

How to generate traffic & leads from Quora

Some people are in it purely as an altruist. I’m not. Yes, I do answer a lot of questions without mentioning my business. But I try to answer about 50% of the questions with, in the back of my mind, the intent to ALSO gain business traction.

Let me first tell you how not to do it. I flagged this guy for spam. It’s obvious why…

It’s clear that the only reason he’s on Quora is to promote his employer. I don’t even think he uses his real name. The company he’s promoting has its seat in India. (Quora is full of people from India btw).

He even just blatantly says “our core business”… It’s just straight up spam. Anyway… This is how NOT to do content marketing on Quora.

Stay away from self promotion

It’s actually OK to do a bit of self promotion according to Quora’s policy. But if you overdo it, you are screwed. Best thing to do: stay far away from the grey area. I don’t know how many times my answers have been flagged as Spam, but I know that the ones who are in the grey area are far more likely to be flagged than the ones where I’m not promoting myself (or my business) so much.

Remember the most important thing about what you should do on Quora: Add value to the community.

You can copy (old) content from your blog if it answers the question

I’ve copied content from this bog a couple of times now. Make sure you change the copy so you don’t say stuff like “on this blog”. Quora won’t mind even the slightest. It’s a great way to repurpose your content and to gain extra visibility.

BUT don’t solely link back to your website. Don’t EVER use affiliate links on Quora. Be careful about linking to your website where you immediately offer people paid services or products.