Buy Me a Beer: Why the “Donate” Button is Dead… Almost

photo credit: Caveman Chuck Coker

Have you ever seen one of those “buy me a beer” buttons that allow you to donate to the blogger? They used to be everywhere.

In fact, I know a few bloggers who would rake in four figures a year just from their donate button. Pretty amazing right?

So where did these buttons go? Why aren’t we all using them? And why is the donate button almost dead?

How did the donate button work

The donate button was a pretty simple invention. Using Paypal’s donate feature you could add a snippet of code to the sidebar of your blog and take money from generous people.

Most of the time the blogger would add the catchy “Buy Me a Beer” phrase to the top of the button to make it seem more casual and friendly.

Other times people would have a little bit of text explaining how the money would be used; server costs, time writing more posts, etc.

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…

On Controversy, Risk and Lost Subscribers

photo credit: BinaryApe

A few days ago I published an article about selling. Some people thought it was about a con man. Perhaps they were right.

Either way, the article resulted in me losing quite a few of my much-loved subscribers – some of them sending me nasty messages about how unethical I was.

So, at the encouragement of my good friend over at Lion5 I decided to write a short follow up post about controversy, risk and lost subscribers. The last paragraph contains a statement I want you all to help me with.

Oh, and Scott, I’m waiting for you analysis of this photo.

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…

The Man Who Sold The Brooklyn Bridge Twice a Week for 30 Years

photo credit: See-ming Lee

“Hello, sir. Would you like to buy this lovely bridge here? Its on sale for today only. Think of all the money you could make from tolls.”

“Are you sure its for sale mate?” replied the confused old man.

“Why else would it have a ‘For Sale’ sticker on it?!” came the reply.

George C. Parker was the greatest con man in American history managing to sell landmark items like Madison Square Gardens, the Statue of Liberty and, you guessed it, the Brooklyn Bridge.

In fact, he sold the Brooklyn Bridge at least twice a week, one time for as much as $50,000. Sometimes the police would have to stop the “new owners” from setting up toll booths in the middle of the bridge.

So what can we learn from this great con man? Well, for starters, I learned that my girlfriend wasn’t impressed when she found out I’d be studying con-artists until 8pm at night, skipping dinner.

But there is also a lot more we can learn – and its not unethical. So let’s dive in. Oh, and stick around to see what happened to ol’ George in the end.

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…

Deathly Silence: What’s Your Off-site Blog Marketing Strategy?

photo credit: Bob Jagendorf

So you’ve got a blog, written some amazing content and now you’re delving into the seedy world of increasing conversions and blog optimization. And its working. Subscribers are increasing, comment counts are at Blog Tyrant levels and you’re getting more followers on your social media accounts.

But what about off-site marketing? What are you doing there? Anything…?

Off-site marketing is something that, when brought to your attention, seems like an absolute given. But it really seems to have fallen to the wayside in recent blogging history. In this post I want to give you a few ideas about promoting your blog off-site.

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…

The Secret Ingredient for Creating Hyper-Loyal Blog Readers

photo credit: pasukaru76 (away on vacation)

That title could be quite funny with a misplaced comma or two… hyper, loyal blog readers. I’m looking at you Jen.

If you’ve been reading Blog Tyrant for a while now you will know that I have been lucky enough to own (and then sell) quite a few successful blogs in a variety of different niches. Some of them were very tricky, competitive niches.

And I seem to have tapped into the extremely over-crowded blogging niche without too much difficulty. But enough self aggrandizement – let’s talk about how it is done. What is the secret ingredient for creating hyper-loyal blog readers?

Its all in the words.

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…

What Are You Doing, Really?

photo credit: John Steven Fernandez

When you go through a tough time in your life you start to look at the choices you have made up until that point. And if you are anything like me you will have a few regrets. And after a while these regrets can begin to weigh you down.

They are tricky too. They might be overt things like cheating on your wife (which I’ve never done), or more subtle things like wasting hours of every day playing video games (which I often do).

And you get to a point where you just need to ask yourself, “What are you doing, really?“

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…

Beat Stress: 6 Reasons You are Stressed Out of Your Mind

photo credit: Shandi-lee

I’m a self-employed 26 year old who has a tendency to get stressed, anxious and panicked – even during the the smallest of life’s hiccups. Beneath my steely exterior and chiseled, move-star jawline is a scared little boy.

Early on in my life I knew I’d have to figure out some techniques for beating stress.

Now, I am not saying that I have mastered these. Far from it. But I am saying that they have helped me. And as I know a lot of you lovely readers out there deal with bouts of stress and anxiety I thought I’d write a bit of an off topic post and talk about some ways bloggers, business people and everyone else online can beat stress when you just don’t feel like its possible.

And I’m going to do it by telling you why you are stressed.

HELP ME: I need your help on this one guys. If you know of any really good stress beating methods please leave me a comment.

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…

How You Can Build Big, Valuable Traffic in Your Small Niche

photo credit: JimReeves

One of the ways I work from home is by having a network of small niche blogs and websites that earn money with Adsense and other revenue streams. A lot of these sites are in niches so small that I used to want to give up on them.

Not any more.

Over the years I have learned a lot of ways to grow traffic. More importantly, I have learned a lot of ways to grow valuable traffic. And that is what this post is all about: finding traffic that is not just big, but valuable to your business.

Let’s dive in and find out what you can do to grow traffic when it feels like there just isn’t any around.

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…

15 Tips to Stop Facebook & Email Hackers Ruining Your Life

Photo: The National Guard

Its true. When your Facebook, blog, email or bank accounts get hacked your life can be ruined. Some of us spend our entire existences online and such a breach can have terrible effects. You can have money stolen, personal details hijacked and, as happened to me, spam emails sent out to hundreds of high profile clients.

Just a month ago my Facebook and secondary email accounts were hacked while I was on holiday in India. It was my fault.

In this article I am going to give you some simple ways that you can boost your Facebook and email security and stop hackers from ruining your life. Please share this post around as this event was seriously traumatic, I’d like to help people prevent it.

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…

10 of the Best Contact Us Pages on the Internet

photo credit: x-ray delta one

The dreaded Contact Us page. The place where you have a last ditch attempt at getting potential clients, customers and fans to get in touch or, in my case, convince them otherwise (I get a lot of emails).

So we’ve had a look at the best About Us pages and now I want to do the same for the Contact Us page. What are the best practices? What works and what doesn’t? Is there anything you can do to increase your chances of success?

Let’s take a look at what I think are 10 of the best Contact Us pages on the internet.

NOTE: Please give this post a Tweet if you like it. It’ll only take you one click of that button up in the top left. You guys are amazing commentators but terrible social sharers!

Read the rest of this amazing literary work…