I know, it’s amazing that you can distill the thought of building your readership down to just three simple questions, but that’s what we do every day here at Slyvisions–we do the amazing.

So what are those three questions?

1. Why?  Yeah, that’s pretty simple.  But it’s a good question, WHY do you want more readers?  And no, “I wanna make more money” doesn’t count–you’ll have to be specific here.  Do you want to sell more merchandise?  Increase your advertising revenue?  Or do you just want to be regarded as a pundit so you can get a foot in the door with publishers?  Each approach requires a different strategy–know what yours is.

2. Who?  Again, simple–but who are these readers that you want to come to your site?  Are you looking for experts who’ll fire a community up with high-level chatter about the minutiae of your topic?  Do you want to make something warm and welcoming for the noobs?  Do you want ad-clickers, or stuff-buyers, or just more readers?  Again, different strategy for each.

3. How?  This is the grandest question of all.  But once you’ve figured out the why and the who, then the how will be a lot smoother.  If you want to get the stuff buyers, then offer discounts or new and interesting stuff.  If you want the ad clickers, make sure your ads draw sufficient attention that they’ll be practically begging to click.  And so on.

With these strategies in mind, you’re likely to put a serious fire under your readership numbers.

No one likes someone who pimps their own stuff. There is an exception to this, when telling your success story can help other people. Telling a good success story about your blog, whether it was a particularly successful post that increased your readership, or it is the anniversary of your blog.

The reason these stories are helpful to people is that they want to learn from your success, they like to be associated with success. Explaining how you achieved your success gives people a tangible lesson from which to learn, and that always makes for a compelling post.

The added benefit of this type of post is that you never know who is reading your posts, it is quite feasible that companies who are looking for outlets to advertise with will be reading your post if your blog is in their niche. By telling them indirectly how successful your blog is only gives them an additional reason to place an ad with you.

What is your success story?

As part of his 31 days to a better blog series, Darren Rowse encouraged the participants to create a blogging schedule.  I think this is a particularly excellent idea. I have a couple of reasons to believe this will actually help any blogger.

Firstly, committing something to paper or in this case to an electronic calendar makes it more real, it creates a more permanent record in your memory. Secondly, by actually organizing your blogging activity it becomes less daunting and you are more likely to complete all the tasks that form a good blogging business.

Take a look at Darren’s proposed schedule and see for yourself how it could help your blog. Bear in mind that there is no one schedule that works for all blogs, and only you can really determine the frequency and number of posts that works for your blog.

Does scheduling your blogging activity help you ?

If you have decided to run ads on your site, you have probably gone through the process of selecting the ad partner you are going to work with. You have most likely read widely on where to place ads, how to get targetted ads and even how to generate specific sponsor ads from companies directly.

Have you thought about how your content helps promote your ads? Not directly, but indirectly? For example if your blog is about Pets and you have ads running from pet supplies, pet foods, Vets etc. Do you write posts that play to those ads?

You might write a post about pet health care for example, discuss various preventative measures, talk about how to select a Vet, but if your post not only discusses an issue but provides all the answers then your post isn’t helping your ads, however, if you discuss an issue, but have the ads that run with that post provide the answer then you are much more likely to increase the number of clicks (and generate revenue!).

Having a post that discusses pet nutrition with ads running along side it that are from Pet Food companies is definitely going to lead to more clicks per reader, because you are posing a problem and letting your ads provide the answers.

Continuing the theme of the last two days, today I want to focus on structure for posting.

When I first learned to do presentations I was taught a very simple way to structure them.

1. Tell the audience what you are going to tell them

2. Tell them that

3. Tell them what you told them

This structure works equally well for blog posts. Did you notice the first line of this post? I told you what I was going to write about. By doing this you have immediately warmed the reader up to what follows. Yesterday we talked about headlines. Today’s headline built from that, it has a number in it, that attracts readers. The opening line told you what to expect.  Then we deliver what we promised.

By structuring your posts in this way it becomes easier to write them, you can find easy headings (if you use those). The final section gives you the opportunity to make sure that you have included all the information you wanted to give to your audience.  By hightlighting what you have shared you are reviewing your post.  The added benefit of this is that you are also editing at the same time.

So, for a good structure, though not the only way, tell your readers what you are going to share, share it, spend time reviewing it, then remind the reader what they read and what you want them to walk away with.

How do you structure your posts?

I’ve seen a lot of great articles in the past week, so here’s another issue of Quick Links. Other than getting a new design for SlyVisions and telling bloggers to stop lurking and start working, I found some articles that are worth linking to. So without wasting any more of your time, go ahead and check them out!

• How to Promote Yourself Without Promoting Yourself? The Secret of SEO 2.0 from SEO 2.0
• Ryan from Smarter Wealth has great tips on What To Do When You Hit “The Wall”
• Learn How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog with StumbleUpon and Twitter from Remarkablogger
• From Mr Javo Using RSS To Boost Your Blog
• Hongkiat has 9 Interesting Facts To Know About A Website

I’d also like to give a shout out to the top commentators of this month as of writing this post.

• Ryan McLean (39)
• SuiteJ (16)
• Adsensing (10)
• Elijah (9)
• paulette (9)
• Hussein (9)
• Freddie (8)
• Danny Cooper (8)
• Yan Shall Blog (7)
• webkinz (7)

Remember there is a free blog review up for grabs, so get your name in the list for a chance to win the prize!

One year ago, Slyvisions dot Com was born!

My first year of being in the internet marketing business has been quite a ride. I can still remember the time when I googled “make money online”, which led me to ProBlogger, which then led me to make this site. Actually, the first content of this site was born in April of last year. But it wasn’t until June 2 of 2007 that I bought my own web hosting and the domain from Dreamhost, when the site was officially born.

Through this blog, I have reached my goal of making over thousands of dollars online. Slyvisions dot Com provided me with the skills that I needed to reach my success. It also allowed me to prepare for what’s to come in the near future. But it all couldn’t have been possible without you, my readers. So I thank everyone who has been part of my first year in this journey.

But don’t get me wrong. I still have a long way to go.

Most Popular Posts

Anyway, I want to present to you the most popular posts of my first 365 days. They are not put in any particular order. Every post you see here are what I feel has made Slyvisions dot Com what it is right now. If you think I missed something, let me know!

• 10 Things To Do When You Have Nothing To Blog About
• Your Blog Sucks and I Got 20 Reasons To Back It Up
• Dear Readers: Stop Lurking and Start Commenting!
• Make $50+ A Day Buying and Selling Domains
• Warning: This Simple Trick Can Make You A Famous Blogger In No Time
• What You Can Learn From New Bloggers
• Make Money Online With Digital Point Forums
• 4 Simple Tips For Writing Great Content the Right Way
• Poll Results: 36% Say Most Of Their Traffic Come From Search Engines
• Blog Tools and Services That Bloggers Need To Use

There are a few more posts I know were popular in terms of traffic, but the ones above are the ones that I think I spent 300% effort writing, and in turn, got plenty of comments from readers everywhere. Anyway, to finish this post, I would like to thank you again for being a Slyvisions dot Com reader. Without you, I don’t think I would have written this post in the first place.

It’s been a very long time since I posted up some Quick Links. So here are some great posts in the past few days that you can check out just in case you missed any.

• Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Usability from ProBlogger
• The Cow asks, Dear RSS Subscriber, Should We Really Care About You?
• Ramkarthik from Blogging Tips has 5 Reasons Why Part Time Blogging Rocks
• Learn how to Check How Search Engines See Your Website from Daily Blog Tips
• Curious George, SEO, & The Scientific Method from One Man’s Goal