NEW* 2015 Blog Planners

Now that 2015 is here and the Resolutions are here, getting more organized is #1 on most of our lists. I know it’s on mine, I have a problem staying organized if I don’t have a planner in front of me. I’ve took it upon myself to gather the best 2015 Blog Planners. Most are free, but there are some that are paid. There are even some other downloads such as blog goals, tax info, etc..

Free 2015 Mega Printable Blog Planner

This Free 2015 Mega Printable Blog Planner from SweetCSDesigns contains calendars, monthly income and expense tracking sheets, conference pack lists/ vendor networking sheets, invoice templates and tracking, as well as tons of to-do lists that are fantastic even if you aren’t a blogger!

Printable Fill It In

 

I also really like this 2015 Printable Fill-it in Planner from Color Me Meg. I am a sucker for all things colored, I just wish my printer ink wasn’t so darn expensive. I mean $30 per color cartridge? I call BS. LOL. Oh well, it’s better than buying a $40 that isn’t half as good as one of these though!

2015 Blog Planner (very detailed)

Image Source: confessionsofahomeschooler.com

Confessions of a Homeschooler made this bright, colorful, and totally FREE 2015 Blog Planner. If you’re ready to get going for the new year, then you definitely need to find a planner that fits YOUR needs. That you KNOW that you’ll use, something you LIKE.

2015 Blogging Goals

To make your (and my) life easier and more organized, The Nectar Collective created a two-page blog planner to help you work through what you’d like to accomplish with your virtual space this year. It’s a free, printable PDF and she includes any questions that she thought could be valuable.

 

If you are new to blogging you also need to read

these articles..

Protect Your Work:

Basic Legal Protections Every Blogger Should Know!

Work a full-time job?

How to Work Full-time and Blog

Hope this gets you on the path to successful blogging in 2015! Leave me links to posts that you’ve found helpful to YOUR blogging goals and dreams!

Blog 101: Create a Giveaway Winner Template

After you post your review, you will want to post your giveaway item. There are different giveaway lengths, depending on how long the company would want to run the campaign. Most giveaway sites will randomly choose a winner for you after the giveaway has ended.


I use Giveawaytools, which chooses a winner for me and then emails me. It makes is a lot easier for me. Then all I have to do is confirm the entries and email the winner. You want to send them something they can get excited about, don’t you?

You can make this process easier by creating a template for your emails, so you aren’t freehanding them every single time. You can create a template in any word processor. Most computers come with Microsoft Word sample, but I usually buy the CD every couple of years through Best Buy. Either way, you’ll need a document creation software.

-------------Document Creation Software-----------------------------

If you don’t NEED Microsoft Office, you can find free downloads to other word document software online. You can use Microsoft Online, but it isn’t the same as having it downloaded.
With other FREE software, you will have limitations that Word doesn’t- like text and image insertion will definitely be different. You can always use Google Docs, which I love.

Here are some to download that resemble Word but are free: OpenOffice, AbiWord. & Jarte
. It does take some creative thought, so it’s better to work with a sample to begin with. Here are some things to include:

• Let your winner know that they won your contest/giveaway/sweepstakes, and let them know how they were chosen.
• Were they randomly selected? Or were they selected manually because you chose them as the winner of your (recipe, photo, or other) contest?

    Ex: You have been randomly selected as a winner in the Softsoap Giveaway on Stylish Southern Mama.
               or Out of all the photo entries, yours was chosen as the winner because it was… (the best. the cutest, most inspiring… etc)

              You can see here: INSERT GIVEAWAY URL

• Explain that you’ll need their address and phone number to send their prize (and that it’s FOR shipping purposes only and you won’t give out their information- that it is strictly confidential.

          (and include whether it’s coming directly from YOU or from the company)

• Also give them a time limit to accept the email and respond. I know stuff happens and people miss emails; I’ve done it a thousand times.. but your company is going to want you to choose a winner pretty quickly. Normally winners have 48-72 hours to respond to the winning email.
• You’ll want to close with a signature and information to your blog + social media, so your winner knows your email isn’t a fake one. There tends to be a lot of spam sent and they need to know you’re legit.

Here I will show you with Google Docs.
Click the blue link above.--------

You will see Documents that you’ve already created. Look to the right, down at the bottom. You’ll see a little + circle

When you hover over that circle it will say… New document. Click it.

Start thinking of what you want to add to your giveaway template. You can always go back and change it if you need to, don’t worry.


Make sure to end the email with a signature and your links to your site/social media.
How to create an email signature
Google Apps Email Signature

After you create your signature, you’ll want to insert it into your Document


Look at the top of your document and click insert.. it will dropdown- then click image


You’ll find your image located in your folders.


I keep mine in a file named “signature”.


Now you can save it… label it “giveaway winner template” so you can easily get to it.
You could also insert an image before the email to grab the email recipient.


I whipped this one up and added it to the top of my Google Docs without a problem.


If you just want to use mine you can see it: Giveaway Winner Template
copy and paste it into your own document-please do NOT edit mine…

Now to create your email.


Copy your google document and paste it into your email. This isn’t going to insert your images, you’ll have to manually do that.

Thanks and good Luck

11 Awesome Places to Promote & Submit Your Giveaway

As bloggers, we ask the same question every time – where are the best places to submit giveaways? Where will the giveaways will get seen by people who want to enter? But isn’t spammy and gets considerable traffic?

Here are the answers. These are websites that are up-to-date with their postings (meaning the authors have recently been posting to their sites), and get tons of traffic who want to see your giveaways. Post away!

Also, if you’re a reader LOOKING for more giveaways, by all means visit these sites. You cannot join the FB groups, but you can enter giveaways on the websites. (and good luck☼)

 

Giveaway Promote- Giveaway Promote is ran by a good blogger friend of mine, Bridget Gillian. She has an amazing site for both adding your giveaways and finding others. If you’re a blogger, she will let you submit your giveaway for free. You can pay just a small amount to be promoted at the top of the site as well. (which is better because MANY people are looking to her for the most amazing giveaways). You’ll find everything- gift cards, money, electronics, kitchen gadgets, cloth diapers…etc. SO much more.

Submit your giveaway here: Giveaway Promote

 

Makobi Scribe- Makobi Scribe is a blogger just like the rest of us, but she put a new giveaway linky up monthly I think. You just submit your giveaway to the linky list, takes about 3 seconds.

Submit Your giveaway here: Makobi Scribe

 

Contest Corner- Another blog dedicated to bringing the best giveaways and letting you submit them. Doesn’t take very long, captcha is required (although it’s the 3 number captcha)

Submit your giveaway here: Contest Corner

 

Mom Bloggers Club- You’ll have to sign up for Mom Bloggers Club, but it’s something you want to do as a blogger anyway. Mom Bloggers Club is filled with sources of information and some amazing bloggers along the way.

Submit your Giveaway here: Mom Bloggers Club

 

Etsy Giveaways- This is just what it sounds like, a place to submit your giveaways from Etsy shops. So that people who want to win handmade goods, don’t have to sift through a giant pile.

Submit your giveaway here: Etsy Giveaways

 

Giveaway Monkey- This site is dedicated to giveaways and contests, although it isn’t like a sweeping website (which I find a little spammy and hard to sift through). This is a great website! Submit your giveaway right at the top!

Submit your giveaway here: Giveaway Monkey

 

Giveaway Bandit- This is an amazing giveaway submission site, although it’s more than that. It’s a regular blog as well, but people definitely visit to see the giveaways. I definitely love how everything is organized within certain categories right in the tab. Makes it easy to move around.

Submit Your Giveaway here: Giveaway Bandit

 

Bloggy Giveaways- This is also a site dedicated to the blog giveaways floating around.. Your giveaway must be live and at least $75 to be able to submit it. But the site also has a linky to submit those that aren’t.

Submit your giveaway here: Bloggy Giveaways

 

 

FB Groups

Blog Giveaways-List Yours Here

Blog Giveaways & Sweepstakes

Giveaway Listings

 

Know any more amazing sites to list or find giveaways? drop me a comment..

 

Blog Tip: Figure Out a Link for a Scheduled Post on Blogger

 

In the blogging world, being able to schedule posts is a god send. It allows you to have the freedom of writing whenever and wherever you want. Say you know that you’re going on a vacation in 2 weeks, you could schedule posts for that entire week. They would post while you were away on vacation and your readers will still be happily reading what you write. There won’t be a gap of no posting.

Or say that you have a fixed schedule for writing. You write on your schedule that you have 2-3 hours every couple of days dedicated to just blogging. You could write out all your posts in those couple of hours and still have free days. Genius, right?

Well, what if you have signed up with a company that need their review or giveaway URL? What do you do then? There is a way to figure out a link for a scheduled post, so no worries. You could write it AND give them the pre-determined URL so you are on track for EVERYTHING.

This is also handy if you post other bloggers giveaways. You can go ahead and schedule it even if the giveaway doesn’t start until a week from the time you posted. I tend to forget if I don’t send the link ASAP.

SO- now onto HOW to find out what your link will be.

Step 1.

Go to your blogs homepage URL. Scroll down a bit and click on a post that you recently posted.

AS you can see the last thing I posted was a review of the Sol Republic Deck Speaker. SO if I click on it, I get the URL of that review.

If you look closely you can see that the title of my blog post “Sol Republic Deck Bluetooth Speaker” matches the URL. http://sewcraftable.blogspot.com/2014/09/sol-republic-deck-bluetooth-speaker.html That tells you what you need to know.

You’ll need to look at the patterns. For instance, The Blog Post

 

becomes the URL>> http://sewraftable.blogspot.com/2014/09/office-organization-with-post-it-review.html

the common denominator will always be your homepage (mine http://sewcraftable.blogspot.com) plus the /year/month that the post is made. The date is always separated by slashes /.

THEN you’ll start with the first word. See how my URL is highlighted in yellow? Followed by the year/date in red? THEN the blog post title separated by hyphens in blue?

If your post starts with “A” or “The” you will not add those in. It automatically adds the first REAL word, skips A and the every time. For instance, If I was to write a post called “The Sample Post” my URL would be http://sewcraftable.blogspot.com/2014/09/sample-post.html

Get my drift? It isn’t that hard if you’re willing to shoot a little guessing at times. It isn’t that hard once you get the hang of everything!

Did this help you? I’d love for you to share it.

Check all the other Blogging Tips and Tricks I’ve written!

 

Until next time,

Jessica

Blog 101: Nofollow vs. Follow Links & Why it Matters

The new SEO has probably got you running around in circles, grabbing your hair. Chasing your tail and wondering what you’re doing. You’re probably thinking… what’s the difference? Why does it matter so much? How do I nofollow? Ugh.. frustrating, right?

Not any more! I’d been reading up on this ever since my PR flanked and dropped completely to a 0. I was completely astonished. I had been blogging for about 5 years and had over 1500 posts. I was stunned. I had went from a 3 to a 0! Holy Crap! I know.

SEO & All That

To be able to explain to you what the follow/nofollow links mean and how they work, I have to explain some SEO stuff to you.

When a site gets a link (link pointing to that web page) (from any website EVER) it gets a tiny PR boost. Each link that is sent to your website equals a higher PR rating. Think of it as a vote. Each site that links to you is a vote. Many votes=King (Well Queen, right?) of the web space (oh, and a higher ranking in Google Search Engines).

Google can see how many links you have and from what websites. Google thinks in the term of “if many people are linking to a site, it has to be a pretty popular website”.  So more links= higher popularity basically. Google only wants to give the best to its “searchers” so higher ranked websites show up first on a google search.

Say for instance you write a blog post on “20 Healthy Hair Tips.” Someone searches “healthy hair tips” and their results show. If you have a higher ranked blog, you’ll show up before a lower ranked blog would.

Follow Links

NOW, onto the actual links and what they mean. A follow link is a link that counts as a “vote” in your Search Engine popularity. If someone writes a blog post and includes a follow link to your “20 Healthy Hair Tips”, you’ll get a “vote.” PR ranking is also upped.

NoFollow Links

A Nofollow link is still a link placed to a website, it doesn’t doesn’t count as a “vote.” This link does not in NO way boost PR ranking.

--------------------------

*A no follow link is created with the nofollow link HTML tag, which looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.website.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link Text</a>

---------------------

The Nofollow tag basically tells googles web crawlers that you don’t want to place a “vote” for this particular website.

You cannot have too many nofollow links because Google will think you’re being paid for links. Then they will mark your website or blog as spammy and pull your Page Rank. So make sure you watch which websites and links you give your “vote” to.

This nofollow tag keeps spammers from blackballing the smaller guys by buying links from everybody and artificially boosting their PR. Like those pesky people who bombard online community boards and blogs with links trying to sneak in some SEO pull. No more of that.

Now there isn’t any worry that there will be 100s of nonsense posts posted everywhere. It isn’t going to get them anywhere anyway, so why waste their time?

When to USE Nofollow

• Paid links (it wouldn’t be honest and fair to buy votes, now would it?)
• Comments
• Forums

Don’t think that Nofollows are completely worthless though. Even if someone gives you a nofollow link in their blog or post, it will still send traffic to your blog.

Don’t think about SEO when you’re writing. Think about bonding with the people who are reading your blog and building your brand.

SO- just make sure if you write a sponsored post or receive a review item (even if it’s an ebook) you have to make sure to add the nofollow link. Google has crawlers searching websites looking for links out of place (randomly inserted with no content to back the link up) and paid content.

Better to be safe than sorry they say. I know- because I started blogging BEFORE the nofollow tag and have to scour my blog and add in nofollow links to almost all my old posts. I know. Great. lol

Just another thing on the to-list I guess.

 

Til next time,

Jess

 

How to Write the Perfect Blog Post

Like this? Learn how to use psychology to get more traffic and sales with Social Triggers.

Jessica Renee

The Blog Workshop- Where Blogging Meets Business #TBW

The Blog Workshop  is a learning community for bloggers and vloggers. Whether you are a beginner blogger/vlogger, looking for tips and tricks to having an awesome blog or you’re an experienced blogger/vlogger looking to take it to the next level.. they have an AMAZING website to show you how to get it done.

They have workshops, annual conferences, and an amazing community that will definitely help you to understand and bridge the gap between YOUR blog and PR reps, brands, and influencers. The Blog Workshop is “Where Blogging Meets Business.”

Even though I’m not a newbie blogger, I’ve been doing this for well over 4 years now- there are still NEW things to learn everyday about blogging, making the best of your blog, and connecting to brands.

The most difficult thing to understand when starting out is how to gain Page Rank. I was confused for almost a year on how to optimize my blog to show up in Search Engines and how to gain link backs. This is where you gain your page rank.

The Blog Workshop has an entire Workshop dedicated on teaching you the ins and outs of Search Engine Optimization. How to get your blog out there and getting it’s name known. It’s all there in their Surviving SEO workshop

This is where the brands are going to be looking. They are going to search you before they say “YES, we would like to work with you”. They are going to see what comes up, how many followers you have, and if you complete high quality work that is worth their time and money.

Knowledge IS power. If you are running around the blogospere not knowing what to do, where to go, or how to get started.. this could definitely help you! They have tons of Workshops that will show you EVERYTHING!

 

 

They also have a Blog Workshop University. That way when you do get jobs with those brands and sponsors you want or need, you’ll know exactly how to serve them and make them happy. You want them to come back, right? Well, getting the job done with quality AND preciseness is part of the job! Learn how to do it!

The Introductory Blogging Diploma is a 1 year program that consists of 4 semesters. Each semester is 3 months long, allows you to gain hands on experience and teaches you the ins and outs of establishing a successful blogging enterprise. Early Enrollment Tuition: $1800

There is a NEW blog workshop on June 26 about SEO!

The Blog Workshop -Surviving SEO - speaker Dan Morris 06/26 8-9pm EDT

Takes place on June 26, 2013 from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm

About:

The Blog Workshop is being organized by lifestyle blogger Da Vinci, founder of YourLifeAfter25.com.  As a veteran blogger of almost 6 years professionally and 10 years of blogging all together,  Da Vinci has been able to witness the blogging phenomenon grow, evolve and flourish.  With that growth Da Vinci has been able to cultivate a trusted audience of readers, fans, followers and supporters.  Your Life After 25 is receiving on average 300,000+ monthly visitors with over 1,500,000 impressions/page views a month.

Connect with The Blog Workshop online:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBlogWorkshop

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheBlogWorkshop

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/theblogworkshop

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/theblogworkshop

 

Jessica Renee

How To Build a Media Kit | The Bewitchin' Kitchen Guest Post

Two weeks ago I finally built my Media Kit. I started at 8/9 am and didn't finish until 10 o'clock that evening (of course there were scattered breaks in between), a lot of hard work went into it. I had no idea where to start, I couldn't find any information on building a Media Kit that related to The Bewitchin' Kitchen's theme and what I wanted to show I offer. So that is why I am posting this. I had a hard time, so I know there are others having difficulty as well and I hope this post will help you.

Getting Started

This was my biggest challenge, I had no idea on how or where to start. So I flipped roles and looked at it from a company's perspective, what would I want to know? This is what I came up with:

• Information about the blog and what their stats are
• Experience and reputation
• Policies and procedures (what to expect and what they expect from me)
• How much is this going to cost me

Once I had an idea on what I thought I should be addressing, I had to figure out what I wanted to state in each section:

Information: Have information about the history of your blog, how did it start, when, what is it about? Include your blogging statistics: followers, subscribes, Facebook Fans, Twitter, Google Page Rank, Alexa rating, etc. Don't forget to write a little information about yourself and how the company can get in contact with you.

Experience and Reputation: List companies you have worked with (and include a link or two so the company can see what your style is). Every once in a while ask a company that you have worked with to write you a short testimonial and post them on your media kit, they're great references.

Policies and Procedures: It's great to be clear on what your expectations are from the beginning and what the company can expect from you, so there no surprises later on, which could hurt your relationship with the company you work with.

Costs: If you have advertising rates or charge for any service that you may provide. State it! Not only  will this save you (and the person you are about to work with) time but there is also clarity from the beginning.

Putting It All Together

This is what took me the most time to do. You want your Media Kit to not only be eye catching and memorable but you want it to look professional as well.

• Keep it organized: I think this is pretty self explanatory.
• Add your blog logo: Not only does this make your Media Kit visually stimulating, but it gives it a professional look.
• Don't over do it: Keep it clean and simple. When you look it over, you want your eyes to glide smoothly over the document.
• When it doubt, leave it out: If you're second guessing putting something in, just leave it out. It probably isn't important to the company

It's hard to put together a Media Kit for a blog without a visual guide. That is why after a lot of thought, I have decided to post samples of my Media Kit. I take a lot of pride in my Media Kit and was hesitant about post it at first, because of copyright reasons. I feel that my Media Kit is personal, and I would hate for it to be duplicated. 

That's why before I share I would like to state that my Media Kit is copyrighted and if you would like to share it or want to use it for your personal use that you contact me first. Unauthorized use of The Bewitchin' Kitchen's Media Kit is prohibited.

Don't forget to update your Media Kit, as your blogging stats, events and even rates will change with time. I update my Media Kit the first of every month.

I hope this guide helped you, and if you liked it don't forget to share it. If you would like to feature this post on your blog (as a guest post), feel free to contact me.

This is a gust post written by, Randa, the owner of The Bewitchin' Kitchen. The Bewitchin' Kitchen is a great place to read the latest reviews and enter some great giveaways. You will also find some recipes, household tips and tricks and everyday tales of life adventures.

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