Blogging is a battle.

A war to get your ideas the attention they deserve.

Your enemy? The dizzying array of online distractions that devour your readers.

This battle is not for the faint of heart.

There are so many learning curves. Blogging platforms and plugins you’ll need to install. Social networks you’ll need to employ. Marketing techniques you’ll need to try.

But none of that stuff matters if you’re drowning your ideas in amateur writing. You might as well lay your sword down in defeat. Readers don’t have time for amateurs.

So before you venture any further down the blogging rabbit hole, you better make sure you know how to write like a pro.

Skip that step, and nothing can save you. Your battle is lost.

The good news is, writing effective blog posts is a skill you can learn. And it’s one you must learn.

You have powerful words and ideas that can transform readers’ lives. Those ideas are worth fighting for.

So when you’re ready to enter the arena, arm yourself with this guide and fight the good fight.

Your readers are counting on you.
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A troubling thought, isn’t it?

You’re slaving away at your blog, but you can’t help wondering if you have a shot in hell of getting anyone to read it.

What makes you any different from the millions of other bloggers hoping for attention?

You’re all doing the same stuff. Cranking out posts, messing around on Twitter and Facebook, leaving comments on popular blogs — you know, the usual.

But nobody gives a crap. Readers have seen it all before. You’re not offering anything new, so why should they hang around?

Good question. And the problem is, you don’t really have an answer.

Most of the time, you feel like you’re stumbling around in the dark. You can’t tell what’s working and what’s not. It feels like a big, never-ending guessing game.

Maybe you came here to find some answers. Maybe you’re hoping I’ll tell you what to do.

But I won’t.

Not because I don’t want to, but because sometimes you can’t understand what to do until you first understand what NOT to do. So, let’s start there.

Here’s a big, fat list of ways to be a mediocre blogger. How many are you guilty of?

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Let’s start with a simple question…

How, exactly, does content marketing make money?

Because that’s the end goal, right?

You’re not hunched over your keyboard, racking your brain for attention-grabbing ideas because you enjoy it. You expect to get clients, sales, or some other tangible result for your business. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sometime in the future, all that work you’re putting into creating and publishing content had better pay off.

Except… what if it won’t?

What if your entire understanding of the way content marketing works is wrong?

What if all the time you’ve invested into creating content was, in fact, a senseless waste of time, never possessing even the slightest chance of turning a profit?

It would be a tragedy, and yet I believe that’s precisely what’s happening. Not just to you, but to millions of entrepreneurs around the globe.

Is it because content marketing is just a fad? Or worse, an elaborate hoax?

No. On the contrary, I believe the hype is totally justified. If you execute the right content marketing strategy in the right market, the results are breathtaking.

But that rarely happens. There are lots of reasons why, and I might eventually write a short book explaining them all, but by far the biggest reason why most entrepreneurs get crappy results is they completely misunderstand what content marketing is about.

Here’s what I mean…
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