Blog traffic tips from blogging royalty, Jon Morrow. Though paralyzed from the neck down, Jon helped build three of the most popular blogs in the world – Copy Blogger, KISSmetrics, and Boost Blog Traffic (now Smart Blogger). Collectively, they have received over 200 million page views, earning over $60 million in revenue!
Have you ever wished you could peer inside the mind of a blog traffic genius who has masterminded over 200 million page views, like the unstoppable Jon Morrow, and find out exactly how he does it?
Well… here’s your opportunity.
This is your chance to find out not only how he does it, but also, how you can become a very successful (or a more successful) blogger or writer.
But first, a fascinating fact about this guy: He is paralyzed from the neck down!
If you’re thinking “how the heck does he do it?”, you’re not alone!
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The Jon Morrow Story
So, who is this extra-ordinary dude?
It’s none other than Jon Morrow, BTG (Blog Traffic Genius).
Jon was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a degenerative neuromuscular disease that progressively weakens the body to the point of complete atrophy, and eventual death. For most families, it would be an excuse to throw in the towel and give up before ever giving life a shot. Not for Jon’s parents.
“I was really lucky to have two incredible parents,” Jon says. “It’s one of the reasons why I’ve survived this disease.”
Paralyzed, yet unstoppable
The only parts of his body he can move are his eyes and lips. His hands, feet, arms, and legs, are almost totally paralyzed, managing the occasional twitch and nothing more.
And yet… he has a life most able-bodied human beings can only dream of.
Using speech recognition technology, he has written articles read by more than 5 million people. He also built several online magazines that have, interestingly, made him a millionaire.
Over the last decade, Jon Morrow helped build three of the most popular blogs in the world, Copy Blogger, KISSmetrics, and Boost Blog Traffic (now Smart Blogger). Collectively, they have garnered over 200 million page views, earning over $50 million in revenue.
His main passion is Smart Blogger (fomerly Boost Blog Traffic) of which he is founder and CEO. Since launching on March 12, 2012, the blog’s popularity has skyrocketed. Here are some highlights:
- It has grown its audience to over 100,000 email subscribers
- It has created a $100K+ a month business based around teaching people about writing and blogging
- It has published viral posts attracting thousands and thousands of shares
Unstoppable Me Blog
He launched his current project, Unstoppable on December 29, 2016. His first post 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face, instantly went viral.
Jon is a traffic genius.
Brian Clark, Founder of Copyblogger and New Rainmaker
And now Jon Morrow is going to tell you exactly how to supercharge your blog and skyrocket your reach.
Well, sort of.
I couldn’t get hold of Jon for an interview, so I did the next best thing…
I scoured the internet for everything on Jon Morrow – interviews, mentions, his blog posts – you name it. I also looked at some of his training courses that I’ve been privileged to be on. And what we have here are Jon Morrow’s Top 10 Tips for Boosting Blog Traffic, Guaranteed to Supercharge your Blog and Skyrocket your Reach.
Want to know the best part?
I am 100% certain that Jon will be every proud of these 10 tips.
Here’s why: Because, as you will soon see, they are his ideas…distilled from his writings, conversations and interviews.
So, without further ado, let’s get started.
# 1. Your ideas are your children. You’ve got to nurture them through hard work, diligence, consistency and constant self-improvement!
Your ideas are your children. They are like new born babies. You need to nurture them. And be prepared to work your butt off to see them bloom and blossom.
You’ve got to realize that success doesn’t grow on trees. You have to sweat for it, work for it and earn it. But don’t just work hard, learn to work smart.
In On Dying, Mothers, and Fighting for Your Ideas, Jon Morrow puts it this way:
If you want to succeed, you can’t wait for the world to give you attention the way a cripple waits for food stamps to arrive in the mail. You have to be a warrior. You have to attack with the madness of a mother whose child is surrounded by an army of predators.
Because, let’s face it, your ideas are your children. Their future is as tender and delicate as that of any newborn.
You can’t just write them down and expect them to succeed. Writing isn’t about putting words on the page, any more than being a parent is about the act of conception. It’s about breathing life into something and then working to make sure that life becomes something beautiful.
That means spending ten hours on a post, instead of 30 minutes.
That means writing a guest post every week, instead of one every few months.
That means asking for links without any shame or reservation, not because you lack humility, but because you know down to the depths of your soul that what you’ve done is good.
You have to realize that your blog is more than just a collection of ones and zeros floating through cyberspace. It’s more than the words on the page. Your blog is a launchpad for your ideas, and you are the rocket fuel that lifts them off the ground.
#2. Take your writing seriously. Be focused on what you want. Be dogged and single minded in your pursuit of your dreams.
Be focused.
Question: Where are you going? How will you get there?
Believe in yourself. Take your writing seriously.
Be a learning machine.
Be passionate enough about your blog that you invest in yourself. Jon Morrow is not only driven, but he’s also passionate about continuing professional development and self-improvement.
I once received this email from Jon after I signed up for one of his online courses:
I’m proud of you.
Chances are, we’ve never met. I don’t know anything about you, except for one tiny little detail:
You believe in yourself enough to invest in your future.
There are over 70 million bloggers in the world, but do you know how many of them ever invest in any kind of education for themselves?
About 250,000. That’s less than 1%!
But guess who achieves all of the success online?
The 1%. The tiny fraction of bloggers who take themselves seriously.
Unstoppable Me Activities: Jon is a workaholic.
In the first several years, he worked 80-100 hours a week, and even now he usually puts in at least 60 hours. He works hard, but in a smart sort of way. That’s because he’s incredibly organized. Hear him:
You want to know how I’ve accomplished so much? Here’s my dirty little secret:
I have a calendar. I put the tasks on it that will help me move to the next stage. Then I do what the calendar tells me.
It’s boring. I hate a lot of stuff the calendar tells me to do. I also get really tired of having to schedule everything.
But you know what?
Nothing else works. Here’s why: We are procrastinating fools.
He uses a system from Dan Sullivan where there are two types of workdays:
- Focus days where he concentrates on one big task, such as writing a blog post or a report. The whole day, he works on nothing but that one task. No phone calls. No emails. He doesn’t go anywhere. He also turns off his cell phone and disconnects from the Internet. And then he focuses.
- Buffer days where he groups up a whole bunch of little tasks into the same day, including staff meetings, interviews, coaching calls, financial matters, whatever. He schedules them back-to-back, so he’s forced to move quickly and get everything done fast. It’s exhausting, but it also frees him up to ignore that stuff on his focus days.
For Jon Morrow, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are focus days. Tuesday and Thursday are buffer days. He tries (keyword: try) to take the weekends off.
Think: how can I work hard and smarter?
#3. Read voraciously and write until your hands hurt
To hone your writing skills and become a better writer, you must read. Read as if your life depends on it.
But more importantly, you must also write. You see, when it comes to it, writing is similar to playing a musical instrument: Practice makes perfect.
You become a better writer by writing.
There’s no shortcut.
It’s not a surprise that Jon Morrow reads 2-3 hours per day, and often uses every moment of his life as “research.”
In terms of writing to improve your writing, I can’t think of a better tip than Brian Clark’s 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer. He says:
Write.
Write more.
Write even more.
Write even more than that.
Write when you don’t want to.
Write when you do.
Write when you have something to say.
Write when you don’t.
Write every day.
Keep writing.
This is something Jon practices religiously.
Jon spends around 10 hours writing each blog post. And for years, Jon wrote a minimum of 2,000 words a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. He never, ever took a day off. Not Christmas. Not his birthday. Not even when he was sick.
“Is that extreme?”, he asks.
“Yes, I suppose, but I wanted to be the best. Point to the top person in any field, and you’ll find someone who went to extremes to get where they are. So, I did too. It’s no coincidence that’s when I created my best work.”
#4. Master one of the most important skills every serious blogger must have: The ability to make your readership curious!
The headlines you choose for your blog posts serve the same purpose as headlines in a magazine or newspaper. Their number one job is to grab the reader’s attention. They either draw the reader in, or push them away.
Your goal as a blogger or writer is to craft captivating headlines. Jon Morrow calls them winning headlines. He recommends you spend a quarter to half of the time you spend writing the post on the headline. For example, he spends an average of 2 hours writing his headlines!
This is an art that you must master. According to Jon, “If you look carefully at any great headline, you can distill it down to a fill-in-the blank “template” that works for almost every topic in any niche. The best writers I know have thousands of them either saved to a file on their computers or floating around in their heads, where they can reference them at a moment’s notice to develop a winning headline of their own.
Stir up your readers’ curiosity. Jon puts it this way, “The more curious your headlines make people, the more they’ll read your posts. The more they read your posts, the better your chance of building a relationship with them. The more relationships you have, the more influential you become in your niche.”
And here’s my little contribu