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10 Tips for Maximizing the Benefits of WordPress Google Analytics - DailyBlogTips

10 Tips for Maximizing the Benefits of WordPress Google Analytics - DailyBlogTips

10 Tips for Maximizing the Benefits of WordPress Google Analytics

Posted: 21 Sep 2016 04:50 AM PDT

The importance of statistics is undeniable. They give us valuable insight on the website traffic and how visitors interact with it. By analyzing and getting deeper into your website stats you can significantly improve its performance, accelerate its growth and better serve your visitors.

If you're looking for good analytics tool you'll most probably end up by choosing Google analytics, the free and most complete analytics tool offered by Google.With its second to none tracking and monitoring functionalities it's the first choice for millions of users and website owners. Another great thing about Google Analytics is that it's pretty flexible, which allows you to obtain individual statistics and maximize the benefits of the tracked information.

The partnership of Google with WordPress made it easy to bring GA to WordPress powered websites and get tracking reports directly from the website dashboard. Moreover, with the available plugins you also get tons of tracking customization options to make your data more valid and useful. Below, you can find 10 tips that will help you maximize the benefits of WordPress Google Analytics.

analytics-plugin

1. Add Google Analytics to WordPress

Adding Google Analytics to your WordPress website comes with a bunch of advantages. It will allow you to access your website stats from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard, and ease you from the hassle of checking your GA account separately every time you need to get a glimpse of your website stats. There are a lot of tools out there that will help you to add Google Analytics to your WordPress website without touching a line of code. And Google Analytics WD plugin is one them. It's the official member of  Google Analytics Technology Partners Program, and makes GA integration with WordPress a breeze. The plugin comes with all the advanced tracking and reporting functionalities that GA provides, and makes it way easier to collect and monitor the data.

Google Analytics WD comes in FREE and PRO versions, both offering a set of most needed analytics features. Find the plugin demo here, and see how it tracks and collects data.

2. Get a more accurate picture of your stats with data filtering

Of course, there can be data from specific resources that you might not want to be included in the tracking reports. Using filters is a smart way to improve the accuracy of the collected data. With data filtering option of the Google Analytics WD you'll be able to filter out the traffic from specific IP addresses, countries, regions, and cities.

3. Exclude specific tracking

Tracking exclusion is a form of data filtering which allows you to exclude tracking based on specific roles and user accounts. Any activity and interaction performed by them on your website will be ignored and you'll get a valid data on your website performance. You can exclude interaction tracking for site administrators, editors, authors, contributors, subscribers, admin and user accounts.

4. Get the most out of custom reporting

With the sheer volume of the data that Google Analytics provides, sometimes it's overwhelming to figure it all out. Plus, there can be specific data which is not automatically reported by the plugin, but you'd really like to track it .This is where custom reporting functionality of Google Analytics WD comes to rescue. You can set custom reports for any metrics and dimension and access them directly on the plugin reports page. For example, you can set pageview as a metric and session duration as a dimension, and track how much time your visitors spent on viewing pages.

Google Analytics also allows you to export the tracking reports to CSV and PDF formats, and forward to specified email recipients on a scheduled basis.

5. Display frontend reports

With Google Analytics WD you can enable displaying reports on the frontend of your website and give access to them to specific users, such as site administrator, editor, subscribers, and contributors. This is a great option to enable those users to access individual page or post reports right on the frontend while working on the pages. This saves a lot of time and keeps them focused on their work.

6. Set reports for custom dimensions

You can maximize the benefits of your stats by tracking specific data that you have on your website. That could be the tracking which of the authors is the most popular among your readers, or what type of posts your readers like to read the most. With Google Analytics WD you can track custom dimensions based on logged in users, post type, category, tags, post author, post publishing year and month.

7. Measure how often your visitors complete specific actions

You website visitors perform thousands of activities on your website every day. With some additional setup you'll be able to track targeted activities and get notified as soon as they are accomplished. You can set visiting a certain page as a goal, or measure how many of your visitors proceed to checkout on your shopping website. For setting and managing goals you'll have to provide its name, select one of the goal types (destination, duration, pages/screens per session) and configure the options for the goal type. The plugin collects data based on the configured options, and keeps you notified by sending you an email or pushover notification.

8. Set alerts for specific conditions

Google Analytics WD comes with an advanced option to send you alerts and pushover notifications when a specific metric meets the predefined condition. It could be the highest/lowest number of the traffic, bounce rate range, and average session duration. For example, you can set to get an alert or pushover when the number of your website visitors exceeds a specific number. The alerts and pushovers are sent based on the selected period, either daily, weekly or monthly.

9. Track your sales stats

You can link your Ecommerce account to Google analytics WD and track your sales stats based on revenues, transactions, time to purchase, product name and category and sales performance. It's a time-saving option for tracking your sales stats.

10. Google Adsense and AdWords reports

If you have authorized accounts on AdSense and AdWords, Google Analytics WD will enable you to view relevant information tracking within the reports page of the plugin. All you have to do is to link your accounts to the Google Analytics and access the tracked data from the WordPress dashboard.

Google Analytics WD is a powerful tracking tool. The data that it tracks includes tons of valuable information that you can use to improve your website performance. So, why not use these useful tips and get the most of your website stats.

Original post: 10 Tips for Maximizing the Benefits of WordPress Google Analytics
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ProBlogger: How To Monetize Your Blog By Repurposing Content

ProBlogger: How To Monetize Your Blog By Repurposing Content

Link to ProBlogger

How To Monetize Your Blog By Repurposing Content

Posted: 20 Sep 2016 07:00 AM PDT

How To Monetize Your Blog By Repurposing Content

This is a guest contribution from Natalie Sisson of Suitcase Entrepreneur.

Sometimes creating valuable content week after week feels a bit like you're running on a hamster wheel, doesn't it?

It doesn't even matter how much you like writing blog posts and replying to readers' comments. If your blog doesn't start to make money, you will start resenting all the work you put into it, and the days of loving your blog will be short lived.

So let me tell you a little secret.

Your blog will stop feeling like a chore and start feeling like an investment if you can find the key that links your content directly to the money you make.

The great news is you can start monetizing your blog straight away by simply using the content you've already written on your blog and repurposing it.

Let me show you how.

Back in 2008, I had just quit my corporate job and co-founded a startup to build a fundraising app for Facebook. Being a startup was a crazy rollercoaster ride and I really enjoyed building something from the ground up.

In the middle of all this, I started my first blog, WomanzWorld, to share my experiences on starting a business, and to interview successful female entrepreneurs about their experiences in building their companies.

I hustled like crazy to build a community and following, and slowly began to attract an audience of people who found my writing to be inspiring. I began to enjoy blogging and interacting with my readers in the comments.

So much so that in 2010, I decided to leave the startup and focus on growing my blog and business — which was, at that stage, just my blog.

However, almost immediately after I left I realized there was a big problem — I had no way to monetize the blog (read: no way to turn my hobby into an income).

For the next 6 months, I kept writing blog post after blog post, but I couldn't figure out how to make money in a way that was aligned with my values.

I loved creating content and sharing my experience, but I was getting anxious about not having an income. I was down to the last $17 in my bank account when I was finally able to turn it around.

Since then I have used the same strategy to create multiple streams of income directly from my blog, and turn it into a multiple six-figure business that allows me to travel the world while helping impact people’s lives.

Today, I want to share with you what I did, and how you can do the same.

How to monetize your blog by repurposing content

If you have been producing content for any amount of time, on your blog or other people's sites, it's likely you are sitting on a wealth of information that could be useful to a lot of people.

All you have to do is repurpose and package that information into formats that people will find really helpful and are willing to pay for. You can start by looking at which topics and posts have been receiving the most traffic, likes, shares or comments and start with that.

Let me break down the content repurposing process I went through when I monetized my blog:

Step 1 – Find out what content your audience is engaging with

When I started my blog, Facebook (and social media in general) was still in the early stage. Working in a startup, building a fundraising app for Facebook gave me a unique insight into the world of social media, and I started sharing this knowledge with my readers.

I found that the posts about social media strategies were getting a lot of comments, more than the posts on any other topic. I realized that people were interested in social media strategies to help build their business and credibility, so I took it to the next step.

Step 2 – Validate your content idea

Just because people liked a couple of blog posts didn't mean that the topic would continue to hold their attention. I needed to validate the idea that people were genuinely interested in the topic and would continue engaging with it.

So, I wrote a series of 12 blog posts on the topic and published regularly over the space of a month. My readers loved the information as most people were still relatively new to using social media for business purposes. The content series was a huge success.

I saw a sharp rise in the traffic to my blog and saw that the visitors were engaging with the content. Now, I knew for sure that people were interested in reading more about social media strategy.

Step 3 – Validate the idea with a minimal transaction

I knew my readers were actively engaging with the content, but I needed to find out if they were ready to take the next step by becoming a subscriber. So, I created a lead magnet in the form of an ebook that outlined social media strategies for small businesses.

Can you guess how I did that?

Yep, that's right. I combined the 12 blog posts into an ebook called, The Social Media Workout for Entrepreneurs. I added a bit more depth in some posts and packaged it all up into a well designed and value packed PDF.

As soon as I made the lead magnet available for download on my blog, I saw a sharp growth in the number of subscribers and my email list kept growing after that. In fact, it was so popular that it continued to serve for over 5 years (with regular updates of course) as the only lead magnet on my blog.

Step 4 – Ask your subscribers to buy

Nothing validates an idea like people actually paying money for what you offer. I knew some of the readers had been with me through the entire journey and now I could email them directly and ask them to buy.

So, that's what I did. I sent out an email to my subscribers, asking them if they would be interested in a two-day, in-person workshop on social media strategy, where they could get personal feedback from me on their unique problems. More importantly, I asked if they would be willing to pay to attend this workshop.

It was a gut wrenching moment for me, asking for people to pay me. It was the real test of whether I could monetize my blog.

Before I knew it I had 3 sold-out workshops with 30 people attending in total and $15,000 in the bank (that previously had just $17 in it). It was the first time since I started growing my audience that I had been able to directly monetize my blog and my knowledge.

I knew I could continue to offer similar workshops and make money, but I had something else on my mind. Namely, travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina and to scale my workshops to reach a larger audience, such that they didn't have to be there in person to learn.

Step 5 – Create a residual revenue stream

I wanted to see if people would be interested in buying an online training program on social media strategy. I could take all the content that I had created, the workshop I had conducted, and package it up in a way that people could buy and access online. I could price it much lower than an in-person workshop, it would be just as valuable, and people could learn at their own pace from anywhere in the world.

So, a couple of months after the workshop, I released and shared this online training program with my audience, and few of them bought it. I didn't make a lot of money initially, but sales for my Social Media Bootcamp (online training program) kept growing as I got better at marketing it and more people started referring it to others.

I was excited that I had something I could sell online, without having to create any new content, and that people were readily paying for. I finally had a residual income stream that would continue bringing in money while I was traveling the world.

Many people may call this passive income, but I beg to differ. You have to select the right content, package it up, set up payment and support systems, and market it to your audience. As you can see, it still is a lot of work.

You just do all the work up front and continue to get paid for it. And even then, you have to keep updating the product, and do relaunches to keep the momentum going.

But this first stream of residual income was just the start. Since then, I have grown my blog and audience into a successful business that makes multiple six figures by creating multiple streams of active and residual income by providing solutions to the specific problems and challenges my community have; while traveling to 69 countries.

Trust me when I tell you that content repurposing really works. Even counting all the other amazing monetization strategies, I have a feeling that as a blogger this one will resonate with you the most.

Figuring out your own content repurposing strategy

Monetizing your blog has never been easier because now content doesn't just mean blog posts. Ebooks, infographics, podcasts, videos, and everything in between is a form of content.

This is good news because your readers may not want to pay for reading blog posts, but they are willing to pay for content in other formats like:

  • Books
  • Audiobooks
  • Online Courses
  • Membership sites
  • Even newsletters

It may still be the same content at the heart of all of it, but everyone loves the convenience learning and digesting the information in one format or in one place. That is why they will willingly pay for it.

This presents a tremendous opportunity to repurpose the content you've already created and package it up in ways that people are ready to buy.

Let's say you have a blog post that has done well. After you have validated that this is a topic people are interested in, you can grow your audience with the same content in a new format by:

  • Recording yourself reading the blog post and turning it into a podcast episode
  • Recording a video of yourself reading the blog post and publishing it on Youtube. If you don't want to be on camera, you can create a simple slide deck summarizing the blog post, and record a voice-over-slides style of video.

As you continue to grow your audience, you will find they have specific needs and will even ask you for solutions. You can create products to fulfill those needs and sell them directly on your blog, knowing that they will pay for it.

For example, to create an online course, you can split up the validated topic into a series of blog posts, turn them all into videos, and package it up so that it delivers a specific outcome to your readers.

You can also expand on the series of blog posts, create an ebook on the topic, and package it up with the course as a higher value offering. Just like Jeff Goins talks about in this Problogger post on six-figure product launch strategy.

You can start repurposing content today with a simple content audit — use Google Analytics to look at the most popular content on your site and best-performing articles, or use social sharing statistics and comments. Then, all you have to do is follow the 5 step content repurposing strategy I outlined above, and soon you will start making money from your blog.

If you enjoy creating content and want to keep doing it, you owe it to yourself to monetize your blog and free yourself from the hamster wheel of content creation.

Repurposing content can become your ticket to freedom.

 

Natalie Sisson is an Amazon No #1 bestselling author of the Suitcase Entrepreneur, podcaster, speaker and adventurer who believes everybody has the right to choose freedom in business and adventure in life. She's on a mission to ensure 1,000,000+ entrepreneurs do just that by 2020 over at the SuitcaseEntrepreneur.com

The post How To Monetize Your Blog By Repurposing Content appeared first on ProBlogger.

      
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