Imagine that you sit down at your computer one day, type in your domain name, and instead of the business website you’ve worked to build you see some crazy page that’s definitely not your website. What happened? What do you do next?

You may see a suspended hosting page asking you to contact your website host, or a domain parking page that says your domain expired and displays links to your competitors!

It can happen to you if you don’t know how to keep your website safe. Here are the two things you must know to keep your website safe.

1. Who is your domain registrar and when does your domain name expire?

A domain registrar is a company who offers domain name registrations. Do you remember where you registered your domain name? Did you save your registration emails that listed the date your domain expires?

You *must* know who handles your registration and when it needs renewed. If you can, extend the registration for several years.

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As yet another epidemic of hacked WordPress blogs is happening around the web this weekend, my inbox is filled with panicked emails with questions like, “Help! What can I do to make sure my blog is safe?!”

Here are two important steps you need to take right now to keep your WordPress blog secure:

If you can’t see the video above, click here to watch it on YouTube:

Ready to discover step by step how to attract more traffic to your blog? Get access to a free video training right now at http://michelleshaeffer.com/driveblogtraffictraining

Michelle Shaeffer is a trainer and consultant, showing online business owners step by step to harness the power of technology and internet marketing to build successful businesses. She teaches her clients how to save hours and hours of frustration and shows them how to make their online presence work quickly to attract traffic, generate leads, and build authority.

How can you add hundreds or thousands of new subscribers to your mailing list and community? Try hosting your own challenge!

I’ve successfully co-hosted more than a dozen challenges for bloggers through the Ultimate Blog Challenge and 31 Days Blog Challenge over the last several years and it’s skyrocketed the growth of my community and my visibility.

Here’s how you can swipe this strategy and use it for yourself:

Step One: Identify a Key Struggle

What challenges and struggles stop your community from being able to take action and break through with what you teach?

As an example, one of the key struggles we address in the Ultimate Blog Challenge is how to come up with ideas to help bloggers post consistently.

What’s a key struggle for your people? If you teach video, maybe the hurdle is just getting that first video done. If you’re a business coach, maybe mapping out strategies and breaking down action steps to reach a goal is a frustration for your clients.

Step Two: Indentify the First Step or Big Action

What is the first step you know they need to take to get to their breakthrough? Or, what big action gets a big result for them?

Continuing with the video example, if the first step your people need to take is to get that first video done and published then you could break that down into a weekly challenge:

• Day 1 – brainstorm your video idea
• Day 2 – write your script
• Day 3 – record your video
• Day 4 – upload your video to YouTube
• Day 5 – write an email to your list to share your video
• Day 6 – post your video on your blog
• Day 7 – kick back and celebrate

Step Three: Plan Your Support Strategy

What kind of support does your community need to be able to take the action you’re challenging them to take?

Figure out what you can offer to support them in completing your challenge. Maybe it’s ideas, templates, step by step directions, or creating a support group for interaction on Facebook. Make that happen.

Step Four: Create Your Opt-In Page and Thank You Page

The next step is to create your opt-in page. It can be something simple: here’s the challenge, here’s why you need to do it, here’s what you get to support you. This is where people join the challenge by signing up for your list.

You’ll also need to create a thank you page that tells your challenge participants what their next steps are and what to expect. The key to this page is to get them excited about the challenge and encourage them to share it with their friends. When they share, not only do you grow your list faster, but they’re more committed and likely to complete the challenge you’ve created because they have more accountability.

Step Five: Get Results

Your community needs to get results from the challenge you host (assuming they follow through and take action!). When they see results, that’s when they fall in love with you.

It’s their action that got the results, they created it, but you provided the energy, support, and guidance to help them make it happen.

They’ll want to tell their friends about you and share you.

Step Six: Adapt as Needed

Ask for feedback. Keep in mind that there’s always room for improvement.

When you accept feedback graciously and implement what makes sense, you give your community ownership in what you’re creating and they’re even more engaged. Plus you’ll find some of the BEST ideas for expanding your challenge and more come from the community.

Asking for feedback also allows you to gather fantastic testimonials to share.

Step Seven: Repeat!

It worked once, so run it again! The first blog challenge I co-hosted several years ago added around 150 people to my list. The most recent hit nearly 1,000. It gets easier every time because the main pieces are already in place and it’s just promotion and little tweaks.

Over the past couple of years I’ve added more than 5,000 to my list using this strategy and you can do it, too!

Michelle Shaeffer is a trainer and consultant, showing online business owners step by step to harness the power of technology and internet marketing to build successful businesses. She teaches her clients how to save hours and hours of frustration and shows them how to make their online presence work quickly to attract traffic, generate leads, and build authority. Get your free checklist to make your blog more awesome at http://michelleshaeffer.com/51

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” ~John Steinbeck

Looking for an idea for your next 10 (or more) articles? Find them hiding one of these 5 places:

1. Your Blog Reader

What blogs are you subscribed to and following? Check out the latest headlines and hot topics for inspiration.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you agree with the the post or have a different take?
• Is there an idea or concept within the post that you could write about?
• What else comes to mind as you read?

2. Books You’re Reading

Always be reading new things and you’ll always have new ideas to write about.

Some ideas:

• Share a short quote from a book and share your thoughts.
• Write a review of the book and share your biggest takeaways.

3. Blog Comments

Take a look through your recent blog comments to find:

• Questions readers have asked that you could answer in more detail.
• Topics that caught their interest and got them commenting.
• Replies you’ve posted that you could expand into a complete post.

If you don’t have many comments on your own posts yet, use AllTop.com or Technorati.com to find popular blogs in your niche and see what their commenters are talking about.

4. Social Networking Sites

Visit some popular Facebook groups or fan pages, search for a #hashtag on Twitter or browse groups on LinkedIn and see what the hot topics and questions are that you’ve got information on or opinions about that you could share.

5. Question Sites

Search sites like quora.com or answers.yahoo.com for your topics or keywords and see what questions people are asking.

Michelle Shaeffer is a trainer and consultant, showing online business owners step by step to harness the power of technology and internet marketing to build successful businesses . She teaches her clients how to save hours and hours of frustration and shows them how to make their online presence work quickly to attract traffic, generate leads, and build authority. Get your free checklist to make your blog more awesome at http://michelleshaeffer.com/51

If you struggle to come up with ideas for your newsletter articles, you aren’t alone! Many small business owners aren’t sure what to write about. You want topics that will be interesting to your readers and help them get to “know” you so they learn that you can be a trusted source of the information or products they want.

Let me share some creative ideas with you to help you jumpstart your brainstorming.

Note: If one of your challenges is that you’re concerned about online privacy, you can still use these ideas. Just keep things general and not too personal or specific. You never have to include photos or names/ages of your children if you aren’t comfortable with it. Keep things from more of a business point of view and you can still build a professional relationship with your subscribers.

Photographs
Of course you’ll include photographs of your products or virtual images of your products, but how about some photos of your hometown, the wildlife or scenery near you, or your sewing studio or workspace?

Product Reviews
Have you received a positive review from a credible website or publication? Share it in your newsletter along with comments of your own about which of your products or services they reviewed and add what you feel the strong points of that product or service are.

Be Interviewed
Find a mentor, friend, or fellow small business owner and invite them to interview you via email. They write up and send questions, then you answer them and include the Q & A in your next newsletter. You can return the favor by interviewing them.

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Your Turn!

Don’t let your email newsletter get tossed into the virtual trash can before it’s opened, or lead your customers to the wrong place when they’re ready to purchase. Be sure you aren’t making these three common mistakes.

1) A non-descriptive or vague “From” line

Don’t put “newsletter” in the “from” line. No one will know which newsletter it is! How likely are you to open a newsletter if you don’t know who it’s from?

Instead, use the title of your newsletter or your business name so people know right away who the newsletter is from.

2) A generic subject line

“May Newsletter” isn’t a very interesting subject line. Make sure your subject line grabs attention and provides a glimpse of what’s inside so readers will open it to read more. Try using the title of an article in the newsletter, a tip from the article, or an intriguing question. Watch your open rates as you experiment with different subject lines to see what your readers are most interested in.

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In a time crunch but need to get a new blog post out? Try one of these quick ideas.

1. Share a video

YouTube and TED Talks are both great sources for finding videos to share on your blog. Choose a topic your readers are interested in, then search by keyword and see what videos come up.

Add a few of your own thoughts on the topic and a question to get discussion going.

2. Write a quick review

Read a great business book recently? Discovered a helpful blog? Downloaded a freebie that solved a problem for you? Write a post pointing your readers to that resource.

A review can be simple – introduce the book/blog/freebie, share a couple of reasons you found it useful or a few tips you learned from it, and link your readers to where they can grab a copy.

3. Reprint an article

Directories like www.WAHM-Articles.com contain thousands of articles you can legally share on your blog. Add an introductory paragraph explaining why you’re sharing the particular article you chose, followed by the article and author’s credit.

4. Check with products/programs you promote as an affiliate

Smart affiliate programs offer their affiliates a variety of promotional tools, often including articles or blog posts for reprint. Take a look at what products you’ve promoted, or love and would be willing to promote, and see what resources are available.

5. Repurpose your existing content

If you’ve been blogging a while, you can repurpose older content by:

• Updating an older article with current or additional information
• Creating a themed post where you link back to 4 or 5 related posts
• Turn a written post into an audio or video post

Ready for more practical blogging tips that get you results? Learn the 3 biggest mistakes smart entrepreneurs make with their blogs, and 5 key elements to review on your blog to be sure it’s working for you instead of against you. Free training: http://michelleshaeffer.com/go/ReviveYourBlog/

Don’t let your email newsletter get tossed into the virtual trash can before it’s opened, or lead your customers to the wrong place when they’re ready to purchase. Be sure you aren’t making these three common mistakes.

1) A non-descriptive or vague “From” line

Don’t put “newsletter” in the “from” line. No one will know which newsletter it is! How likely are you to open a newsletter if you don’t know who it’s from?

Instead, use the title of your newsletter or your business name so people know right away who the newsletter is from.

2) A generic subject line

“May Newsletter” isn’t a very interesting subject line. Make sure your subject line grabs attention and provides a glimpse of what’s inside so readers will open it to read more. Try using the title of an article in the newsletter, a tip from the article, or an intriguing question. Watch your open rates as you experiment with different subject lines to see what your readers are most interested in.

3) Bad links

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