The two biggest reasons that people abandon blogs (or don’t start them at all) are that either they can’t think of anything to write about or they feel like nobody is reading what they’re writing. Both of these problems can be solved by understanding what kinds of blog posts typically get shared by readers and attract new ones.

This is by no means a list of the only kind of blog posts that are worth writing, but here’s five post suggestions that might help you get over writer’s block and/or get a little more attention for your blog.

1. Lists

Oh, the irony of the first item in a list being mention of writing lists. Anyway, writing lists has in a lot of ways become the bread and butter of comedy blogging these days. Even though it seems like the web’s been flooded with them, they still seem to attract a decent amount of traffic. I think people like them because they’re easy to skim even if you don’t feel like actually reading the whole thing and also because they inherently convey a point of view – an opinion that readers can either agree or disagree with.

Cracked has basically built an empire on Top 10 lists, but you can also find them at just about every popular comedy blog on the Internet. Also, keep in mind that your list posts don’t have to just be written – they can be a collection of videos, or photos, or anything else you can think of.

2. True Stories

Here’s one that I think most comedians could do really well with, but don’t try to implement nearly enough. People love reading about crazy true stories and most comedians have more than a few of those to draw from. You may think that writing some crazy fictional blog post will be better than telling actual stories from your life, but you’re wrong. Real is always better than fake, because people can relate and it’s just more interesting.

3. Controversial Opinions

If you’re a comedian, you’ve probably got a strong point of view and a blog post is a great place to get across that point of view. Controversial opinions tend to get traffic because people who agree with you will want to share your post as a way of expressing their agreement, and people who disagree with you may even share your post because they’ll want to tell people what an idiot you are. Either way, your content is getting passed around and that’s exactly what you want to happen. You know how they say there’s no such thing as bad press? Well, there’s no such thing as bad content sharing either.

4. How-To Posts

There’s tons of how-to blog posts floating around the web and that’s because they usually get traffic. People are always searching for advice about how to do something and if you can provide that advice in a blog post, the chances are that it will get read. Most funny people don’t bother doing How-To Posts, but I think it’s actually a missed opportunity. Most how-to posts are pretty boring reads and I think somebody could create a funny how-to blog that would probably do really well because it could be both informative and entertaining.

5. Link Posts

There’s a basic rule of the Internet: if you want another blogger or website to know that you exist then post a link to their content on your site. Just like you, every blogger religiously checks their analytics and looks to see who is linking to their site. As a result, if you start creating posts that are packed with links to content on other sites that you like, the chances are that those sites will see you have linked to them and may return the favor. If you’ve ever wondered why just about every popular comedy blog includes regular link posts, this is reason.

Obviously, there’s a lot more kinds of blog posts that can attract traffic than just these. Please leave a comment and tell me what kinds of posts you’ve found to work well…

Over on the Connected Comedy Facebook page this morning I asked readers which of several topics they’d like me to write about next. Predictably, most people requested that I write about “The Dirty Secret Of Comedy Clubs,” so that’s exactly what I’m about to do.

But first, I’d also just like to point out a quick reminder about the importance of headlines in promoting your content. I believe that The Dirty Secret Of Comedy Clubs was requested almost unanimously because it was the “sexiest” headline of the potential topics I offered (others included “How To Teach Yourself To Be Successful,” “Why You Should Think Like A Comedy Club,” and “The Golden Rule Of Social Media.”)

Sure, there may have been interest in my thoughts on those other topics, but the most teasing headline was the one that really captured people’s attention. The same will apply to your videos and blog posts – the better the headline, the more clicks you’ll get.

Anyway, here’s what I think is the dirty secret of comedy clubs: They don’t really care if you’re funny.

Now, before my email inbox gets flooded with hate mail from comedy club owners, let me explain what I mean.

As I look at the comedy club business from the perspective of an outsider (I don’t own a club and I’m not a comedian, even though obviously I work in the industry), I see a major disconnect between what club owners and bookers value most and what most comedians think they value most.

Club owners are most interested in selling tickets to shows, because getting people in those seats to buy their booze and food is how they make their money. Sure, they’d like you to be funny because they understand that a good show is more likely to lead to repeat business than a bad show, but they also know that they’d take a moderately funny guy who can sell out their venue (with little work on the club’s part) in a heartbeat over a hilarious guy who isn’t able to sell any tickets (without significant marketing money spent by the club).

Comedians, on the other hand, tend to believe that the key to them getting more work is to improve their act and to be “funnier.” Of course this is a great goal and will have an impact on your career, but it’s not ultimately what club bookers are looking for. Trust me, if the room is packed every time you perform in a club you will get asked to headline a lot quicker than if you kill in front of a handful of people.

Now the reason I refer to this misunderstanding as the dirty secret of comedy clubs is because they don’t ever seem to explain this to up and coming (or established for that matter) comedians. Sure, maybe they tell their booking agents (who are equally at fault for not teaching clients how to grow their fanbases), but you rarely hear a club owner tell a comedian to work on his/her ability to draw a crowd.

Ironically, club owners are quick to offer artistic advice on a comedian’s act which creates the illusion that if you just get a little funnier, then headlining gigs will flood your way. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.

For comedians, I’m always curious to find out how much time you spend working on your act compared to working on growing a fanbase that will show up and support you? In most cases, there’s a ton of time spent on the act and just about no time spent on the “business.” That’s fine if that’s your prerogative, but it’s also the reason that the vast majority of talented comedians wind up so frustrated as they watch people that are less talented than them progress further in their career.

Even though I think this is the biggest dirty secret of comedy clubs, I’m sure lots of you have some of your own thoughts about comedy club secrets. I’d love to hear what you think so please leave a comment with your opinion…

I was talking to a comedy blogger the other day who told me about another blogger who recently decided to auction off his blog and eventually wound up selling it for $35,000. This is a pretty nice chunk of change and I thought it would be worth sharing a break down of exactly what the blog was and why somebody felt it was worth acquiring for $35,000.

First, a little backstory. The blog that was sold was Don Chavez, a popular blog which has been around since 2006 and covered all sorts of things of interest to guys including comedy, sports, and lots of pictures of hot girls among other things. Don Chavez was also a featured site in my 100+ Places To Promote Your Comedy Content premium report.

The site was auctioned off through Flippa, which is a site which helps people buy and sell websites, and the sale went through in January.

You can check out the auction page for the Don Chavez sale if you’d like to check out all the details of the site and its sale, but I thought I’d also highlight some of the things that stood out to me about it. These should help give you some sense of what it takes to build a blog that’s worth $35,000 to somebody else.

You Need To Have A Lot Of Content

According to the auction site, Don Chavez featured 5,200 unique posts on the site and had 47,000 pages that were indexed by Google. The pages number is bigger because Don Chavez featured a lot of photo galleries and each individual photo creates its own page. I’m a big believer that in order to really build a successful blog or website, you need to be posting content just about every day and this backs that up.

Sites that only post sporadically rarely if ever build large audiences and a look at these numbers shows you the kind of commitment it takes to producing content in order to build value. These numbers mean that Don Chavez on average posted three new pieces of content EVERY DAY for five years.

You Need A Large Audience, But It Doesn’t Have To Be Impossibly Large

Don Chavez was getting 250,000 unique visitors to the website every month and while this is a large number, it’s not so large that it seems unattainable. The site also had 2,250 people subscribe to its RSS feed and 2,049 people subscribe to its email list. Again, these are good numbers but not so amazing that it doesn’t seem like something that could be done. After all, lots of you probably already have more than 2,000 people on your own email lists.

Additionally, 18% of the site’s traffic (approximately 45,000 people each month) was coming from search engines and only 15% of its traffic (37,500 people) was coming from people who directly typed the URL into their browsers, which suggests its core fan base was actually less than 50,000 people. Again, this isn’t a number that’s too intimidating to think you could attain with good content.

You Need To Have Relationships With Other Sites And Be Part Of A Community

While most comedians are terrible at working together and cross-promoting each other’s creations, almost all successful bloggers have mastered the skill. They link to each other, they trade traffic, and they understand that it’s incredibly difficult to succeed in gaining an audience online without becoming a part of a community. Sure enough, Don Chavez mastered these kinds of relationships and as a result these relationships were the site’s number one source of traffic.

A whopping 65% of Don Chavez’s traffic (about 162,500 people a month) came to the site from other websites who linked to Don Chavez content. This is how the web works. And it’s why one of the big selling points in the auction was that the site’s relationships with other traffic driving blogs in the space would stay in tact for whoever bought the site.

The lesson? If you’ve got any thoughts of building a big audience for your online creations, you better be prepared to make some friends elsewhere in the online community that can help you do it.

Making A Little Money Can Help You Make A Lot Of Money

Even before this sale, Don Chavez was a profitable operation. As is detailed on the auction page, the site was generating approximately $2,500 a month and only costing about $150 a month to run (web hosting was the only real cost). This is important because it means that the blogger had not only attracted an audience and created a lot of content on the site, but he had also laid the groundwork for a business plan and was already monetizing on some level.

This likely made the blog much more attractive than it otherwise would have been to an investor because now the investor can see exactly how he will make his $35,000 back. Don Chavez was making that revenue through deals with several ad networks including Blogstand Media and Break Media, so potential buyers knew they could count on continuing those relationships and potentially supplementing them with even higher-rate advertisers.

Too often, comedy creators concentrate on asking people to invest in their creations based on its entertainment value or audience, without ever actually doing anything to show potential investors how they can actually make a profit on their investment.

You Have To Be Willing To Commit The Time To Make It Work

Despite the myth of viral success, it usually takes a lot of time and work in order to build anything of value and that’s true on the web as well. In the case of Don Chavez, the seller estimates that he spent 2 hours a day, 5 days a week working on the blog. After all, those three posts a day aren’t going to create themselves. That means that he had put in 10 hours a week for five years prior to selling it.

If you’re working on a project or anything to further your career, are you willing to put in 10 hours a week to make it succeed? Are you willing to do that for five years? And if you’re not doing that yet, how much further along do you think you would be with your projects if you did? Success doesn’t just happen, it has to be earned.

For a look at how you can monetize your videos, check out this post about what it takes to make $11,000 a month on YouTube.

In 5 Free Tips, I provide some free advice specifically tailored to one person’s content. If you’d like me to give you 5 Free Tips, please send me an email and tell me a little about yourself.

Today’s free tips are for a live alternative comedy show in St. Louis called Punch Drunk Comedy, whose producer sent me the following email:

Hey Josh,

I run a comedy show in St. Louis, Punch Drunk Comedy (www.punchdrunkcomedy.com).  It’s a variety show that has a lot of different elements in it (stand up, sketch comedy, videos, silly characters) and I want to make it more of an all around brand that would attract people that don’t necessarily live in the area, like how Upright Citizens Brigade is a theatre, website, T.V. show, etc.

Also, we recently moved from a Facebook “Group” (http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=106004787280) to a “Fan” page, (http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Punch-Drunk-Comedy/171782082863484) and would like to carry over more of our fans and keep growing as a brand.

Also, we would like to be  be more interactive as I feel that is key with these kinds of things, but don’t really know how or what works.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time,

Kevin White

I checked out Punch Drunk Comedy’s stuff and came up with the following 5 Free Tips for them:

TIP #1: Build Your Brand In St. Louis First

I think it’s great that you’re looking to turn your show into an all around brand, but I would suggest that one of the best ways to do that would be to concentrate on building the brand within St. Louis first, since the jumping off point for your brand initially will be the live show (I assume). Live comedy “brands” that have gone national such as the Upright Citizens Brigade and Comedy Death Ray all began by first conquering their local city.

I would suggest having your initial goal be to have the best (whatever your definition of best is) comedy show in St. Louis. The process of trying to build a hot show in your city will allow you to experiment and figure out exactly what the Punch Drunk Comedy brand ultimately is, before you have to worry about trying to spread that brand nationwide. Also, when you’re ready to expand beyond St. Louis, it will be much easier for you if you’ve got the credibility of already having the hottest show in St. Louis as a launching pad.

For example, UCB began as a small theater in New York and it was only after it became successful there that it branched out to a theater in Los Angeles. And the success of both of those theaters eventually led to TV, etc. A lot of times it may seem like a brand springs up out of nowhere, but usually most brands started small and evolved into much bigger entities.

TIP #2: Use Your Performers To Promote Your Brand

It sounds like you’ve got a lot of different comedians and performers appearing in your shows at various times. That’s a tremendous asset and one which you should try to leverage as much as possible to grow your brand. Each of those performers likely have their own friends and fanbases who they can introduce to your brand if you have a strategy for how to take advantage of that.

For example, I assume that the performers in your shows plug their actual appearances to their followers, but do you ask them to also plug your brand as well? For example, if a comedian is performing on your show next month it’s great if they tell their followers about it. But what would be even more beneficial to you is if that comedian asked their fans to sign up for your mailing list or follow you on Twitter. I assume most performers are happy to be booked on your show and will probably have no problem with giving you a plug if you ask for it. Even better, you can work out an incentive such as giving discount tickets to any of their fans that join your mailing list or something like that.

TIP #3: Change Your Website Landing Page

This is a simple one, but I noticed that when I went to the home page of your website there wasn’t a lot of information. You have the countdown clock to the next show which is cool, but there’s no real description of what Punch Drunk Comedy is and nothing telling me why I should care when your next show is.

I know you have a lot more info on your site, but the only way anybody would discover that is if they happen to click on the little star which takes them inside the site – and it took me a little while to figure that out. There’s a good chance a lot of people won’t realize they’re supposed to do that and will just assume that there’s nothing on your site except for that countdown clock. I know that’s what I thought at first.

I’d really recommend reconsidering what’s on the home page of your site, because you want anybody that comes across it to be drawn into the world of the brand you’re creating and not to assume that there’s nothing on your site worth seeing. In short, don’t hide the important stuff.

TIP #4: Record Your Shows And Release Them As Content

A great way to spread the word about your shows and your brand is to record them (either audio or video) and post the highlights or full shows on your website. If you think about it, there’s a ton of great content being created at your shows and that content is relatively easy to adapt and share with the world online. Also, while you’re busy building your brand in St. Louis, this will let people from around the world start to enjoy the shows you’re producing as well.

The Naughty Comedy Show in Los Angeles regularly posts show highlight videos and they’ve really helped to sell the show and build the brand. Here’s an example:

TIP #5: Let Your Fans Help Plan Your Shows

I think it’s great that you’d like to figure out some ways to be more interactive with your fans because the more they feel a part of your brand, the more connected they will feel to what you do. There’s lots of different things you can do to increase interactivity, but in general I would suggest that you change your mindset. Most performers (and producers for that matter) tend to think that it’s their job to put on a show and entertain their fans. That’s true, but it can also be part of your job to create opportunities for your audience to participate in what you’re doing. It’s not always about you – sometimes it’s about them.

For example, maybe in each of your shows there could be a sketch that’s based on a fan-submitted topic? Maybe one of the acts on the show could be actually booked by the fans who would vote to decide which comedian they’d like to see perform? This could have the added bonus of getting you more promotion from performers who would encourage their fanbases to vote for them so they could land the gig. Maybe there’s a part of the show where comedians answer questions that had been previously submitted by fans? Or maybe you feature a video introduction from a fan to start the show each time?

As you can see, there’s limitless possibilities to get more interaction if you just start to think about it in terms of allowing fans to help guide the direction of the show at times.

I hope these tips help, and if anybody else would like to get 5 Free Tips, please let me know.

I’ve recently had multiple conversations with comedians who were surprised when I suggested that they needed to have their own “official” website and make it the hub of all their promotional activities and content. Because of the soaring popularity of things like YouTube, Twitter, and especially Facebook, I realized that a lot of comedians are thinking that having their own website is no longer really necessary.

As one comedian said to me, “It seems to me that visiting someone’s website is a thing of the past. Most people prefer to go to Facebook, don’t you think? The main reason I don’t worry about my website that much is because I assume people just go to my website to find me on Facebook. I guess I have trouble believing people go to websites any more.”

This is not an uncommon belief, but unfortunately it’s only partially correct. I agree that most people pretty much ignore comedians’ websites at this point, but the reason is because most comedians are ignoring their own websites. People will go to your website if you give them a reason to go there by regularly updating the site with fresh content. When it comes to websites, it’s definitely an “If you post it, they will come” scenario.

But even if you believe me that people will visit your website if you update it regularly, that still doesn’t necessarily explain why it’s so important for you to put the time and effort into having one. That’s why I wanted to take a couple minutes and share with you these 5 Reasons Why You Need To Have Your Own Website.

1. Your Website Ensures You Won’t Lose Your Connection To Your Fans

This is by far the most important reason why you need to have a website. When you rely on Facebook for your connection to your fans, you are leaving yourself extremely vulnerable to the ups and downs of social media trends. Just because Facebook rules the world now, there’s no guarantee that things will stay that way. In fact, most likely they will not.

And if your only connection to your fanbase is through Facebook, you lose all your fans if they abandon Facebook, It may seem impossible, but think about how many comedians built up huge MySpace followings a couple years ago only to find them useless when everybody stopped using MySpace.

Having your website be the hub of your fan community ensures that you’ll be able to weather the ups and downs of social media trends. No matter how things evolve, your website will still be relevant (and controlled by you), so it will ultimately ensure that you don’t lose connection to your fans as time goes on.

2. Your Website Allows You To Control The Experience You Give Your Fans

Things like Facebook and YouTube offer extremely little ability for customization. This means that you’re limited in the experience that you can offer your fans on those sites. For example, if you wanted to create a message board to allow your fans to communicate with each other and strengthen their connection to you and your work, you can’t really do that on somebody else’s site. If you wanted to create some kind of game for fans to play, that’s not going to work on other sites but could be a great feature on your own. The possibilities of what you can offer to your fans are limitless…but only if you’ve got your own website on which to feature them.

3. Your Website Helps You Capture Emails And Build Your Mailing List

Despite the explosion of social media, building a good old fashioned email list is still probably the best possible thing you can do to grow your fanbase. And it will be much easier for you to capture more fans’ email addresses on your website than it will be through other social media sites. This is because you can structure your site however you’d like to plug your mailing list and ask for signups. Sites like Facebook and Twitter can be used to help promote your mailing list, but ultimately you’ll have more effectiveness capturing those emails on your site.

4. Your Website Creates A Valuable Archive Of Your Content

As you know from reading Connected Comedy, I’m a big believer in the importance of thinking about your career in the long term as opposed to the short term. And over the course of time you’re likely to create a ton of interesting and valuable content – but without a website to archive all of those creations, they will essentially get lost.

When was the last time you went to somebody’s Facebook page and scrolled through to see what they posted 6 months ago? Or when did you check out somebody’s tweets from a year ago? Or how do you search somebody’s Facebook page to find all of their TV appearances?

Most social media sites are designed for the short term, but they don’t do a great job of archiving and presenting older content which may be every bit as entertaining. But with a website, you can slice and dice your content however you want.

Want to create a page showing links to all your tweets about celebrities? That’s easy to do. Want to show people the 10 most popular things you’ve every created? Very easy. A website will allow you to benefit from everything you create for as long as you’d like.

5. Your Website Will Bring You New Fans From Google

Another thing that comedians rarely consider is the impact that having a website can have in introducing new potential fans to you and your content through Google searches. Every time post a piece of content on your website, you get the benefit of letting Google do free marketing work for you . That’s because every page is indexed by Google, and there are likely people out there searching for whatever you’re posting.

For example, let’s say you post something about how to get over a break up. Well, on average, 33,100 people a month search for “how to get over a break up” in Google and there’s a good chance that some of them will see a link to your post in the Google search results. This is free traffic and a great way for people who are interested in the kinds of content you’re creating to find you and be introduced to all that you do…on your website.

For more tips, check out my special report on 100+ Places To Promote Your Comedy Content.