Author: Erika Madden

02 October

The Extra-Heroic Guide to Writing Remarkable Blog Posts

The extra-heroic guide to writing remarkable blog posts: what makes a blog post valuable to your audience, attracts new readers, and makes your brand strong online. Comes with free worksheets and TONS of tips! Visit Olyvia.co for more.

When you think of a #HeroicBrand in your life and the blog they keep -- the blog that helps you genuinely improve your business, or your blog, or your fitness, or your cooking, or your hobbies, or anything else that's important to you -- what comes to mind?

What is it about it that makes it so darn valuable?

Why do you follow it, refer to it, and tell your friends about it -- over and above most of the other blogs out there?

There's no doubt that a good blog includes many things: a blogger who is dedicated to being responsive, kind, and helpful, an attractive + distinct "voice," eye-catching photos + graphics, clean design, and so on. Those all are sure to make your list.

But a terrific blog -- a blog that stands out from the crowd and earns an ever-growing + loyal audience -- has another unique quality all its own:

It provides specific, in-depth, remarkable content that people can use to immediately accomplish goals or fix problems in their life.

In short, it's not just a pretty place, a warm fuzzies place, or a mildly interesting place.

It's a worthwhile place. It serves people.

That's why you + a throng of others keep coming back to it, right? It's not just a narcissistic, "look at what I'm eating for dinner!" project on the part of the blogger...

23 September

Earning An Audience: How To Be Irresistible + Grow Your Brand Online

Erika Madden | Blogging Tips, Business Tips, Classy Marketing, Customer Service | 79 Comments

How to earn your audience: the actions that REALLY make you noticeable + irresistible as a small business and brand online. Get 13 beginner community-building tips + 4 advanced strategies with examples and questions to help you improve.

The best way I know how to share what I'm about to share with you about building a business on the interwebs is to start off with a little story-slash-confession. I promise, pinkie-swear, and cross my heart not to be boring.

Before I launched the Olyvia brand, I spent my time reading.

By my estimations, I read about 157 gazillion articles on business marketing strategies on a daily freaking basis in the months leading up to my website going live.

You see, even though I had experience in growing communities online -- launching + promoting around a half dozen blogs over the previous 10 years, advising non-profits on social media marketing, informally assisting my friends who owned small businesses, and other rather unremarkable things -- the truth is this:

I was certain that anything I knew would prove to be woefully, shamefully inadequate. Oh yeah: and I would fail.

In my mind there simply had to be the Holy Grail of marketing strategies out there that would guarantee my entrance into biz blogging heaven. I just needed to find it behind some internet guru's squeeze page.

(Don't even ask how many newsletters I signed up for in my quest for marketing enlightenment. #likewhoa)

But ~~sales pitch after sales pitch~~ errr, I mean webinar after webinar, all I found at the end of the rainbow were $2000 courses I couldn't afford -- and didn't trust enough to buy even if I could.

So, alas, the day came when I finally could do nothing more than push Olyvia.co into being. I hoped (and ohhh it was a desperate hope, I might add) that what I knew from my past online experiences -- in point of fact, what I had built my entire brand around -- would be enough to get me started.

What was my so-called strategy?

Only this: ...

06 August

How to Make Easy Passive Income Online With a Free Challenge or Mini-Course (The Ick-Free Upgrade Technique)

Erika Madden | Blog Income Report, Business Tips, Classy Marketing | 66 Comments

Want a simple, no-hassle way to make passive income for your blog or business AND grow your email list? It's not as hard as you think, and you can do it without a scary launch or crazy webinars. (Perfect for introverts + beginners!) Click to read the full tutorial on Olyvia.co

Let's say you've never released a product online and you're terrified. You're terrified because not only are you scared to pull off a "big launch," the truth is -- #letsbehonest -- you don't even know HOW.

Webinars? Sales emails? Instagram parties? Excuse me, but oh. my. gosh. and WTH.

Or, maybe you have launched big before. (In which case I say, you are amazing!) But your hands are full and you're looking for a different, simple way to monetize your blog -- something that's low key, straightforward, and that will continue to bring in consistent passive income without any uncomfortable promotion OR continual sales-y fanfare on your part.

Whichever camp you fall into, this blog post is for you.

Today I'm teaching you all about The Ick-Free Upgrade technique, a monetization strategy for your blog or business that:

1. Does not require a big email list. (In fact, you don't need an email list at all to start doing this and be successful, AND it's going to help you build one at the same time -- #winning.)

2. Is extremely affordable to set up. (All that's required financially is a mass email marketing provider [I use Mailchimp - #afflink] that allows you to set up a simple automated email sequence. To do this in Mailchimp you need to use their upgraded version, which costs as little as $10/mo depending on how many subscribers you have. With ~ 1-3 sales of your product you'll recoup the cost.)

3. Demands exactly 0 promo efforts by you other than the normal promotion you would do for a blog post or email opt-in gift. (In other words, you decide how much and in what way you make people aware of it -- there's no pressure to be a pushy saleswoman or bubbly ball...

27 July

91+ Outrageously Helpful Blog Posts That Will Make You A Better Blogger + Biz Owner

Erika Madden | Blogging Tips, Business Tips, Resources | 39 Comments

91+ of the best blog posts out there to help you launch your online brand, blog successfully, market yourself on social media, deal with clients + customers, and more!

If you have Too Many Open Browser Tabs Syndrome you're not going to like me for this post (as a fellow sufferer I know the struggle is real, so I hope you can forgive me) -- but I promise, there is so much insane usefulness here if you want to:

start blogging (for hobby or biz)
improve the blog/website you already have
start or grow your email list
use social media like a #boss
become the overall smartest online business owner, entrepreneur, solopreneur, infopreneur, etc.

So, despite the fact you're going to have 91+ tabs open to check out all the stellarness (just made that word up, thanks), what I'm saying is this: you're going to be grateful you did, my good friend.
...

26 June

The Olyvia.co Blog Income + Traffic Report for June 2015

Erika Madden | Blog Income Report | 24 Comments

Okay, okay. I know you're all just dying to know:

How did Olyvia.co fare in blog traffic + income for the month of June?

(Which is actually part of May and not the entire month of June, but what the hey.)

Here's the breakdown.
...