Discover one way to use blogs to market and sell more books

Those who make great money online are those who continually seek opportunities to position their expertise. An excellent way to do this is with blog tours and guest blogging.

What is a blog tour?

Blog tours became popular by authors who were seeking a more cost effective way to get the word out about a book. In days past a book tour for an author consisted of going from location to location to do readings, signings and hopefully sell a few books.

This has always been a very expensive way to promote books. For many authors it has also been extremely ineffective.

Enter blogs. Somewhere along the lines someone got the idea that rather than simply writing for their own blog, why not do guest appearances.

What was a very mysterious activity as recently as only a few short years ago is now a very common practice. And rather than simply promote books, a tour is now used for promoting a number of different things such as live events, teleseminars, information products and services.

A simple definition of a blog tour is a virtual tour where you stop at a number of blogs and post relevant information.

Participating in a blog tour has replaced the need to make "personal" appearances for many experts.

In the purest sense a blog tour is done over a specific period of time where the expert "visits" several blogs.

A blog owner hosts one stop of the tour unless of course, they have several blogs you are posting on. The best part of all is you can do a tour from literally anywhere in the world as long as you have Internet access.

Some people prefer to do sporadic guest blogging rather than a structured blog tour. In essence guest blogging is exactly as it sounds. You post on a blog as a guest. But, you must get the blog owner's permission to do this type of posting.

Being a guest blogger is different than simply posting comments about other people's posts. In essence you are the "star" blogger.

In this lesson you will learn what you can do to make your star shine each and every blog you are a guest of.

Benefits to blog tours and guest blogging

There are a number of fabulous benefits to either. You definitely increase your visibility and credibility. Both allow you to create a buzz about a book, event, or telseminar to name just a few things.

Without a doubt your writings will be viewed by new eyeballs. This is exactly what you want.

When done right, you are able to reach more of your target market. The reason you want to be clear on who your market is and who is reading the blog you are going to post on is for increased reach with the best market.

There's no point in writing for blogs that are not viewed by those who are interested in what you have to say and offer.

Guest blogging opens up opportunities for potential joint venture relationships with the blog owner. What better way to get your foot in the door than to do a stellar job with your guest blog appearance?

Search engines love blogs and when you use the right keywords you are creating incredible opportunities for better SEO.

In addition, you can increase your own opt in subscribers if you do have a link in your bio at the end of your post.