This guest post is by Chris The Traffic Blogger.

We always hear stories about the people who eventually succeeded as bloggers … but what about the ones who didn’t?

What of those millions of people who heard that you could make money online, tried it, and eventually gave up? Why aren’t those stories shared and, more importantly, why don’t we discuss the reasons these people failed? Here is but one story in a sea of millions that can shine some light on the subject.

What does it mean to fail as a blogger?

For some, money is not everything in this life. They value relationships, connecting with others and sharing time together more than anything. This is exactly the mentality my mother had when she began her own blog. She wrote about life as a mother of five children, her incredible ability to cook great food with awesome wine pairings, and her love for her faith.

Her articles were well written and thought-provoking, funny sometimes, and even touching. Having read through her first few posts, I thought to myself, “Wow, my mom is really going to do this and be an awesome blogger.”

However, she failed.

Having seen myself making $10,000 a month with a video gaming blog, my mother thought that she could try her luck at it as well. After eight months and only $2.14 for her efforts, she simply gave up. To her, yes, blogging was fun, but it was too much like a job and she still had a little one to take care of at home. There just wasn’t enough free time for her to justify writing as a hobby with no income to show for it. Despite my best efforts to show her how to draw traffic to her site, she simply gave up due to the learning curve and time involved.

My mother didn’t fail because she couldn’t write, or because she didn’t have a revenue stream. She was an excellent writer and had AdSense/affiliate links on her site in good locations. She failed because she lacked connections and social interaction with her potential audience.

Where things went wrong

Here are how the conversations went with my mother, and here are the responses she had to them. If this sounds like you, stick around because I’m going to show you how to be successful with your blog traffic.

Me: You need to sell something.
Mom: But I have nothing to sell. I don’t own anything.

My mother thought that because she didn’t have a pre-written ebook that she couldn’t make money online.

First off, I didn’t have an ebook when I first started out. What I had was grit and determination to find my audience and market products to them. My mother lacked this, nor did she want to start to learn how to do it. Her fundamental argument is flawed, however, because she did have something to sell: her opinion. Mom had great ideas, great outlooks on life, she was entertaining, and often made people think with her posts. That’s what she could have sold.

Maybe that would have taken shape as an ebook on how to pair wine with food, or maybe it would be life lessons from a mother of five children. I don’t know, but she did have something only she could sell and I’m sad it never came to be.

Me: Mom, you need to read other blogs and forums, then post comments on them.
Mom: I don’t have the time and they don’t know me.

Despite my mom’s expertise in three separate niches, no one knew about it. All she needed to do was start visiting blogs and forums and comment on them, and she would have started developing a following rather quickly. She’s a smart, witty woman with a lot of talent, and it would have been obvious to everyone she interacted with that she knew her stuff.

Sadly, she equated leaving comments at these locations to knocking on doors like a salesman, or preaching in front of random people on the street corner. She didn’t see it as the networking opportunity it really was.

Me: Hey Mom, did you contact any bloggers this week?
Mom: Yes, but I haven’t checked my email in over a month.

When Mom was first starting out, she did make an effort to contact bloggers … well, at least the ones I found for her, and whose email addresses I sent to her. But she never followed up (one even wanted to do a guest post swap!).

Due to time constraints, my Mom never was able to do the essential tasks necessary to manage her PR efforts. Following up seems like a no-brainer, but when you don’t check your email more than once a month, it’s virtually impossible to have a conversation with anyone!

Mom can still succeed

This is it: the part where I show you how she (and you, if you sound like my Mom) can turn things around.

Let’s say my Mom can spend three hours per week blogging. Here’s how I would change her schedule from 100% writing to a different setup, and get her on the path towards blogging success.

1. Spend one hour emailing and responding to emails.
2. Spend one hour commenting on blogs and participating on forums.
3. Spend one hour writing posts.

Yes, she would write one-third of what she was creating before, but she would have a far greater number of interactions with people. Simply improving your own blog is not enough—you have to get out there and connect with your potential audience.

In fact, that’s all you need to do: go out there and find your audience. It seems simple, but to many it feels like added work because they spend all their time writing. Freeing up time solves half of this issue. The other half is getting over the fear of sounding like a salesman. Entering into a conversation and leaving your intelligent opinion on the matter is all you really need to do to avoid sounding like a salesman.

If you need help finding your audience, try searching Google for “[your niche] + forum” or “[your niche] + blog.” Then, after you find a few sites, try looking through their links and blog rolls for additional sites to check out. Get involved, build relationships, and most importantly, have fun! That’s what it’s all about!

Chris is a self proclaimed expert at showing bloggers how they can get traffic, build communities, make money online and be successful. You can find out more at The Traffic Blogger.

Real estate inheritance tax tips

Accomplish goal without adding children to title

By Benny Kass, Monday, April 11, 2011.

Inman News™

DEAR BENNY: I am a retired widow who owns two homes. I have two children. Is it possible for each one to be a co-owner with me: one child on one house and the other on the second property? How would I go about doing this? Would that save anything on taxes, etc., for my two adult children? Would it cost me anything other than the filing fee for the property ownership papers of each of the homes?

My estate isn’t huge, but the inheritance taxes would take up quite a bit of money. They would each naturally inherit the homes, but doing it the way I propose would give me the power to will a specific home to each child with no arguments over any value difference. –Evelyn

DEAR EVELYN: I get this question all too often, and my standard response is that there may be serious tax consequences when a parent adds his or her children to title on a house.

Let’s say you bought the property for $50,000 and it is now worth $300,000. Your basis for tax purposes (a number that is important in determining capital gains tax) is $50,000. If you give half of the property to one of your children, his or her basis will be $25,000.

The basis of the person giving the gift (donor) becomes the basis of the gift receiver (donee). If you die, and the house is then worth $300,000, and assuming no improvements were made (and ignoring selling costs such as real estate commissions), the tax basis of your child will be $175,000.

How do I get this number? On your death, your child gets a stepped-up basis as of the date of death. Supposing you die when the house is worth $300,000, and since you own half of the house in my example, your child gets a stepped-up basis in the amount of $150,000. But your child also has a basis of $25,000; thus $175,000.

If the house is sold for $300,000, your child will have made a profit of $125,000 and will have to pay capital gains tax. At the current 15 percent federal tax rate, that means a payment of $18,750. Additionally, your state or local government may also impose a capital gains tax.

But if you die, and your children inherit the house, they get the full stepped-up basis. In our example, if the property is worth $300,000 on your death, their tax basis is $300,000. If they sell for that price, they have made no profit and thus have to pay no tax.

You are concerned about your children arguing about value. Quite frankly, they should each be happy that you are giving them anything. Parents do not legally have to give things to their children; they can spend all of their kids’ inheritance.

You can prepare a last will and testament giving one house to each of your two children. If there are dramatic differences in valuation — and if you want to treat your kids more or less equally — you can adjust your will so that more money, or more furniture, etc., goes to the child who will inherit the less expensive house.

DEAR BENNY: My partner died and he had put the house in a trust. I have lived in the house for 24 years and paid the mortgages for two years after he died. The trustee hates me, and he is in France most months. I am the sole beneficiary of my partner’s will, which includes everything. How can I get this through probate? Can I fire the trustee? The decedent also owes $30,000 in credit card bills. The trustee does not even return my phone calls. –Paul

DEAR PAUL: I can’t give you any good answer, because the laws differ from state to state. However, if the real property is in a trust then its disposition is governed by the terms and conditions contained in that document.

You say that you were the beneficiary of the will. Are you also the beneficiary of the trust? That will be an important factor that the probate court will be considering when making its decision.

Bottom line: You need to obtain a copy of the trust agreement to determine what your rights are, and to see what can be done to either enforce your rights with the current trustee or to have that trustee removed. If those provisions are not contained in the trust document (they should be if it was prepared properly) your state law will dictate.

You can also file to probate the estate if there are any probate assets. As mentioned earlier, there is a distinction between a will and a trust. Currently, the property is probably outside of the decedent’s estate, which is one reason why people create trusts.

However, when someone owns a revocable trust, the will simply "pours over" the probate assets into the trust. This is highly complex and you really should get yourself a lawyer who understands probate and trust law.

DEAR BENNY: I have been a student of retirement living since 1962, when I was an executive with one of the major developers of active retirement communities.

Among my findings:

1. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans living today in over-55 retirement communities. Very few of them are currently in financial trouble. About 30 percent of them paid cash for their houses. Many others have only very small mortgages. Practically none had subprime mortgages, and few have negative amortization. Foreclosures are minimal.

2. About the only financial problem is that many seniors are "brick rich and cash poor." I ran across one case years ago where an elderly widow had such a small income that she could not pay the $2 donation for Meals on Wheels. But her $400,000 house was free and clear.

If reverse mortgages had been in existence then, it would certainly not have been a last resort. Godsend would be more like it. She could have lived like a queen (albeit a modest one) for the rest of her life, tax-free.

3. Lump-sum payments, I agree, may create real problems and should be a last resort. But I see a real advantage to many seniors in the way monthly payments are structured under the Federal Housing Administration program. They are based on average actuarial tables for life expectancy at a given age.

That means that some of us are going to die short of our life expectancy and some of us are going to outlive our life expectancy. The "early diers" are not disadvantaged because they have not used up much of their house’s equity. The "outlivers" reap a bonanza because their monthly payments are received as long as they live, even after their house’s equity is used up. This is guaranteed by the FHA’s mortgage insurance pool we contribute to monthly. This can go on for a long, long time.

My next-door neighbor, for instance, is 96, and she is not at all unique in our community. Had she taken out a reverse mortgage at age 65 she would have received 372 monthly payments by now (and counting). Talk about a win-win. –Kelly

DEAR KELLY: I still am a strong believer that a reverse mortgage should be considered a last resort. However, new laws and a new FHA product are slowly changing my mind.

You used the concept "brick rich and cash poor." My terminology is "house rich and cash poor" (although I like your phrasing better). I have had too many clients over the years who were in this category.

But the upfront costs of a reverse mortgage could not compete with a home equity line of credit (HELOC), where you had to pay interest only when you tapped into that line. It basically gave you a checkbook to keep in your desk drawer until you needed the money.

However, last year Congress increased the loan limits on reverse mortgages to $625,000. Additionally, FHA announced a new version of the old reverse mortgage, which they call the HECM Saver (home equity conversion mortgage). Although this new product does not allow homeowners to take as much money under the program as with the older version, the upfront closing costs are considerably lower.

If you are age 62 or older and have a house that is "free and clear" (or only has a small mortgage), you may be a candidate for this HECM Saver program. Do your homework and consult with your financial, tax and legal advisers before you make the final decision.

Benny L. Kass is a practicing attorney in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. No legal relationship is created by this column. Questions for this column can be submitted to benny@inman.com.

Contact Benny Kass:
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Copyright 2011 Benny L. Kass

All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.

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