When I introduced Ramsay as a new member of the ViperChill team, one of the things we asked you all to do was share some of the challenges you face when it comes to blogging. Though ViperChill isn’t solely focused on the blog medium, it’s an area we’ve both had a lot of success in, and something a large portion of you clearly care about — the post has resulted in over 400 comments since it went live.

Our plan was to use these problems to plan future content that addresses specific needs you have (and we’ll do that), but recently we had the idea to actually answer a lot of them, in public, and hopefully solve a lot of the dilemmas that the average blogger faces. Especially since we’ve both “been there and done that” and know how frustrating it can be when you really want to get going but have some hurdle in the way. I think we’ve solved that…

Note from Glen: This is a post by Ramsay, who was recently introduced as a new member of the ViperChill team. Last month I made an extra $5,000 by jumping on the phone with a long-term email client to close a deal. And at that moment I had an important business realization: I’d forgotten something vital. And I think almost every blogger is making the same mistake that I was. You see, blogging and internet marketing can be a really tiny industry sometimes.

There are a few big players who dictate how things are done and then everyone else follows for a while. But within that narrow spectrum of teaching and following there are vital business practices being overlooked. This is not another “how to make money by following this method” kind of post. By the end of it you won’t have a new gimmick to test and obsess over.

But you might have an idea planted in your head that works for you for the rest of your business life.

My analytical brain is always looking at different ways I can improve the conversions on my websites. From changing page titles, graphics used to entice people to give away email addresses and even the “Buy Now” buttons on sales pages, I know that small changes can have a big impact. There has been one thing though that in all honesty, I’ve really overlooked in my last few years online, and only now am I doing something about it.

It’s something that has dramatically increased revenues for online retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Shopzilla, and even greatly affected how many people use Google Maps. Fortunately it’s not something ubiquitous that only those with multi-million dollar budgets can implement, but a tactic that every single person reading this can benefit from: speeding up your website.

On the 27th of March, 2010, I received an email from a guy named Billy Murphy, who basically just wanted to say that he really liked ViperChill and the content I was posting. Three days later I was at a friends house and he got to talking about some of the membership sites he uses for training. Since he’s a professional poker player the site in question was indeed a poker site, named BlueFirePoker. The name sounded very familiar, and after a quick check on my phone, I realised it was the site Billy owned.

Fast-forward to two weeks ago, and Billy let me in on some of the sites details, and also let me know about a new site he’s starting up. I jumped at the chance to ask him some questions, but with his claim of making $100,000 in one week, I was slightly worried the interview wouldn’t be good enough to post. After all, I assumed a huge amount of money must have been spent in order for that to happen, and it’s not exactly something all ViperChill readers can replicate. How wrong I was.

Note from Glen: This is the first post in ViperChill history that isn’t written by me. That’s all I need to say for now…

In the early 90′s my recently divorced mother started dating a man with a horrible son who wore sweater vests and would trash the kitchen in his sleep. Soon our parents fell in love, got married and Mom and I moved on over to their house; a house of learned doctors.

I’ll never forget seeing his ugly face on the front lawn as we pulled up in their drive. I decided right then and there that I was going to bury him alive. But something strange happened.

On my 21st birthday I shared a list of 21 lessons I’ve learned during my short spell on earth. On my 22nd birthday I worked for weeks on a free 2 hour video course called Cloud Blueprint. And if there’s anyone really good at guessing, then you probably know that today is my 23rd birthday. I thought for a long time about what I wanted to share here. I knew that I didn’t want to share something “personal developmenty” and I already have a big marketing related announcement coming in the next few days, so I decided to do something else.

That something else, is just to be personal.

This is an important blog post, because it makes a prediction. A prediction about the future of blogging; a platform actively used by over 181 million people (Nielsen data for October 2011). Not only will you learn why I think most blogging advice is dated and ineffective, but I’ll also reveal where I believe this entire industry is heading, so you can stay ahead of the competition.

This is not only an important post, but also the longest I have ever written. It’s more like a mini-eBook, without the price tag. Don’t let its lack of cost make you doubt the value here though. I will at least sell you on what you’re about to learn:

• A weird tip I personally received from Google’s Matt Cutts which increased my ViperChill search rankings
• What Gawker does once per week to double their traffic figures. That’s going from two million to four million uniques per day
• Why the Daily Mail recently surpassed the New York Times as the number #1 newspaper website in the world
• How Mashable crushed TechCrunch on traffic numbers (even though they used to be the underdog)
• Why the successful ‘make money online’ blogs of the past have now faded into obscurity
• The number one reason Leo Babauta dominated the personal development industry in two months
• What Steve Kamb did to build a six-figure blog in the overly saturated health niche
• Why feed counts mean absolutely nothing (and never really have)
• Which Huffington Post articles attract 3X more clicks than any other
• Why the Verge was one of the fastest growing blog launches in history

…and most importantly, how this all helps me to make a prediction about what it now takes to build highly profitable blogs.

As you would probably expect, the last few weeks of my life since launching OptinSkin have been absolutely crazy. I can’t remember a time when I’ve spent so much of my day with my head in my inbox, dealing with customers. I assumed that most of the feedback after the launch would be from people with feature requests, support questions and pre-sales curiosity.

As a team, we’ve definitely received enough of those, but the most common type of feedback I have received personally was totally unexpected. Dozens of people from around the world got in touch just to let me know how cool they thought it was that I actually got to do this. That I could spend my days working on a creative project of my choice and then finally get to show it to the world.