This is how I went from being a coal miner to a top ten social media blogger in under 9 months! My story plus some of the strategies that I use to get noticed!

1. From Coal Mining
To Blogging:
How I Became Successful

2. Introduction: My name is Wade Harman and I am the main contributor of
BloggersMakeMoney.com.
My story is really uncommon, and one that a lot of people have asked me
about so I thought I would just sit down when I had the time and write it all
out for you.
So sit back and relax and let me take you down a road that I never thought
my life would come across.
Blogging.
Chapter 1: The Life of A Coal Miner
I almost made an introduction to the two coal companies that I have worked
for giving them a piece of my mind. It was a doozy too! But I thought
better of it and deleted it. They won’t read this anyway, because a coal
miner spends most of his life underground anyway, and has no time for
anything…especially the internet!
Don’t get me wrong. Being a coal miner is hard work, and the “regular
guys” were great friends of mine and I wish them all the best! I hope each
one of them is safe and happy and I pray for them all the time.

3. Most of the introduction was to the bosses of these corporations. Because
these guys are buttheads!
Anyway, the life of a coal miner is a hard one.
First of all, let me give you a description of where I live. One guy asked me
how to get to my house one time and I told him to “go to the end of the earth
and turn right”. It’s that far off the beaten path!
The above photo is actually one that was taken near my house. As you can
see its pretty barren here, with lots of mountains. But there is gold in “them-
thar hills”…black gold, that is, coal.
My father was a coal miner. His father was a coal miner. His father before
him was a coal miner as well. And I believe that even his father was a coal
miner. That is not an uncommon story for the men in my town. It’s a
vicious cycle that is really tough to break.
Around our area, there are two types of jobs that you can make a lot of
money at. That is being a coal miner or becoming a doctor. Since most of
the people around our area are poor, spending 12 years in med school seems
too expensive, therefore the only other drawback is to be a coal miner.
Now don’t get me wrong, being a coal miner is a great paying job! When I
first started back in 2003, I was making $18 hr with a $2 raise every 6

4. months. For a kid of that age, that was a lot of money! Today’s rates are
much higher, starting pay usually runs around $22-$25 per hour for a
newbie.
But as you can imagine, the stakes are just as high. Your surroundings are
very dangerous and you spend most of your days hunched over or on your
knees because its too low to stand up in.
If you think that’s the worst thing about working underground in a coal mine
then you’ve got another thing coming!
If you turn off your cap light, it’s darker than the darkest hell…you can’t see
your hand in front of your face either. You don’t want your cap light to go
out on you when you are 1,900 ft underground, something that has happened
to me more times than I can count.
A coal miner is a tough person. They have to be! How can you not get
muscles when you squat-walk every day!
Crawling around in the coal and dirt every day, breathing in the fresh rock-
dust air that will eventually kill the man in a couple of years.
Coal mining is hard work.
The work notwithstanding, it’s hard, but you not only have to look forward
to back-breaking work every day, but you also have to be aware of falling

5. rocks and rolling ribs!
Ok, now you probably already know what falling rocks are. You’ve seen the
news reports of miners being crushed by loose rocks falling from the top, but
you probably don’t know what rolling ribs are.
A rolling rib is actually the side of the mine. If its too loose, and you’re too
close, it could roll out on you, covering you up. It’s basically the same as a
falling rock but sideways.
So a coal miner is usually a jumpy guy. Always looking for something that
can kill him, too scared to get too close to the ribs and always looking above
him for fear of that widow maker ready to fall on him.
But surprisingly enough, rock falls and rib rolls aren’t the main killers in a
coal mine. The main killers are miners killing other miners by accident!
When you’re running a piece of equipment, and the roof is 6 inches above
that piece of equipment, then you really can’t see where you’re going. You
have to read the rib walls in order to drive. Needless to say, pedestrians DO
NOT have the right-away in a coal mine.
…and that is where I worked.
The guy who’s social media strategies were called insanely great by Marcus
Sheridan used to work between two rocks at one time!
Chapter 2: My Intro To The Internet
I always knew about the internet. In fact, in 2003, I learned that my parents
had it, and I got on it…and got right off. I had no idea where to go or what
to do. It wasn’t until almost 8 years later that I got on it again!
If I only knew then what I know now…..

6. There are days that I kick myself because I didn’t look more into the internet
game back then.
But I didn’t. Why? Because I didn’t know any better! I had no idea that
you could make money online.
It wasn’t until years later that I read about people that were making a serious
living on the internet while I slaved away at my 10 hour a day job, even on
Saturdays and Sundays! Sure I was making a lot of money, but I wasn’t
seeing my family, I was tired all the time, and things were looking bleak for
me on the home forefront.
The area that I live in is pretty rural. We have to drive an hour in any
direction just to go to a decent mall! There is simply nothing out here. Just
your plain old hard-working americans who don’t know anything else. And
I was a victim to that idea and principle!
I wanted to write this book for those of you who are not following your
dream to build something for yourself online.
Let me go into it more…
The ideology of my town is you can’t make money doing anything frivolous.
A dream is something you do when you sleep. You eventually wake up and
the dream is over and you start your day off working the grind.
You can do anything you set your mind to. You can become successful
online. I am an example of this fact.
Chapter 3: That Fateful Day
I will never forget that day as long as I live. It was the same as any other
day of work. I got up at 4:30, put my clothes on and made the 20 minute

7. drive to the mine. Put my mining cap on and my tools strapped to my belt,
and followed all my co-workers to the mine bus so we could ride the rails
and make the 30 minute trip underground to where we worked.
It was a normal day.
But we were moving power that day. This basically means that everything
electrical had to be moved up 190 feet underground. Everything was going
fine until we started moving the 20 ton electrical box that had all the power
cables hooked to it.
Now, if you can see this in your mind, I would like to try to paint you a good
picture of myself and two other guys on our knees pulling bicep-sized cables
into a loop so we could drag it with what we call a “scoop” which is
basically an underground forklift.
Piling all of those cables on top of each other, we roped them together and
made a big pile of them and hooked them to the scoop so the boss could pull
the whole pile the necessary yardage we needed to move it.
But wouldn’t you know, the crazy pile wasn’t pulling straight so I jumped on
top of it. Keep in mind that the height from the floor to the roof was 40
inches high, and I jumped up on top of these cables. Right away, my left leg
slipped down between all of the cables until my left foot hit the ground. I
was sort of straddling the cables if you can see that.
Not heeding to my head shakes (something miners do when they’re not

8. ready) the boss pulled out, jerking the ropes taught and pulling the cables
which, in turn, started twisting my leg around.
This pressure caused my knee to make a sickening pop. I’m serious, it
almost sounded like a gunshot it was so loud!
When they finally got me out of the pile, I sort of dropped to the mine floor
and did my impression of a limp dishrag. It was so painful! There was no
way I could walk, much less crawl, out of the mine! But I did know one
thing, I wouldn’t be able to work again!
I was right.
Since it was a boss that hurt me, the company was liable. Of course, since I
wasn’t working I tried to get as much money as I could from them! No dice.
They wiggled and squirmed out of it like big corporations do, and ended up
getting away with paying me less than five thousand dollars!
I still dream of punching that guy in the face!
Anyway, what was I to do? I had a family, a brand new baby boy, and bills
coming due, and no money to pay them with!
Chapter 4: The Reason You’re Reading This
I always knew that you could make money on the internet, but I never tried
to do it.
So, being the stupid person that I was, I immediately paid someone $800 to
build me a website. Yeah, I know…Let me stop right here and say that you
do NOT need anyone to set up a website/blog for you. You can figure it out
if you have half a brain, and seeing as how I left mine underground, I spent
the last couple of dollars I did have to someone that just took my money
after doing a 5 minute process.
It’s a lesson learned.

9. Needless to say, that poor website didn’t do anything at all for me.
There was something about blogging that just didn’t click.
As I sat and stared at the computer, I knew that I would have to produce
something that would make a sale. I focused on making money right away,
and with that aspect, I lost a lot of readers too.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized that in order to become successful,
you had to create relationships with people.
I eventually created BloggersMakeMoney.com and started to realize what
was important. The reader. It CAN’T matter that you want or even need to
make money. You have to produce great content that is going to help
someone accomplish something or answer some sort of question that people
have to create trust and a big reader base.
I finally figured it out. Well, writing the content part anyway. I’m still a
long way from where I need or even want to be with my blog. There are
tons of bloggers out there that can write circles around me, but a lot of them
will be hard-pressed to care as much about as their readers as I do!
Traffic Strategies of a Coal Miner
What do you do when you know nothing of SEO, or don’t even know what
SEO stands for?
You keep on trying.
There is a lot of people that would discourage someone from jumping into a
niche that they know nothing about. The fact of the matter is, if you know
nothing about a subject, how can you write about it and help people?
I disagree with this.
I am a prime example of jumping into a niche that you know nothing about
and succeeding. You will always hear people tell you when you first start
that you cannot succeed if you know nothing about it. There is a truth to

10. this. You cannot succeed if you pretend to know everything there is to know
about the niche you’ve just stumbled in.
However, I believe, and this is what I did, that if you treat the new blog as a
starting point and blog about things that you have learned as you go along,
then that is a great way to learn AND teach people.
Some SEO Tips:
One thing is for sure, the SEO that has been used in the past is not the same
strategy that is used in today’s search engine marketing strategies.
Article marketing sites like Build My Rank have left our jaw on the floor as
our websites fell off the deep end of the pool never to be seen from again.
So I’m going to tell you the secret strategies that I use…
Nothing.
Yup, you read right. I really don’t focus on an SEO strategy. Yes, I use
keywords and post optimization, but as far as building links like a mad man,
I don’t do it.
In my on page optimization, I use Yoast SEO to help me get a handle on
what my posts need to be to actually rank. However, I don’t frantically go
and build links.
Here’s what I do when I do want to build links.
Chapter 5: Building Links
Recently, my blog has been nominated as one of the Top Ten Social Media
Blogs of 2013 and I got there by helping people understand what I use to get
a better social media presence. So, like any good marketing blogger, I do
have posts that have affiliate links in them. However, not all of my posts do,
but the one’s where I have a chance to make money on I do build links to
these posts to have a chance to get them noticed on the search engines. I

11. recently wrote a post called The Best Twitter Tools that got over 7,000 views
in the first day of publication! So pointing links back to your articles is
going to help you to make money when you need it.
Here is what I do to build links to my articles that I want to make money on.
…I don’t.
There I said it. I don’t build links.
Sure, I comment on blogs that I like every now and then and I guess that
counts for some back linking, and sure, I share my posts to social media and
I guess that gives some backlinks, but to tell you the truth I don’t really
focus on SEO.
My SEO Strategies:
For one thing, I DO make sure that my posts are optimized, but not to the
point where people can’t understand what I’m trying to say because of over
optimization…
On the other hand, my social media strategies are a long way from my SEO
strategies.
My Social Media Strategies:
After you have published your post what then? You share it to every major
social media network, right? Well what happens after that? Do you just
wait and hope for the best?
No.
Social media is a cruel and unforgiving playground where you are dealing
with real people, not bots.
Staying active on social media is the key to a great blogging experience.
Building relationships and making friends with other bloggers in your niche
is one of the most important things that you can do! But there is one

12. problem with that.
You have a blog, you’ve got to keep up with the posting, you have to share
to social media, and(if you’re into this) build some links. You really don’t
have time to build relationships! Trust me, I know! It can turn into a long
12-14 hour work day when you try to juggle all of these things at once.
My major social strategy IS to make friends and build relationships, but I
can’t do that if I’m posting social media updates all day long and building
links and writing blog posts.
When I first started to really get noticed for social media blogging I was
really embarrassed because I actually had no idea how to remedy this…
Until about 3 months into it.
I want to introduce you guys to a product that is simply awesome! There is
actually two great products and I want to explain why I want to tell you
about two and not just one.
The first one is called TweetAdder, and if you would like to try this out for
free you can check this review I did on it. This is basically for people like
me when I first started out. The newbie, the beginner…the person that
probably doesn’t have a lot of money to shell out on products like this.
TweetAdder is a Twitter automator, and, when connected to your Facebook
account, it allows you to post on 2 major social networking sites at once!
For the person that is a little more advanced and may have a little more
money to spend I recommend Social Oomph, and when you check my
review out they will give you a free trial also!
The difference?

13. They are really the same, because they submit recurring updates to social
media sites, but they are different in the fact that TweetAdder only posts to
Twitter and Social Oomph posts to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Plurk, pulls
your blog RSS feed, and other options that retain to statistics.
Now some people may frown on using social schedulers all the time. Not
me. This frees me up to actually get on social media sites and interact with
people I want to get to know more! Social Oomph provides me with stats
that I can use to direct more targeted people to my blog, which in turn builds
a larger following!
From Coal Miner To Top Ten Social Media Blog
Nomination
I can’t really tell you why I started to blog. At first, I thought I was going to
make a killing right away. And while now, I’m making pretty decent money,
it’s been 10 months into it, and a Top Ten Social Media Blog Nomination
later.
So you’re wanting to make a difference on the internet? You’re wanting to
make some killer cash?
You can.
But not with some get rich quick scheme that was developed by a guy
wanting to scam you.
You’re going to do this with hard work and long hours. You’re going to do
this because you love doing it!
My Tips For You:

14. Always be consistent.
Always share other people’s content.
Make friends and build relationships.
Get out there and visit other people’s blogs.
Find a mentor and follow their lead.
Get a scheduler.
Oh yeah, and always be consistent!
Read Some Of My Favorite Posts!
http://www.bloggersmakemoney.com/social-media-marketing-tips
http://www.bloggersmakemoney.com/verified-youtube-channel
http://www.bloggersmakemoney.com/google-authorship-markup
http://www.bloggersmakemoney.com/psychology-social-media-sites-traffic
http://www.bloggersmakemoney.com/twitter-tools
http://www.bloggersmakemoney.com/best-twitter-tools
http://www.bloggersmakemoney.com/social-media-updates