More and more people are realising that blogging is one of the best ways to start your own online business. It requires minimal start up costs, you can build an impressive and loyal readership over time and once you know how to monetize your blog it can also bring in a decent income that will keep on coming even on the days when you don’t update your blog.
There are several ways to set up a blog online. You could use WordPress, Blogger, or another free site that hosts your blog for you; or alternatively you can set up your own blog under your own domain name.
If you want to make serious money from blogging, you must have complete control over your blog – and that’s something the free blogging accounts won’t give you. You’ll be bound by their terms and conditions and that usually includes not being able to actively promote anything. There are plenty of people who have established a blog only to have it removed without notice some weeks or months later.
Featured Story: Click Here to find out how one “stay at home mom” is making $379/day working from home using eBay & Google. Read the full story here.
It will cost you a few dollars to buy your domain name and set up a web server that will host your blog, but the benefits will far outweigh the cost involved. It can literally be as little as $20 a year we’re talking about here – and that buys you total freedom.
Once you’re ready to set your blog up you’ll need to choose a good theme and layout for it. You might find one that relates to your choice of subject (more on that in a moment) or else there might be one you just like the look of. But there are thousands of templates available for you to use – a simple search on Google will reveal the ones that will be best suited to your topic.
But perhaps the most important question is what you are going to blog about. The whole world is your oyster here – some people blog about their lives in general; some blog about their jobs; some blog about their hobbies; some tell the world about their kids and what it’s like to be a parent, and still others blog about the weird world of celebrities. But whatever you choose to blog about it needs to be something you are passionate about. Don’t forget, you are going to be writing about this topic several times a week, and if you don’t have the enthusiasm for it, that will show in your posts – and no one else will have the enthusiasm to read them.
Okay – so you’ve got your subject. Now you have to start writing your blog posts. If you take a look at just a few of the blogs already online, you’ll notice that the length of the posts varies a lot. Some people only write a paragraph or two each time, but you’ll get better results if you go for something a little longer than this. Around 400 to 500 words makes for a good post with a lot of information in it; some people write hugely long posts that are thousands of words long and could be called an e-book by another name.
But you can also take the format of this blog, by posting a short blog entry which leads into a longer article. This has the benefit of highlighting a lot of blog posts on the home page of the site, and people can then click through and read the ones they like the most.
You should remember however that there are no real rules when it comes to blogging. Over time you will naturally find what works for you, and your blog will settle down into a nice pattern that both you and your readers will enjoy. You’ll find your character and personality will start to come through in your writing too; don’t fight against this as it is one of the hallmarks of blogging. It is, after all, a personal account of an individual’s life and experiences, so show people what you’re made of! You’ll get a more loyal – and bigger – audience like this.
So you’ve got your blog up and running and you’re posting to it on a regular basis. The next step is to get it in front of as many interested eyeballs as possible.
One great way to do this is to submit it to as many of the social bookmarking sites as possible. You can also join social networking sites and build a profile which contains a link to your blog. Other no cost ways to generate traffic include writing free articles for article directories with a link to your blog at the end, and creating signatures at the end of any posts you make to internet forums, and also in all the emails you send out. When you really start thinking about it, you don’t actually need to spend anything to generate plenty of traffic.
All we need to do now is monetize the blog itself. You’ll want to generate some money from all the visitors you’ll start getting, and there are plenty of ways to do this easily. Google Adsense is probably the most well known method – you can join the program for free and display contextual ads that your visitors will be interested in to maximise your click through rate.
There are also a handful of websites which give you the opportunity to get paid for each blog post you make on a specific subject. Pay Per Post and Review Me are two such examples, and they will pay you a certain amount of money to review a product or website for the owner. In a similar vein you can also review and recommend other people’s products through affiliate links inserted into your blog posts, and earn money on commissions earned through any purchases people make.
And once you’re more established you can offer ad space on your blog too, and charge a fee for both classified and display ads if you wish. What could be better than setting your own price?
But there is one final step you can take with your blog if you enjoy a change of scene every now and again. You can sell your blog! Once it is established and has plenty of revenue and traffic, you can usually sell it for ten times its monthly revenue.
And then, you can start all over again with a whole new subject!
So that’s it – profitable blogging in a nutshell. If you have any questions feel free to leave your comments in the form below. And once you’ve done that, get out there and get started building your first blog today.
Showing posts with label to. Show all posts
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Sunday, March 27, 2011
Friday, August 15, 2008
I Paid 12 Months To Learn These 32 Things
February 4, 2007 - Carl Ocab dot com was born. The 13-year old blogger made waves, gigantic waves in the blogosphere - up to now.
Err! Enough with the spiffy 3rd voice introduction.
So yeah, I’ve just celebrated my first year anniversary, bought a cake and took a good glance of the past. I’ll also be having a contest, but there’s more than that.
Blogging has taught me hundreds of things since then. Today, I’ve compiled them and picked the best to share it with you. I’d suggest you bookmark it, print it out and save it in your desktop.
But before that, I would like to give a little plug here to those who have helped me succeed a lot of things online, blogging and in life. Special mention goes to the Lord God for guiding me, helping me and in all of these things. My parents who have supported me all the time. Lil’ brother and sister for the laughs. Friends and classmates (Gloria, Audrey and Jean requested a special mention, hehe) for giving me few hits here and there and for taunting me for my outstanding english - that I rarely show in class. My online buddies (too many to mention) for helping me with their tips and updates and last but not the least, to YOU my readers.
Alright, I guess I’ve thanked everyone. Without further ado, here are the 32 things that blogging taught me in 12 months:
1. WIIFM or What’s In It For Me
The first question that pops out to all of us everytime.
Let’s have a little question and answer here just to prove it to you:
Why do you work? - To make money.
Why do you want to make money? - To buy the coolest car.
Why do you want to buy the coolest car? - To impress my neighbor.
Ask yourself, you’ll always find out that you do all things that give you a benefit.
Here’s a totally different scenario where you want to help people in need. You try to do it anonymously as you can.
But what’s in it for you? - you feel happy on the inside helping people and seeing them happy.
People need benefits. You can’t just ask someone’s shirt if it wouldn’t benefit them, and you can’t sell a product without giving a reason why the customer need your product. Show the benefits.
You won’t be reading this article if you didn’t have YOUR benefit right? Ask yourself.
2. People Like To Be Fed, Spoon Fed
I added a follow up message to those who download my free report “This Is Quick Money” asking them “What have you done today that I taught you in the report you downloaded yesterday?” I got loads of replies.
They were asking me basic questions like “How do I start my own freelance service?” or “What is an autoresponder?” that can be simply answered by our little household friend - Google.
Look at it on the brighter side, what if you sell an ebook that spoon feds people on what they need. Wouldn’t that make you a good sum of money?
3. Content Is Not King, Marketing Is
The internet is FULL and overspilling with awesome useful content. It’s so many, you can’t stay on a site for a minute.
If you generate more and more content, do you think your traffic will also increase? Nah. Well with the right marketing, it will.
Marketing without content is dumb. So I consider content, as part of marketing.
4. Always Show BIG Numbers
What do A-listers have in common? (Preferably John Chow, Shoemoney, and Problogger)
They have BIG Numbers to show.
John Chow with his eye cracking monthly earnings, Schoe with his $180k AdSense check and Problogger with an astonishing amount feed readers.
5. Sleep Is Important
Here’s a good one.
There was a time when I slept 1:30 AM on a Sunday night. Tomorrow is school so I had to get up 5:00 AM.
That’s roughly four hours of sleep for me. My eyes was closing all day long. I even took a nap on our lunch break.
When I got home, I tried to write an article but I just can’t. No ideas was floating on my mind. All I can think of is to sleep and forget all those things first. I can’t even answer a single email!
I’ve learned a lesson the hard way.
6. Act Now, There’s No Later
You have this super idea that you know if you take action, would make thousands over thousands of dollars. After sometime, you forgot about it and you were surprised to see someone did it and got the cash you dreamed of. Has this happened to you?
When you have an idea, implement it now - before anyone does. If you have to stay up all night long, sure. Just act.
7. Log Your Achievements For The Day
Everyday I bullet point all the things I’ve done. From writing a blog post to SEO stuff and etc, just so I can track my achievements.
If I did less the other day, then I would exert more effort the next day.
8. Blogging Is A Sport
You get better and better everyday. The more practice, the better you get.
Let’s have this little article I wrote on my first month of blogging, compare it to this post ;-)
9. You Won’t Make Money Blogging - ALONE
Quoted from the Kidblogger’s Master Plan leaked report.
Yes, you won’t make money blogging alone. Although you can get some coins but that’s not money. It’s not enough compared to the time blogging ate.
That’s why, there’s a system. With that in place, everything is completely duplicatable - Of course, you have the option to hire writers too.
So if you think you can make money off blogging by yourself now, STOP.
10. Blogging Is A Job
Writing an article everyday, sponsored review deadlines, blog commenting schedules?
What’s the difference from your ordinary day job? Ah well at least, you’re at home. But still…
11. Very Good Is Not Very Good At All
I owe this one to Seth Godin. Having read his Purple Cow (Still on the halfway) my perspective and goals change when doing something.
We see very good things everyday, when we walk down the street, everywhere. Very good is too saturated. When you’re unique, you’re just you, you stand out.
12. You Don’t Have To Be Passionate About Your Niche
Our passion is to make money – not writing. So why do you need to be passionate about your niche? You can always hire writers who are passionate enough to write good articles for you.
13. Don’t Sell Yourself Too Thin
Have you encountered those $27, $17 or even $7 crap books? (No offense intended, most of them are really CRAP). They’re selling their self too thin, why sell for $7 if you can for $97?
If you think you can sell a $97 product 100 times, do you think you can sell it for $7 1000 times – with the same people? No! Not a chance.
Why?
You see, some people are not buyers. They’re there to see what’s going on and skim over your site, but only small amount of real buyers are worried about the price.
So if you have 1000 prospects, 10% of them bought the $97, but not 100% of them will buy your cheap $7 product.
14. Monetize Now Or Die
The “Wait for your readership to grow, before you monetize” saying just makes me laugh all the time.
Let’s just say you waited half a year to monetize your blog, then on the 7th month, your hosting crashes. All the back ups are gone – or your blog got hacked, the tables in your database ruined and you don’t have a chance to fix it.
Wanna cry now?
Tip: Here’s how I sold my private advertisements.
15. Blogging Is Communication
I’ll let author Tom Peters speak to you “Communication is everyone’s panacea for everything.” In blogging, you communicate by writing informally. You write like you’re talking to your reader. Informal is the best, even copywriter legend Gary Halbert (You are a homo habilis if you don’t know him) uses it to sell!
16. Go Positive
Don’t give clues to your readers for the things that you don’t want them to do. Like say, “Don’t unsubscribe to my blog! I’ll post tomorrow” (Darn, I said it! But with this post, I think you would stay subscribed, aye?) or “Don’t leave yet… *sales pitch here*”
Even though that’s a warning, it’s still a command that might give your visitors a hint.
17. Experiment!
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, take risks - the money is there. Here’s one from me ol’ favorite speaker Anthony Robbins “There is no failure, there are only results”.
18. Experiment! Be Careful Though
Just a word of warning, don’t go below the belt. If it still urges you, don’t forget to grab hold of your privacy.
19. Gurus Don’t Know Everything
Even though they make thousands or even millions of dollars online, they don’t know everything.
I’ve talked to loads of marketers who make six figures a month, but guess what - I still have something to share to them. Everyone has something good at.
20. Focus
Speaking of number 19, that’s the number one reason why those guys are called “gurus”. They are good at a specific, very VERY specific sub niches of internet marketing.
In link building, we have Jack Humphrey. List building, Joel Christopher. Affiliate marketing, Ewen Chia and Chris Mcneeney. Traffic generation, John Reese. The list goes on…
They boiled down so much, they tend to ignore other things not relevant from the niche they are focusing at.
21. Be Prepared For Legal Issues
I can’t believe loads of people put legal issues as the last item on their list! Imagine with just one (yes, it’s that serious that I have to put all the styles in it) flaw, you can lose your whole business - or worse, even your personal stuff.
I won’t finish this as I’m not qualified to do so. Just go get a lawyer now and let him tell you what to do.
22. Set Goals In Everything You Do
When I get home from school, I rest for half an hour before I go online. I never thought that that 30 minutes is one of the most important factors of success.
I plan my day strategically so I won’t lose a single minute out of the blue. And these goals are not just for the sake of writing, they need to be done.
23. Shorter = Better
We are at the attention age era. People are surrounded by tons of information, we give too little attention to things as we have the option to just move on and click away.
In that case, we have less time to tell people what we are really trying to tell them. And heck, it’s actually harder to explain things shorter than the usual.
P.S. Yes, this article is shorter than the usual, I have 32 things to pin point so there. :-)
24. Design Is An Important Factor
Like what I said above, we are at the attention age - and one of the most attention grabbing part of a site is it’s design.
Your website’s design speaks for you. Connect your design with your niche. I guess my master plan is a good example.
25. Sometimes We Could Use Some Ramblings
Blogging is communication aye? (number 15) Why not give your readers a bit taste of your life and how you live?
Even though, yes, your readers are there for topics about your niche, but a post a month with updates of your current lifestyle won’t hurt right?
Most people are curious cats and would always like a snippet of someone’s life. That’s one reason why gossip is a pretty wide niche. ;-)
26. Mingle With The Big Boys
It has been said that if you add up all the earnings of the top five people you hang out most and get the average of it, it will be close to your current income.
That’s simply true. When you hang out with poor people, they’ll influence you to do what poor people do. If you hang out with middleclasses, same thing happens. If you hang out with millionaires, they will influence you too on how to become as rich as them. Even if you have nothing in hand! They’ve got the kicks, all you have to do is listen.
27. Under Promise, Over Deliver
I hear amazon.com does this nicely.
When I ordered my first books from amazon they gave me a rough date when will the books arrive, it’s for three weeks I guess. Surprisingly it arrived in our frontdoor in only two weeks.
I’m pretty sure that they knew they can give it in less than three weeks, they just under promised to make us think they have over delivered in service.
28. Protect Your Feed
Content aggregation is a big hit these days. You know those guys who scrape all your content and plaster big blocks of ads around it trying to make money?
Yes, it annoys me too. One way or another, I see five to 10 duplicates of every article I post on this blog - luckily most of them links back to the original article, but some just don’t get it. Some just copy pastes the whole post, leaving no trace behind.
However, if you place links inside your posts, it will be carried by the scraper because most of them still carry out the html.
29. Make People Feel Important
This I owe to my email list.
First of all, lead capturing is harder than you think it is. It takes three steps to make people subscribe to your list. They type their name and email, press subscribe and go to their inbox to confirm it. Sounds simple? NO! Tell you what (I guess there’s no softer way to say this) people are LAZY.
Why do they have to spend their spare minute to subscribe to your newsletter (or whatever you are offering) when he can subscribe to the one next block?
Make them feel important, give them private access to your swipe files for example. Or maybe a beta access to your new site, etc.
30. People Love Lists
Oh c’mon, you’d never get this far if you didn’t love lists! ;-)
31. Leverage Other People’s Resources
In order to start making money, there are a lot of things you should consider. You need traffic, list, content, credibility and tons more. If you drill down those things and do it all by yourself, it will take years before you can establish a good online business. Notice, I only said good.
But what if you can leverage other people’s resources? Other people’s traffic, list, content and credibility? Wouldn’t that skyrocket your business and your profits?
32. Read Then Implement
This is probably the best thing that blogging taught me after 12 months - read. Don’t just skim, read. If you bought a book today, read it, finish it then implement it. Don’t get another book if you still haven’t implemented the principles taught in the first one.
Start this year right, buy a book now then read it and implement. You’ll be mesmerized by your improvement. I guarantee it.
To Close This One Up
I’ll let Henry Ford close this looong article with his infamous quote “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
Err! Enough with the spiffy 3rd voice introduction.
So yeah, I’ve just celebrated my first year anniversary, bought a cake and took a good glance of the past. I’ll also be having a contest, but there’s more than that.
Blogging has taught me hundreds of things since then. Today, I’ve compiled them and picked the best to share it with you. I’d suggest you bookmark it, print it out and save it in your desktop.
But before that, I would like to give a little plug here to those who have helped me succeed a lot of things online, blogging and in life. Special mention goes to the Lord God for guiding me, helping me and in all of these things. My parents who have supported me all the time. Lil’ brother and sister for the laughs. Friends and classmates (Gloria, Audrey and Jean requested a special mention, hehe) for giving me few hits here and there and for taunting me for my outstanding english - that I rarely show in class. My online buddies (too many to mention) for helping me with their tips and updates and last but not the least, to YOU my readers.
Alright, I guess I’ve thanked everyone. Without further ado, here are the 32 things that blogging taught me in 12 months:
1. WIIFM or What’s In It For Me
The first question that pops out to all of us everytime.
Let’s have a little question and answer here just to prove it to you:
Why do you work? - To make money.
Why do you want to make money? - To buy the coolest car.
Why do you want to buy the coolest car? - To impress my neighbor.
Ask yourself, you’ll always find out that you do all things that give you a benefit.
Here’s a totally different scenario where you want to help people in need. You try to do it anonymously as you can.
But what’s in it for you? - you feel happy on the inside helping people and seeing them happy.
People need benefits. You can’t just ask someone’s shirt if it wouldn’t benefit them, and you can’t sell a product without giving a reason why the customer need your product. Show the benefits.
You won’t be reading this article if you didn’t have YOUR benefit right? Ask yourself.
2. People Like To Be Fed, Spoon Fed
I added a follow up message to those who download my free report “This Is Quick Money” asking them “What have you done today that I taught you in the report you downloaded yesterday?” I got loads of replies.
They were asking me basic questions like “How do I start my own freelance service?” or “What is an autoresponder?” that can be simply answered by our little household friend - Google.
Look at it on the brighter side, what if you sell an ebook that spoon feds people on what they need. Wouldn’t that make you a good sum of money?
3. Content Is Not King, Marketing Is
The internet is FULL and overspilling with awesome useful content. It’s so many, you can’t stay on a site for a minute.
If you generate more and more content, do you think your traffic will also increase? Nah. Well with the right marketing, it will.
Marketing without content is dumb. So I consider content, as part of marketing.
4. Always Show BIG Numbers
What do A-listers have in common? (Preferably John Chow, Shoemoney, and Problogger)
They have BIG Numbers to show.
John Chow with his eye cracking monthly earnings, Schoe with his $180k AdSense check and Problogger with an astonishing amount feed readers.
5. Sleep Is Important
Here’s a good one.
There was a time when I slept 1:30 AM on a Sunday night. Tomorrow is school so I had to get up 5:00 AM.
That’s roughly four hours of sleep for me. My eyes was closing all day long. I even took a nap on our lunch break.
When I got home, I tried to write an article but I just can’t. No ideas was floating on my mind. All I can think of is to sleep and forget all those things first. I can’t even answer a single email!
I’ve learned a lesson the hard way.
6. Act Now, There’s No Later
You have this super idea that you know if you take action, would make thousands over thousands of dollars. After sometime, you forgot about it and you were surprised to see someone did it and got the cash you dreamed of. Has this happened to you?
When you have an idea, implement it now - before anyone does. If you have to stay up all night long, sure. Just act.
7. Log Your Achievements For The Day
Everyday I bullet point all the things I’ve done. From writing a blog post to SEO stuff and etc, just so I can track my achievements.
If I did less the other day, then I would exert more effort the next day.
8. Blogging Is A Sport
You get better and better everyday. The more practice, the better you get.
Let’s have this little article I wrote on my first month of blogging, compare it to this post ;-)
9. You Won’t Make Money Blogging - ALONE
Quoted from the Kidblogger’s Master Plan leaked report.
Yes, you won’t make money blogging alone. Although you can get some coins but that’s not money. It’s not enough compared to the time blogging ate.
That’s why, there’s a system. With that in place, everything is completely duplicatable - Of course, you have the option to hire writers too.
So if you think you can make money off blogging by yourself now, STOP.
10. Blogging Is A Job
Writing an article everyday, sponsored review deadlines, blog commenting schedules?
What’s the difference from your ordinary day job? Ah well at least, you’re at home. But still…
11. Very Good Is Not Very Good At All
I owe this one to Seth Godin. Having read his Purple Cow (Still on the halfway) my perspective and goals change when doing something.
We see very good things everyday, when we walk down the street, everywhere. Very good is too saturated. When you’re unique, you’re just you, you stand out.
12. You Don’t Have To Be Passionate About Your Niche
Our passion is to make money – not writing. So why do you need to be passionate about your niche? You can always hire writers who are passionate enough to write good articles for you.
13. Don’t Sell Yourself Too Thin
Have you encountered those $27, $17 or even $7 crap books? (No offense intended, most of them are really CRAP). They’re selling their self too thin, why sell for $7 if you can for $97?
If you think you can sell a $97 product 100 times, do you think you can sell it for $7 1000 times – with the same people? No! Not a chance.
Why?
You see, some people are not buyers. They’re there to see what’s going on and skim over your site, but only small amount of real buyers are worried about the price.
So if you have 1000 prospects, 10% of them bought the $97, but not 100% of them will buy your cheap $7 product.
14. Monetize Now Or Die
The “Wait for your readership to grow, before you monetize” saying just makes me laugh all the time.
Let’s just say you waited half a year to monetize your blog, then on the 7th month, your hosting crashes. All the back ups are gone – or your blog got hacked, the tables in your database ruined and you don’t have a chance to fix it.
Wanna cry now?
Tip: Here’s how I sold my private advertisements.
15. Blogging Is Communication
I’ll let author Tom Peters speak to you “Communication is everyone’s panacea for everything.” In blogging, you communicate by writing informally. You write like you’re talking to your reader. Informal is the best, even copywriter legend Gary Halbert (You are a homo habilis if you don’t know him) uses it to sell!
16. Go Positive
Don’t give clues to your readers for the things that you don’t want them to do. Like say, “Don’t unsubscribe to my blog! I’ll post tomorrow” (Darn, I said it! But with this post, I think you would stay subscribed, aye?) or “Don’t leave yet… *sales pitch here*”
Even though that’s a warning, it’s still a command that might give your visitors a hint.
17. Experiment!
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, take risks - the money is there. Here’s one from me ol’ favorite speaker Anthony Robbins “There is no failure, there are only results”.
18. Experiment! Be Careful Though
Just a word of warning, don’t go below the belt. If it still urges you, don’t forget to grab hold of your privacy.
19. Gurus Don’t Know Everything
Even though they make thousands or even millions of dollars online, they don’t know everything.
I’ve talked to loads of marketers who make six figures a month, but guess what - I still have something to share to them. Everyone has something good at.
20. Focus
Speaking of number 19, that’s the number one reason why those guys are called “gurus”. They are good at a specific, very VERY specific sub niches of internet marketing.
In link building, we have Jack Humphrey. List building, Joel Christopher. Affiliate marketing, Ewen Chia and Chris Mcneeney. Traffic generation, John Reese. The list goes on…
They boiled down so much, they tend to ignore other things not relevant from the niche they are focusing at.
21. Be Prepared For Legal Issues
I can’t believe loads of people put legal issues as the last item on their list! Imagine with just one (yes, it’s that serious that I have to put all the styles in it) flaw, you can lose your whole business - or worse, even your personal stuff.
I won’t finish this as I’m not qualified to do so. Just go get a lawyer now and let him tell you what to do.
22. Set Goals In Everything You Do
When I get home from school, I rest for half an hour before I go online. I never thought that that 30 minutes is one of the most important factors of success.
I plan my day strategically so I won’t lose a single minute out of the blue. And these goals are not just for the sake of writing, they need to be done.
23. Shorter = Better
We are at the attention age era. People are surrounded by tons of information, we give too little attention to things as we have the option to just move on and click away.
In that case, we have less time to tell people what we are really trying to tell them. And heck, it’s actually harder to explain things shorter than the usual.
P.S. Yes, this article is shorter than the usual, I have 32 things to pin point so there. :-)
24. Design Is An Important Factor
Like what I said above, we are at the attention age - and one of the most attention grabbing part of a site is it’s design.
Your website’s design speaks for you. Connect your design with your niche. I guess my master plan is a good example.
25. Sometimes We Could Use Some Ramblings
Blogging is communication aye? (number 15) Why not give your readers a bit taste of your life and how you live?
Even though, yes, your readers are there for topics about your niche, but a post a month with updates of your current lifestyle won’t hurt right?
Most people are curious cats and would always like a snippet of someone’s life. That’s one reason why gossip is a pretty wide niche. ;-)
26. Mingle With The Big Boys
It has been said that if you add up all the earnings of the top five people you hang out most and get the average of it, it will be close to your current income.
That’s simply true. When you hang out with poor people, they’ll influence you to do what poor people do. If you hang out with middleclasses, same thing happens. If you hang out with millionaires, they will influence you too on how to become as rich as them. Even if you have nothing in hand! They’ve got the kicks, all you have to do is listen.
27. Under Promise, Over Deliver
I hear amazon.com does this nicely.
When I ordered my first books from amazon they gave me a rough date when will the books arrive, it’s for three weeks I guess. Surprisingly it arrived in our frontdoor in only two weeks.
I’m pretty sure that they knew they can give it in less than three weeks, they just under promised to make us think they have over delivered in service.
28. Protect Your Feed
Content aggregation is a big hit these days. You know those guys who scrape all your content and plaster big blocks of ads around it trying to make money?
Yes, it annoys me too. One way or another, I see five to 10 duplicates of every article I post on this blog - luckily most of them links back to the original article, but some just don’t get it. Some just copy pastes the whole post, leaving no trace behind.
However, if you place links inside your posts, it will be carried by the scraper because most of them still carry out the html.
29. Make People Feel Important
This I owe to my email list.
First of all, lead capturing is harder than you think it is. It takes three steps to make people subscribe to your list. They type their name and email, press subscribe and go to their inbox to confirm it. Sounds simple? NO! Tell you what (I guess there’s no softer way to say this) people are LAZY.
Why do they have to spend their spare minute to subscribe to your newsletter (or whatever you are offering) when he can subscribe to the one next block?
Make them feel important, give them private access to your swipe files for example. Or maybe a beta access to your new site, etc.
30. People Love Lists
Oh c’mon, you’d never get this far if you didn’t love lists! ;-)
31. Leverage Other People’s Resources
In order to start making money, there are a lot of things you should consider. You need traffic, list, content, credibility and tons more. If you drill down those things and do it all by yourself, it will take years before you can establish a good online business. Notice, I only said good.
But what if you can leverage other people’s resources? Other people’s traffic, list, content and credibility? Wouldn’t that skyrocket your business and your profits?
32. Read Then Implement
This is probably the best thing that blogging taught me after 12 months - read. Don’t just skim, read. If you bought a book today, read it, finish it then implement it. Don’t get another book if you still haven’t implemented the principles taught in the first one.
Start this year right, buy a book now then read it and implement. You’ll be mesmerized by your improvement. I guarantee it.
To Close This One Up
I’ll let Henry Ford close this looong article with his infamous quote “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
Friday, May 23, 2008
7 Strategies to Help you Get Started Immediately - Blogging
You can make money from blogging. It can pay for your bills. It does work for everyone. There’s no secret and you’ll just really need to know how to get started and which blogging framework to follow.
It’s not a difficult process at all and this post will provide 7 distinct methods you can use to generate substantial income from blogging. These seven methods are strategies you can adopt right from the beginning, preferably before you set up your first blog.
You can think of them as guidelines which point out the different options you have, if you’re serious about using blogging as a method of making money online.
1. The “Flagship” or Big Blog Route
This is simultaneously the most profitable and most time-consuming blog venture. The flagship method directs all your focus on a few blogs in order to make them incredibly popular in their niche. Flagship blogs should have a large audience as well as high daily visitor traffic numbers.
These type of big blogs have a wide variety of monetization options with direct advertising sales being a big part of it. Know that not everyone can successfully create a big blog so attempt this route only if you absolutely believe that you have the networking skills, niche knowledge and marketing know-how that’s needed.
Benefits: Fame as well as more monetization options/potential for your blogs, alongside personal satisfaction. Another advantage is that big blogs usually market or promote themselves automatically once a certain level of fame has been achieved.
Disadvantages: Very time-consuming especially if you are not outsourcing the content creation or marketing duties. Expect a lot of work and experiment with creative promotional ideas if you decide to go this route.
2. The “Pay per Post” or Get Paid to Blog Route
This is rather simple. Set up multiple niche blogs on either your own domains or free blog hosts like Blogger. Maintain them over a period of time and focus on writing content and building up their Google PageRank, link profile and Alexa Rank.
Submit all of your blogs to multiple get paid to blog websites like Blogitive, Blogsvertise, Review Me, Sponsored Reviews, PayperPost, LoudLaunch and then start writing sponsored posts. I highly recommending using PayperPost as they simply have the largest amount of paid offers available.
Benefits: The greatest strength of this method is that you don’t even need a large audience to make money. 20 people could be visiting and reading your blogs everyday and you’ll still be able to make at least $15 a day from each blog. If skillfully done over multiple blogs, this method can allow you to easily make over $1.5 K a month.
Disadvantages: No passive income. You’ll need to spend time writing multiple sponsored blog posts, which can be boring and time consuming. Work will also be needed to maintain your multiple blogs, although that will be minimal after they have been optimized and running for some time.
3. The Automated Blogging or Splog Route
Automated blogging involves the setting up of blogs which automatically pull content from RSS feeds, search engines and news sources to serve as content on your website.
Some bloggers set this to pull full RSS feeds which does go against some copyrights and one can choose to only include excerpts with a link back to the site in question. Monetization for automated sites is usually done through contextual ads like Google Adsense or affiliate programs.
Benefits: Very little work needed to maintain these blogs as they do not need you to actively generate or write content. You might need to do a little SEO and regular maintenance now and then. Try if you are adventurous.
Disadvantage: A weak potential for profit unless you understand the entire process perfectly and if you have quite a large number of blogs.I estimate that a fully automated blog will make you around $5 a month although the actual value depends on the niche and your skills. Assuming that this is so, you’ll need 1,000 blogs to make around $5000 a month. Splogs dwell in ethically gray areas as well.
4. The Text Link Selling Blog Route
The main bulk of your income through this method comes from selling text links to various webmasters and businesses who want to improve their site ranking in Google. While text link selling works for the flagship or other blog models as well, sites can be primarily built for text link sales as well.
The overwhelming emphasis here is on Google PageRank and niche relevancy so you’ll need to focus on these two factors. You can either convert a domain into a text link and sponsored post selling blog or you can purchase a domain with existing PageRank to sell text links for a quick buck. I suggest looking for link buyers directly through webmaster forums.
Benefits: Selling text links or contextual text links is rather easy and doesn’t involve much work. Potential for profit will correspond to your Google Page Rank and niche. A site with a high PageRank and a profitable niche (mortgages, credit cards) will be very attractive to link buyers. Like paid review blogs, traffic is not a factor in these blogs as well.
Disadvantages: Over Reliance on the Google PageRank algorithm means that your income may rise or fall depending on your actual Page Rank. There may also be a limit to the number of links you can sell which leads to an income ceiling.
5. The Made-for-Adsense or Made-for-Affiliate-Program Route
This involves setting up a blog around a specific topic with moderately high priced keywords (e.g. teeth whitening, car loans). You’ll only need to create around 25 keyword rich articles on the topic, optimize it for search, set up Adsense or affiliate programs and then leave them alone.
The main emphasis is on building links to the specific webpages, according to the long tail keywords you want to target. Search engine visitors will then find your blog and either click on the ads or convert on a product.
Benefits: Not a lot of time involved as you can usually contract an experienced writer to develop the keyword rich articles. Not much time is needed to update the blogs as well and new material can be added on a bi-weekly or even monthly basis.
Disadvantages: There might be a lot of competition in a profitable niche and search traffic might not lead to sufficient income, unless you go for volume and set up dozens of similar websites in other niches as well.
6. The Blog Network or Contract Blogging Route
This involves joining a blog network and getting paid to maintain and create content for blogs. You’ll get paid according to the amount of pageviews, possibly receive a token base fee in the hundreds or a share of the blog’s ad revenue.
Benefits. Relatively stable monthly income because of the base fee. Contract work usually leads to more freelance blogging or writing assignments because of your proven ability or association with a specific organization.
Disadvantages: Why bother? If you’re that good at creating and promoting a blog, set up your own website and keep all the profits. However, it is useful to note that a lot depends on the type of network or contract agreement you receive.
7. The Blog-as-Marketing or Branding Route
This method will only apply if you own an online business or provide a freelance service like web design, copy writing or marketing consultation. A blog can be used to help promote your personal or business brand and attract more customers.
This is an indirect method of making money. Ideally, this sort of a blog shouldn’t be plastered with ads or paid reviews because it can tarnish the image of the brand.
Benefits. A blog can help your brand or business to develop much more search visibility because it allows you to easily create more fresh content that caters to specific demographics as well.
Disadvantages. Your blog will only be as useful as the quality of the service or product you are pushing. The amount of money you earn doesn’t entirely depend on the quality of the blog but the value of your service/product as well. Income is therefore indirect and can be inconsistent.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several strategies you can choose if you’re interesting in making money from blogs. To ensure maximum success, be sure to pick one that suits your personal schedule, skill level and interests.
To receive more tips on how to make money blogging, consider subscribing to Dosh Dosh’s RSS blog feed or sign up for free email updates.
It’s not a difficult process at all and this post will provide 7 distinct methods you can use to generate substantial income from blogging. These seven methods are strategies you can adopt right from the beginning, preferably before you set up your first blog.
You can think of them as guidelines which point out the different options you have, if you’re serious about using blogging as a method of making money online.
1. The “Flagship” or Big Blog Route
This is simultaneously the most profitable and most time-consuming blog venture. The flagship method directs all your focus on a few blogs in order to make them incredibly popular in their niche. Flagship blogs should have a large audience as well as high daily visitor traffic numbers.
These type of big blogs have a wide variety of monetization options with direct advertising sales being a big part of it. Know that not everyone can successfully create a big blog so attempt this route only if you absolutely believe that you have the networking skills, niche knowledge and marketing know-how that’s needed.
Benefits: Fame as well as more monetization options/potential for your blogs, alongside personal satisfaction. Another advantage is that big blogs usually market or promote themselves automatically once a certain level of fame has been achieved.
Disadvantages: Very time-consuming especially if you are not outsourcing the content creation or marketing duties. Expect a lot of work and experiment with creative promotional ideas if you decide to go this route.
2. The “Pay per Post” or Get Paid to Blog Route
This is rather simple. Set up multiple niche blogs on either your own domains or free blog hosts like Blogger. Maintain them over a period of time and focus on writing content and building up their Google PageRank, link profile and Alexa Rank.
Submit all of your blogs to multiple get paid to blog websites like Blogitive, Blogsvertise, Review Me, Sponsored Reviews, PayperPost, LoudLaunch and then start writing sponsored posts. I highly recommending using PayperPost as they simply have the largest amount of paid offers available.
Benefits: The greatest strength of this method is that you don’t even need a large audience to make money. 20 people could be visiting and reading your blogs everyday and you’ll still be able to make at least $15 a day from each blog. If skillfully done over multiple blogs, this method can allow you to easily make over $1.5 K a month.
Disadvantages: No passive income. You’ll need to spend time writing multiple sponsored blog posts, which can be boring and time consuming. Work will also be needed to maintain your multiple blogs, although that will be minimal after they have been optimized and running for some time.
3. The Automated Blogging or Splog Route
Automated blogging involves the setting up of blogs which automatically pull content from RSS feeds, search engines and news sources to serve as content on your website.
Some bloggers set this to pull full RSS feeds which does go against some copyrights and one can choose to only include excerpts with a link back to the site in question. Monetization for automated sites is usually done through contextual ads like Google Adsense or affiliate programs.
Benefits: Very little work needed to maintain these blogs as they do not need you to actively generate or write content. You might need to do a little SEO and regular maintenance now and then. Try if you are adventurous.
Disadvantage: A weak potential for profit unless you understand the entire process perfectly and if you have quite a large number of blogs.I estimate that a fully automated blog will make you around $5 a month although the actual value depends on the niche and your skills. Assuming that this is so, you’ll need 1,000 blogs to make around $5000 a month. Splogs dwell in ethically gray areas as well.
4. The Text Link Selling Blog Route
The main bulk of your income through this method comes from selling text links to various webmasters and businesses who want to improve their site ranking in Google. While text link selling works for the flagship or other blog models as well, sites can be primarily built for text link sales as well.
The overwhelming emphasis here is on Google PageRank and niche relevancy so you’ll need to focus on these two factors. You can either convert a domain into a text link and sponsored post selling blog or you can purchase a domain with existing PageRank to sell text links for a quick buck. I suggest looking for link buyers directly through webmaster forums.
Benefits: Selling text links or contextual text links is rather easy and doesn’t involve much work. Potential for profit will correspond to your Google Page Rank and niche. A site with a high PageRank and a profitable niche (mortgages, credit cards) will be very attractive to link buyers. Like paid review blogs, traffic is not a factor in these blogs as well.
Disadvantages: Over Reliance on the Google PageRank algorithm means that your income may rise or fall depending on your actual Page Rank. There may also be a limit to the number of links you can sell which leads to an income ceiling.
5. The Made-for-Adsense or Made-for-Affiliate-Program Route
This involves setting up a blog around a specific topic with moderately high priced keywords (e.g. teeth whitening, car loans). You’ll only need to create around 25 keyword rich articles on the topic, optimize it for search, set up Adsense or affiliate programs and then leave them alone.
The main emphasis is on building links to the specific webpages, according to the long tail keywords you want to target. Search engine visitors will then find your blog and either click on the ads or convert on a product.
Benefits: Not a lot of time involved as you can usually contract an experienced writer to develop the keyword rich articles. Not much time is needed to update the blogs as well and new material can be added on a bi-weekly or even monthly basis.
Disadvantages: There might be a lot of competition in a profitable niche and search traffic might not lead to sufficient income, unless you go for volume and set up dozens of similar websites in other niches as well.
6. The Blog Network or Contract Blogging Route
This involves joining a blog network and getting paid to maintain and create content for blogs. You’ll get paid according to the amount of pageviews, possibly receive a token base fee in the hundreds or a share of the blog’s ad revenue.
Benefits. Relatively stable monthly income because of the base fee. Contract work usually leads to more freelance blogging or writing assignments because of your proven ability or association with a specific organization.
Disadvantages: Why bother? If you’re that good at creating and promoting a blog, set up your own website and keep all the profits. However, it is useful to note that a lot depends on the type of network or contract agreement you receive.
7. The Blog-as-Marketing or Branding Route
This method will only apply if you own an online business or provide a freelance service like web design, copy writing or marketing consultation. A blog can be used to help promote your personal or business brand and attract more customers.
This is an indirect method of making money. Ideally, this sort of a blog shouldn’t be plastered with ads or paid reviews because it can tarnish the image of the brand.
Benefits. A blog can help your brand or business to develop much more search visibility because it allows you to easily create more fresh content that caters to specific demographics as well.
Disadvantages. Your blog will only be as useful as the quality of the service or product you are pushing. The amount of money you earn doesn’t entirely depend on the quality of the blog but the value of your service/product as well. Income is therefore indirect and can be inconsistent.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several strategies you can choose if you’re interesting in making money from blogs. To ensure maximum success, be sure to pick one that suits your personal schedule, skill level and interests.
To receive more tips on how to make money blogging, consider subscribing to Dosh Dosh’s RSS blog feed or sign up for free email updates.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Intresting way to make some cash / I didn't use it/
Hi,
Here's an amazing report that shows you how to make real money from home - with the internet...
Grab yours now before it's gone:
http://tinyurl.com/57uroj
This simple report truly helps you to get a full-time income from home with just a computer and internet connection...
It even includes a *ready-made* business built in for you!
When you own this report, you can have access to the amazing "Instant Income System" that makes you $150+ over and over again...
Get this now and relax at home with cash coming in 24/7!
http://tinyurl.com/57uroj
Here's an amazing report that shows you how to make real money from home - with the internet...
Grab yours now before it's gone:
http://tinyurl.com/57uroj
This simple report truly helps you to get a full-time income from home with just a computer and internet connection...
It even includes a *ready-made* business built in for you!
When you own this report, you can have access to the amazing "Instant Income System" that makes you $150+ over and over again...
Get this now and relax at home with cash coming in 24/7!
http://tinyurl.com/57uroj
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