MelvinBlog

A blog that chronicles my journey on online marketing, blogging, social media, technology and life.

Melvin

I’m Decreasing My Posting Frequency, What’s your Take?

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My last post last week is a very clear indication that some necessary changes are imminent in this blog. So now in this post I would particularly talk about the decrease on the blog posting frequency here in MelvinBlog.

Over the past few months I have been consistently churning out 8-10 blog posts per month or a post per three days. During my school days, it was I think 6-8 posts a month. That being said, for a very long time you as my reader is trained for that frequency. You’re not expecting me to post twice a day because you get used to the current frequency that I have

Now that I obviously don’t have the same time to be dedicated in blogging, I’d like to make a short announcement that I would be decreasing my posts more. I don’t have an exact figure in mind but I think 5-6 a month is where its currently heading.

I’m sure a lot of people really don’t think it’s something that important and I really don’t think it is too but because I care for my readers so I’d like to let everyone know. Couple of years back, there was an awesome post at Problogger on that subject and it has been concluded that blog post frequency doesn’t really matter that much in as much as people would like to think to. And I agree.

Right now, I look at bloggers like Glen of Viperchill, Marko of HowToMakeMyBlog and even Neil Patel of QuickSprout as good examples. They really don’t need to commit into writing everyday, what they commit to is writing high quality content each and every time they write and it’s really something that I’d like to implement here.

I’m sure you would notice it with my recent “how to” posts that I really have started to shift into that writing way. That being said, Im not really worrying on a sudden drop of traffic (maybe that would be evident on the first few weeks) because my aim since this year was to make this blog more as a reference guide where people could actually look into this as a reference, not just a blog.

Another reason I’m doing it is because I want to set aside time some time to some of my bigger projects in conjunction with my real-world work/job. I’ve announced a couple of weeks back that I’m working on my relaunch of my info product called MMO Blog Monetizer 2.0. I’m also working on some side projects that may need to take some of my time as well.

How about you guys? Whats your take on posting frequency? Do you think it’s overrated too or what? I’d like to hear you out on this matter.

Finding a Job, err.. Career. Do I Really Need to?

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Been a long time since I’ve done a post here in my blog w/c does have some sort kind of a personal touch. Lately I made a commitment to really take the blog to the higher level by actually posting definitive types of articles and guides. As you may recently notice here, there were really some very wordy posts here that provides very good quality for my audience.

I want to take a break on that and want to focus on this post about… my life. Yes, my life. Not very many of you know that last May, I graduated with a degree of Computer Science. Even before graduation I was really looking for jobs. I actually applied on a very popular bank here for a computer programmer’s position but eventually failed the 5th step of the process. I also applied on some several other IT firms but haven’t yet gotten any confirmation. Ironically some of the companies like Accenture and etc. surprised me because of their very low entry level pay w/c had me backing out. Oh well.

Anyways back to the topic. I usually get asked with the question “do I really need it? why not just ramped up my effort in what Im doing online?” I don’t know but I think people don’t really understand the reality and the situation.

We, people who make money online usually are fascinated with the fact that the internet has enormous opportunity and it’s totally true. We also see a lot of those success stories wherein “John decided to make his internet efforts full time and eventually he succeeded”. In fact, guys like Darren Rowse, David Risley and many others took that path and were huge figures right now in the blogosphere. But the thing is when people fail doing this, they are usually left unnoticed.

The reality is that almost all people who decide not to take a real world job usually fail doing things online. That’s the truth. We can talk about mindset problems here, or lack of strategies or many other more geeky stuffs but the bottom line is, it’s hard. There’s a very thin line between people living off the internet dream and having a real world job.

How about me?

Aside from the question above, my friends usually ask me “aren’t you making enough?” This question really is a funny question for me. My answer is yes and no. Yes, because I’m a bachelor right now. I don’t have a wife (heck Im 20 yrs old!), I don’t need to pay anything besides my internet (yes I pay for it) and my food. On the other side, the answer is no because I’m the eldest of the family.

I know you will say, “whats the relation with that?” I don’t know about you but basically here in my country, if you’re the eldest then you have tons of responsibilities in your shoulders. As I’ve stated many times before, we’re not a rich family. My dad is a seaman and my mom has a small store business here in Philippines. I know they’re not getting any younger so it’s time for me to help out and maybe 5-10 years from now, I may have to earn what they are earning from now.

For me I think I’m doing good in the internet but still not enough to call it a living from the internet. This blog is doing good financially, some other sites do well too. I also am a paid writer on some of the popular sports websites. I used to also make a lot of money with affiliate marketing before I decided to take an hiatus in it because I want a more steady business model.

The problem that comes with that is I invest a lot of money. I have 3-4 designers right now for my bigger projects. I also have a guy working for me full time to write blog articles and I also pay for stuffs like hosting and whatever. It didn’t also help that I inherited that Western Culture in terms of spending money on foods and other royalty stuffs. Eventually it leaves me just enough to enjoy my month off the money I make. That’s going to change though as my responsibilities gets bigger.

Financial Security

The reason why most people work is because of financial security and that’s the path I’m looking at right now. My parents aren’t too high on what Im doing (although they somehow support me all throughout) and even up to now they still don’t get it. They were always on this speculation that I’m doing something scrupulous online and it’s not really something reliable.

I don’t know but I think thats really it. As of this writing I am about to sign a contract with a company for my first job and it’s a mixed feeling. As like many people, I’m looking for financial security and of course coupled with my responsibilities as a the eldest child of my family. I don’t know but I’m a bit worried on how my first job would impact my life, impact my business overall.

Now to you! I know most of the readers here have a real world job. I know you’re doing it and also alloting some part-time effort on blogging or whatever business you may have. Finding a career (the more elegant term for job) is the path I’ve gone into. It’s the better decision or maybe its not but one thing is for sure, it’s the realistic demand of life. Any insightful tips that you can give to me or any words of wisdom?

$2000 Blog Marketing Contest Recap & Announcements

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Update: Super sorry for a 5 day delay in the drawing of this contest. Was super busy with work. All in all there were 10 entries so great odds for everyone. The winner through random.org is @danalingga. Contact me on how to claim your prize. 🙂

So the first two weeks of the MelvinBlog’s Marketing Tip Contest w/c does have $2000+ of prizes at stake has ended and today I’m going to make a recap of  the entries thus far. If you haven’t joined yet or it’s your first time to learn that I have a contest, make sure you join now.

The contest itself has received so much attention (and traffic) from the blogosphere but I’m quite surprised that less than five people have so far joined. As expected (like in any type of contest), most bloggers who say they will join NEVER really join (or haven’t yet). It’s expected considering the contest will still run up to July 15  and most of the entries will come as we approach that date.

However like I said, joining today is by far the best way. Remember each participant can write up to 5 entries and with that being said, I’m sure some of the contestants who started out early will have a decent advantage over those who will wait, before they write.

Anyways as for the recap, I’m really happy with the turnout. The entries that I’ve received so far are good entries and reading comments from their audience I know that it has become so beneficial them. As I stated initially that’s really my goal, to give good value to the blogosphere through this contest. And for the entries thus far, here they are. Be sure to check them out and give feedbacks if you like their articles.

As you can see, only three people have participated in the contest yet with a total of  4 entries. (If you had written your entry and wasn’t mentioned here, feel free to shoot me a PM). There’s really no risk in this contest so if you have the best marketing tip then just throw it in.

Like I said, it’s people’s mentality to wait for the last minute before entering but if you do yourself a favor and actually start right now, you’ll be getting much higher chance of winning. Remember we will only have 3 winners for this main contest with each winners receiving prizes not less than $200 worth of good products from good people.

Surprise “Side-in” contest

As I’ve said, we’re going to make this entire celebration more special by having in more “smaller contest”. In short, its contests within contest and for this post, I have made this really easy for you.

So for this mini contest, all you have to do is follow me on twitter and retweet this statement:

Reading MelvinBlog’s Best Blog Posts from his blog http://bit.ly/bestbloggingtips  RT @melvinblog

That’s it! At the end of 21st of June 2010, I’m going to randomly pick a winner which will get $10 paypal cash straight to his account.  Remember, you have to follow me first on twitter and then retweet the statement. You can do it just once or it depends to you. There will be only one winner and since this is not really the biggest blog in the universe, your odds of winning is really high! Easy eh?

That’s for now, see ya soon!

Why I Pulled Out the MMO Blog Monetizer off the Market

Why I Pulled Out the MMO Blog Monetizer off the Market

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MMO Blog Monetizer, what a horrible name, isn’t it? Anyways for those of you who just started reading this blog since this year, that is actually my first and only product that I released last year and took off the market after a couple of months. The product is all about monetizing make money online blogs (and other blogs closely related to mmo).

So basically when people ask me why I took it off, I usually respond that its because Im going to use it for larger project and of course to avoid saturation. Do you actually believe it? Heck, that is a marketer’s reason always! I mean you see products that are taken off the market and there’s always a reason/s why it happens. And it’s always related to business.

Anyways those two reasons I mentioned are true and I didn’t lie (or perhaps I did) when I said that. However that’s just 5% of the whole story. And in this somewhat controversial post, im going to detail to you the other reasons why I took it off the market.

My First Info Product

That MMO Blog Monetizer thing is my first info product. As i’ve always expressed here in my blog, I’m quite allergic with info products. In my post entitled “Does reading eBooks really help you make money“, I ripped off most eBooks and basically claimed that when you purchase one, don’t expect anything.

I followed that post with a how to steal an eBook post in which I outlined several ways on how most marketers are retarded for just exposing their products without them knowing it. So it’s kind of ironic for me to start my own product especially if its an info product right?

Anyways, the first reason is that my eBook sucks. Nope, not that its of crap value and not that I received gazillions of refunds. I re-read the book after 6 months and it’s really bad in formatting, kind of disorganized, text are not spaced-out well. I didn’t use that much image and I have some crappy grammatical errors, name them!

So what I eventually had in mind was that I’m going to close it out because I don’t want people to make fun of my eBooks crappiness, formatting-wise. Although no one has really complained with the crappiness of the product, I’d like to make sure that I need to work harder on that aspect more and so I decided to take it off and seek professional advice more on that side.

Not the Easiest product to Comprehend

Most first-time info marketers really make this mistake. They tend to create their products for themselves, considering themselves as their audience. Again the takeaway on marketing something is that “we are not our customer” and it applies to creating info products as well.

Actually I re-read the eBook a couple of times as well as have some of my friends read it for me. We did some editing and thought it was all fine already. Eventually it was not. I used a lot of jargons that were hard for some readers to understand.

This is really one of the hardest things for me. I’m never good at walking people through on basic stuffs that I oftentimes just butcher it completely. The downside for me was that I got a lot of support questions from people since the product was really hard to understand especially for noobs.

It’s expensive

Yes it is. It was priced at $14 for a 17 page eBook and some bonuses. Now I don’t want to tell the product doesn’t have good quality. It has, and that is one of the things Im proud with. But with that, I realized I need to throw in some other couple of valuable stuffs to make it the perfect product.

These days, most product claim that their product is more than what its worth. That was where I failed before. I should’ve added more than just the core product.

Timelessness

And of course just like anything, things get outdated. The main reason why MassControl and Traffic Secrets have 2.0 versions is because they were updated and most of the content inside were catered for the time it was released.

That’s my same goal with that product. Its funny because I threw in a ton of coupon codes inside only to realize that they were already not working anymore. Some of the screenshots were also old-ish so that was I was trying to achieve with that.

MMO 2.0 – Watch out!

And if you got a sense from the beginning of reading this article that I am about to expose something in the end, then you’re right. 😉 I’m currently working out super hard on producing the 2.0 version of the product. I’m eliminating and improving all of the flaws I mentioned above and I’m sure you will like it better than LA Lakers capturing the NBA Title.

MMO Monetizer 2.0

I may give this product away for FREE or may not. I may sell this for lower pricing or higher pricing. There’s a lot of uncertainties right now but two things are sure. One is that it’s going to be of perfect quality and second is that people who are gonna opt-in to the early bird waiting list will get massive discounts and tons of good value bonuses and throw-ins. Get inside now!


Post Note: MMO 2.0’s early list is different from the blog’s mailing list so make sure you get in. 😉

What My Readers Are Saying With the Free Report

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Not so long ago, I gave away my first “freemium” product on blogging which is all about marketing blogs competitively. The book was titled “Blog Marketing for Fame” and its a little report where I tackled several ways to make your blog popular by employing creative and competent strategies.

So like any other marketer/blogger, I immediately seek their opinion about the product and so far so good. 😉

Vic Soriano says:

Your report is indeed very much informative. I am amazed at your writing skills and would love to meet you in person one day. I am much older than you are but I am learning a lot from you. Continue sharing your knowledge and being a blessing to others that God may bless you even more!

SantoshKumar B says:

yeah it was beneficial n i find it nesessary for future work..thankss..

Elie Palima says:

The ebook was Great. I learned alot. thanks! 😉

I like the idea about guest blogging. actually I’ve thought about it a lot for quite sometime now.

Brook says:

Sound strategies but very advanced tactics. I like the way you pointed out guest blogging and creative advertising. I find it all innovative

Now I don’t want to fill this post with testimonials for the poor sake of bragging. This is entirely risk-free, you just sign up with the newsletter, get your copy and then read it. If you don’t like it, fine, you can delete it w/no problem at all. But I’m sure if you pay attention well to the product, you can actually benefit a lot from it.

Well just to clarify, the free eBook is just an icing. By subscribing to the newsletter, the main benefit you are going to get is the insider tips, premium email newsletter and case studies that I don’t usually publish here in this blog. Those are really good stuffs and in fact, I’m even considering on selling those insider messages someday as a paid product.

Lastly, the newsletter is entirely me sending you good stuff, not some random guy or a part of the staff (unlike some big marketers). You can see that I’m even using my personal email so any time you feel like replying or clarifying something from the newsletter, I’d be able to help up asap. 🙂 So make sure you’re in!

Do make sure you’re not missing the newsletter or maybe if you have already downloaded the product, make sure to give your take as well.

Things I don’t Like with Guest Blogging Contests

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Every summer it’s noticeable that contests spring up like mushroom as you can almost find them anywhere. In fact, here in this blog there is a current contest running that started this June. That being said, we can conclude that summer is contests season.

Anyways, the days where the contest is all about subscribing to feed, blogging about it, digging, stumbling it are probably gone. What you’d notice today is that a lot of bloggers have become more creative in creating their own contests. What’s in today is guest blogging contests which at the same I’d like to talk about.

The latest is the one that Smartbloggerz is currently running while the other same type of contest can be found here and there. That being said, guest blogging contests is something that will happen more in the future as its becoming the newest trend for contests.

Guest blogging has really exploded for the past 2 years now as evident with the whole scene. In fact some bloggers like Carl Ocab and even Problogger have already let the guest posters post majority of their content. Back to the contests, I can say I’m not really a big fan of those although I participate a lot into it. For me it’s kind of like ruining the whole guest posting strategy and here are my thoughts.

The Goal Becomes Different

People would argue about it since in order to win these contests you have to write good content right? The problem with this is that your focus shifts from reaping the benefits of a guest post featured to winning the contest all out. I mean normally with guest posts what I usually do is make sure the readers of that post will be catered as much as possible to my blog, get replies for their comments and me tracking numbers, optimizing whats working out and what’s not.

With contests, it becomes really different. Instead of doing things I listed above, I would then focus more on writing more and more guest posts for that contest, observe where am I currently standing, do I have a good chance of winning or not and things like that. Nothing really bad about but its like the true essence of doing guest posts diminishes.

Readers’ interaction Differs Considerably

Another thing I don’t like with it is that its really hard to reap the same benefits from it as oppose to writing a guest article for the sole purpose of making a guest post. I was tracking my stats (again my fave hobby, lols) and what I found out is that not a lot of people really read the article and go to your blog. For instance I wrote a guest post before and it gave me like 35% bounce rate to my site which is an exceptional rate. After quite some time I did another guest post with the same blog but this time just got a 69% rate. Of course things could vary depending on other factors but I’m sure the “contest” factor is one of the bigger factors.

When guest blogging becomes a contest, most of the consumers of the post becomes the contestant and oftentimes they are just lurking there to see and track how other contestants are doing.

Lesser Traffic

This is the obvious disadvantage of this. We, as guest posters will receive lesser traffic and obviously lesser bang for our efforts when we guest post more for the contest than for the intrinsic purpose of it. I mean if you see an awesome guest posts and then you saw a note saying “this is an entry to blah blah, join now and get a chance to win $XXXX”. I mean what would you do? Naturally we will participate. There’s really nothing to blame. You can’t blame the owner who hold the contest nor you can blame the sponsors that made that pot got that high. There’s no one  to blame because its human nature, you see a contest related to you, odds are high that you’ll join it.

Overall, if guest blogging contests keep on growing more and more, it will definitely have a big impact on how traditional guest blogging works. With things I mentioned, it can be hard to really see the essence of doing guest posts aside from targeting those contest prizes.

But then I don’t have any problem with that  (or just a small problem), in fact I’m even one of those who are competing to dominate win it. But still at the end of the day, you’re still gonna wonder where all of these things head into. What say you?

OnlineProfits.com Reopened its door, for FREE! (wtf?)

OnlineProfits.com Reopened its door, for FREE! (wtf?)

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OnlineProfitsInternet marketing is a very broad topic. In fact, some school are either having an exclusive course on this subject or integrating it to their marketing course. The internet has been around for quite some time so expect it to have more and more impact to our offline ways.

Anyways, if you can remember Daniel Scocco last year launched his own internet marketing course called OnlineProfits. For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s basically like a university course on the subject of internet marketing. It contains 24 huge modules which would take you from the start up to the advanced modules. Those modules are the main core of the program.

OnlineProfits.com Relaunched, now for FREE

Yes, thats not a typo or whatsoever. I actually had to refresh Daniel’s announcement to make sure I’m reading it right. His main reason is that he wants to have as much people as possible to gain access to his membership program. Whether that’s true or there’s something fishy remains to be seen. 😉

There’s actually a catch though. In order to get lifetime access to the OnlineProfits Membership area, one must sign up either to the hosting plan of his partners for this program. The partners I’m referring to are Hostgator and Hostnine. The deal is that if you sign up to them via Daniel’s affiliate link, you can get the whole membership site for free.

Now I understand that each and everyone of you already have your own hosting but as Daniel said “sparing an extra $10 to get a $325 membership program” is the best deal and if you don’t find it lucrative enough, then the program may not be for you. To be honest, I didn’t mind paying $10 to get this membership site that is this good. Actually if you use the code “onlineprofits” you will get your hosting almost free ($0.01) but then you have to sign under Daniel’s link. So it’s definitely a no-brainer.

OnlineProfit Overview and Comprehensive Review

From a hindsight, Daniel Scocco’s membership program claims to be the most complete internet marketing resource on the web. It contains all strategies that you will need to do to anything you desire, may it be blogging, affiliate marketing, information marketing and etc.

So as I’ve said, the program contains 24 content-packed modules, from the rudimentary history of internet marketing up to advanced tactics like link building and social media.

OnlineProfits Modules

OnlineProfits Modules

Each lessons consist of 500-1000 word article specifically targeted to the certain topic. Another good thing for me is that there is this handy “play now” buttons on most lessons. This is also downloadable so just in case you want to listen to the mp3 while on the go or whatever, you can. Btw, my computer resolution wasn’t able to capture all the modules through the print-screen function so to see all the modules and the topics inside them visit onlineprofits site below:

www.onlineprofits.com/

Altogether the lessons are so-packed in meaty content that I don’t have an idea how Daniel was able to produce all of this. It can be a bit overwhelming for you to look at it, but since its presented in modules, its good to take the lessons one at a time.

All Star Faculty Mentors

OnlineProfits Faculty

One unique feature OnlineProfits.com features is their All-star cast faculty. Again I don’t have any idea on how Daniel pulled this people as mentors for his membership program. Some of the lessons inside the program were produced by them depending on their expertise. For instance, Zac Johnson on Affiliate marketing topics while Hamlet on SEO related ones. I never had seen any other membership sites that have experienced people like them on board as mentors

Live Case Studies & Several Add ons

What’s unique with OnlineProfits.com recently is the addition of live case studies. This case study is produced by Daniel himself so this is one exciting way to really understand how the lessons should be applied. It contains exactly the steps as well as the monthly stats that Daniel would be providing as well.

Like any other program, this does also have several addons to inflate the value more. One of which is the tools section. If you’re not new with internet marketing then most of the tools here are probably not new to you but still there are some nice ones like domain name ideas generator and  stuffs like that.

One of my favorite place aside from the lessons in there is the Resources Page. In that page one can find all the resource free exclusively for OnlineProfits students. It contains useful stuffs like list of free and paid web directories, list of dofollow blogs, list of dofollow social media networks and etc. I also like the free premium wordpress themes that are given away. These aren’t just your cookie-cutter free template. In fact, the premium ones you see on WooThemes and iThemes are given away here for free w/c is pretty amazing.

Lastly are the library and social clubs. The library is just basically a compilation of all useful (or useless) articles on any niche. It also comes with a MRR rights so just in case you want to resell them, then you can totally do it. The social clubs on the other hand is just simply a club for promotion. Just like a community for retweeting articles, digging, sending it to stumbleupon and etc.

How to Avail the FREE access

The entire program costs $392 before and I’m sure those who joined the program before will be ‘not-so happy’ with the fact that its offered for free now.

Again you have to sign up to Daniel’s partners which are HostGator and HostNine and you have to do under his affiliate link. After signing up all you have to do is email him you’re invoice number and in less than 5 minutes you can immediately access the program.

Verdict & am I recommending it?

Internet Marketing is a big part of online business. Actually for some people, it’s all what online business is all about. I was fortunate enough that I had experience and that I started young. But even with that, I still took the course.

I know most of you here are bloggers and there’s a good chance that since you’re reading my blog, you’re serious with what you’re doing. You hear me preach a lot that blogging alone is not enough, if you don’t have enough knowledge on internet marketing and you’re not a competent marketer, chance is you’ll not succeed.

I rarely promote info products and membership sites here in my blog and even though I consume a lot over the past few years, I made a point that I wouldn’t promote it here if it’s not possible for my readers to avail it or study it. With OnlineProfits, not only you can get it for free. But it also gives you a good and organized lessons on how things work and why they work. I’m sure most of us here learned internet marketing through experience and with this program, it only aims to sharpen up those previous learnings and organize them in such a strategic manner that we can use them immediately.

Be a part now of the highly-touted OnlineProfits membership program for FREE and start learning internet marketing from people who actually do it and not just teach it. Let me know!