Melvin – Page 31

The Death Of Site Flipping

by Melvin · Nov 15, 2009

Probably all of you now know the term “Site flipping” as it’s had its growth late last year up to the middle season this year. During it’s growth over a hundred info products teaching people flipping started to come across and it seemed like everyone wanted to get on that bandwagon immediately.

And as of this writing the hype of site flipping has really seemed to plummet. Death of site flipping mania? Probably yes, not in the sense that no one is making good money anymore with flipping websites and blogs. Death in the sense that probably people have realized it’s not really as easy as counting numbers and hence they moved on a completely different thing now.

I don’t know but I think the business model really became saturated (with noobs) when its growth skyrocketed. I mean the ratio on seeing a new startup site get listed on major marketplaces is just astounding, as if the potential buyers are dumbass stupid business people. Obviously what happened was that people created tons of startup sites only to get stucked on their own server after some time. That’s the problem when one doesn’t have an idea of running a website properly.

So that has what happened. It’s funny to think these people are selling startup sites they boast to become ‘profitable’ YET they themselves couldn’t monetize it. I’m not ranting but I just think people need to learn first before jumping into ANY business model.

Too late to profit then from this business model? Naah, the whole point in this article is that people may have somehow realized site flipping is MORE than just installing wordpress on their sites and cranking out cheap dirt articles (and saying its SEO’d!). I am no site flipper myself although I have sold good websites in the past few years and my piece of advice is that, just try to put yourself in the position of your potential buyers. Are you gonna buy the crap out of that site? (be honest!)

Can You Still Make Money Online in MMO Niche?

by Melvin · Nov 8, 2009

In this guest post, Simon shows to us why making money in a make money online niche isn’t yet a history.

I was recently reading an article that was asking whether it’s still possible to earn money from the ‘make money online’ (MMO) niche. As we all know, the MMO niche is getting more and more packed, thus increasing competition and making us work even harder to get traffic to out site. And, as we also know, without traffic you can’t make money.

So, can you still make a decent amount of money by blogging in the MMO niche?

Simple answer: YES.

There are lots of make money online blogs around, but at the same time lets be honest in saying that well over 50% are rubbish.

OK, sorry for sounding harsh, but it’s true. Most the MMO blogs I visit have no real potential for earning: the bloggers don’t have a clue how to monetise their blog and are only in the make money online niche because that’s how the big names (Darren Rowse, John Chow etc) have made their name, so they try it out for themselves.

If you’re interested in making “proper” money on your MMO blog, you shouldn’t associate yourself with these blogs. You should really be taking a step to make your blog better than the average, and this way you already have an advantage over tons of other blogs.

There’s lots of ways to gain that extra something that will take your blog above the rest. It could be something as simple as the design (for example, small, ‘not so good’ blogs will often have a free theme, but by getting a custom theme made you can set yourself apart), or something as complex as creating a whole new branch to your website that has never been seen before.

Either way, the thing that is most important is the content. Quality content is what sets the cool blogs apart from those that are quite frankly rubbish. By posting articles that are going to grab the readers attention and then be enjoyable to read, you’re bound to get loads more traffic as people will link to you, and, as we all know, more links means more traffic.

So, how do you make your blog worth visiting? I’d love to hear some of your suggestions, so feel free to leave a comment below!

Simon Rogers is a teenager who blogs at Teenius.com. Also, there is an awesome contest he’s running at the moment which you can find here. It’s easy to enter and has some great prizes!

Personal Branding with Your Name and Photo

by Melvin · Nov 3, 2009

In this post, Antti Kokkonen talks about the benefits of using your personal name and photo in boosting your own personal brand)

Personal branding is about building up trust and establishing yourself as an authority, a source of valuable information. By being honest, being yourself and branding yourself as an expert in your niche, you’ll have something that cannot be taken away from you, a personal brand you can be proud of.

And the first step is to put your name out, so make sure your name is visible on your blog, your social media profiles, etc. I know, it might be scary to use your real name online, but think of it this way — would you trust and buy something from someone whose name you don’t know? I certainly wouldn’t.

The next step is to get an image that your name can be connected to. Logos are important for branding. Having a logo means you can utilize that logo everywhere. So if you like, you can get a logo designed (or design it yourself) for your blog.

But more importantly, for yourself, you really don’t have to design a logo, as there’s a good chance you already have one. Your photo! Choose one great photo of yourself and use the same photo as your avatar and profile picture in all the social network sites, like Twitter and Facebook, and also your blog! Not having your own photo in your blog is something that’s ridiculous. Of course it’s debatable since guys like Maki of DoshDosh.com don’t use one yet is considered an authority.

When you use your real name and photo on your blog and social media, you’ll start building an audience and a following for yourself, not just your blog, business or service. Your personal brand stays with you, even if you sell your business, your blog or start providing a new kind of service.

Using Real Name and Photo Builds Trust

When I see a blog or website with someones face on it, it’s immediately more interesting than a blog without one. I’m much more likely to subscribe to a blog which has a “face on it”. I don’t know, maybe it makes it all feel more honest. If I can’t find who is keeping the blog, I immediately become suspicious. And even more so, if I’m in the process of buying something from that person, or something he/she recommends.

I don’t know about you, but I think seven times before I buy anything from someone who I haven’t met or seen. That’s seven opportunities to convince myself not to buy from this stranger. And that’s seven opportunities for you to lose that sale. If you’re planning on selling anything online, keep that in mind.

Also, if I find a blog filled with great posts, I want to know more about the author, I want to know who he or she is. If I can’t find anything about the blogger, I’m gone. And I’m not alone on this, as your readers want to know you and get connected. Don’t disappoint them and make sure the links to your primary social media profiles are clearly visible.

By seeing your name and photo, people on your blog or social networks will know who they’re interacting with. They will know that this certain guy right here is not just a “fly- by night person”. Of course, there’s more to personal branding than just putting your name out there and using a real photo, but this is the first step you have to take.

Now it’s your turn! Are you in the process of building a personal brand? Do you use your real name and photo in your blog and in the social networks?

Antti Kokkonen has been hiding under an Internet alias “Zemalf” for many years, and you can find his not-always-so-focused blog about blogging, social media and Internet business at http://zemalf.com. To stay connected, go ahead follow Antti on Twitter.

I Wish There’s More Than 24 Hours A Day

by Melvin · Oct 31, 2009

Being into blogging and internet marketing for more than 2 years now there is really only one thing I wished for, and that is more time. I mean this is not just blogging as it also applies in life more generally but let me just ramble for these things quite a bit. 😀

So in one day there is 24 hours. Obviously most don’t even use half of and neither do I but I think it would make sense if it’s longer than just that. Ok here’s how my life works (since June). Monday through Fridays I have to wake up 5 am to go to my internship. So basically its an 8-5 duty where all I do is create a program for the system we are developing using VB.NET. Then by 6:30 I am home, would take my early dinner and then open my laptop and do my stuffs. Doing those things 5 times a week. It would still be the same if Im going to school given the fact there are things that suck like homeworks and projects (and exams of course).

Then during Saturdays and Sundays I wake up 7-8, then do majority of my work maintaining several websites and blogs as well as tracking my affiliate campaigns. Then I have to split my time with other members because we have a small grocery store business, in w/c its really thriving so good that sometimes we need to be all there just to ensure the process is smooth for the customers. Then afternoon, back to my computer doing a mix of blogging and surfing the internet/watching videos (just what a usual teenager does) and stuffs. And yes being the eldest of the family, doing errands, performing my responsibilities are the things I haven’t even mentioned.

It’s not really that I am complaining I am doing so many things. Not that I dislike being busy either. But I think it would make more sense if there’s more than 24 hours in one day. I know it sounds crazy and retarded but I feel some of you guys can connect with me. Nope, Im not lacking rest nor am I letting my health suffer either. It’s just that I WANT TO DO MORE. I always feel that it’s not even a question if I could handle all those stuffs. It’s more on if time can really hold on for me. Anyways I thought its interesting to let you guys know what are the MORE things I am referring to:

Play Basketball – remember I used to be an “athlete” and I was super active with basketball before college came in.
Do more offline businesses – I have several small ones, but I am really yearning to start on few brilliant ideas that I have.
Travel – I always do this but not to the place I really feel delighted to.
Teach my siblings with internet marketing and blogging
Cook, cook, cook – I have a ton load of cooking recipe eBooks here in my hard drive and Im just wondering on when I could implement it
Speak/Attend in conferences
Socialize with friends more.
Do extensive training for bulking up and building muscle – LOLs..
Organize events locally for bloggers and marketers alike
Have my own radio show – like what the guys at webmasterradio.fm do.
Get more involve with community activities here in my place.
Watch every possible movie in cinemas.
Manage some of my “high-potential” business assets that never really get off the ground.
Hold a private seminar locally helping people get started with blogging and making money online.
Leverage my online presence more.
Do large joint ventures
Be able to have time to make a major makeover of my room/office.
Have a voice lesson
Play guitar and keyboards again – Two to three years ago I believe i was really a good keyboard, guitar player. I had lessons before that jumpstarted my abilites and since I started becoming busy, I just had to cut doing this one. 🙁
Learn martial arts and self defense
Spend more time with people that MATTER to me. 😀
and the list goes on…

So I thought that’s it. I like to be the most well-rounded person I can ever become, doing the most possible stuffs that I enjoy. And yep it could only become possible if there’s more time. Productivity is not something that I think I can boast to you but Im sure I’m not a lazy person. Heheh, what about you? It would be interesting to hear your side w/regards to this matter and also gather any advice you may have for me. 🙂

Head to Head 5, HowToMakeMyBlog vs. Blogussion

by Melvin · Oct 27, 2009

It’s been like decades ago since we had the last Bloggers head to head matchup! To view the past matchups we had, you can do so by clicking the Head to head category.

Ok, so this is probably my most favorite head to head matchup ever created here in this blog. Today, we would pit two bloggers who teach people how to become better bloggers. They do show people how to get things done by showing real examples, doing real case studies and really handing out superb value for their readers. And probably the best thing is, their blogs are AD-Free (unlike this blog), a thing that always amazes me.

So enough talking, I’m talking about Marko Saric from HowToMakeMyBlog.com and Alex from Blogussion.com. Here we go!

	Alex Frasier	Marko Saric
Describe yourself in less than 5 words?	Passionate and always looking forward	I’m blogging about blogging.
What is your favorite breakfast?	Over-easy egg, sausage and a a hash brown. 🙂	Something with eggs, peppers, tomato, avocado, mozzarella…
Any story behind choosing that domain name	On the blog I was going to create, I was going to be discussing blogging. So, I took the two words, merged them and formed Blogussion.com!	I am always thinking about what would my target audience type into Google when searching for my topic and “How to make my blog” was one of the best sounding…
Why did you choose a saturated niche?	It’s a niche I am okay talking about and can talk about for a long time. I don’t feel like the blogging tips niche is saturated however. It is crowded for sure, but the amount of quality blogging tips blogs out there are few.	I had some websites / blogs since late 1990’s and wanted to share what I have learned. If niche was saturated or not didn’t really affect my decision.
How hard is it to blog about blogging tips??	I am always learning new things about blogging every day. Some things just hit me in the oddest of places, and it is very easy to tie life into blogging (at least, that’s what I have found).	Not really hard, whatever you do to make your blog better is a blogging tip so there is always something to write about.
How many uniques are you getting monthly?	A few thousand, let’s just say	14344 unique visitors in August 2009.
How many hours do you spend with your blog?	It depends on what I am doing. If I am working on new things (like the theme I just recently reworked) then it could be a few hours a day. But writing for the blog takes no longer than two hours max.	I am on a one-blog-post-per-week schedule now so that doesn’t take more than couple of hours. Most time is spent on answering comments, answering emails and promoting the blog.
Any other venture aside from blogging?	I freelanced for a while, but I decided to quit because I could not handle all of the business I was getting..	Not at the moment, blogging only… I have some 3-4 blogs that I work on.
How much are you making with it?	I’m not freelancing at the moment, but I am going to be getting into theme markets and a few other markets. But, nothing really for me besides a couple hundred dollars a month from affiliate sales.	Very hard to say as it fluctuates a lot. I have some stats on my blog about it. But I hear Thesis Theme 2.0 is on the way out and Thesis is my main monetization method so that should affect my earnings.
How do you split your time with blogging, and your other stuffs?	I focus on usually one or two tasks a day when it comes to blogging. I work less, but harder when I blog so I can equalize my time spent on other activities.	It’s not very hard. When I blog I am in the blogging space, 100% concentration, but when I finish I am in the other stuff space and the blogging takes a backseat for a bit.
How do you persuade people to read your blog?	I make my designs as aesthetically pleasing as possible, write the catchiest headlines I can and cross my fingers that their attention is grabbed!	I write the best blog post I can and I send a tweet or two about it. The rest takes care of itself hopefully.
What’s the biggest goal for this blog?	I would like to earn some form of recurring income before I am 18 years old from my blog. Another thing I would like to do is meet with the people who play major roles in the growth of my blog in person.	To help me learn and improve on all things blogging, WordPress, web-design, CSS, marketing and so on.
Give me a blog you admire and why?	I enjoy reading Marko Saric’s HowToMakeMyBlog.com. I am a big fan of Marko and his blogging tips, and he is actually one of my biggest motivators.	Steve Pavlina I like because every time one of his posts hits my RSS newsreader I tend to spend an hour or two browsing his archives via his internal links structure. I hope I can have that effect on some of my visitors at some point.

I Am Going To Steal Your Ebook!

by Melvin · Oct 24, 2009

Disclaimer: This is not a post teaching you to do this evil thing. I, myself HAVE NEVER EVER stolen any eBook. I don’t need to, I make enough money to live. Just look at this post as a guide to have a basic understanding on how this process works and how you can protect yourself when you do selling eBooks.

Internet Marketing in whatever niche you are, involves a lot of selling. And 90% of the products is what we known as info products or eBooks. But do you know that most of the eBooks that these people are selling are usually just ripped off for free? Or do you know that a lot of people have a ton of good quality eBooks they don’t even pay for? Well I’m sure you, as a reader of this blog are selling ebooks, or have plans of doing it, so this post can be a good read for you.

So most people do sell ebook via Clickbank. In selling, you are required to do two pages. First is the salespage itself, where you would pitch your offer and the second is the thank you page, a page where a paying customer would be redirected once they have made the payment. The problem that I see most of the time is that any user can easily access the thank you page!

One good example is the sales page Problogging BluePrint. So the main page is the index page while the download page is just located in /thanks.html part. Fortunately the link is broken (and its unfortunate for paying customers!). The surprising thing is that most salespage function that way! They have their download page accessible almost by anyone! I mean the usual locations are the ff:

/thanks.html
/thanks.php
/download
/download.html
several variations

That’s why Im not surprised that a lot of info products just leak like crazy. Another bone head mistake most marketers do is make use of robots.txt. Oh my god! I mean yes you can tell the search engine to hide your download page but have you forgotten humans can read it? So if you guys want to steal someone’s ebook all you have to do is try to go /robots.txt and see the page that they disallow, LOLS… Another problem is the noticeable increase of PDF search engines. It’s surprising that a lot of popular eBook shows up on sites like pdfsearchengine. So altogether, it’s an uphill battle to combat eBook fraud and many people so far fail to do it!

How Do I Protect My Ebook?

Well this post is not really a guide on info product protection but since we’re here Im going to give you some brief explanation of what I know. If you’re a clickbank merchant, make sure to have a third party plugin to protect your download page. One that I came across through is DlGuard. Since I have never done any clickbank thing I would suggest you to do your own research as to what the reliable third party plugins are.

If you’re just selling a product yourself, using e-junkie is the smartest thing. E-Junkie is one of the leaders in terms of handling info product automation, payment and delivering the product itself. So far I haven’t heard any issues about using it and even the top marketers like Darren Rowse is using it. $10 per month is a reasonable price for the protection that it gives.

Lastly, always do a simple Google check for your eBook to see if some asshole is sharing it. Use the query “title of your ebook” filetype:PDF, and then scan the search results THOROUGHLY. It’s because sometimes you protect your download page a lot that you forget the file itself. Again some morons do buy it only to share it to other people while other people accidentally (or not) stores it on their server only to leak when someone does a search. Just consider doing this like a maintenance thing.

It can also be a good option to use the PDF search engines we mentioned earlier to your advantage. Search for your eBook, then if you find it, contact the site owner and tell him to remove it (or send him a DMCA notice). Obviously when someone shares it, he knows it’s illegal so he’d just more likely laugh at you when you contact him. The best thing to do is send the notice to their hosting provider by doing a quick whois on the site that distributes your copy illegally.

Conclusion:

Selling eBooks is a big and still growing industry and unfortunately not a lot of people are techy enough to protect the hardwork they exerted. Protecting your own info product can be really hard but there are ways. Im not saying people are evil but put yourself in their situation. You are craving for some expensive info product and you see a flaw that would make it free for you, are you not going to download it? The obvious answer is the answer for 98% of us!

I don’t know about you but if you’re just letting your product leak like waterpipes, then I think your product and you deserves to be ripped off for free. After all security is part of any business model both online and offline that should never be neglected. I would really love to have your opinion about it. Or maybe you can share your own tips that you implement yourself!