A blog that chronicles my journey on online marketing, blogging, social media, technology and life.
So I never really wanted to be mainstream, but I think this is the best way to go if you’re heading back on a busy week. Fire your questions away and the best question, not not really, but one that I like the most will get $10 on his/her paypal account.
Questions can literally be everything, if I don’t feel to answer the question then I will not answer the question… 😉
CLOSED: PENDING ANSWERS
Just woke up this morning and well upon looking at the toolbar of my firefox, it stated that I got a pr0 rankings anew. I immediately head on to my SEOMOZ account and indeed my blog has became a pr0 just a couple of hours ago..
Let’s face it the pagerank on toolbars is something a lot of people building links are always looking at. Although, it doesn’t make much sense and the real PR algo is what counts, it still makes sense to have a fair overall ranking. Back to the PR update, its strange because I have never done any paid post and all links and banners ads here are nofollowed so I’m not passing the PR juice. I don’t think I have done black hat link building stuffs or so… Hmm. what do you think?
Update: Allow me 2 days to process the rewards… 😉
I have been slacking a little bit now on posting blog not only because I have some other stuffs to do but also because I am feeling so much lazy about it. I was tweaking and optimizing all of my dating sites and everything that is related to it. I’ve been also in bad mood these (waking up in morning) and I don’t know why. One thing I feel is that I don’t feel well.
So with the top commentator rewards that happen every month, I nearly forgot the August Month. With the success from previous months, I had a thought for bigger prizes for the succeeding months. So for the last month’s jackass top spammers commentators, here they are:
So for that month’s stake, the top 3 will get the Unique Blog Money Maker Ebook Which is worth $7. 4 and 5 will get 1000 entrecard credits each. In addition to that the top commentator will get a free 1 month featured link at my sidebar while no.2 will get into my blogroll link (no nofollow). All’s well that ends well 😉
For the future, I might be giving out more surprises. As you may have noticed, I do not disclose the rewards every month so that it would be a surprise to everyone. The future rewards would range to cash, gift cards, and some other stuffs.
Most people underestestimate the value of testing different stuffs. I mean most don’t even know they should test things. Testing plays a key role not only in online business but also in every aspects of life. Sometimes, it can be risky and most of the times it will help us learn and gain knowledge based on what we have observed. With affiliate marketing, I really love to test stuffs out. I mean when I was doing Adwords early this year I was very receptive on committing mistakes and learning from them. I put up different landing pages and different color schemes and see how they flop! On that way, you know you could do better the next time.
There are tons of ways wherein you can test something and do a case study. Like for instance in this blog, when I was promoting Pepperjam Network here. I think I made over $100 with an affiliate banner at the sidebar (when there are few advertisers yet). Why is that so? Basically I just rotated every type of ad that Pepperjam gives. I give my users different views of the ads which I think have helped both of us. What you are needing to do is make your users avoid banner blindness wherein they just go w/your site and say “these banners again”. That’s why as much as possible I ask for different types of ads from advertisers so that they can maximize their exposure from this blog.
Now someone can say “It’s risky to test things and I don’t think I can afford it”. Well its true but most of the times it is not really as risky as what you might ever think of. What you have to do is always look and observe what you’re visitors are doing. How they respond to it. It’s easy sometimes to say, “oh what I did doesn’t really make much sense” but you will benefit a lot from it on a long term basis. How if it doesn’t work? Then it doesn’t work, leave it! If you believe you have exerted a better effort with stuffs that flops then you can always drop it and start again. I know many are afraid but it’s just business and life I think. You will succeed and you will fail
I know some of you also do testing and some “under the microscope” experiments. Maybe you can share yours and what you have learned from it.
Yesterday I was looking on blog premiere forum (kid and teenager bloggers) and have observed that it seems most kid bloggers today have had some adjustments with his posting frequency and others have just simply stopped because of studies. Well this is true especially the latter part of the year wherein the school resumes back and more probably take a huge chunk of time of bloggers and marketers who are studying still. It has also been noticeable that the comments and activity of young bloggers through forums and social sites have decreased. Really hard to manage time right?
Well I think it’s one crucial thing here and most kid and teenagers will learn from it. How they should be able to manage their time and how we should maintain our online stuffs without having our studies suffer. For me the trimester of our school has ended. There will be a one week break before I head back again to the second trimester. This trime by far is the busiest one and I really learned a lot on it. It’s ironic because the blog has never lost its ranking. I mean from August to July, I have stopped promoting it and well mainly because I can’t, everything related to school has been like eating my whole time.
How about you? I know most readers here do also study and split their time doing different stuffs, do you think you are managing your time well?
I am not really a fan of these “place a banner” and get monthly payments or anything like that but sometimes stuffs like this will help people or new people build something for startup and it does not cause anything to join. So I thought I would be making a post about it.
Well What I am talking about here is freebies 4 Webmaster. Last July they contacted me introducing their services, I though they were just scam or maybe they are really so I turned down their offer. But then last month I was playing with monetization here in this blog and you may notice me placing different things on the sidebar and doing A and B testing. Then one friend referred this now to me. I pasted the 468X60 on the lower part of the sidebar. I did it last August 20 and then yesterday I received 10 British Pounds from them which means they really pay. They do also promise to pay monthly for keeping that banner on my site. Lets see.
So this one came a little very late because of the season. The June part onwards seems to be the busiest part of the year as some people focus on their work, young ones like me go back to school and so. This round of head to head is a pretty interesting one. I really haven’t had much time picking a nice matchup. It’s pretty a little contrasting. Dave of the Internet Babel looks like a old older person than most of us while Germz cannot even watch rated x movies at cinemas! But well oh well, like other previous head to head this is a pretty interesting one. Check it out:
| Dave | Germz | |
|---|---|---|
| Describe yourself in less than 5 words? | A handsome balding hunk.  |
Easily Bored Person. |
| What is your favorite breakfast? | Hmm – Crispy Bacon, scrambled egg and Toast. | Coffee, it’s the only thing I drink for breakfast. If there is no coffee I won’t eat breakfast. |
| How long have you been blogging? | Currently – 1 hour a day cos I have a lot of other work on. Hope to ramp it up a bit soon. | Usually an hour, I spent way more time researching new business ventures and freelancing. |
| Any story behind choosing that domain name? | I bought Internet Babel as a developed blog (but I liked the name). | My friends call me germz, and Germz.com was already taken. |
| How many uniques are you getting monthly? | July (my first month of owning the Blog) was about 2,000 UVs and 15,000 Page Views.. | About 6000. |
| What is your average blog income? | hah 😉 Only 1 month in so very little to show at the moment. Ask me again in 12 months ;-). | About forty bucks per month, great thing that’s not my main source of income! |
| Do you read other blogs feeds? How many do you track? | – not a big consumer of feeds – prefer to visit the blogs i like and just Google around the web | I’m not a big fan of blog feeds, I don’t like having my email spammed with hundreds of emails per day with new articles. I hardly subscribe to any feeds unless I really like the content or I’m doing a favor for a friend. I currently only track about 3 or 4. |
| What are the other thing/projects that you are doing aside from blogging? | – Website development (got about 20 clients at the moment) – Helping develop some mining/data logging software – domain flipping/speculation – got a few websites of my own that bring in some Ad$en$e – Writing articles – drinking beer |
Studying, and freelancing. |
| What keeps a blogger from making money from his blog? | a few things off the top of my head (in no particular order) – lack of time – lack of commitment – not enough belief in their own skills/ability – treating readers like idiots – no interaction with community – aiming for a saturated market/not finding a niche |
I don’t use my blog to make money, I don’t think it’s easy to earn money from a blog unless your blog has a niche that’s easy to exploit. My only source of income for the blog comes from the advertisers. I only use the money to pay for hosting and aweber. |
| When does a blogger have to consider monetizing | Well, unless you’re doing it purely for the love of your subject and income is not a factor, then ideally you should be thinking about monetization before you start – it should be a part of the planning process. Money isn’t the key factor for a lot of Bloggers though so they shouldn’t get hung up about it. |
As soon as possible, it’s best when you have some content otherwise no one will want to advertise from you. |
| What makes your blog unique from others? | Me. Hehe. Well, that’s the main reason – the blog is about my personal entrepreneur experiences and projects, which differ from other entrepreneurs, good and bad. | It’s written by me! 😀 |
| What’s the biggest goal for this blog? | Apart from the things I mentioned above: – get the stats back up to where they used to be and then make them even better – increase the earnings (although that’s not my primary driver) – spread some useful knowledge – have some fun “ |
At the current moment I’m doing a very special project which I’m sure everyone will like. |
| Give me a blog you admire and why? | At the moment, I like reading the Net Fool – a lot of good info in there usually, and a nice ‘tone’ to it. | Thenetfool.com I visit his blog every time I get a chance, it’s very informative and I really like Jim’s point of view on most of his articles. |