MelvinBlog

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

Melvin

What I Think About Comments

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Another busy week for me. I had to rush everything because I feel so behind with all the projects that we we’re doing and the affiliate products this month had a pretty bad ROI and some mistakes about Adwords. This month by far is the worst month as far as affiliate marketing is concern. So now I am going to share with you what I think about Comments.

As you can see, my blog has been getting some decent number of comments (even though the form was all white before). But what many people do not know is that comments are not usually like the number shown. Oftentimes I reply two to three times to other comments so to say I got 6 comments on a post, the real number only is three. So being a blogger for not so long time I have seen comments that are pretty ugly. Many are just lame, Some look spammy, and few make sense. I don’t really have anything against those comments in fact I am even accepting comments that contain 2-4 words only. But of course I don’t tolerate trolls.

So what about the comments? Most of the time people are forgetting that the real value of comments reflect on the person and/or site itself. Let’s say about 85% of your comments say “nice post”. The common effect here is that you just comment because you want to get commented to and that’s awful! Most bloggers will see it and despise it. And because they don’t like it, the IMAGE of your blog will not be good to those 85% of the blogs you commented! Maybe for others, it’s ok but I’m sure a large percentage will not like it. You are giving your blog a bad name around the blogoshpere. Sure it’s not wrong to say “nice post” but if you do it all the time, then wtf! I see a lot of blogs these days complaining about lame comments and this is just a message that I want to get across everyone. Comments = Your Blog = You!

How about you? Have you established a great presence in the blogging world because of you adding value to other blogs? I want to get your view about this.

Winning The Web Shirt is a Great One!

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Well just this day I have received something in a brown envelope that I first suspect as a bomb. And upon looking at the back I saw the name Gyutae Park so I guess it’s his shirt of winning the web. I have purchased it last month from him because I’m a big fan of shirts that promote sites. I pretty feel the price is very fair with everyone. The shirt also looks better when you wear it than when you just look at it.

I guess the shirt makes me look better. 😉 For those who do not know Gyutae, he is the proud owner of Winning the Web, a site that is about internet marketing. He has a lot of great content there. I can remember he hosted a certain contest there that is really really great. His site definitely worths a look. For others who are selling great shirts, let me know it so I can take a look at it. 😉

me!

University Kid vs. The Net Fool Blogs Head To Head Premiere

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So today is gong to be the premiere of the bloggers head to head. You can recall a couple of weeks ago that I have really worked for this one. I am very elated that at last this head to head has now started. I wanted to thank Mr. Daniel Scocco because he had allowed me to use this very popular face-off. You can visit his blog at Daily Blog Tips.

Ok so for the premiere, we have Jason Pereira of The University Kid and Jim of The Net Fools. I think this is a great premiere as these two blogs have really established something in the blogging and internet marketing world. They also interact well with people as their content is very natural and has a lot of humor packed into it. And thank you so much for the interview. 🙂

theuniversitykid

Jason

 netfool

Jim
Describe yourself in less than 5 words? Never serious, always lazy. 🙂 Determined businessman focused on success
What is your favorite breakfast? The full English breakfast – eggs, sausages, bacon, hash browns, orange juice etc. More of a brunch I guess because I can’t eat all of that unless I’m real hungry. Cocoa Krispies, of course. It says “I’m professional, but I like to party”
How long have you been blogging? Since November last year, however I only took an active interest in networking and promoting in the middle of January 2008 I’ve been blogging for just a bit over a year to this point, it’s been a long road to get to where I am now… but once you get a foothold somewhere, ventures in the future are a lot easier
Any story behind choosing that domain name? I was out of ideas, thought that there weren’t too many established university students with a blog that were making money online, and had to pick a domain that came free with my hosting, there wasn’t much risk. I was just brainstorming for a name and I wanted something fun that would be a good bubble term for all the stuff I was attempting to write about. The “fool” seemed like a good approach and “net” is just
How many uniques are you getting monthly? Anywhere between 10,000 on a bad month to 30,000 on a good month. Somewhere around 10,000 every month
What is your average blog income? Around $500, give or take a couple hundred. This is direct income from the blog itself, from ad sales, reviews, affiliate sales etc. However, indirectly I have developed an $X,XXX income from the blog, in the form of joint ventures and project launches. I’m averaging about $500 a month
Do you read other blogs feeds? How many do you track? I’m subscribed to about 15 but haven’t checked them in ages. I’m more the traditional type, prefer reading blogs on the actual website… I’d say I read about 20 – 40 daily, some A Listers, some B Listers, some friends and the rest people that have commented on TUK. Yeah, I have a whole mess of feeds in my Google RSS Reader. Probably around 40-50 names in there, it’s essential to keep in touch with as many people as possible to succeed in this business
How did you gain your feed subscribers? Contests and guest posts. Can’t beat them for getting you a truckload of subscribers fast. However, I’ve not promoted it like I should have; if I put the energy into the blog I’d have five times the subscribers I have now. Gaining recognition etc is not too important for me and TUK; I have a small group of friends that read it and that is enough (although that circle of friends seems to be growing daily  ) If I knew that, I’d be a very rich man, haha. Lots of my readers have come out from contests I have run, others have just stumbled upon my website and still others have been referred over to me. You never can tell exactly what is happening when people are subscribing. I like to think its my superior content that got me readers.
What keeps a blogger from making money from his blog? Laziness, nothing else. Lack of knowledge is one of the things, but if people were not lazy they’d do research and everything so it all eventually leads to laziness. By doing simple things – things that anyone can do… link building, guest posting, networking for contests etc, people could easily (and I’m including myself in this) get thousands of readers daily and make lots of money. However, few do; partly because they’re lazy and partly because for a return on time, blogging is not one of the best ways to go. Wasting time is the number one thing. People spend so much time monetizing and analyzing stats that they forget to write good content and stay active on other blogs to drive traffic
When does a blogger have to consider monetizing From the get go, especially if you’re in any niche related to internet marketing. It’s gotten to the stage where people expect ads on the websites they visit and if you keep your site clean and then suddenly pop some ads on them, they are going to be pissed off. Let it be known from the beginning that you are looking to make money from your blog and you won’t have a problem. Consider monetizing from the get go. People that tell you not to monetize until you have a cult following are out of their minds. It’s essential to have a game plan from the start, regardless of whether or not you actually put the ads up, for functionality purposes. I would start right of the bat selling ads to make some extra revenue and appear as an authority on the blogosphere
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. My blog is unique because of the design and what I write about. Look as hard as you want, you aren’t going to find another stock market blog that talk about affiliate marketing on the internet
What’s the biggest goal for this blog? Probably to meet more people I can network with, and eventually sell for five figures. No urgency though. 🙂 I want to eventually hit 1,000 RSS subscribers,that would be a big moment for me and the blog. I really am a lot more concerned with my readers than making money or any of that. Every little bit helps, and so far I am on pace to break 1,000 within the year. Of course, things do become more challenging as you work along
Give me a blog you admire and why? It would probably be Darren Rowse of Problogger or Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips. Despite being relevant giants in the industry, they’re always honest and haven’t done anything that’s pissed me off yet. 🙂 I admire GarryConn.com because his content is honestly some of the best I’ve seen and he isn’t afraid to start a fight. The fact that he puts out so much content all the time is really eye-opening, and he recently got into competition with John Cow… who honestly had a lot more going for him. Despite this, Garry knows that even if he doesn’t come out on top, he’ll be a winner. I admire that

Monetization Scheme That Doesn’t Make You Sweat

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Well in my entire life I have always been hearing people complaining that they are not making money with their blogs. In my own opinion that is incredibly impossible. While one may not make a lot of money from his blog, sure he can make even some cents or dollars. So getting back to monetizing, I can agree it’s hard to make a consistent income from blog but then I’m also sure that making money is very possible.

So if you have a blog that exists for a decade now and still haven’t made any money, my dear this one is for you. I’m surprised that many people do not know this things so I’m sharing it. Remember this will make you money but don’t expect this to make you money consistently. Here we go:

  1. Matched.co.uk –> You’ve probably have heard it already, maybe not. Matched.co.uk is a site that pays you 3 pounds per ad (where’s the pound sign on keyboard?). They oftentimes give up to 5 ads. The ads just look like an adsense ad and you can place it everywhere. The ugly thing is they pay monthly, so you will have to wait, and I know waiting sucks!
  2. Money4banners –> Almost exactly works the same way as the former. It gives a banner and pays you $5 for it. It’s different because the ads are a little lively but is not intrusive. As of now they are very picky with the applicants. If you have a blog as great as mine then you would probably get accepted also. Btw, I am planning to add it after the 468×60 ad from dp expires.
  3. Money4Blogs –> Well this is my favorite one. The only thing you need to do is put a link on your site/blogroll and they will pay you for that. They pay on a yearly basis. The great thing here is the link can be nofollowed. I have tested it in my basketball blog twice. The first link costs $50 for one year. The other one costs $120 for a year mainly because when I applied again my site is a pr3 and 600,000 in alexa. After putting the link they would pay you immediately, I mean really immediately. After I placed the link I went to defecate for maybe 5-10 minutes and then upon opening my paypal account it’s already there.
  4. PayPerPost –> This one sucks I believe. But this is an easy $20 to you my dear! When a blog gets accepted at PayPerPost (even if it’s a pr0 and over 3 m in alexa) you are eligible for the $20 review about payperpost.

So that are the ways to do it. Let me make it clear, I have tried all of those programs and made money from them and I can guarantee it’s very possible you can too. Why do I need to do this? For startup cost. Jason of the University Kid always emphasizes the importance of working for startup costs. And it depends to you on where and how to use it.

I Know Alexa Is Useless

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Well everyone knows that Alexa is useless, even me. But still I feel a little (just a little) elated when I saw my Alexa going down from over 2,600,000 to 1,600,000 which is a great spike. Heck I don’t even use social media marketing yet…

Yet another busy day for me…

Did You SEO Your Site?

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SEOWell going back when this blog was born, one of the things I have planned is to experiment on different stuffs. So the first thing that I did was not to optimize my site for search engines and see if the traffic can still have its way. Basically, at first I don’t really feel optimizing this site much for SE because it’s a personal one and besides I know people will somehow get here. I even remember someone saying “SEO your site dude”. Of course I understand that I must make the most of search engines.

Looking to my Analytics, I saw that the blog had over 800 page views and a very high bounce rate and NO traffic from Search Engines. So what I did last week was tweak my site for search engines. I didn’t really do it fullblast, as I’ve said i’m in the testing mode. This week I was surprised to see that there was a small spike on traffic from search engines. The 0% before turned to 6%. It only means that optimizing really works and it works for the good of your site.

I have seen several blogs with great contents not optimizing their site and I don’t really have anything against them. Who knows they might just be testing the waters too! For those people who do not know it, it’s not really hard actually. You just need to read and usually it’s easier than what most people think. Google loves WordPress blogs a lot and having a wordpress site is a great booster whatever projects you may have. Joost De Valk has written a very very very great guide on WordPress SEO.

How about you? Have you completely optimized your site already? Did you SEO it?

Experimenting With Search Funds

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I know you guys are very familiar with get paid to search program known as Search Funds or now known as homepages friends. Basically it’s just a network that pays you for every search you do. Sounds scam right? Well I don’t really do get paid to, but I think this one will be an exception. As a student, and affiliate marketer and blogger, I do probably about 30 searches a day. And joining this type of network makes sense besides it’s free and it’s cost is next to nothing. I’ve been using it for close to a month now and I have £2 on my account. The minimum payout is £20 and obviously I’m very far from it.

So going back to the plan, well I have something not so evil going in my mind. I am the upcoming treasurer of our university’s information technology and computer science organization department and more probably my friends and/or our group would dominate each positions (because we are intelligent nice people). So what am I gonna do is just simply change the default Google search engine and search box on browsers of computers in the laboratory to my search engine with Search Funds. Then that’s it, students in the laboratory are students so oftentimes they do research. 😉 I will be tracking everything there by myself. And in a month I will put here the results. 🙂

Btw, if you haven’t heard search funds and somehow is interested here’s their Search Funds homepage