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The “Other” Things that You Can Enjoy in Blogging

by Melvin · Jul 31, 2011

So before I start everything else in this post, I just want to (proudly) let everyone know that I make money from most of my blogs and its one of the reasons why I really love blogging.

I said financial benefits is one of the reasons, the other half is the happiness and the satisfaction that it brings to me. It’s always been my mistake to write blogging and internet marketing tips to bloggers as if everyone is aiming at making money and being famous. It amazes me (and I’m thankful) when someone goes out in comments and says “not all people have making money on their minds and I’m one of them”. That gives me a very good realization that blogging for money like we do is just less than 10% of the whole blogging community.

I figured out that most people blog because they’re happy with it and it fulfills them greatly. That’s something that I’ve realized late last year and in this blog post, I’m going to tackle how you, as a make money online blogger can still be happy with blogging even though you’re not making that much money or not meeting your expectations financially.

1. The “intrinsic love” for blogging

When I started my blog MelvinBlog.com (see I’m not linking to it), I was very sure that I can do this forever AS LONG as I could make money with it. Its tricky but when I had hard times late 2009 and the blog wasn’t making that much money, I thought I would lose my interest in it but I was wrong.

The reason for that is the intrinsic love that I have for blogging for the topic. I do internet marketing since late 2007 and every time I talk about it in my blog, I really, really feel that great satisfaction for doing so. And that should be the case for most of us. People who have been blogging forever that aren’t getting compensated are the ones who have that “real love” for what they do and as a result, they don’t bother with the money that they make. That’s how I equally feel, how most of my blogging peers feel and hopefully that should be how you look at it as well.

2. The community

This second factor does not come immediately and it may take a while for you before you realize it.

The community is what makes a blog alive and without it, a blog is nothing but a plain static web entity. It just so happened that our blog community is one of the reasons why most of us stay and feel fulfilled. Imagine having tens of people, if not hundreds, commenting on our posts. Imagine thousands of people daily visiting our blogs even though its written by a simple person like us. Isn’t it self-fulfilling?

That does not even stop there. I know most of you here have received personal emails from your own audiences on how they’re so thankful for one of the things that your blog have done for them. It sounds corny, but that’s sweet right?

3. Friendships and relationships

While its very rare to see an occasion where two bloggers end up being into a romantic relationship (lol), forming friendships through blogging is a very frequent case. How many of you here have actually treated a blogger as a good friend of yours without even seeing or talking to that blogger in person? Yes, I know the feeling.

It doesn’t end with friendships. Most of the times, it leads to fruitful partnerships and joint ventures that can later on pay off for both of you.

You see, I could take 20 friends any time over 20 rotating 125X125 sidebar banners on my site. 😉

4. The Experience (with a big E)

Consider the following: I wrote a blog entry and got over a hundred comments. I got in front page of Digg, I got a thousand pageviews just this day for this post.

I can’t stress enough for myself how blogging has given me so much unforgettable experience in life. I was told that people don’t crave for things, they crave for experience and I can say that’s 100% true based on my experience.

All the things I mentioned above, the love for blogging, the community and the relationships. It all leads to a superb real-life experience on something. And I’m not just talking about good experiences that make us happy, I’m also talking about experiences that are a bit negative. No one actually forgets them and its equally memorable for us just as with the good ones.

5. The rewards (outside the money)

Every time I look back on what blogging has brought to me except the money, I usually end up smiling because it has brought me a lot more than I expected.

One of the best rewards that you can get from blogging is the increased expertise and brand that you get. “Who would think that by talking about this topic people would see me as an expert in this niche?” Is it not nice for us to realize that?

Another unsung reward is your personal learnings from it. I mentioned above that I learned blogging isn’t just about making money and we are just a minority of the blogosphere. That’s just one of the myriads of things that I’ve learned from blogging. I consider these learnings as a reward since I don’t really need to study something (formally) to gain those things.

I got tired of putting a heading called conclusion because not all blog entries have conclusions like this one right? I’ll let you put your own conclusion on this post. What do you think about blogging minus the “making money” part? Do you think its still as fulfilling?

Image credits to Smemon

Surfing Locally Without Being Local. GeoSurf Review

by Melvin · Jul 27, 2011

This is a paid review. If you’re interested for having your product/website reviewed, kindly see our packages here.

The internet has been there for quite a while now and its hard to talk about it without really touching on how it opened lots of opportunities for us, online entrepreneurs. Its amazing to imagine that by having an internet business, we’re not really limiting ourselves to a specific demographic but rather catering to a global one. Also, it allows us to just stay and work where we want to and not really move on to different places.

Geosurf came up to me and asked me I could test out their service and write this review. For those who don’t know, Geosurf is a service that allows you to browse the internet with different locations. Basically you will have to download and install their toolbar before you can do those things.

Now bare in mind that prior to Geosurf, there are different ways to browse the internet using a different geographical location. One of them is using those third-party websites that allow you to do it. The downside of using that is its annoying with popups and different bunch of ads. To add, those sites usually have security issues and are long believed to be unreliable. But that’s what many people are still using right now.

The other one that I used is the Tor Project (used to be tor.eff.org). Its a free and awesome solution back then but for some reason the service started crapping out and basically lots of people shied away from using it anymore.

You might be asking where can you use it? Surfing in different locations has a lot of uses but for me personally I can use it when doing affiliate marketing and internet business.

Some of you may know me as a hardcore affiliate marketer back in the day and the problem usually is that when you’re promoting a certain product, you cannot really see how it looks and who your competitors are. You wouldn’t be able to see other things as well such as your position in an ad, how your ad looks like in different places and things like that. I would normally use a proxy to get to do that but its very very annoying to do so because of a).advertisements b).slow and unreliable connection. I know some people are using proxies differently but in an internet business that is how its mostly used.

This is where Geosurf comes in

What Made GeoSurf Different?

Update: What you are about to read below is a review of GeoSurf 3.0. GeoSurf came up to me about their new version 4.0 which is a huge upgrade over the previous version.

In their latest version, GeoSurf is no longer just a proxy toolbar since it allows you to explore the entire ‘ecosystem’ of display advertising on different sites in various locations. GeoSurf believes this new features puts their product far above the competition.

Geosurf is different because its in form of a toolbar. Basically what you do is download their plugin and install it in your browser. Another difference is that it has a sleek interface and is very easy to use and understand (especially with the 3.0 version). Here’s a video to know more about them:

As if its still not enough, they also have other features such as an Android and iPhone app, mobile simulator and the Geosurf Direct Connect API which I know is going to be very useful for more techy users.

Plans and Pricing

Geosurf starts at $29/month while the high end price for advanced users is $89/month. They also offer an enterprise plan for Geosurf although the price obviously depends on how large the company is.

Final Words

My overall experience with Geosurf is good since I was able to use it without having any problems at all. Speed is there (although it varies depending on the country) and you would really enjoy surfing on a different location minus all these popups and annoying advertisements. You can even surf on a per city basis (for US locations) although I haven’t thoroughly tested it.

The only thing that might get you a bit confused is it logs you out on a site where you are normally logged in (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) which is very understandable since you’re changing locations and IP’s. If you don’t want being logged out, I suggest that you install it in a different browser. In my case, I installed in IE since I don’t use IE when doing my normal social media stuff.

Price-wise is it worth it? I think so. Besides they have a free trial that you can test out so you can see if Geosurf suits you (w/c I would be surprised if it doesn’t). Probably normal surfers wanting to surf the internet in a different location wouldn’t be able to afford it but other than the normal ones, I think its very very reasonably priced.

I believe Geosurf can become revolutionary if they can be able to maintain it affordable while offer good support to its users. Add the fact that there aren’t very many tools like what they have there and I’m pretty sure its going to compete really well with the other tools in the same space.

How about you? What’s your experience with Geosurf? If you haven’t tried it yet, you can start your free 5 day trial now and see how it goes.

7 Ways to Lose Search Engine Rankings

by Melvin · Jul 24, 2011

This is guest posted by Jordan Metts who provides SEO services to his clients.

Capable SEO services exercise several tactics for rising in the search rankings, and avoid using techniques that fail to appease search engine spiders like Googlebot. Many tactics can get a site into trouble, and seven of the most egregious are described in this post. Using one or more of these tactics is a guaranteed way to lose rank.

1. Accidentally have meta tags or robots.txt set up so that spiders cannot index your files.

In meta tags, if “robots” is set to content=”noindex”, this disallows spider indexing. Remember that each subdomain requires its own robots.txt file. Having the file in the root directory, but not for its subdomains, means spiders will crawl the subdomains with different rules than those applied to the root directory.

2. Scrape web pages for content and repackage it as your own.

This underhanded practice is one way to get on Google’s bad side in very short order. There are ways to automate most of the process with web scraping software and robots that shoddily rewrite paragraphs, but search engines are coded to find repackaged copy. Googlebot in particular is effective at detecting such pages.

3. Use hidden text on a page or set of pages within a site.

Although human eyes cannot detect text that is the same color as a page background, search engine spiders have proven quite adept at finding hidden text. A more recent method of employing hidden text on a site is by using cascading style sheets to layer text beneath copy. Again, spiders have been coded to look for this method, and penalize pages that use this technique.

4. Generate backlinks too rapidly.

Search engine spiders look for “natural” link building patterns over time. Unnatural patterns like a high spike in low to medium quality backlinks raises red flags for those spiders. An effective SEO strategy seeks to build links naturally, avoiding the ire of Googlebot and other spiders.

5. Sign up with a Free-For-All link farm.

This is closely related to the topic number four. FFA link farms promise “guaranteed leads” and such, offering a few thousand links once a month to its non-paying members. Many offer membership packages for $50 a month or more, sharing thousands of links every single day. As stated earlier, natural link building is key. Even if one decides to pay for links, an idea that does not come highly recommended by most SEO professionals, it is very easy to form an unnatural pattern when generating backlinks.

6. Redirect users to a page without their permission via fast meta refresh.

This technique is part of using what are known as doorway pages. They are also called portal or gateway pages. Users do not care for sites that whisk them to another page abruptly and without warning. This is a guaranteed way to lose traffic from visitors who might have become paying customers or contributing forum members, and Google has frowned on the practice for several years.

7. Let complacency set in.

Search engine optimization is not a one-time fix, but a set of recurring, routine tasks. Thinking a site is optimized once and for all is a mistake that will cost you in the rankings. Like any competitive sport, some of the players in the SEO game may be less than ethical. It requires vigilance to root out unfair competition and to keep a site optimized as search algorithms change, and they change often.

Googlebot and other spiders are the equivalent of Internet law enforcement officers, scouring the Web, punishing offenders. Some malefactors receive stern warnings and continue to evade the law while other suspects are fired upon. The best way to dodge Googlebot’s bullets is by avoiding tactics that could induce its ire.

Is Lightbox Popup Still Effective For Marketing?

by Melvin · Jul 19, 2011

If you’ve been reading blogs ever since like me, then you probably know that the use of popup lightbox is widely popular. The growth of blogs switching to it and using it has been enormous over the past year and more and more people seemed to be convinced into using it themselves.

But is it still worth using it? That’s my question. Obviously, the use of popup lightbox has something to do with marketing (and ‘psychology’ for some) since some bloggers are reporting a ridiculous increase in conversions by using it. So logically, when people start using the same thing over and over, it becomes saturated and less effective.

What’s a Lightbox Popup?

Lightbox is actually a programming term which is a javascript application used to display images using modal dialogs. In internet marketing, its more of popup that contains something that’s being marketed to the blog’s audience. It could be a form where users can enter their email to subscribe to newsletter, an advertisement or simply just a message that you want to deliver. The idea with it is that its simple, yet elegant enough to capture the attention of the readers.

Before, most blogs are just using it to display pictures from their galleries but now it has become more than just that.

Here are some of the screenshots I’ve taken from some blogs in the internet marketing industry:

Those popups appear when you visit their blog. The behavior is that these lightbox popups would take the focus by putting itself on top of any other elements in the blog. Its highly customizable though. Some bloggers have it appear all the time in the homepage while some just prefer to display it once on first time visitors.

What I think of Lightbox Popups

For a fact, I’ve used lightbox popups before and I even used it here in this blog. I removed it because some of my users were complaining that its kind of obtrusive and they suggested that it might be harming user experience.I listened to them and took it off.

I know a lot of my peers are using it and are reporting decent and better conversions as oppose to not using one. But bare in mind, they’re promoting a heavily marketed product too that I think is widely popular.

I haven’t really had time tracking my conversions closely so I can’t speak that much. But personally I’m thinking that lightbox popups are becoming overused which leads me to think that it ‘might’ not be worth using it anymore. Maybe just like the Amazon orange button when it first started and now its not converting at all anymore. But what do you think?

Memes Can Make Your Blog Money

by Melvin · Jul 16, 2011

This is a guest post by Jessica Wagner

Anybody who takes their blogging seriously doesn’t need to be told about internet memes and their influence on web culture. In fact, many of the more famous memes found on the web owe their popularity to the relaying nature of links through blogs. But maybe you’ve just started out on your blog writing adventure and aren’t too sure what a meme is. Trust me, you’ve seen one before.

An internet meme is any image, video, phrase, concept, or personality that takes on a cult status online. Typically they’re found on humor sites and forums, where they often originate. One of the most popular meme genres is “LOL Cat”, which is simply a series of photos of cats caught in interesting poses or actions with white font text bordering the image, often conveying a phrase the cat in the picture is “saying”. If you still don’t know what a meme is, search for “lol cat” on Google and spend the next ten minutes laughing.

Now that you’ve gotten your giggles out, consider the ways in which getting familiar with memes can boost visits to your blog. These images and videos are some of the most widely searched for entities on the Internet. Perusing sites where “fresh” memes are being created everyday is a great way to familiarize yourself with the latest laughs. Catch one before it catches on and your blog could be a hotbed for traffic.

Internet memes are becoming their own subject to study. You can research the history of the already established volume of existing memes, and read more about their individual creation by visiting sites that categorize them. KnowYourMeme.com is a great place to start.

So how does a blog make money with memes? Like any other way of making money with a blog, it’s an incredibly elusive feat, but pairing your day-to-day musings up with widely popularly images and videos is a great way to get the ball rolling. You’ll never know until you try.

The added bonus of most memes is that they’re often created anonymously via sites like 4chan.org and reddit.com, and are therefore copyright-free. You can use as many as you want without worrying about being emailed a cease and desist letter.

Blog success is simply a matter of popularity. In order to achieve financial success via blogging, you have to understand that in order to be found, you have to associate yourself with what’s being searched for. For those who don’t take the content of their blogs too seriously, even if they take their blogging itself seriously, nothing could bring more people to visit than making memes your mission. Give it try. You have nothing to lose besides a belly full of laughs and empty space on your blog.

Google Plus. That Damn Thing

by Melvin · Jul 13, 2011

I know its too late now to post about what Google Plus is and what I think about it but screw it, I’m gonna post about Google Plus anyway. 🙂

Google Plus was launched last June 28 although it was just like a week after before i got aware of it. Truth is it was just this Saturday that I got an account with it thanks to a very very beautiful lady named Pao (she gave me an invite). So I started using it and exploring it and quite frankly, its confusing. I mean just imagine how its so different coming from a platform like Facebook and then moving on to Google Plus and then thinking it just works like Facebook.

Anyway here’s my Google Plus account and you’re free to add me up if you think I deserve it. 😉 As of writing this blog entry, its already my fourth day using Google+ and I can definitely see its potential and how its so different from Facebook and Twitter as far as usability and worthiness are concern, yet they’re on the same plate when talking about ease of use. I see it as a combination of Facebook and Twitter plus LinkedIn. You can pretty much imagine it as something like Facebook yet with a professional ‘semi-corporate’ touch. With that, I don’t really see myself posting as often as I do on Twitter/Facebook as with Google Plus.

Google Plus for Internet Marketers

Well a lot of marketers and bloggers have already expressed their thoughts on how they can use Google Plus to market more and tap into a more “confined” audience. I would say I can’t agree no more.

Google Plus made it a lot easier to connect to the right people/demographics with the use of circles w/c is basically just like groups. The idea is that when you add people, you are allowed to place them inside these circles. So if 10 of these people are family members, then obviously I would place them inside the family circle and so on for the other groups.

With this you can ‘segment’ people that you are following and are following you and then share to them accordingly. Let’s say I’m voicing in something about internet marketing or a make money online tip, then what I will do is simply just allow people in that ‘circle’ to see it. The same way when you go personal and you don’t want your customers to see what you’re violent ramblings are. Now bare in mind that this is possible to when using Facebook, only that Google Plus has done a good job making this feature much more intuitive.

With that in mind, I’m seeing this tool as something that could potentially be in the same level as emails as far as marketing is concern. Because I feel that right now we’re getting into this point that a lot of people are getting more and more tired of the ‘usual’ marketing stuff and that they’re slowly tuning it out.

So does that mean Google Plus will be a good way to tap into a slightly different way to reach out and market to people? Absolutely! What’s remains unseen is how effective and worthy it could be since right now Google themselves are limiting people who can join and obviously they’re not gonna let marketers take over Google Plus. Google’s definitely not the easiest company to game with.

That’s my take with Google Plus and how it could impact us overall. How about you, what do you think of it? Perhaps, it might be a better idea to add me to Google Plus so I can test it out thoroughly and then let you know my findings. 🙂

Image credit goes to Dream Grow

Give Your Blog A Facelift!

by Melvin · Jul 10, 2011

Starting a blog is the simplest part of the process, but where it becomes difficult is holding onto the following that you have built. With so many people out there blogging, it’s hard to stand out from the white noise of the blogosphere. Many times it’s due to no fault of the blogger and more to do with the competition and viewers wanting something fresh and new. If you’ve noticed a lagging readership and a following that’s dwindling, consider giving your blog a facelift.

Reviving Old Posts

You’ve likely put a lot of resources in time and effort into coming up with each post. Though you’ve used them in the past, if the material is relevant, consider going back through your archives and pulling from the wealth of information that you’ve already offered to past readers. If it was a topical posting, then you probably should consider the shelf-life of it, but there’s no reason why good content shouldn’t continue to work for you. You don’t have to repurpose them and try and pass them off as fresh material. Use Tweet Old Posts. It might end up getting you some extra attention from people who didn’t follow you a year or two ago. The idea is to introduce new readers to older work. You might find that re-posting an article will get more traffic than when you were first starting out.

Socializing

We all know the power of social networking and when you put the power of information in the hands of people, it spreads like wildfire. It’s like taking the pulse of a demographic by getting their opinions trough something like a survey. Companies like Survey Head get in touch with people to see how relevant the content is. You want to be relevant to people and you should expose people to you content and allow the to freely react. By allowing readers the tools, on your site, to share your work with others you’re not only connecting to them but also their networks. It all snowballs from there. Tools like the Facebook Like feature are all about sharing information and making easier for people to interact and share content. Encourage readers to use these features and you’ll be amazed at what it will do for you numbers.

Guest Blogging

This approach works very similarly to social network. It is, in fact, a form of networking. Just as Facebook puts you in touch with a greater readership, making connections in the blogosphere could prove most beneficial for your success. You may have an excellent approach and opinion but you should realize that yours isn’t the only one. Consider this as a kind of free PR. By writing on other blogs as a guest, you’re getting your personality out there and connecting to an entirely new network of users that might not have otherwise ever heard about you. You’re trying to sell yourself and neglecting this avenue is a bad choice. You should also be commenting on other blogs. This is not a waste of time. Stay up to date and active in the blogosphere.

Try some of these approaches and try not to get disheartened. If you’ve been contemplating giving up because you’re just not seeing the excuse to keep it going, use some of these devices and see how it works. It might be just the thing you need to revitalize you lagging numbers and get your blog noticed.