MelvinBlog

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

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The Birthday Bash Contest Winners

The Birthday Bash Contest Winners

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As usual I am again late in issuing contest winners. I was very busy with my personal life and I’m very sorry for having this one a little late.

Overall the contest got about 25 participants for 12 prizes up for grabs which means the odds for winning is very very high. Anyway I have used random.org for the results and here are the screenshots (the first three are the winners):

Feed Winners

feed-winners

Tweet Winners

tweetwinners

Stumble Winners

stumblewinners

Blogroll Winners

blogrollwinners1

………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Again the first 3 people listed in the screenshots are the winners. Just respond to this comment form to confirm your winnings. After that I would hook you up w/the sponsors of the contest and they will send you the prizes directly. DON’t contact me! for the sake of life If you don’t respond in comments here for the next 2 days, I would pick another winner. Again I would like to thank the sponsors, if not for them our small contest wouldn’t be possible. I would also like to extend my hands to those who have participated and hopefully you don’t unsubscribe in the near future. 🙂

Promoting Email Submits? Don’t!

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affiliate fraud Pictures, Images and Photos

When every newcomer enters the world of affiliate marketing, he’s normally advised to try out the low-risk email submit types of offers. Why not, I mean email submits are pretty easy to convert. All you need to get a lead is an email of a customer. Also you don’t need to compete for those very high keyword competing keywords Promoting email submits ‘could’ really be the way to start for newbies.

Anyway here in this blog I have written some email submit walkthroughs that I have done (which has become outdated already). The last successful email submit campaign I had was last year when I heavily promoted the Obama vs. McCain thing. The campaign nearly brought me $20+ for almost 1 1/2 straight months and I was promoting them through Copeac.

Just to let you guys know email submits work this way. The merchant  ‘is ‘said’ to pay affiliates (us) $1+ for every email submit lead. The truth behind the offer is that when someone enters his email, he is then presented to 20+ more incentivized offers which the merchant runs as an affiliate as well. Affiliates get scrubbed when the certain customer enters his email but never completed 6-7 more offers (both paid and free offers). On some shitty email submits offers, they even demand 15-20 offers to be completed before they even get you the $1.50 per lead! Sucks? Yes it does!

For the customer’s side (our lead) here is how it goes.  So what is going to happen about that “free” something on email submit? Well as I’ve said they’d be entered into a larger plethora of offers in which in order to get that freebie, they have to complete those. To be able to complete, they have to purchase something and again in the end, it’s like they just paid  that free stuff.

Convert2Media founder Ruck told me in their IRC channel that these types of offers are something that they don’t have control at. So the best thing they did is just to eliminate all email and zip submit offers. If you look around the other affiliate networks, Copeac has taken down all of them as well, Market Leverage on the other hand has lessened theirs. It seems like the once mighty and in-demand type of offer has rapidly plunged down.

So to end this one is it still worth promoting email and zip submit offers? Hmmm, partly? Well if you could go for other higher converting offers that don’t scrub your balls that much then why not just go for them instead? I would very much love to hear your opinion about it

Link Lovin’ And Some Announcements

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Hi guys, another great week here in Melvin Blog and it means its time for another Link Love (words borrowed from Net Fool 🙂 ).

Before everything starts here. Let me remind everyone that there’s a small contest running here in MelvinBlog that would end at the end of this month. The contest has 12 great prizes up for grabs and there are 12 participants thus far. If the contest ends today, no doubt everyone is bound to win! Make sure to check it out.

So this week has been great as I can read a lot of blogs now because my summer vacation has started. A lot of great posts have been produced this week and here they are:

Shoemoney’s post discusses a very interesting topic which I think is a must read for all make money online blogger. Balkhis (or his wife?) puts up a nice post about how blogs and online presence could influence your life. My buddy Carl does a list of how a banner can totally suck someone’s eye. Tom from SOB writes a very realistic article about stuffs that are way more important than a blog and lastly Caroline gives her readers some tips on monetizing email lists.

Just Acquired AffiliateHat.com

Well in a seemingly fast pace of life, I just acquired an affiliate marketing blog. The former owner was a great friend of mine who happened to be real lazy in typing posts. Brim is a super affiliate and obviously who would want to exert more effort on something that would give lesser money? Just in case you don’t know, the blog is an affiliate marketing blog that focuses more on newbies trying to get off the ground and fly them to the outerspace. joking… Well I really like to domain name of it and now that I have it I am so excited. Because I was, I immediately replaced the generic ugly looking theme with the premium UBT theme and wrote the first post. I have also fetched some freelance writers to write for the blog since I couldn’t afford to write on two blogs with almost same topic. But anyway I would still love to have writers, so if you write about that certain topic you can mail me using my contact form with your rates and samples. If you feel it’s a nice blog, then feel free to subscribe to it. 🙂

Replying To Every Comments Is Silly!

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Interacting with your readers is one thing that makes a blog a tight community. As what has been said a thousand times, blogging is a two way process, providing something, and getting feedback. So in short, you cannot just provide good content and then take a nap. Your readers sure have their say, maybe they couldn’t understand something or want more clarifications. Either way, this is where replying to them takes place.

While I do reply to 15-35% of comments in this blog, I think replying to each and every comment is silly! Why? Simply it’s because you really don’t have to most of the times. I find it ridiculous when a blogger responds to all comments (including trivial comments). I read Neil Patel’s blog and to be frank I enjoy reading it. But I just don’t get why he needs to reply to all comments he receives. I also have done a guest post on Yan’s blog about reputation management. I was asked by him as well to reply to every comments, so I did (not all comments though). Anyway I know 60% wouldn’t agree on me but I just think I have these 4 reasons why I think it’s silly and here they are:

  1. Not all comments add value – Comments like “been here, nice blog” or “thanks for this informative post” are no way can be considered as useless comments. In fact, it always feels good when someone finds your article great. But, it doesn’t add value! I feel I could always go by not saying “you’re welcome”. Depends on my mood, though. 🙂
  2. 85% don’t even get back to your post – The truth about bloggers is that, they bounce so fast. I mean because they want to comment on as many blogs as they can, they don’t really pay much attention to the post and would just rather agree on it immediately or say thank you. So because of it, they wouldn’t even be able to read your reply. In this case, I always look whether someone is subscribed to the comments via email (always make sure it’s unchecked). In that way, I would know if the guy is really waiting for a reply or not.
  3. It inflates your no.of comments per post – In my previous post about whether comments could justify the success of the blog, I tackled that because some of the bloggers reply to every comments, it makes their blog’s community so huge. I’m not really against it but I think it can have a negative impact on a blog because the blogger may have been wasting his time replying to all comments instead of promoting his blog more.
  4. Face it, not all your posts can be liked! – Well in my blog’s case, I have a ton of personal posts rather than helpful posts. I understand that by posting something about my crush, or my school life, it would tune out some of the readers. You see, people always expect something from your blog. If they are into blogging and they think you could help them but suddenly they’ve read an affiliate marketing article, it’s very likely that they wouldn’t get it and won’t respond. Same with contest posts. They rack a hundred comments but that doesn’t justify the popularity of a blog.

Overall the number of comments is really a nice way to dress your blog up and have a nice community. It attracts readers, advertisers and so on. But I think it goes more than just that. If you could possibly work more on other important things that would benefit your blog then that would be nicer than just wasting your time replying to each and every comment, even though you know its just a spam. What do you think? Or maybe am I missing something?

MelvinBlog Dot Com’s Birthday Bash

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Well like what I mentioned in my last post there is going to be a ‘lil’ contest here in my blog because I just celebrated my birthday yesterday. 🙂 Anyways the contest is more of a “giving away” thing rather than the usual month-long, so many requirements type of contest. So quickly I’ll start explaining the mechanics.

The contest would run for only 10 days (which ends at May 1 2009). The contest is very easy, for you to win you just need to do the following:

  • Subscribe to RSS via email – This one is open only to new email subscribers so if you’re kinda an old subscriber unfortunately you are not qualified. Why? It gives equal chances to everyone. New subscribers would have an easier time winning because they don’t need to slug it out against the other one who subscribed before.
  • Follow me at twitter and retweet ““I just entered to win prizes from MelvinBlog.com! You can too, just follow @melvinblog and retweet http://xr.com/melvinblog” “. – This one is open for everyone. If you’re following me for a long time all you have to do then is retweet and you’d be fine. For new ones it’s easy as well. Again just follow me and retweet.
  • Blogroll Me! – If you can put me in your blogroll, then thats another way to win. Everyone is welcome to do this but there are restrictions. Your blog must have at least 20 rss subscribers and must be at least 3 months old. This prevents retards from creating a new blogger blog just to put my link there and gain an entry here.
  • Write a short review on my blog on Stumbleupon – Well its easy, all you have to do is click this link and write your brief review about melvinblog.com. It could contain constructive criticisms and anything that doesn’t contain slang terms. 🙂

Are you required to do all? No, but of course if you can do most then it could be better. There will be 12 prizes up for grabs, 3 for each category and while I did say this is a small contest, it doesn’t mean the prizes are crappy ass. I would rather show it to you rather than put the $$$ value here Look over:

Twitter Contest

Feed Contest

Blogroll Contest

Stumbling Contest

Flip Ace

$10

Flipping Sparks

$10

Work Smart, Get Rich

Flipping Sparks

Ultimate Blogging Theme

Flip Ace

1000 Entrecard Credits

1000 Entrecard Credits

Work Smart, Get Rich

1000 Entrecard Credits

So to add, everyone is eligible for only one prize per category meaning you can’t win twice in stumbling contest, but you could win twice or thrice in the overall contest. All entries would be drawn using the ever famous randomizer but don’t worry, this blog isn’t shoemoney or chow’s blog so the number of entries wouldn’t be so high whch means you have bigger chances of winning something. The prizes are listed in order so you’re not allowed to pick your own prize. Now as I promised the prizes aren’t crappy. Here’s a little bio of what the prizes are and the one that gives it:

  • Flip Ace (e-book) – Everyone who reads this blog knows Jason Pereira. He is the former owner of The University Kid and he’s been known  well to produce high quality content for the blog and for the info products that he sells. Now he runs Make Money Dynamo where he know shares some of his secrets in making money online. Flip Ace is basically an info product about creating and selling websites.
  • Work Smart, Get Rich (e-book)- The creator of this one is the pal of the former one, Jim Reagan. Jim is the owner of the famous Net Fool which blogs about making money as well. Don’t get him wrong, his blog is followed by a thousand of readers who were obviously satisfied by his works. His ebook is about making money online by working the right way.
  • Flipping Spark (e-book) – Flipping Spark is an ebook covering site flipping from Desmond Ong. He blogs at DesmondBlog.com where he shares his knowledge with site flipping. His latest achievement was selling his former site for $2000 for a very little work on his part
  • 2 $10 – Is sponsored by your one and only Melvin, the owner of this blog. I could’ve had certainly sponsored more if not for paypal limiting and locking my account.
  • Ultimate Blogging Theme – UBT is just simply the theme of the ever so famous Kid Blogger Carl Ocab. Carl ranks good for some really competitive keywords and he’s one of the younger bloggers that earns so much with his blog. Valued at guess what? 🙂
  • Entrecard Credits – A lot of people think Entrecard is useless but its not. Well how would you like a PR2 link for some credits eh? I have over 10,000 credits in my account and there’s a reason, for sponsoring contests. Glad we have blogtactic, contesthunter to sponsor some of their wealth here.

The sponsors of the contest are those reputable people that I have known for quite a while. Trust me, each of their info products are the ones that could very much help you start making dimes on the internet.  The contest goes as easy as that. No worries about needing to blog about me in your blog or stuffs like that. To add some more excitement, three lucky readers/commenters would be able to get free text sponsorships each (worth $30) for one month. The text sponsorship is in demand in this blog and maybe there’s a reason. 😉 Anyway for commenters, you have to specify the account you used in joining in your comments. Here’s an example:

Bilo: Hey dude I joined your contest. here’s my twitter account: @bilo, my stumbleupon username: bilo.stumbleupon.com, the email add I used to subscribe: bilo@bilo.com, and the site where I have placed the link: bilo.com

Well I guess everything has been explained well and good luck to everyone. Questions?

March Traffic, Earning Details & Announcements

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So it’s been a long time since I have done this one here so I will be writing one now. The reasons why I don’t do the usual monthly recap are:  1) my blog isn’t really wrecking high revenue numbers, 2) I don’t have the time to do this. But now I have the time so I just thought I would put an effort to do a recap of what has happened the past month. So here it is without much further fluff:

Traffic & Growth Related Details
  • Alexa Rank – 144,726
  • Technorati – 55,363
  • Average Uniques – 220
  • Average Pageviews – 620
  • RSS – 150
  • Pagerank – 0

The blog stat-wise has actually declined from almost everything except feed subscribers. I’ve been working so hard on getting returning visitors by forum interaction and commenting around. The pageviews is more than 2 times of what the average unique visitor is. Maybe it’s because of some folks who keep refreshing the page because they are waiting for a new post, LOL> 🙂 As usual, Pagerank is still 0 as I just implemented the canonicalization thing last month and I am hoping that it would get something on the next update.

Blog Revenue Details
  • Text, Sponsored Links – $30
  • 125X125 Banner Sponsorship – $80
  • 468X60 – $50
  • Paid Reviews – $50

As usual the blog almost had a sold out advertising spot (despite me refusing to

blog-earnings

use OIO). The text links are so cheap ($5) that a lot of dudes on digitalpoint forum don’t even ask for stats. 🙂 The popular banners at the sidebar is sold out as well. The premium banner at the top has 2 rotations each up for $25 and fortunately it’s taken also (thanks to the reverse funnel guys, 😉 ). I got 2 paid reviews this month and I gave discount on that one. Yes, I give discounts! The economy is tough so I understand that a lot of marketers are skeptic to spend. As much as possible, I give them 10-50% on the first month so they could decide whether the exposure fits well. Don’t be a moron dude, don’t sell your ad spot for $40/month if your Alexa is over 500,000 and you just get 1-2 comments per post.

As this blog is relatively small, I don’t spend much expenses here more than just the hosting and the flip-flops I use while typing here. 🙂 Unfortunately I have 5-6 other websites that aren’t making any revenue as of now so the income is good to cover up other expenses from failed investments startup investments.

What’s up this April & May?

Well I have done a couple of guest posts on different types of blogs w/different types of audience. I conclude it’s doing good actually because it kept my traffic steady while my blog is in lull. I still have about 5 more guest posts to issue so just look around me on other blogs. Also, you may want to greet me. 🙂 April 21 is going to be my 18th birthday and I am planning to hold a small but very nice contest here in Melvin Blog wherein everyone can almost win! Watch out for that! Anyway if you would like to send me something, like a car or a yacht just use a contact form. But don’t worry I accept small gifts like shirts, usb drives, steaks or any tangibles. LOL, just joking. You’re presence is more than enough!

Failures That I Implemented in This Blog…

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So you probably have read it everywhere. A lot of people are really open into sharing their mistakes and faults with their business. Why? Because it takes so much interest from the readers. Readers are usually interested about these things and so I think I need to create my list as well. 🙂

But with a twist. I think if I would put a general list then it would quickly grow up to over 200 major failures. And so I would limit it to this specific blog known as melvin blog. Here they are (no order):

  1. Putting a pop-up ad on this blog –> Not a lot of you might have noticed it but I actually did it about 2-3 months after I started. The pop-up geographically targets US, canada visitors so traffic outside those countries wouldn’t experience it. After 2 months it drew over $10 before I learned the company actually is on hiatus for about 1 year. sucks!
  2. Putting an incentives page –> The page was actually still active and is found on /incentives of the blog. The initial thought was I would present incentivizable offers and have people sign to it and get paid (like gpt sites). It’s only at the end that I learned that merchants were scrubbing most of the leads and actually bots taking over the chatbox. 🙁 In the end I’ve spent $20 and barely made $5.
  3. WidgetSucks Experiment –> Well I thought this one is gonna be successful but its not. I implemented it for 2 months and never barely made a dollar with it. I am getting the impressions but for some reasons its not matching with the Widgetbucks stats. Failed!
  4. Thinking this blog was popular –> When the blog was on its peak during September and October, I almost neglected it. I thought “oh wow, my blog is now popular like a rockstar!” I am getting great number of responses and sold out ad spots as well. It wasn’t until November that I realized I lost 2/4 of my readers (for not posting useful stuffs) and 3/4 advertisers…
  5. Selling the blog on DP –> I’ll tell you what, the reason I actually had thoughts of selling the blog was because I eagerly want to have macbook Air before january this year.. Because I am idiot I listed it in DP instead of Sitepoint. The maximum bid I got there is a lil over $100! wtf!
  6. Not Canonicalizing –> It wasn’t until last month that I found out my url isn’t canonicalized. Hmm, thats why my pr is 0!

Well they say you learn from mistakes and failures. But I say I enjoy mistakes and failures after I actually realized how pointless those mistakes are. Sure it could be fun but I guess sometimes we have to be wary because it could hurt us sometimes not just financially. How about you and your blog, maybe you can tell your own story as well!

I learned my lesson!