MelvinBlog

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

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Shoemoney Has A New Theme

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Well the ever famous Shoemoney has his theme get tweaked a little. Though he never announced it, it’s obvious. He has been promoting his newsletters and well this is the first time he has done this one. If you feel you will benefit from it, then signing up is a must.

Well the blog’s theme is nice but well I still believe the old one is better. You can see his blog have it’s own frontpage wherein the three subheaders are shown whereas it isn’t when you’re reading the post on the link directly. I got some reasons why the former theme was better

  • Better Width, Better Spacing – In his previous template he had everything extended. In this recent one he had a margin at both sides. Well IMHO the better the spacing the better it looks…
  • No threaded comments anymore – Though this one can be installed, I still think the threaded comments is one of the better part of commenting system of blogs. In this blog there is no threaded plugin because it’s not functioning well. So while removing the threaded plugin can be a wise move to lessen junk comments, I can say it’s still valuable. Large blogs like shoemoney aren’t just blogs. They are like forums. People talk in it, exchange their 2 cents and well criticize each other. Thats why I feel it’s important.
  • Looks like MMO blog – With the new theme, shoe’s blog has become like most “make money online” blogs there. The structure reminds me of most mmo (junk) blogs in the industry. Shoe never claimed his blog as mmo neither as a “blogging know how-to” blog.

Well a new theme is a fresh start. Sometimes it helps your readers feel more refreshing. I don’t know, maybe Im the only one thinking the old theme of shoe was better. How bout you, do you think your theme is that good?

Ad Spots/Types I Don’t Think Look Good For Readers

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Well as you can see I am almost pretty sold out on private ads. Maybe that’s because of the super duper affordable but quality advertising I am giving them. 😉 There are some who have booked it for long term. If you are interested in advertising (I know you’re not!), look at the advertising page.

So, selling ad spots depends on the owner. You can oversell every space on your blog to make money. Just look the evil Chow and the number of ads on his site. But of course sometimes this may hurt your readership (in some cases they dont). Well, these are the spots and/or type of ads that I hate:

  • Stripe Ads – I will never consider this one. On older browsers, sites that have stripes do not look well. But well even though if everyone is using Firefox, I wouldn’t still consider it. For me it’s annoying and would hurt your readers (literally)
  • Leaderboard – Although I have used it in my basketball blog, it isn’t really much of a great choice I think. After all it’s very HUGE and the focus of your reader will instead shift to the leader one.
  • 300X250 – Again Chow and some guys like Tyler Cruz and Carl Ocab are selling this spot. Why I don’t think its good? Well because oftentimes people will wonder what’s the relation of that pic/ad to the certain post! Your readers will wonder what is it for and it’s not so good for branding. Will never try it!
  • Peel away Ads – For some other people they have had some success with it but for me it’s like giving almost 1/4 of your blog to advertising. Although it’s not as intrusive as others, I have received feedbacks that it slows down your blog/site. Anything that makes a site slow is BAD!

That’s it for now. Maybe someday I can appreciate those spots and start thinking of selling them (no way!) But well it depends on people and needs. Maybe if I need it badly to buy me a house and lot then I would consider it. 🙂

Sphinn Is More Than A Social Network

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SphinnLike any other stuffs in the world, social networks have increased a lot these days. You can submit your own content, find great discussions and chunk in with a lot of traffic. But well not all managed to create a buzz for themselves. So now I am going to talk about Sphinn, a social network for everyone who is involve in internet marketing, SEO, and blogging and so. Sphinn probably is one of my big favorites. It is owned by SEO godfather Danny Sullivan. They are like digg (not as polluted though) wherein you can submit your content. People who like it will sphinn it and those who do not will bury it.

One thing with I like with Sphinn is that it’s very educational and you can learn a lot from it. Before I used to jack up my content there and hope for a share of traffic. When you look at Sphinn, it has a lot of interesting posts there gathered and compiled. Unlike Digg who can easily be gamed, Sphinn prefers to be different. I like the way they nofollow links from the sites that do not hit the frontpage. It’s a great way to measure the quality of the articles. Most of the articles and entries there are about SEO and SEM which I am very interested about.

Oh well… Maybe someday they can release a book with the compilations of the best entries. Just my 2 cents

CPM Ads: Underrated MoneyMaker

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I often hear questions in forums that say “I have the traffic but little income from my blog”. Well as what I have observed people saying it, are people who are putting their earnings largely on Adsense. Though Adsense has had been a great money maker for some, almost 85% of people in this world are still not successful from using it… So getting back from the statement, I always answer “try CPM ads”. CPM stands for Cost per Millie, meaning you are gonna paid per 1000 impression. Take note, impression is not unique visitors, its pageviews!

So why do I think it’s an underrated moneymaker? Well just look. If you’re blog is getting about the normal 5000 uniques a month and say 12000 pageviews, then you’re on your way to $30 per month. People oftentimes think of selling direct ad sales but sometimes you cannot find anyone who will buy it. Especially if you’re blog is something very unrelated to internet marketing, then chances are people will notcare about your ad space. With CPM ads you can make money easily. And the sky is the limit. On my basketball blog, I had a large leaderboard CPM banner at the top that really pays me well. What I have done is I have ordered a cheap 100,000 US traffic. And with some advertisers paying up to $4 per cpm (US based), thats a really great deal for me. And that’s just the prelude. You can do more, “read more buttons” hot or not, voting scripts, and etc) Just do note that some CPM networks are very strict with some shady techniques and you’re account can be terminated, do it at your own risk!

Well one thing famous bloggers don’t like CPM is that it gives user a bad experience. Oftentimes ads are not good to user experience because they are unrelated. ANother is that sometimes they show flash ads that slows down your site! They also take a huge chunk of your income, 30-40%. Sites like Chow and Problogger could have had tripled their earnings that easy. But well it’s really bad to branding so I guess theirs no way they would try putting CPM ads on their sites…

How about you how do you find CPM ads? Have you considered trying and using them?

The History of America

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A lot of countries for sure are envious on how successful and rich and established a country like America is. Most of the countries here in Asia even have deteriorated America before with all those terrorism attacks and so. But do you know guys that America like any other successful people and things have started in dust and have struggled immensely before becoming very successful? Well, not many know that! Here’s a video that explains how:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLzo9pOXa-s

What Makes You Rich The Most?

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So obviously you didn’t came here saying blogging is your primary source of income right? Also you’re not planning to do it by blogging. I was looking at different blogs and different people and seeing they were making a lot of money doing things very far from blogging. We all know it’s impossible to make a living out of blogging. Yes, some people do it, name them, Darren Rowse, John Chow and more. But the thing is its very hard to duplicate the feat they have achieved. When they started, they were not so many people doing it so they were getting a lot of attention and exposure. Today, you can always write a great post and no one can still read it. That’s how www is very competitive right now.

Back to the question, what’s the thing that had made you tons of money? or maybe the most money? Some do well in joint ventures, freelancing, offering professional services and so. As many of you know, I had made some success with Affiliate Marketing. Isn’t really big, but a three figure income a month is always better than nothing. And besides that is doing it part-time. You can see, people get what they want based on how focused and determined they are. Most people fail because they tend to do tons of things at once and the result is they never accomplished any of them. My word of advice is, do what you think you’re strength is! You code superbly, then why linger with affiliate marketing? You write like a god, then why not go with freelancing? For me it’s just how those things work. Many people see always the value of having multiple streams of income but what they never see is if they can sustain positive results from them or just waste their time and effort.

How bout you? What makes you rich the most? I know you have blogs (and you won’t be reading these if you don’t have one) and that’s what you share with your readers (and that’s what pay your bills and hosting). Maybe you can share it.

7 Tips Before buying an Adspot on Any Site/Blog

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I’m really skeptic about accepting guest posts here but w/me being stucked on my schedules, I would consider accepting some.

In this competitive world ,everyone wants to promote his site. People use various methods for the cause. But the best way is paid advertising. Although advertising blindly may result in nothing but loss of money. So here are some tips which every advertiser should follow before advertising on any blog/site

  1. Create a Good Banner :- This is a point which most of the advertisers miss out .But having a good banner is equally essential as choosing a good place to advertise. Having an attractive banner results in more visits to your site/product.P.S If you are not good in designing then you can get your banners designed at Digital Point Forums at cheap rates.
  2. Keep Up with your niche :- The point becomes quite clear from its heading itself.Advertise on sites related to your product/site. e.g advertising on a blog writing about WebDesign having a Unique Visitors of 100 daily will give you better results than a site about gardening and getting 1000’s of Unique Visits daily.
  3. Get the Stats :- Before advertising contact the owner or the admin of that site.Ask the site statistics like Monthly Visitors , Page Views etc. Dont simply trust the written stats ,ask for screenshots for stats and if possible ask for public stats URL (in case of sitemeter and some other statistic service which support it ) to test it yourself as screenshots can be faked.
  4. Not just the Visits :- While checking the stats, just not ask for number of visitors ,bounce rate and average time spent by a visitor. Average time is very important as the visits may be of low quality.Dont forget to check the alexa rank,incoming links, yahoo domain links.Use plugins like SEO Quake or Search Status to get important informations about the sites.
  5. Position of Ad :- Ensure that your ad is on a good position.Header ads perform better than sidebar and footer ads in most cases.
  6. Posting Frequency – Make sure you see if the blog you are advertising on has a high of posting frequency. More posts will result in more visitors automatically.
  7. Go for trials :- If you are not yet sure about a site/blog’s performance then go for a paid trial ad.You can get it for 1 or 2 days and can pay the site owner a small amount of fee for it.If you are satisfied with the amount of visits you get , then you can go and buy ad for long term.Better lose 10$ then 300$

This is a guest post Written by Siddharth from Technoworld