MelvinBlog

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

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I’m Making Money Online

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Update: I am still accepting sponsors, so if you are godly then you can contact me

Back to the days when I was starting out my venture on making money online, friends usually ask me “What the heck are you doing bro?” I normally respond and say “Im trying to make money online. They didn’t mind and never asked a follow up questions anymore.

So some time early this year and recently I was showing them some checks and moneys from affiliate programs and my records on paypal and that’s the only time they have got interested into what I am doing. Problem is, they ask me now seriously. How did you do it? How are you doing it? How can I do it also? Can I also get rich doing that? I respond by saying “I do affiliate marketing, I promote other people’s product and get paid by commissions”. Then they respond with so many many more follow up questions. Because for them it’s hard to understand technical terms such as CPA, CPL, Adwords, Squeeze page and so. Now I want to ask you guys, how would you explain this to someone who knows literally nothing about internet marketing. I mean when they ask you “How do you make money online and how can I too?” How can you answer them (meaningful answer that would enlighten them and not confuse them) in less than 5 sentences?

Ok, actually this one is a little contest. Everyone is running big contest just to boost their feeds and I don’t want to be the same with them. This one is just a small contest with very small prices (can’t even see them). And here are the prices first:

  • 2 copies of how a newbie could make “$500 a month in affiliate marketing sponsored by Simple Cash Blog.
  • 1 copy of the “Atomic blogging ebook” which I have won in the contest
  • Mega PLR package hosted by Me… 😉
  • Update 3 links for 1month free from Zigtur
  • Adsense Profit Unleashed by Zigtur Again
  • 2 125X125 ads at the sidebar
  • 5 text-links at the sidebar

As you can see I did not even include the price for the prizes. Let the quality do the talking. 😉 You see, just a very little contest that benefits other people and great value of prices. What do you have to do to get points?

  • Answer the question – Obviously this is what the contest is all about, right? This would not benefit me, but others who have very little knowledge of this one. Only 1 answer please. 5 points + 5 to the best answer.
  • Stumble this post – Obviously I was getting very little traffic from social media except reddit so maybe you can help me. 3 points
  • Linkback from this one – 2 points

As you can see I didn’t even include you subscribing to my feed because I know you guys are subscribed. But if you aren’t the best way to give back is to subscribe to my feed. Another way of gaining points also is by signing here (available only to United States and Canada)

That’s it. Everything would be randomized and the higher the points the better the chances of winning. 10 winners will be taken and I will post the result here next week since my exams are pretty close. Goodluck to everyone and happy blogging… 😉

Laying Out My Initial Plans

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Most of the contestants for the blogging idol have already revealed what they are planning to do to gain rss subscribers on the first week. I have read most of it and I can say that they really have a nice plan to gain subscribers. Today I am going to share with you what are my initial plans that I have thought of. Of course writing good content, doing some forum promotions and others stuffs are obvious. My thoughts are a bit of out of box but I think is very very effective. So how do I start promoting this feed? Well I have started doing it offline. 😉 But of course I also had some great plans for online promotion

  1. Begging – yeah I am going to admit this one is a little unorthodox. But so what? I did some statements that would surely touch the readers heart on some discussion sites. Of course I made sure the statements wouldn’t look exaggerating to them. So where did I do it? First is Smorty Forums. I have a pretty good image there as I have helped a lot of people earn (or at least what i think). Another is in the Blogcatalog discussion area. Obviously Blogcatalog is a high-trafficked site averaging about 50,000 page views per day. The problem there is that all members want to take the spotlight so if you had posted there, come back after 2 minutes and you’ll see that you’re thread is already in the second page.
  2. The family and friends – this one is so easy to understand. The great thing here is that the more friends you have the more chances that there are more who will subscribe to your feed. Filipinos are very close to each other and it’s not hard to see why they would do what you requested for.
  3. Using my University – As I have said before I am an officer of an organization in our university. And not that just I am an officer, I also have a huge influence all throughout the org. So the thing would be simple, you’ll ask everyone in the IT and CS department as well as the students to subscribe.
  4. Giving away free stuffs! – Here in Philippines, people hold a lot of bloggers party. And I have a lots of giveaway cards printed that has my feed address at the back asking to subscribe. Now what do I say about Filipino people?

Right now, as the contest goes on I am seeing how little, I mean very little, a bloggers chance are. But this does not stop me from getting motivated! This is a great challenge for me and on how can I improve things that I am not really an expert in. So far I only had a 20+ increase in my feed count but I am very optimistic. How about you? How motivated are you? Well, if you are, then you may like to subscribe to my feed. 🙂

Your Face In Your Blog!

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So today I was reading doshdosh and again I have noticed Maki still not putting his face in his blog. Actually I know so much that Maki loves anime and have nothing against it. However I always feel that having your picture in your blog helps. Well I think I have said last time that blogs represent yourself and most of the times, the content, picture reflects to ourselves. Having your own picture in your blog specifically in the about page helps the readers value your blog more. I think one of the first pages that a visitor would read in your blog is your about page and what would you think he will think upon seeing a cartoon or no picture? Hmm..

I can’t argue with DoshDosh. It’s an established site that has given everyone a great help. In fact it’s one of my favorite blogs (a blog I read every morning). With Maki, he already had set his own standard of putting anime girls (sexy & yummy) and anime pictures in his blog and you can see that the readers don’t bother about it. For smaller blogs, it’s really important to have your face there. In case you’re trying to imitate him or just wanting to be anonymous, I’m very sure you’ll not duplicate Maki’s success. I really really do not see reason/s why you should not put a picture of you on your blog. Just look around, Chow being evil is being punctuated by his picture, Shoemoney has his every friday and almost everyone is proud of their face. And i’m not even talking about being gorgeous or ugly 😉

If you do not have a face in your blog, then how can you interact face to face with them? Or could you tell me why you don’t have a picture of yours and maybe explain your side.

RevResponse Looks Good!

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So last Monday I was contacted by a friend highly recommending RevResponse Program. Sure I know this one seeing on some established blogs. I have also seen some post about it. After signing I immediately play with it and have seen that they are giving everyone a lot of potential in making money with this program. Actually after some days of experimenting with it I’m not surprised to see that I already have incurred $30  for just 3 days.

Before everything else what is RevResponse? RevResponse is simply a site that supplies free white papers and catalogs and let publishers get compensated for giving them so. They are working on a CPA basis. It’s very attractive because it’s for free. You can get paid for giving your audience free resources. How much do they pay? They pay $1.50 per complete signup and usually some advertisers are paying more depending on your conversions. Revresponse offers a lot of free resources in different industry but most are business related.

Actually they require nothing for signup. No minimum traffic or whatsoever. In terms of placing banners they do the whole process for you. The banners are javascript so it surely would take a slight toll on your site. Another thing is that RevResponse gives you a unique site for promotion of all this catalogs. It is something like “http://publishername.tradepub.com. In my case it looks like this. So overall I can conclude that it’s a good program. The thing here is that most people love free resources and would surely and easily bite in this offer very easy. The only thing that I will do now is wait for my payment. They pay every 45 days in which for me is not good. 🙁 All in all I don’t see anything wrong the program. How about you? You read this blog everyday and maybe you can tell me something more about Revresponse!

I Forgot The Top Commenters!

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Everyone in the blogosphere seems to be talking about the launch of Blogging Idol. Of course I know everyone is getting themselves ready to launch their attacks to gain rss subscribers. I’m not gonna talk about the competition. Today I am giving something away to the top commentators last month. As you may have remembered I told you that I’m giving something for those people who have commented even w/an almost unseen comment form. So I just feel they deserve to get credited for doing so. So here are the top commenters for last month

As you can see, the criteria of top commenters is based per month. BUT it isn’t just end there. I have an algorithm done by a friend that detects people who are just running up their comments. As I have said before I’m not strict in comments but of course I don’t tolerate trolls. Another thing to add is that I have the editorial decision to remove a commentator who is sporting a spammy keyword. That’s why I always believe that when you put a comment, then you might as well want your name to get credited for it. For winners to claim your prizes shoot me a mail or a comment stating you’re email address. Don’t forget to put [@] to avoid spam on your inbox.

And before I forgot of course, everyone is doing it so do I. I’m not forcing you but see I can say I have something to be proud of my content. You can say I’m great, I’m sloppy, I’m lazy, I’m not ugly, but the best thing you can do is say nothing and subscribe to my feed. 😉

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What’s up Max Banner Ads!

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So everyone seems to be intrigued with this new plugin from Maxpress. Max Banner Ads is a plugin that makes it very easy to add and rotate banners in your wordpress blog. The good thing is you don’t need to alter any codes in your theme. Sounds good right? That is just the prelude. Another thing that it does is that it automatically tracks the statistics of the specific banner. It shows the impression, CTR and so on. After reading Chow’s post about it I immediately take a look at the site, grab my copy of it and installed it.

As you can see, the plugin automatically lets you add banners from almost everywhere in your site.  You can rotate as many as you want. And add the fact that it is free. Yes, it’s free. So you’re thinking now everything about it is positive? Well not quite. The plugin after activating it, actually is not still activated. You will be asked to subscribe to Maxpress newsletter, and it’s not optional. If you don’t want to, then you cannot use the plugin! For me I find very annoying. That simple subscription would probably have a huge impact on those who want to use the plugin. Another thing is that under the banner there is a link ala Project Wonderful. As of now I haven’t tried if you can remove the linkback to their site. Geez…

So all in all I find this plugin still useful. Though, OIO direct is still better by far, Max Banner Ads is free and would be very beneficial to those who do not have a $37. Yes, the subscription looks spammy and the linkback is annoying but sure the plugin worths a great look. If you have any other things to say about this plugin then say it…

What Niche to Dominate (Doing a Research)

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This is the first part of the series Niche Marketing (or whatever name you may call it) which I will be discussing this month up to July. Everything stated here is based on my experience and WILL NOT guarantee anything. However you can always put you’re views on it and I’ll be glad to know it.

One of the first things to do when you try out affiliate marketing is to make a simple research on what product to promote. Though it may sound very easy, the truth is, it is REALLY easy. Many of us do our research differently. But here I am going to show how I do mine.

So before can even start affiliate marketing, you need first to find products to promote. You’ll be needing to narrow down your choices of what niche you are going to promote. You have to find out what is hot, what people are exactly looking about and what they are prepared to buy. The best thing about the world wide web is that it gives is us a free market research. So what I’m talking about here is 43things.com

43things.com is one of the better sites for marketers like us. This is where people put things that they want, things that they crave for.  The thing here is that if people desperately want it, they are willing to pay for it.  43things.com operates on what is called tagging system. The tags there vary. Some are written big, some are underlined, others are small.

Any of the tags can be promoted. It just depends on what you feel suits you more. You can put up a list of the tags and you can narrow down and promote. The bigger and more bold the tag, the higher the number of people who are demanding information. It’s always advisable to promote anything outside internet marketing (at least that’s what I feel and do). You can do it very easy just be focused.

Another great tool is Yahoo Answers! Members there post public questions. All can certainly answer the question but at the end only one answer can be said the best one. The whole point of this from a marketer’s perspective is that you can look through the archives of questions, and find questions that are being asked on a regular basis. It all helps to give you an overview of the type of topics people need information on, as well as narrowing it down to specifics if there are multiple entries of the same question. Answer a question that appears over and over and you have an insane hot report on your hands.

The last thing is looking for stats. One great example of an affiliate program that gives stats is Clickbank. Clickbank is very popular (that’s why I don’t use it). You can browse Clickbank and look for your selected niche and the products under it. There you can easily see the best sellers, high converting products and distinguish them for crap products. There are many information provided as well such as how much you are going to paid, tools they provide and so on.

So that’s it. Of course others are common sense so you can be able to do it yourself. Just remember that there isn’t such a thing as perfect. Research is very important and if you’ve done it properly then there will be a demand.