MelvinBlog

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

Blogging Experience

Are You Slacking Just Because It’s Holiday?

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With the Christmas getting closer and closer, I know most people are slacking, relaxing and have stopped working on generating more income for themselves. I know most are busy shopping and thinking of what to do this holiday season and I know some people are busy spending this holiday maybe in a romantic place to spend some time with their love ones? I know that all too well, because I am, too! 😉

Of course, it’s not really that I have not generated any sort of income this month but I just received some of the payments so I became lackadaisical. It’s really hard to work harder now because of a lot of things. First is that i was just coming off a bloody school week wherein we did defend our application project, we did some thesis which worth about 1000 pages, took exams that are mind boggling(somehow) and think of gifts to give for Christmas. And honestly it just made me think i need to take a break now for all the stuffs I am doing online. Just gotta relax for quite sometime

But then you gotta be thinking, “Melvin, I thought you’re business is autopilot?” Actually affiliate marketing could be and couldn’t be an autopilot business. Of course you can run campaigns and sleep but if you don’t pay much attention to it, chances are you’re not gonna make any revenue at all. So, another problem for me that hindered me from affiliate marketing is that my credit card isn’t functioning well. I mean Adwords have stopped my campaigns because they couldn’t get to process the payment through my cc. wtf! It’s like close to a month now and I don’t have a spare credit card and they don’t accept debit card payment here in Philippines. That’s why. It has also become apparent that my chances w/regards to winning some aff.marketing challenge has become thinner! What the fuck!

Anyway, with me slacking and doing nothing like an asshole I started to see the value of some of the things I do. First is my 3.5 ft coinbank. It hasn’t even reached the middle but when i opened it’s close to $80 which is nice since I just started it last month. Now I have extra $80 in case I need it for something. Also with my PPC campaigns getting paralyzed for the mean time, I have started to think creatively and do something different to make some pennies at least. For me its good because I have been w/pay per click for the rest of my life and have become dependent on it.

So w/us slacking this Christmas I don’t really see wrong with. Christmas is the time for relaxing and giving and whatsoever. Everyone is entitled to do what they want for this holiday. I might be slacking w/these things online but sure I never slacked w/my studies, sure I never slacked w/preparations for Christmas. I might have not made a lot for a month that most people think they should do the most but at least i know I can bounce back next year. So maybe I’m not slacking at all. 😉

Are you slacking w/your thing this Christmas?

Free Ad Spot, Free Text Links, Are They Really Worth It?

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Even when I first started this blog, I was seeing a lot of sites and blogs offering and giving away free advertisements in form of text links, 125X125 ad or whatever. Some people are even reluctant to give them away in contests or as an incentives like this blog for example (the incentivized q and a sessions). But the most common trend nowadays, is contests which claims to have $XXXX in advertising galores. Of course, its easy to say “I’m going to sponsor this spot worth $XX”.  And saying that it worths that way doesn’t really mean it’s really the value of that.

Well don’t get me wrong, I am not against those stuffs and contests, sponsors that give away these things. In fact I do even sponsor something here as well in form of an adspot. But my point here is that, these free adspaces can really give you a nice estimate of how much you are really getting w/advertising. I mean, an adspot oftentimes is priced higher than the value it gives but one thing to keep in note when you advertise is not just the clickthroughs you are getting, remember that more than the clicks is what is called as “brand awareness”. Most of the time, people come to my site and tell me “I am seeing your site’s “my blog sucks” slogan on most forums and blogs so I just thought I would give you a visit” And actually thats it. Brand recognition is like you want to get all people reading that blog to know that you have a website. This way people will be more aware of your brand/product and believe me it helps in the long run.

So what about the free adspaces you keep on receiving day in and day out? My advice is always take a chance to use it. You don’t need to expect something “good” that quick with it, but then there will come a time wherein all the readers and commenters of that blog will also start commenting on yours and start following your blog. And of course, its always nice to get something for free, even if it seems to be of trivial value. 🙂

Why Some People Get Affiliate Referrals So Easy

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Most of you here are bloggers and when you started months ago or even until today you place some affiliate links on your blog. On the sidebar, maybe in posts or in footers/headers. But well to be honest, I’m sure we’re all not getting the referrals we thought we could get when we were starting out. The truth about it is that you will really get low conversions on referrals and thats the bitter truth about it. People nowadays, because of information overload or maybe what you can call it, have become skeptic on things like these. Not so long ago you can do a review of something w/your affiliate link and have people jump on the bandwagon immediately. But then its different now.

Saying it doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. 🙂 Of course there are ways to increase affiliate earnings from your blog. This is different so to speak with the whole affiliate marketing but I believe affiliate links on blogs can itself buy you a shirt and shoes every month. W/o further adieu, here are the tips:

  1. Don’t make them sign, if you yourself haven’t made money w/it. – this is mostly the case a lot of people don’t get. Ok they’ve read this program pays $10 per signup, then they sign w/it, promote the program itself and say to their readers “this program is great and you should try” but the real reason is that it gets them $10 which I feel is cheap. I believe if you can show people your account or how you’ve fared w/them, then you can more likely encourage them to sign up under you. Like here, you’ve seen me made some posts w/pepperjamnetwork. Apart from me getting nearly $20 on every posts of it, is that I really make money w/them even outside this blog( and bigger amount). They’ve had some nice dating offers and I had a lot of campaigns w/them before so I promote them. Show proofs!
  2. Have a Nice Rep First – As I’ve said earlier, its hard to make tons referrals from blogs. But make no mistake w/guys like Zac Johnson and some other big affiliate bloggers. I mean Zac is earning a thousand dollars from affiliate earnings from his blog alone! Why? Because he’s a super affiliate! Its the human psychology that when they see someone making a lot with something, they tend to think that hopefully they can too w/the same program the person is using. And I believe Zac uses a lot of affiliate networks to make a living so just guess how many people signs on almost all program under him. Again it helps for you to have a great rep first.
  3. Be transparent and honest – Wth my ancient post about whether you are signing under aff.links or not, I mentioned that if it really gives out value, then I signed through the link. I mean the guy who showed me that must be compensated for the thing right? Most people want to cloak links, mask them and try to look it natural. But I got to differ. I am a big believer that people don’t care if its an affiliate link or not. Some bloggers even say, that the certain link is an affiliate link. If you have the former 2 things mentioned above, I dont see the need for not being transparent.

This blog hasn’t really made thousands of affiliate referrals every month. But then for me to see it makes hundreds and see people saying “I will sign under you” is something that makes me feel well. Not all that worked for me will work for them and I know by being too good to be true and to honest w/my posts, they understand it well.

You Always Have To Rotate

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I am surprised on how many people not even considering rotations when they are advertising or just talking about internet marketing in general. Rotation is just basically rotating of ads and other stuffs. Why do you need to rotate? It’s simply as because by rotating you are optimizing your campaigns or whatever you are doing. Just one simple great example is when you’re placing out affiliate links on your blog. When I was starting out before, the 468X60 banner at the top is not a paid placement, it was just a clickbooth affiliate link. And well, what I did is that I put out about 3 different 468X60 copies of clickbooth banner and rotated them and observed who do well the most. I ended up finding out that the clickbooth banner you’re seeing now is what works best.

I think its important to do this. I mean when an advertiser calls me up for advertising I am more likely expecting them to give me about different ad copies. This is important, I mean if you’re out to buy an adspot promoting something you should almost always have different types of banners so that you can make the most of them. That’s why I don’t really like OIO because although it rotates ads, it doesn’t give out the advertisers an option to put up different ad copies.

Even in Pay Per Click and affiliate marketing, rotating is also very essential. In Adwords I always have ad variations on products that I am promoting and Google optimizes it themselves to show more what gets more clicks. People normally get tired of what they see and rotating it makes it look fresher for them. So how do you rotate?

Well there are different methods but I can say you can use a simple php roll call. You can download the ad rotator plugin by Taragana. The steps are enumerated their on his site and its really very easy. You can also use openX but this can be confusing to newbies but the features are really powerful. As you can see there’s really no excuse not to rotate. I can boldly say rotating can make anything that you’re doing online better

September 2008 Income From My Whole Life

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Sorry for the crappy title. 🙂 The month of September is a busy month for me! I have to go full time in school and Pay Per Click campaigns! Anyway September is a nice month and I just thought I will do a roundup like what most people pretty much do. This is the first time I will do this one 😉

Rankings and Blah Blah…

  • Alexa down to 136,000
  • PR dropped to 0 for no reasons at all
  • Technorati in 50,000 now!
  • 12,000 Pageviews from last month
  • Top 130 in 45n5
  • Improved Google SERPS
  • What else

I have improved slightly overall even though I haven’t done much promotions. I have also not been posting anything related to making money and most post from this month don’t have the quality that most blogs offer. Still my readers are still visiting and have seen increase return visitors traffic. The number of comments per post is still great and I just think the best way to say is thank you for my readers! 🙂

So for the income of the blog this month

  • $25 from Paid Post
  • $55 for direct sponsorship

Believe it or not this is the highest paid advertisement I got in this blog. From June to August, it was just like $10 – $20 and last month was probably the best month. I also got a long term bookings and some really took advantage of my cheap rates (my advertise page is still not updated)!

Income from Affiliate Networks

The Copeac thing is doing great. You may remember me for posting the Pay Per Click Campaigns that I did with Copeac. $165 is damn impressive for me because I just kick started things off last September 20 until the last day. The $62 from PJN was actually $62 way before the 15th month, before I took all my camps down from them. Still a decent amount for me! Btw, PJN still pays new signups $10 for signing under my ass! $20 from Clickbooth is I don’t where it actually came from and the my smallest earnings that came from Comm. Junc. is great considering I even have forgotten my password with my account with them.

Basketball Betting

So Actually I and a great friend Raymille had this little bet on our teams, me w/Ateneo and him w/his LaSalle crap! Eventually LaSalle sucked that bad and was swept in the entire series.

Expenses

  • Adwords – $120
  • Food and Transpo for school – 500 PHP ($12)
  • Bills ($20)

So I really hate talking about expenses because it makes me feel I have earned nothing but lets face it everyone spends on something. The adwords cost for the entire month is just actually when I started running Copeac’s campaigns. I set up a very poor low budget campaigns. For the food and transportation, I have always been over what’s my money for school. My parents give me about $6-8 per day for my expenses and its like I was always $10 per day not because I have poor budgeting but because everything has skyrockted in terms of price.

So, that’s everything for the previous one. What should you expect from me this October? Literally none! 🙂 I will be trying to post some of my PPC tactics and some blogging tips that I have learned along the way as well as my ramblings and blah blah. I would also like to beg Market Leverage to accept me to their network because I think I was like rejected for about 20 million times and all I wanted is to get accepted to their program and hopefully dominate Tyler’s New Signups Affiliate Challenge! 😉

The Pleasure Of Being Read

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Once in a while, I got a question and answer here and someone asked a question like this:

Wess Stewart: What motivates you to blog? What made you want to blog in the first place?

I just said for the pleasure of being read and for money. Well I think I would love to say more about that. The money, of course everyone in the blogosphere has believed they can become rich and they can put up a decent amount of money having their blog. It’s given, I mean not so many people can continue a blog that you have to pay $10 a month and get no moolah for it.

Back again to the pleasure of being read. I was looking at my stats and it says I am getting 800 page views a day and 350 uniques. About 1/4 of that probably is just because of AdWords and some PPC. So thinking of having about 150-250 readers a day reading the simple thing that you say about something, man don’t you feel happy for that? Being read from US to Australia to India, New Zealand, Philippines and etc. just seems to be a pleasurable thing for me. I even have some offline friends who says “oh dude, you’re post about this topic pretty got a great response!” And I was like “oh I thought you’re not reading my blog”.   I know a lot other blogs there have bigger number of readers but for someone like me who’s just a dork and a cool student, it’s really amazing. I also got about 100 feed subscribers and its great!

To be honest, I never think at first blogging can be this  fun. Back to my first day I just posted how I think making money online being not for everyone and I think receiving no responses to now getting 5-10 comments per post and keeping on growing. I also meet a lot of people and learned from a lot of people who commented on this blog to share something about what they think and how they disagreed and such stuffs!

I see people who are getting depressed with their blog not piling up hundred of dollars for them every month but with great readership. I know its hard not to get a lot of money but well you just always have to think that a lot of people are following you. You may not be gaining money but for sure you’re getting the traction that most people couldn’t get. And believe me, this will be more useful for you and your journey!

If you like this one you can stumble it!

The Proper Way Of Doing Paid Posting

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So I have never posted anything this month that has something to do with blogging. I just thought I would post one. 🙂 Well, paid post or paid reviews is a thing that is really in right now. I mean almost everyone has given their a blog a go signal to have it. It’s just surprsing how many people do not actually know how to do it the proper way. In forums and discussion threads, I always hear “you have to choose between the pr and the money” and some “oh, I don’t want to piss Google” and such stuffs. The thing is there is really nothing wrong with paid posting and links and blah blah. Matt Cutts has explained it well and still I thought many didn’t get it. So here are the guidelines (very few)

  1. Disclose it! – This is the first rule first and foremost. Unless you’re doing a review from those networks that are taking a cut, you should always tell your readers and Google that what you wrote is a paid review or some sort like that. I know a lot of people (including me) getting away with it with not disclosing but believe me you will hurt your blog in the long term if you do not disclose it
  2. Rel=’nofollow’ – How hard it is to put that simple stuff on your code? Well basically Google frowns on links that pass pr juice and you could get penalized. Although I do see a lot of bloggers nowadays not nofollowing links and well they do disclose though, that it is a paid post. And I think the disclosure would automatically mean something to Google as those sites pr were never dropped. Or Maybe I can tell Google they’re passing PR Juice. 😉

So thats it. Basically those are the only things that bloggers should keep in mind when doing paid posting. People who told you that the end of paid links and postings are near are stupid. The thing you always have to remember is that Google is the largest and the best search engine and they always say they can weed out any spam. Follow what they say and you’ll be all fine!