Blogging Experience

Making Money Blogging by Not Trying at All

by Melvin · Dec 5, 2010

I know the title of this post raises the eyebrows of some of you here but let me just get my point here. So basically here in this blog, what I have been preaching is that you can never make money blogging unless you put in enough effort. you do it wisely and execute things strategically. Heck, most successful bloggers even take like one year before they even get to where they are now. And that comes with the fact that they are consistently putting effort from day one.

In this blog, I wrote some few tips related to making money blogging although this blog is NOT about that topic. I wrote posts like how this blog makes money, how I doubled my advertising income, monetizing local traffic and stuff like that. Another popular blog posts is this post which is entitled making money isn’t hard, it just involves a lot of hardwork which has completely nothing to do with making money blogging.

If you read those posts, you can see that most of the things that I do or attain are possible because I’m workaholic. I do exert a lot of effort in this blog (although not these days though) and most bloggers that I know do the same so there’s a commonality between bloggers who are making money.

Work hard, Don’t Expect at All

Ok I know I’ve been taking both sides of the fence here which definitely will confuse you but let me explain. Some of you here know that blogging isn’t really the main way I make money ever since. Before it was affiliate marketing. I did a lot of CPA stuff, promoting offers through PayPerClick, making a lot of money back then and some of you are aware with it.

I don’t do it that much today because of all regulations and affiliate marketing is a fly-by-night thing. I can be making $100 in one day or losing more than that. There’s that much risk that convinced me to stop doing it.

I also spent some little time with freelance writing early back in my college days and was associated with some companies. This was just a part-time gig for me as I was studying so I could have some allowance on my part.

I enjoyed blogging ever since and probably had spent the most amount of time in it without really making nearly the amount that I make with other things.

Having a Day Job

So late last June, I took a job at a certain software development company as their online marketing guy and with that I applied all the knowledge that I have to that company.

Obviously its nice for me because it was my first ever job and it allowed me to kind of like have an income source outside the internet which I also considered consistent (at least for the first 6 months) because you’re getting paid monthly.

Consulting & Client Work

The demands of having a day job is tough but that didn’t prevent me from pursuing this consulting & client work business. Very few know that I manage a startup company at Round Table Networks and that I did some consulting way back last year. It was good and the money was enough but back then I didn’t find it that fulfilling so I stopped doing it and instead focused on my sites.

Late September I started doing it again to just try to see what would happen. Luckily I got some clients that I have been working until now and that has brought both good things and bad things to me. The good is obviously the compensation and the bad is that I have lesser and lesser time to spend for my web properties which includes this blog and some other stuff.

Making Money Blogging & Not Expecting at All

I don’t know. I, myself is confused on what the topic of this blog post really is but I guess its just about accepting the fact that living off with the sole money that you make from blogging is almost not possible these days. I mean I still make a decent (not phenomenal) monthly passive income from this blog and some of my other sites but they just take a backseat with what I do primarily.

The main point here is that if you’re trying to make money from your blog but you have a job that you make consistent amount of money with, then just don’t expect too much from your blog. Sometimes its better to just work without expecting something because in that way, you don’t get depressed or frustrated when you don’t make that much money.

Looking back now, I realized that blogging was NEVER the main thing for me. Sure, this blog is one of main prized assets that I have online but it just acts as a second fiddle to the things that I really do. It was affiliate marketing before, having a day job and consulting work for now.

I think it’s equally important to have this mindset that sometimes enjoying something is enough and may alone justify the effort that you put into it. I know that statement is debatable.

I try to make money blogging, but I don’t expect that much. And that helped me a lot in focusing on more important things that I need to prioritize without getting frustrated. How about you?

5 Different Things that I have to Accomplish Everyday

by Melvin · Nov 22, 2010

If you’ve been reading the blog, you’ll easily see that I’ve been whining quite a lot about how I’m super busy and how hectic my schedule is. I mean if you go to each of my previous posts for the past few days and weeks you could easily notice that I always open the articles with the “I’m so busy lately” kind of line, lols.

Anyways sometime last year I wrote a post called “I wish there’s more than 24 hours in one day” and I got some interesting feedback about it. Now in this post I’d like to go a bit offtopic again by tackling the 5 different things that I always strive for before each day ends. The list starts now (in no particular order).

My work tasks – Obviously I need to accomplish all my tasks for my day job for the particular day. I usually set out goals in every working day to make sure I’m being efficient and helpful to the company. For instance if my task is to find review sites, I usually set out a goal for myself (i.e. 100 review sites a day).
Read all emails – I have a whole bunch of email accounts for different properties and to be honest I have been receiving a lot per day. In just my recent post I talked about my difficulties with responding to emails. But even with that I make sure that I read each and every emails on all my accounts before the day ends.
Do all blog-related micro tasks – This includes moderating comments, spam comments, seeing if theres a new advertiser, retweet articles, manage my facebook blog fan page and so on. This usually happens at the latter part of the day.
Post blog entries – If you know me, I usually write my posts for one week in one sitting, usually every mondays or saturdays. With that, I usually just set them as drafts and then the task becomes publishing those posts as the days go by. And making sure it’s error-free (although all of my posts have errors!)
Do my responsibilities at home – I pretty much arrive late at night so my task upon arriving is to ensure everything in home/house is fine. Just the simple things like making sure everyone took their dinner, my little brother has made his homework, my mom is well-rested and the doors are locked and secure for the day.

Those are the 5 different things that I aim to accomplish and complete everyday. It’s a bit daunting but it has become a part of my daily routine that it’s normal now for me. How about you?

5 Clever Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog…

by Melvin · Nov 14, 2010

In this blog, I probably have given a lot of tips already on driving more traffic to your blog and you could see all of them simply by checking out my traffic and blog marketing sections.

So in this blog post I would like to share to you some *clever tips on driving more and more traffic to your blog. These are tips that are uncommon and on whether they are blackhat/shady or not, its up to you. 🙂

1. Setting referral traffic source as your site.

I’m not sure if this is something that a lot of bloggers and webmasters know but basically you can set your site as a referrer for all sites that you visit.

The way you do that is through your browser. In Firefox you can simply just download this plugin called RefControl. What this does is simply just allow you to set the referring URL either for all sites that you visit or for a specific site.

The good thing about this is that the traffic that you will get can potentially be a repeat traffic(recurring) since you’re letting real people (not bots) see your site/blog. And the best part is that there’s literally no work involved. If you’re like me who loves to read stuffs online, then thats it.

2. Link baiting in forums

Couple of months back I wrote this really definitive guide on how you can drive traffic to your blog using forums. It was well-received by a lot of people and you may want to check that out.

So with link baiting in forums, I’m not really referring to you creating a new thread with some controversial topic and then linking back to your own blog. That’s actually an idea forum members usually frown into. Link baiting in forums is simply just posting a thread that you know a lot of people can relate into.

So as you can see in the image above, I just simply created a thread that I know a lot of people would be interested to engage in. I didn’t even put a link explicitly to my blog and as you could realize, this forum thread reached more than 5 pages and a lot of replies from the forum members. Obviously it drove a lot of traffic back to my blog through the signature links and the header itself.

The interesting thing is that the thread was created May last year and people are still replying up to today which brings up the thread above.

3. Talking about making money online

I don’t know what’s the reason behind it but obviously if you make a certain post targeted to making money online or maybe a tip about it, people generally respond positively to it.

Not so long ago, I wrote this post about how MelvinBlog makes its money and up to know its one of the highest viewed page/post in this blog. It’s even viewed more than the recent post on “making money isn’t hard, its just a lot of hard work” which I thought was the best post I have ever produced.

Of course you may not want to talk about making money if you don’t have an experience with it yourself or lack the knowledge about it.

4. By Joining Guest Blogging contests

Its kind of like odd to include it here right? I have joined a lot of guest blogging contests this year and have talked alot about it too but the truth I think is that it simply just drives you traffic without you really realizing it.

Most people join these contest not to find new readers, nor drive traffic but to win a cash prize and I think that cash serves as an incentive for us bloggers to work harder in driving more and more exposure to our articles. So little do we realize that in trying to win it, we’re unexpectedly driving more and more new readers to our site.

Note: On a little side note, I am participating in Blog Engage contest. Please read, comment and tweet my article on how to drive consistent traffic to your blog. 😉

5. Taking advantage of your newsletter/email list

Most people now know that having a list is essential in blogging yet STILL believe it or not, most bloggers still don’t have one. What do we do now? Simple, take advantage of the fact that we have a list! Having your own email list has several advantages. You could a).connect with people who are interested in the niche that your are into b). drive them to your blog, get them to read your content c). cultivate that relationship that could eventually enable you to sell and push some products to them.

I know some people would find it quite an investment to pay $20 a month for an email marketing tool like Aweber but I think its really really a major investment. I think Aweber still has this $1 for 1st month promo. If you’re interested, take advantage of it now and see if its for you or not.

So, those are my 5 clever tips that could help you drive more traffic to your blog and more importantly, this is a traffic that converts (as a reader, as a customer). If you have some questions or would like to share some other tips, please comment on the comment form below.

Have You Ever Thought of Revamping Your Marketing Plan?

by Melvin · Oct 10, 2010

Revamping something is one thing that is always feared by people for two reasons, a) is because they’re afraid that everything or mostly that they exerted would put into waste and b). because of skepticism. It’s really hard and there’s no doubt that it would take much thinking and suggestion to actually decide on whether its time to change or not.

I myself had been into these situations. With affiliate marketing for instance where I mostly do my campaigns via PPC and Facebook ads, there were times that I had to change my strategies to adapt to some changes in guidelines that these networks usually impose (especially Facebook). The hardest part of this is that sometimes strategies that have worked a lot of times for you are the ones that you need to revamp.

This can also apply both to internet marketing product launches and just the typical blogging. Over the past few years we’ve seen so many guys changing their strategies/marketing tactics on their business. For instance Shoemoney which came from the pay-per-click/ringtone affiliate marketing has been into list building and product launches as you can easily notice if you’re subscribed to his email list.

Traditional marketers like Jeff Walker, Frank Kern and other ones are getting more into content-based stuff. You can see them tapping blogs or even incentivizing something for their joint ventures.

Another great example is our blog marketing plan and strategies. Before, its more on the more active you are, the more traffic you can pull. If you can be a top commenter on 20-50 popular blogs then it may alone be enough. These days it still works but we have to be more creative in order to justify a good return for our efforts. As you can see guest blogging seems to be the “in” thing since at the start of the year (although it existed a long time ago). Who knows, maybe next year it will not be as effective as it is right now.

Bottom line here is that marketing is a continuous refining process. There may be something that works superbly for now but is obsolete tomorrow. There are also some factors to consider like FTC intervention, saturation, legal type of stuffs and so on which just makes things more complicated. What do you think?

Wordcamp 2010 Recap and Photos

by Melvin · Oct 3, 2010

The last few weeks and days have been pretty crazy for me. As you know I was planning (back then) to attend Wordcamp Philippines and so the way I did it was I slept in office to be able to come early to the event. Eventually I did, through the help of a good officemate named Chigs who offered to accompany me to the event.

Ok now back to the event. I arrived early as in really (6:30 am, event is 8am) early. I stayed in McDonalds for half an hour and went to Benilde at around 7. The organizing team was kind enough to welcome me even though they were surprised I was that early (shame on me!).

Anyhow I just waited patiently. And after quite some time, I met my friends named Paul Gerard and the hyperactive Eymard in the event. These are the same guys whom I met in iBlog event last year.

So this year was kind of like different from the previous year. This year, they had 2 parts. First one is the breakout session and the latter part is the Plenary. Most of the talks in the breakout session (w/c was held in different rooms with limited number of participants) were kind of like fundamental to me but I know its really really valuable especially for the right person.

The Plenary talks were interesting. Topics that were covered are: Social Media powered by WordPress, Blogging Ethics, Google University talk and some sponsor talks. They were of great value and its nice that a lot of people ask questions with regards to it.

The most interesting part though is the Q and A with Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress. A lot of people asked interesting questions and its nice to see Matt answering all of them in a very straightforward matter. Questions related to plugin marktplace, Thesis theme and even the Hello Dolly plugins were all asked. Lastly, Matt encourage everyone to approach him personally if we ever have questions or we want to take pics with him. Now thats something not all famous persons would say.

I really like Matt a lot, I mean he’s a smart guy and a very nice person. You may have seen him speak in interviews and stuffs but in person he’s really really such an approachable person. So Matt if you’re reading, its nice to meet you! 😀

Some images

So just to make this post longer (lols) and seriously just to give you some of the neat stuff in Wordcamp, here are some images.

To see more photos from this event, kindly just head on to my photos page.

Conclusion

Overall it’s a nice event as I was able to personally meet Matt and some others there as well. Networking-wise, I failed badly since I hardly talk to anyone aside from my friends. I’ve planned a lot for this and even prepared a document with regards to networking and making more friends in the event. Unfortunately, I’m very shy and it didn’t help that Eymard and Paul weren’t as engaging as well.

But all in all, it’s really nice. The breakout sessions is something that I think is unique. I liked most of the talk and the event overall was great. I’d like to thank the organizers avatar media for really working hard on this event, the sponsors, Matt and everyone who attended the event. Now I’m excited for Wordcamp 2011. 🙂

Driving Consistent Traffic is the Key

by Melvin · Sep 29, 2010

You wonder how those bloggers can actually just spend very little time in a week yet they still get the same amount of traffic to their sites? You wonder how they participate so little in the blogosphere, almost never make comments on other blogs nor do they lurk on forums? There are two simple answers, 1). They’re already an established blogger and 2). The traffic that they get is pretty consistent.

Now the first answer is understandable, they are an established blogger. We all know it takes time to be an established authority blogger. Some of the top bloggers in the space were fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time.

But for us who’s definitely not considered as a top blogger in this space or any other space, what we could work on is getting consistent and recurring traffic to our blog. Yes, this is the same traffic that could repeat again and again with little to no maintenance at all. By driving consistent traffic, there’s a better chance of getting more loyal readers to your blog as oppose to just a one time visit.

Here’s a short quote on my guest post on BlogEngage about driving consistent traffic:

“One thing that sets apart good bloggers from just the average ones is the ability of the former to drive traffic on a consistent basis. Driving traffic these days is easy but what counts the most is on whether the traffic that you’re going to drive is going to convert or not.

Conversion can vary depending on the goals that you set as a blogger but the bottom line here is that every serious blogger must aim for consistent and returning traffic, not just a one time spike.

In this post, I would like to talk about different things that you can do in order to get that consistent stream of traffic. But before that, let me just cover first the facts about traffic and why you need to aim for consistency.”

I also happened to share some personal stuff on this post on how I thought I was already getting consistent traffic but still I don’t so you may want to check the article out.

Bloggers Come and Go, You One of them?

by Melvin · Sep 23, 2010

In my 5 years experience of blogging and 2+ here with this blog, I have met so many people, made friends, and probably had done some joint ventures with them as well. But one thing that’s clear is that being a blogger is not permanent.

I know I have bragged many times before on how I’m going to last forever as a blogger and how this blog is going to remain stable despite any challenges but I realized that you can’t really control things. There are some events that are just inevitable and would cause us to refrain from doing something and I know this is mostly the case for some of my blogger friends.

At some point its sad because bloggers are friendly in nature and I really had met a lot of bloggers that I really liked a lot. For them to leave the blogosphere is like cutting that only communication channel they have for their readers and specifically me. Of course in some cases I’m happy and it specifically pertains to bloggers who have sold their blogs successfully. I’m sure they’re satisfied with whatever pay they got from it and it only helped them move towards the direction that they like to move into.

As of this writing, I’ve been really really busy as evident with my lack of activity in the blogosphere and with this blog. My day job really demands my full eight hours that its impossible to sneak anything into that work sched. And when that 8 hours is over, all I could ever do is take my rest. In conjunction with that I also need to fulfill my responsibilities as the interim head of the family.

But as I always boast, this blog will still be a blog owned by me, Melvin. I don’t have any plans of selling it or abandoning it. Heck, that’s why I chose to have my name in it!

That last line is honestly what I really feel but I know there would be inevitable circumstances that could force me to do things differently. 🙁 How about you, what do you feel about this subject matter?