Blogging Tips

Entrepreneurial Tip: Take Everything With a Grain of Salt

by Melvin · May 22, 2010

In this information-overload era its just so easy to find answers to our questions. I mean when was the last time you searched for something and didn’t find anything? That pretty much sums it. Add the fact that search engines are constantly tweaked to cater to the majority of users so all in all we are in this ‘so useful’ internet era.

But we might as well be cautious a bit though as the information could basically own us. How many times have you heard someone saying they’re suffering from information overload? The information we’re talking here are good and brilliant informations and its so easy to just consume things as much as you could.

Let alone in blogging and making money online that so many people can’t get pass the first stage because they keep on consuming new information after new information. Everyone suffers from this and unfortunately most people mishandle it. I used to think that info overload is just a person’s inability to filter but I was wrong.

Take everything with a grain of salt

According to phrases.org.uk, the statement means we should accept infos but maintain it in a degree of skepticism about its truth. In a more normal description, it’s all about taking each and every information but not completely believe it.

I know most of us, if not all, rely on information to do all the things we need to get done. However, we should always remember that there are certain factors that can affect whether that information can be useful or not. Here are some reasons:

Most information are not timeless – The first thing I do whenever I read a good piece of article related to my business is to check out the date. I think not a lot of people understand that informations or advice that they usually read aren’t gonna last forever. For instance, I could search on something about “wordpress tweaks and stuffs” and could find great lengthy articles on that subject. But the problem is if it the info is too old or outdated, it’s not going to benefit me.
The effect is usually NOT the same for others – Recently I wrote a post about how my blog makes money and I’m sure thousands of people who have read it would exactly copy the ways I mentioned. But does that mean they can reap the same results? probably, probably not! A good friend always likes to tell me that not all MBA students who graduate get a good life even though it is highly perceived that if you take that course, you’re gold.
Things can go wrong with unusual outside factors – Another question, when was the last time that what you planned goes off exactly as its planned? Just the same with informations we consume. One good observation is that when one writes a good walkthrough on how he makes money for example with affiliate marketing, almost no readers get to duplicate that effort. Why is that? Because in every thing we do there are always outside factors that greatly affect things. Demographics, time, and etc., they all play a good role in all of this.
False claims/infos – It’s funny but a lot of people aren’t too keen on spotting wrong and fake informations. A lot just completely gloss into it and completely treat it as it is. That’s why its important to understand that almost all websites have disclaimers and it’s there for a reason.

Do it and see for yourself

The only way to find out is to do it and see for yourself. You can never really conclude something as working unless you get to experience it yourself. It’s also good to test since doing so can make you avoid being a crybaby, taking info and then calling it out a bum if it didn’t work. 😉

A good example is what I do with affiliate marketing. In forums, you oftentimes see bums people who post “hey this offer from this, I tested it in this, and its killing it for me!”. But the truth is doing exactly the same thing wouldn’t certify a success! There might be some factors that hinge on demographics, the PPC slaps, landing page issues and so many things. And in that particular example, the best thing to do is do the offer yourself, test and see if it’s really worth converting (or is just all hype).

I know you guys trust a lot of brands related within your businesses. There’s nothing wrong with that. Besides, these people are experts and credible for a reason. But in the end don’t forget to do your own testing and take all those infos with a grain of salt. After all, they say marketers are liars. 🙂

Definitive Guide to Driving Traffic With Forums

by Melvin · May 17, 2010

This topic has been covered several times but I do feel most articles are just junk ones. Either not really adding anything significant, or not covering the topic properly. With that in mind I decided to write this in-depth article on how to drive traffic to your blog using forums.

First and foremost, forums are always a good source of traffic to your blog because its highly-populated by nature. A lot of people lurk in forums, people want to engage in talks and debate and more importantly they know how to appreciate something good that’s done to them.

Due to the intrinsic nature of forums, a lot of bloggers abuse them badly. I’d like to be honest and would like to share I was one of those. During my early years, I was one of those morons who annoy the members by posting as much as I could without really adding anything of good value. If you feel guilty of doing this, then I highly suggest you read this post more and quit what you’re doing right now.

1. Pick Forums Carefully

It all starts by doing a small research and picking the forums that you would want to join in. Obviously it has to have some relation to your niche. In this niche, I am fortunate to have so many forums related to what I’m talking about.

This is the first step and this is a crucial step. Targeting the wrong demographics is a serious mistake so make sure you pay attention to that a lot.

2. Start By Building Your Identity

This may seem to be a basic one but I bet you a lot of people are doing this completely wrong. When you are just signing up, make sure to pick the appropriate name, a name that people could easily remember. In most forums, my screen name is Melvin and because of that they easily recognize me as a blogger who blogs at this site.

Do make sure to complete as much details as possible. You will be easily surprised on how a lot of forum members actually look at the profile of other members (voyeurism at work eh?). Make sure you add an avatar or a real pic. Lastly carve out a good signature. Do take note that the main goal of the signatures is to make other members engage, not and never for search rankings.

3. Help People Out

The main reason why forums exist is to help people out on certain topics. Yes we want to get traffic but our main goal always, should be helping people out. A lot of people in forums give good quality advice for free and do take note that it is costing them energy, time and other stuffs.

What I like to do is go to the “new posts” section of forums and then respond on those things. Since most of those are basic questions, there’s a good chance that you can help them out and start gaining good karma.

4. Explicit Promotion

I am guilty of this before. Never ever post anything that doesn’t add value and then explicitly put your link there. People don’t need half-baked information, what they need are quick-fix ones. A lot of bloggers make this mistake and not only it annoys the members, but it also does tune you and your blog out.

5. Its Ok to Argue, But not that much!

As I’ve said forums are a good place to debate and share insights. There’s a good chance that you would be encountering instances where someone would disagree with you and criticize you. It’s important to argue and stay competitive yet not have so much negativities. Too much hating will do no good and may even harm your reputation in the end.

We cannot please everyone but it’s good to side with the majority.

6. Write Precisely, Be Cool to them

Whenever you present your answers, make sure you tell it to them in an organized manner. Although forums really aren’t too strict with grammars, spelling and punctuation, do take note that any sentence your write, any help you provide reflects directly to you and the brand of your blog. We don’t want to sound like the most intelligent person but at least we want to look good.

Being cool is just all about helping so you could easily see if you’re being helpful by observing your reputation icon. People on forums aren’t too shabby on hitting the icon especially if they know you’re genuine interest is helping them out.

Final Words

Like in your own blog, you build yourself first before you benefit. If you’re a newbie this may sound a bit overwhelming especially if we are about to combine it with other marketing tactics like commenting, guest posting and etc. What I’d like to do with this is set at least one day in one week where all I would do is build my expertise and credibility on those online forums. I highly suggest you to do the same so that you are highly focused on what you are doing.

By following all the rules I outlined above, you don’t only get to gain additional traffic, you are also presented to a large number of people as an expert. By being cool to them, following rules and just being like a genuine person, its a win-win situation for everyone.

How cool is that?

How MelvinBlog Dot Com Really Makes Money

by Melvin · May 10, 2010

I got this request from two people and although they are only two people (lols), I thought I would share here with you right now how MelvinBlog Dot Com makes money.

First and foremost, I would first like to clarify that this blog makes very little to no money at all. Initially when I started this blog, I had in mind bloggers like Shoemoney and Carl Ocab and basically told myself that I’m really going to monetize this blog as hard as I could. Eventually it did especially the past few years where it makes a steady three-figure income every month which I thought was amazing considering I’m not really selling anything except ad space and also the fact that the blog isn’t a high traffic one.

Anyways enough schmoozing, today I am going to break down to you how this blog makes money in the past recent years. I may not totally give you the exact figures or the precise time period but I’d try to detail it as possible.

This blog is nowhere close to a high-traffic site but it’s enough for me to make some money out of it and take good care of all the bills. I also think it’s interesting to let people see how this blog makes money considering a lot of blogs who have much bigger traffic than this blog has been having difficulties with monetization. Without further ado, here we go.

Direct Advertising

It’s no secret and by simple observation you can easily see that majority of the money from this blog comes from selling ad spaces directly to advertisers. I sell several advertising which includes the well-known square banners at the sidebar, I also have text links and the premium spot which is the 468X60 banner space. Initially I wasn’t too keen on selling paid reviews but after realizing it’s totally just fine, I decided to give it a go.

I don’t know but I think I really do well with selling my ad spaces in this blog. I usually get sold out and if not, maybe 1-2 ad spaces were left. One reason is that my ad space is really cheap. I know some bloggers who have the same traffic than me yet they’re selling their spaces for like double of my amount. I’ve talked about it in my how to get that blog advertisers post and it’s all about really letting the marketplace decide for the price tag. Getting 4 $10 placement is always better than one $25 placement.

I’m also keen on giving out discounts especially if it’s on a commitment basis or if it’s a bulk package. Not only I get to be able to get sponsors but also it builds that publisher-advertiser relationship over time which is something that most bloggers don’t do.

And lastly yes I use a very awesome plugin called OIO Publisher. For those who do not know, what it basically does is make selling ad space automated. The advertiser purchases an ad, and then the plugin does everything. You don’t need to upload the banner manually, you don’t need to undergo to those long processes that you usually go into when doing it by yourself.

It also does have some other unique features like geo-targeting and stat-tracking in which it emails the advertisers about all the stats, the clicks, ecpm, and all those geeky number stuffs.

If you don’t have it yet, get your copy now. I know I was like having some pride into myself before and said “I’m not gonna jump into this OIO thing.” I was making good money then but upon purchasing, I almost doubled my advertising income alone because of this plugin. $47 is so cheap since you can use it in as many of your sites as possible.

Direct Ad Sales alone pays for my virtual private network hosting bills and some other couple of outsourcing works so maybe it’s not that dead after all.

Affiliate Marketing

Most of you here know that I’m an affiliate marketer primarily running CPA campaigns through Pay-per click and then Facebook so being an affiliate is usually my bread and butter in terms of making money. But then it’s not really something that is related to this blog so I really don’t count it as part of the revenue.

However, I made some money though with some affiliate products I recommend in this blog. On my earlier days I was promoting affiliate networks like Pepperjam Network and Clickbooth which back then was paying $5 and $10 respectively for every referral. I made a lot of money in that since I leveraged the blog’s traffic and my reputation in forums. Do take note that I was making money as well by promoting affiliate offers within the network so I was not just trying to refer people for the sake of making money.

Most commissions nowadays are from the products that I’ve used and recommend here in this blog. Some of them include the 31 day workbook by Darren Rowse, Elegant Themes, Theme Wars, and of course OIO affiliate program which is one of the lucrative programs out there. Again, I promote products that I use and recommend. I would say stay away from promoting stuffs that you haven’t used yourself.

Affiliate program isn’t really the main driving force of this blog but I know some blogs who do really quite well with this business model. One of them is Michael Dunlop of IncomeDiary.com who doesn’t sell ad space. Instead he leverages his traffic by providing tons of free good stuffs and then recommending products to them afterwards. It’s a great business model as well for the blog so you might as well look at that.

Selling my product

If you can remember I sold a product last year which was called “Make Money Online Blog Monetizer” in which it was my first info product ever. The product was launched for 2 and a half months before pulling it out in the market. I’m not gonna say it’s the best product ever since sliced bread but it did almost raked in a thousand dollars in that period. I know I could’ve done much better had the internship not started killing me back then.

Since then I closed the product down as my goal was really to test the market back then as well as analyze its scalability. Whether I had made $20, $200 or $2000, I would still close the launch for that thing for the same duration of time. Whether it is still going to get launched again or not remains to be seen though.

In the latter part of this year I am looking to release another product so stay tuned for that.

Unorthodox Monetization Ways

I always take blog monetization as a big challenge so I did some unorthodox ways to squeeze money from this blog as well. One of them is through the “put the banner and make money program”. During the past couple of years it was really kicking. I mean you don’t need traffic, don’t need page rank, all you need is to sign up, and then put those ugly looking banners that are made of frames and tables and then receive your 10 Euros (they were usually paying Euros). Some are on a recurring basis and most are on a one time basis.

I really didn’t get the other side of it, all I knew was it’s another way to make money. I even wrote a post about it on how you can money without any sweat at all.

I also did some paid text links in posts thing where I basically was approached by advertisers saying they want this keyword in this specific post to link on their site or whatnot. Probably it’s an evil tactic but is definitely another good way to make money. The buy sell text links forum in digital point was where I was getting most of my clients.

Finally I also tried my luck with CPM-based advertising where I get paid a dollar or more for a thousand impressions. I was a smart ass so all I did was to leverage social media traffic, setup some rotating IP addresses to view my blog and buy cheap traffic. It was a little profitable thing but then I stopped doing it when I switched with this magazine template.

I still have a couple at the back of my mind but I don’t think it’s good to share those things as well as it may probably harm your blog if you implement it. Anyways do take note too that this is what I’d like to call as “desperate monetization measures”. Like I’ve said, it’s always a challenge for me to make money and so even when people see me as trying too hard to make money, I really don’t mind.

Future Plan

As I’ve said I’m going to release a couple of products down the road this year and test the market for it. Since I started list-building last year, I would try to get something from it as well, try to build relationships and then leverage it by recommending some stuffs to them.

The direct advertising model is going to be here in my blog for at least this year since its making me some really good money although I would try to shy away from it probably starting next year once I start getting a more consistent stream of income from other sources

An interesting note to take as well is on how I myself have turned the focus of this blog from making as much money as possible to actually starting to work more on its personal brand and focusing with relationships instead. Although the blog still makes decent money, most of the goals that I’ve set this year aren’t really on the financial side, rather more on building a larger community towards it and bigger readability all throughout the blogosphere. Money is good, but I’d take growing credibility and expertise any time of the day.

Long post huh? What say you?

Why Personal Posts Get LOTS of Traffic

by Melvin · Apr 29, 2010

I was playing with the logs and stats from my Google Analytics account and it really didn’t surprise me that some of the posts that gets the most traffic were the ones that really didn’t have anything to do with internet marketing, blogging or make money online (w/c is the topic of this blog). Here’s a short screenshot from G.A:

Contest posts are naturally high traffic ones due to its intrinsic nature, while some of the other posts here go within the theme of this blog w/c is internet marketing and blogging. The hits from other couple of posts and pages may seem unnatural though. The post about the best birthday gift for the girl I love have the most no. of unique counts and pageviews in terms of posts and the about and photo pages are the most popular in pages.

That is voyeurism at work. It continues to amaze me how offtopic writeups, mostly are personal posts, get so much traction. When I wrote that “teenage-love” affair post I really wasn’t so keen that I would get responses but I was surprised when so many people I do not know commented and gave me their tips. It also went hot on social sites and eventually just got so many traction.

Why it rakes in traffic

People love personal posts, there’s no doubt about it. Most of my readers read my blog because of my expertise in this topic so that being said, any other post outside my niche can either spark a good interest or no interest at all and luckily for me its working on a good side.

Voyeurism is a superb traffic technique just because of the fact that it enhances your relationship your audience. It brings you closer on a more personal basis and in marketing, that’s an added trust and credibility.

Top 3 ways on how to take advantage of Voyeurism

Build your expertise first and foremost – Ok, you cannot just start a blog and write random personal posts and then expect a heap of traffic. It is not gonna happen. What you can do though, is work on building a presence first, overdeliver good content in your niche and focus on growth. As I’ve said people become more interested on your personal stuffs when they trust you for what you provide.
Share your personal craps BUT STILL add value – One thing you would notice with all the personal posts is that they all add value. No one wants to read something they wouldn’t enjoy so whether that value accounts for enjoyment, or learnings, its all up to your readers. Just make sure they are going to pick up something useful.
Don’t hold back anything – People love honest stories and it’s always one thing that people admire. You cannot call that post personal when you’re lying so make sure you don’t hold anything back.
Limit yourself in doing it – Ok now we know that personal posts are the ones that get good traffic. We also understood that people like it for intrinsic reasons so what now? Make all your posts personal posts? Naah! Like anything there’s a limit. When it comes to superb content, you can’t feed your readers with these each and everytime as they will get overwhelmed. That goes the same with personal posts. Once you abuse the use of it, it would start boring the heck of your readers.

So what now? Here in my blog, I’m proud to say that people like my personality (debatable). I get both good and bad feedbacks but overall I think I’m doing things fine. Voyeurism is an effect of good personal branding and if youre not leveraging it, you’re missing a lot.

You Need a Pitch for Your Blog, Here’s Why

by Melvin · Apr 21, 2010

Most bloggers are blogging in a certain niche and if you’re reading this blog for quite some time you probably have heard me say that having a clear niche is very important to be successful in blogging. Gone are the days where you could just blog about anything and expect a heap of traffic in return. When I was just getting started, I pretty much did things that way. I felt, “oh, those are for just those sleazy marketers or just for get-rich quick scammers”. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that hey maybe I really need one.

Darren Rowse 31 Days to be a better blogger eBook calls this an elevator pitch, wherein you have a very short space and time to pitch what is your blog really all about to visitors, especially new visitors. This also helps you as blogger to have a nice idea of what to post and what to not. If you’re blogging about car insurance, then pitch it in the way where the visitors can find it unique. You also need to find an enticing angle to present it. Just pitching it as a “great [niche name] blog” is not enough.

Ok I know what you are thinking. I know you’re saying “Im not a salesman and I never want to sound that way!”. I don’t want either! In fact, I really haven’t sold almost any stuff here in my blog. I don’t sell info products (I did for 1 month last year), I don’t do consulting, I don’t psyche you that what I provide costs $XXXX amount).

The truth is a blog pitch doesn’t really need to become like a traditional pitch. If you look at the most successful blogs in this niche, you really wouldn’t think they’re hardselling or pitching something that sounds like they’re selling. The ever famous Shoemoney’s tagline is “Skills to pay the bills”. Not that he says he’s a make money online blogger, but still people come to him as an authority.

By bringing in your blog’s pitch, you’re making a clear and concise detail on what your readers should expect in your blog. You’re telling them ‘hey I’m in this industry, Im an expert in this field’. But of course, your pitch must stand out from the rest so you should not just make use of old generic ones.

Another good reason why you need to have one is to target your audience very well. All of us want a huge number of audience. Unfortunately, it’s all useless when some of them are not really aligned to what we offer and present. Isolating the right people as our audience is crucial for having a tight and well-targeted blog readership.

Final Words

So by now, you should’ve already understood the value of a pitch or elevator pitch for your blog. If you still feel you don’t have a pitch for your blog or you are unsure whether its the proper one, then take some time to think one. If you, yourself is not clear about it, then how would you expect your readers to get it too?

What do you think about elevator pitch for blogging? What is your own pitch for your blog? My blog pitch is “Internet Marketing for Bloggers” or some variations of it. I would be pretty interested to know yours as well.

Don’t Wait to be Perfect in Blogging

by Melvin · Apr 6, 2010

We all want to be perfect. We want to look perfect while going to any party, we want to be perfect while playing video games, and we want to be perfect if we are cooking something. We just want to be perfect in whatever we do, so that we can prove how much superior and efficient we are than our peers. And, the same rule applies to the blogging. Time and time again, I see bloggers who got struck in the vicious cycle of creating a perfect blog and eventually lose focus from their real objectives. So, in this article I’ll try to convince you that you shouldn’t wait to be perfect in blogging.

1. Improvement is more important

Don’t expect too much, too quickly because it will just increase your frustration. I’ve seen many bloggers who wants to be perfect from the first day. And due to this, they put so much pressure on themselves that they completely ignore the improvement that occurred in them over the period of time. Perfection is a never ending process, so don’t think a lot about it and focus on improving your skills.

2. Success depends on efforts

You can’t control the perfection but you can control your efforts. The more efforts you are ready to put into your blog, the more successful you’ll be. It is a myth, that to be successful you need to be perfect. How many successful guys are completely perfect in their jobs? How many successful guys know everything about their niche? I don’t think even one of them knows everything about his field. What makes them successful is the huge amount of efforts they put in to their job.

3. Criticism is good

Criticism or rejection helps you to identify your weak points which you were not aware of and provide you with an opportunity to make yourself much better. So if you just want to be perfect before you are afraid of criticism then think again. Don’t wait for your content to be perfect, go out with what you’ve and learn to take all kind of criticism.

4. Just Do It

It’s a Nike slogan, but really a great advice. Don’t hesitate to execute your plans even if they are not perfect. I’ve seen many persons having great ideas about product, website but they never execute it because they feel their plan/product still needs some more tweaks. As the result, most of those plans never get executed. Execution is more important than perfection. Don’t wait for your plan to be perfect because you don’t know how people are going to react in reality. The greatest example of this is Microsoft; they never waited for a perfect operating system. They came out with the basic version of windows in 1985 and are still trying to improving their product without sacrificing their sales.

5. Sometimes it’s better not to be perfect

When you are perfect (popular) in your niche, then you start attracting lot of unwanted attention towards yourself. People start having huge expectations from you, your failures get more criticized, you’ve more enemies etc. So, in a way your decisions start getting influenced by the opinions of others. But when you are not perfect, you are free to do whatever you want to do and how you want to do.

So these are the five points due to which I think that why you shouldn’t wait to be perfect. As I know that I’m not a perfect and there is lot that I’ve to learn. So, please share your opinions in the comments below.

Gagandeep Singh is a Freelance writer working for conversion rate optimization company Invesp.

It’s Not About Making Controversy, It’s just Being Me

by Melvin · Mar 17, 2010

If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you probably have seen me a lot of times really go into a certain topic and just write on it freely, most of the times really pouring in a lot of immature controversial statements as oppose to just being balanced enough and having a milder take on things.

But it’s just recently that I’ve been quite getting some flak for that attitude and that lead to me writing this very interesting post about my take on things.

It’s not Being Controversial, it’s just being me

I don’t think a lot of bloggers have this attitude but when I write, I just speak myself out. I try to be as spontaneous as possible and I think it speaks very well on how transparent I am. But that doesn’t mean that I am being irresponsible. Obviously when you write based on how you feel, you’re most of the times wrong. And that’s what I try to avoid. I can always assure you that I do my research or own study before really speaking on things. For all those people out there, it’s crucial. If you don’t do your research first, it may ruin your credibility.

Back to being transparent, I think most people here have liked my spontaneity and personality. That being said, it’s equally important as well to try to connect to your readers by just being your own. Sure at times we feel quite pressured not to sound too personal (and quirky) fearing to lose our credibility, but the truth is what all our readers care for is our own view on things. You could talk about this, talk about that and talk about all those latest trends but at the end, our readers will only care on our own tack on those issues and that’s why they comment on the first place. They either agree or disagree.

Controversy gives more risk as a blogger

A lot of people have gone down to this path. They start a blog, and to make a shortcut or to get noticed quickly, out of nowhere they hit big bloggers/people. They try to criticize them even though it’s not reasonable, they tend to create a lot of controversy so that they can get traction in as little time as possible.

I would tell you first and foremost to avoid that tactic. It’s an old blackhat practice and I don’t think it is going to work if you do it solely for bullshitting other people. Sure it can yield you great spikes in traffic but unless you give people enough proof on those, all of those craps are just deemed claims. And claims are just stuffs that you should never believe into.

Striking a balance

All in all it boils down to striking a balance between both. I am always a firm believer that you can get more people to read you by just being yourself, not pretending to be a lawyer or what. On the flip side, more people will actually then BELIEVE you by doing your research, thus boosting your credibility as oppose to just reading you.

Striking a balance is quite a work if you ask me. Sometimes we tend to be not fair but that’s where our readers come and rescue us. I always feel glad, actually really glad when a commenter opposes to what I believe and then explains his side on the comments.

What do you think about this topic?