Preachings

What Image Does Your Blog Portray?

by Melvin · Dec 2, 2008

When we first create our blog we set our niche, what is our topic all about, who is our target audience and etc. We don’t really dwell with what image does the blog really portray. As our blog gets older, we started to notice that “ah this blog is something like this” or “this blog’s jokes aren’t that funny” and so on. I think this is what our blog can be remembered for when they died. In short, this what makes the blog unique. For some reason, it could also be the reason why people are following you. Maybe they like a perverted blog or a blog that has a horrible grammar.

And its nice to see that whenever you look at each blog, you see what their images are. You head on to problogger and you see a blog that is very professional. No nonsense posts, no crappy paragraphs, all (seems) done to perfection. Go on to Chow’s blog and you’ll see a completely contrasting one. “Evil” full of affiliate links, 35% only are the helpful posts and so on. But on the flip side, it flows more natural, everyone can relate to it and you can learn a lot outside making money online. Now I’m not just talking about Big blogs here. Head on to smaller blogs and you’ll see some other too.

Now it goes on at the top of my mind and said to myself “What the heck does my blog portray?” “Why are people following me?” Sure I don’t provide solid money making tips as other bloggers do and I don’t claim this blog as a make money online as well. I was just like writing what is on my mind for the certain moment. Whenever I look at my archives (I always does), and see my past posts and read them, what I see common about them is how spontaneous the posts are. Sure people can rip me for saying i don’t pay attention to grammar and I don’t proofread and I don’t care to fix my previous page link and I don’t care to cloak links but then its like most of my readers like it here. The funny thing is that some of the most viewed/commented posts here aren’t related to internet marketing like this one.

Oh well. All in all my blog is just portraying an image an 18 year old intelligent student who has ton of interest w/making living of Google and the internet, someone who thinks he’s a great basketball player and a guy who’s deeply in love, attracted w/a girl named krishtalyn at the moment. What about your blog? I have my own thing on how each blog portrays themselves but more likely its better if it comes out in your own mouth first. 🙂

Why Teens Should Try Making Money By Now

by Melvin · Nov 1, 2008

A lot of times, people credit me and say “You’re young and still in school yet you’re making your own money”. Of course I feel good and flattered upon hearing that and I say thank you deep from my heart. 🙂 On some other days, some of my friends are curious telling me why I am trying to make money. They say I don’t really need to and maybe its hurting my studies. Most of the times I just respond to it and say I wanted to buy a shirt with my own money. 😉

Obviously that’s a lame reason and not true. But then I think, I have one thousand reasons why I should try and make money now (online and offline). I know there are a lot of kids right now jumping heads first into making money online. Of course they have come to realize its not as easy as playing PSP or anything. With regards to this topic I always wanted to put up a list on why we, teens or kids should try making money by now. Here are my goats:

Helping your parents – Each and every of my friends know we are not a rich family. Although, we are never hurting financially, there are times wherein my parents just got everything that we need to spend. The point here is that, sometimes you can pay or buy something w/o annoying your parents for financial help. I’m not sure how you can relate to this but I think its a big and understandable reason.
Experience, nevertheless – Obviously there’s nothing in this world that can replace experience. Most people fail and still pursue and thats for experience. It’s your teacher and whatever you may want to call it. Most successful millionaires here in Philippines started out flat and crappy. They gained experience, learned from it and then applied what they learned. Now they are successful! It’s also an edge against everyone to have that experience in your belt.
Pride – I have talked about it a lot before with my friends. I did say I get complement from a lot of my relatives with it and to be honest it damn feel good! I am a pridey guy. I take pride in a lot of things. I take pride that I can buy shirts and gadgets w/o asking for help, I take pride that I am having transactions with bigger and more established marketers, and I take pride receiving checks day in and day out! It sounds arrogant but pride is what lights my butt to work harder! and I don’t want my pride to get hurt.
Emergency purposes – Imagine you had sex w/your crush or maybe your girlfriend. You had your sperm inside her and she got preggy! Now unless abortion is your religion then you having your own money can make things a lil better. In life there are a lot of things that we don’t expect. A lot of things that we don’t expect to bury our pockets. Having that little earnings from Adsense surely can help in case of hard times.
For Holidays – Halloween had just passed by and next is Christmas and New Year! Everytime you talk about holiday, you gotta to talk about shopping and buying gifts. I don’t feel actually the essence of buying gift for a friend using the money from your parents. How can you do it yourself? Start filling that coin bank now!

This is talking about making money in general, both online and offline. Not many kids and teens today take interest on trying their luck with online business or saving money. And I feel this is what makes us stand out from the rest. Of course the purpose varies. What do you think is yours?

Do You Value Your Computer’s Security?

by Melvin · Oct 26, 2008

security

The last couple of about 2-3 weeks, my PC has been on quarantine almost everyday. It was reformatted almost every 3 days because of some silly virus and malicious script. Basically it all started out when I inserted my music player via usb connector. Then it had a folder called “The Corrs” in which is really true because I have a whole “The Corrs” album there. Now the problem was that The Corrs isn’t really a folder. It’s an application that has an icon of a folder, wtf! What happened then is that the virus was triggered and the end of my PC! During that time I dont have any antivirus or whatsoever because I am arrogant to think that a virus can never run unless it is triggered. Also I was boastful to think that I know a lot of things on registry tweaking and cmd command lines and so many stuffs. Eventually, my pc was infected and by trying too hard to manually fix w/my own power it got corrupted. Then I have to reformat it.

So the lesson I learned here is to always value your computer’s security. Most of you know that my blog was hacked and I had to tighten up my security measures to make sure those things will not happen again. Wth my computer I was really careless. I don’t have any internet security software as well as my updates for my OS is turned off and just like that. Before (5 years ago) I was obsessed w/internet security. I mean that time I had about 7-10 anti spywares plus other software specifically just for a certain/special type of virus and scripts. Now I became careless because I think since August last year I never had any antivirus and some anti spy for my PC so I think its hard to blame me for not having one since I withstood any attacks for almost a year w/o antivirus. 🙂

Anyway, in as much as we are concern about the security of our wordpress blogs and websites, I think its just the same thing that we should also care about our computers. Most of us not only use computers for making money online, but also for fun, entertainment, and pornography education. So important because a virus can immediately turn all of these down, the same as spywares can easily steal our personal info. What would you do then if these things immediately happen?

What I did now is purchase a copy of Trend Micro Internet Security and had it updated. I also had to update w/some security fixes for my OS and also try to install anti Spywares and have them get updated as well. Things online change up so fast and its crucial to keep up with the changes that happen. You might have the most secure workstation today and maybe everything is obselete the next day!

The Pleasure Of Being Read

by Melvin · Sep 25, 2008

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

by Melvin · Sep 20, 2008

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)

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
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!

The Huge Value Of Testing Stuffs

by Melvin · Sep 8, 2008

Most people underestestimate the value of testing different stuffs. I mean most don’t even know they should test things. Testing plays a key role not only in online business but also in every aspects of life. Sometimes, it can be risky and most of the times it will help us learn and gain knowledge based on what we have observed. With affiliate marketing, I really love to test stuffs out. I mean when I was doing Adwords early this year I was very receptive on committing mistakes and learning from them. I put up different landing pages and different color schemes and see how they flop! On that way, you know you could do better the next time.

There are tons of ways wherein you can test something and do a case study. Like for instance in this blog, when I was promoting Pepperjam Network here. I think I made over $100 with an affiliate banner at the sidebar (when there are few advertisers yet). Why is that so? Basically I just rotated every type of ad that Pepperjam gives. I give my users different views of the ads which I think have helped both of us. What you are needing to do is make your users avoid banner blindness wherein they just go w/your site and say “these banners again”. That’s why as much as possible I ask for different types of ads from advertisers so that they can maximize their exposure from this blog.

Now someone can say “It’s risky to test things and I don’t think I can afford it”. Well its true but most of the times it is not really as risky as what you might ever think of. What you have to do is always look and observe what you’re visitors are doing. How they respond to it. It’s easy sometimes to say, “oh what I did doesn’t really make much sense” but you will benefit a lot from it on a long term basis. How if it doesn’t work? Then it doesn’t work, leave it! If you believe you have exerted a better effort with stuffs that flops then you can always drop it and start again. I know many are afraid but it’s just business and life I think. You will succeed and you will fail

I know some of you also do testing and some “under the microscope” experiments. Maybe you can share yours and what you have learned from it.