Contest

Why a Blog is your Best Marketing Asset

by Melvin · Oct 10, 2011

I have been blogging for about 4 years now and it still never ceases to amaze me how a blog can be utilized as a powerful marketing asset for whatever you’re doing. For example, this blog alone has helped me do a ton of things just because I write here. It has that leverage that gives you a pretty good advantage over your other competitors in your market. Aside from that it allows you to do direct response marketing better than ever since you’re hardly pitching them anything but rather just giving out good content.

Anyway there’s a huge contest over at SEM-GROUP in w/c I am currently participating right now. My writing entry to that contest is entitled Your Best Internet Marketing Asset – Your Blog. It’s a detailed blog post about what I said above. It also tackles how blogging alone covers all of the other components that you probably already need in order to succeed in marketing your business online. Again you can help me win the contest by reading my contest entry.

It’s not a traffic-getting contest actually but rather just a writing contest. However, its one of those rarely lengthy blog entries that I usually do and I think you can benefit greatly from that.

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Contest Media Partner

$500 Sponsors

RankPop.com Affordable SEO

$300 Sponsors

Daniel McGonagle Link Building

SEO-Peace.com Professional link building SEO Company

$150 Sponsors

Hesham Zebida Thesis Skins

$100 Sponsors

Scott Bradley Simple Weight Loss Tips For Entrepreneurs

Milan Matchev Health Directory

Jacob Share JobMob Job Search Tips

Ileane Smith Blogging Tips

Search Engine Marketing Group

John Britsios www.SEOWorkers.com

Magento Developer

Doc Sheldon’s Clinic Critical Thinking for the Discerning SEO

$50 Sponsors

Vertical Measures Internet Marketing Services

Whitney Michael Segura Greenhouses for Sale

Butch Segura Wholesale Greenhouses by EarthCare

Whitney “WeedyP” Segura Internet Marketing Blog by Whitney Segura

Ernest Segura Greenhouse Supplies @ OurCrazyDeals.com

Raxa Design Houston Internet marketing

Ana Hoffman – Traffic Generation Cafe Web Traffic

James Brown James Brown

Anwar Barake Wholesale Herbal Incense

Understand Technology with TechFume

The Tech Blog TechnoZeast

Wilderness Aware Rafting Colorado White Water Rafting

Sales Nexus online CRM

SEO Prize Sponsors

David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.SEO Training Dojo

Lifetime membership to: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) SEO tools

SEMrush.com – the best tool to spy on your competitors ($210 value) www.semrush.com

3 month Pro subscription to Raven Internet Marketing Tools ($297 value) Raven Internet Marketing Tools

Most Bloggers are Limiting Themselves & Here’s Why

by Melvin · Sep 5, 2011

As bloggers, we are constantly taught not to put our eggs in one basket. What this mean is that we should never limit ourselves to just one thing. For traffic generation for instance, we should not rely on search traffic and we should try to diversify different sources of traffic. For monetization, it could be tapping into different source of income. If you’re monetizing solely through Google Adsense, then have you given a thought that you’d be broke when Google bans you?

To be honest, I highly think the same of blogging itself as a whole. Most people I think are limiting themselves too much and sometimes I am one of those people who do it unfortunately. I used to limit myself too much in blogging and that I didn’t realize there’s a lot of money outside of the actual writing in a blog. Of course a blog is a very valuable asset but sometimes we can use that blog to get into many other different areas that can prove to be profitable for us. Example? Freelancing, affiliate marketing, consulting, etc.

For more of this, you can check out my guest post entry entitled why most bloggers don’t make much money. It’s also an entry to a contest so I would appreciate if you could comment there and retweet the post for me. Or you can do other more stuff if you want. 😉

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I’m obligated to post the sponsors of the contest so here they are:

SMARTBLOGGERZ – Main Sponsor ($750)

SmartBloggerz helps bloggers and affiliate marketers learn what it REALLY takes to make money online and be successful online just by implementing the tips that are shared regularly on the blog and to those who subscribed to the private newsletter.

ESTAVA MORIOKA – Gold Sponsor ($150)

Estava Morioka is the premier resource for the American Party Girl. Their online boutique offers Stylish, Inexpensive, and High Quality party dresses, cocktail dresses, sexy party dress and sexy club dresses.

THE BAD BLOGGER – Gold Sponsor ($150)

“The Bad Blogger” is a blogger who blogs about Internet Marketing, Copywriting and Blogging related Topics.

Again I would appreciate if you can support me in this contest. 🙂

Blog Engage Crazy Guest Blogging Contest

by Melvin · Sep 24, 2010

Cash contests and guest blogging seem to be the perfect combination these days. Just after one and one and another one have been done, it seems that new guest blogging cash contests keep on springing all over. So for this edition, it’s Blog Engage turn to host its own contest. You can read more about the contest here.

So basically it’s just pretty much the same (as far as rules) as with the other guest blogging contests. In order to win, you have to put in a superb guest article and you have to promote it.

Contest Prizes and Awards

2 year free hosting (3 GB space/15 GB bandwith) + 1 free domain

Leading Travel Directory for Travel Websites

My Guest Blog Media Sponsor

Newark Airport Parking

Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors

Platinum Package ” $125 value + stationery design “Business Cards, Letterhead and Envelopes” 100$ value

One year membership at Elegant Themes From Nick

Simply Fresh WordPress theme

Free Blog Review at Bloggeries Blog Forum

One Year Free of HostGator’s Business Web Hosting Plan (a $179.40 value)

So that’s it, make sure you don’t miss it out and please do support me in the contest. As always I just don’t join contests, I try to win them too. 🙂 And it doesn’t end there, I actually hand out superb value by writing a really good article so make sure to check out my post entry there and let me know what you think

Can you Really Depend on SEO for Your Site?

by Melvin · Sep 2, 2010

Search engine optimization is one overrated thing. And I know its not just me who thinks it this way. But even with that fact, I still have a lot of respect for the top SEO guys like Aaron Wall, Danny Sullivan and some other ones. They’re the guys whom I think have the most extensive and updated knowledge about the topic that’s why I keep on following them.

Anyway back to the topic. I know a lot of newcomers in the business or even the experienced ones rely too much on search engines. I mean, the time that they allot in planning and strategizing for SEO is just too much. Now this leads us to the question, “Can you really depend on your SEO tactics for the profitability of your site?”. I’m sure we will all have mixed takes about it.

As most of you know, I guest post a lot these days and I wrote an article over the cool folks at Sem-group which is all about SEO, SEM and Social media. In that post I discussed a lot about how they’re connected and how SEM and social media play vital role in giving the site the initial boost. Here’s an excerpt:

When building a website or any online-based project, you want to build SEO in it from the get-go. You want to optimize it for those key terms that you’re looking into from the start. I know you’re saying, “how can you do that, you don’t even have content yet?” Yes, you’re right but what I mean is that with every websites you can already set up things from the start that would give you a dramatic effect later on. Let me explain.For example, if I’m building a site based on a WordPress platform, I can start fine-tuning the site’s search goals by doing the necessary things like adding an All in One SEO pack, canonicalizing the domain, setting up the meta descriptions properly and creating a robots.txt (and many more of course). You see, these are the things that you can already do from the start yet it doesn’t take that much to do those. On the flip side, it may not yield that much results for the first few months but its future benefits would be enormous for sure.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t a short-term goal in the first place right? Organic rankings is something that can be achieved over time and if you’re getting lots of traffic from search engines then you know what I’m talking about.

Read more: http://sem-group.net/search-engine-optimization-blog/sem-seo-social-media-and-their-connection-to-each-other/#ixzz0yL5bkfe4

Again you can visit my post about SEO, SEM and Social media and feel free to add your insights about it too. I know people have various opinions about this topic and Im willing to take criticisms for it.

It’s a Contest, Help me Win it!

Yes, the article I’ve written above is a contest entry. Sem-Group.net was lucky enough to gather over $2000 of prizes at stake and as all of you know, I love joining contests. Here are the cold-blooded prizes and their sponsors:

$200 Prize Sponsors

Link Building from Daniel McGonagle
Best Travel Sites from BestTravelWebsites.com
Vacation Rentals from ArrangeYourVacation.com

$150 Prize Sponsors

The Best Candy Store

$100 Prize Sponsors

Marriage Advice from Alisa Bowman
Internet Marketing Services provided by Vertical Measures
SEO Software from Sheer SEO
SEO Ottawa – SEO consultants, writers, and translators in Canada
Virtual Assistants from Offshore Ally
Thesis Skins by Hesham Zebida
Houston SEO services provided by Gerald Weber
Network Marketing Training from Toni J Young
Distinctive Ecards by Quillcards
Ghostwriting services provided by Ghostwriter Dad

$50 Prize Sponsors

Whitney Segura’s Internet Marketing Blog
James Brown
Houston web design by Raxa Design
Freelance Copywriter Eric Brantner
Houston Business Development by The Servant Media
Increasing Targeted Website Traffic by Ana Hoffman, Traffic Generation Cafe
Kennewick Homes from The Lane Real Estate Team

Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors

Hostgator.com is offering a 1 year Business Web Hosting plan. Includes toll free phone number and SSL, a $179.40 value.
David Harry is offering a full years membership at SEO Training Dojo, a value of $250.
Link-Assistant.Com is offering SEO tools – SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) $599 worth with a life-time LIVE! plan subscription.
Special thanks to the contest media partner My Blog Guest, the free guest post exchange community by Ann Smarty where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

What’s needed for me to win

To help me win the contest, simply visit the post above, share your opinion by commenting and retweet it. The more comments and retweets the more chances of me winning. As you can see right now, I’m in the last place as far as both are concern but that would change if you help me out. 😀

Again here’s the post: http://sem-group.net/search-engine-optimization-blog/sem-seo-social-media-and-their-connection-to-each-other/ feel free to check it out!

MelvinBlog’s Marketing Tip Contest Winners

by Melvin · Aug 7, 2010

The time has finally come. As I’ve promised, today the winners for the MelvinBlog’s Marketing Tip Contest will be announced. And as I’ve said, I will not be late this time in announcing the winners I will try not to be late but still I did (lols, its Aug.7 in Philippines).

As I’ve mentioned thousand of times, the entries were really great and I’m sure the judges had a hard time rating each article. I myself had a hard time too! Anyways for the last time I’d like to thank the sponsors for gracing this event as if not for them all these things will not happen. I’d like to thank my media partner Fergal of Business Advice Forum who has done an exceptional job in spreading the news. Now for the last time let’s give these people a round of a plause for being sponsors:

Now the Winners

So all in all we had 16 entries and as I’ve said the winners will be judged by two factors; quality and popularity. Quality is 70% and is largely based on the ratings given by the five judges. The second one is popularity which accounts for 30%. This is basically the amount of comments and retweets the posts have received. For the sake of getting you more excited here’s the screenshot of the scoreboard (Click for a larger view)

As agreed upon, I’m not going to disclose the name of the judges for now. If you saw the image above and still you were not able to figure it out. Read below to see the complete list of the winners.

1st Prize – Lee Ka Hoong

Lee’s entry was entitled 3 Effective Blog Marketing Strategies That I Use and it got the highest score overall. He scored a total of 8.1 points and got the nod of most judges. Aside from that it also got a lot of traffic that his blog was one of the main traffic drivers for my blog on that month. Congratulations Lee! You win the following:

6 months free for the standard package of CrazyEgg valued at $19 a month – $114 value
1 character design courtesy of LogoNerds – $97 value
1 multi-use package of Themewars premium theme – $70 value
WordPress SEO service courtesy of ShoutMeLoud.com – $250 value
1 First Class Package of Ultimate Blogging Theme 3.0 – $147 value
1 license of OIO Publisher – $47 value
$20 cash from FamousBloggers.com – $20
6 months free Web hosting courtesy of MelvinBlog.com – $45 value
1 copy of Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco – $17 value
Premium Interview featured here in MelvinBlog.com – $70 value

2nd Prize – Murray Lunn

Murray which is more known by the name Murlu wrote a post entitled Write 10 Articles A Day, Market Yourself And Avoid Burn Out. In that article Murray made a really interesting point and approach in terms of not burning out yourself so you still have time to do a lot of things. Personally this my favorite post as I find this really really unique and innovative. Congrats Murlu! You win the following:

$50 cash and one year PRO membership for MyBlogGuest – $170 value
1 copy of Blogussion Thesis theme package – $46 value
1 character design courtesy of LogoNerds – $97 value
1 license of OIO Publisher – $47 value
1 copy of Crowbar Content courtesy of Buzz Marketing guru Dean Hunt – $97
1 copy of Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco – $17 value
$15 cash from BlogTactic
1 copy of 70 Posting Ideas courtesy of Liane – $15

3rd Prize – Devesh (no surname)

Dev wrote a well-received posts entitled 10 Best Marketing Tips that Will Blow Your Mind | Make Money Online. I can say that’s a good post to start with and its nice that his readers really benefitted from that article. Actually he’s tied for second place with Murlu but for the tie-breaker I asked all the judges on who deserves the 2nd and 3rd place more. Congrats Dev, you win the following:

1 copy of Gab Fire Theme – $59 value
1 year membership for ElegantThemes -$19
$15 cash, one advertising space and one copy of Facebook ad coupon eBook valued at $15 courtesy of Smartbloggerz.com – $54 total value
1 copy of Easy Blog Traffic worth $59, Insider SEO Revealed at $39 and Twitter Marketing Power worth $57 courtesy of WebTrafficROI.com
1 copy of Thirtyday blog eBook by Jimvesting – $15 value
1 copy of 70 Posting Ideas courtesy of Liane – $15

And to everyone else.

To all others who have joined the contest namely, Agent Deepak (man! you’re the favorite one on this contest), D3s0, Felix Albutura, Elie Palima, Cynthia Boris, Febap Liew, Sourav, I’d like to thank you for participating in the contest. You know what? I feel really really bad that I only got this number of sponsor prizes to give away. I mean I should’ve begged for more.

All entries are just exceptional and as you can see in the scoreboard, the difference between the winner points and a non-winner points do not even have a disparity of 1 point! It only means that this contest is really well fought so everyone should really deserve more than just a mention.

Again I hope I could’ve grabbed 10 – 20 more prizes so maybe I can include 2 or more winners but I didn’t really expect it to be this tight.

I wish I could give away $50 to each one too but that would be too much for me. Still for those who didn’t win, again just because I appreciate your entries, it’s closely fought, almost had same scores with the winners, I am going to contact you (using your blog’s contact form) for a surprise prize. Yes that’s how I appreciate you and your entry. Just wait and I’m sure you’re gonna be happy about it. 🙂

Twitter Retweet Contest

I nearly forgot this! I was about to publish this post yesterday midnight until I realized this contest. If you would remember, there was a side-in contest which was more to twitter users. As mentioned I’m giving away 10 prizes for that as well. Here are the awesome winners drawn randomly via random.org and in chronological order:

The 10 highlighted names are the winners and they are arranged chronologically. Its kind of funny because John Chow who retweeted my article won too although Im sure he wouldn’t mind giving that thing away to others anyway. Here’s your winnings btw:

Deanna_J – GabFire Theme
AgentDeepak – Blogussion Thesis Theme
whatswithjeff – Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco
easy4com – Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco
John Chow – Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco
AhsanHussein – Thirtyday Blog eBook by Jimvesting
MyBlog2day – Thirtyday Blog eBook by Jimvesting
d3so – Thirtyday Blog eBook by Jimvesting
Elie Palima- 1 copy of Social Media Marketing Book
Funbu – Youtube Made Simple Video Series Book

To all winners both in retweet contest and the main contest, don’t contact me. I will be contacting you to give you directions on how you can claim your prizes. It goes the same to non-winners on the main contest as I would be surprising you by giving you something. 😉

Again, don’t contact me. I will be the one who will contact you.

Successful Contest, What’s Next?

Well this contest ran for almost 2 months and I prepared this for almost 4 months. With that, I wanted to weep that it ended up being successful and I was really happy with the turnout. Congratulations again to all contestants, you’re all winners as I learned a lot from you. Also to sponsors, which are mostly my peers and friends, I appreciate you helping me out. This isn’t anywhere possible if not for you guys!

Obviously I’m don’t have the time I used to for this blog as I’ve started working a normal job but rest assure that this blog will still be as alive as ever. And if you’re looking to maximize and take advantage of my traffic, then why not submit a guest post entry so that your article would be featured for a long time since I don’t really have that much time to write a post? clever idea eh? 🙂

The Best Blog Marketing Tips Around the Internet

by Melvin · Jul 31, 2010

The contest has finally ended and it’s really really such a great one. It ran for almost 2 months and we’ve had successful feedbacks all over. On top of that, the quality of the entries that we’ve received is just superb. So if I am about conclude now if the contest was successful or not, there’s no question it is.

Anyways first I’d like to apologize for not having this post earlier nor reminding people that the contest has already ended. Actually, it is just this month that I started feeling the sting of having a day job. Although it’s enjoyable and exciting, it disables me to do a lot of things that I used to do when I was still in college.

Anyhow, the winners for the contest will be announced in August 5 as the current entries are already in the hands of the judges. But with that I’d like to honor those entries and give them some link love not because they participated in the contest but because they are really good reads. So if you’re looking for the best marketing tips around, then you may want to read these articles:

I’ve personally read all of them and I’m so happy with the quality. As I’ve said before, the goal of this contest is really to give back to the community and with the participants adhering to that, I think this is the most awesome contest I have ever run so far. With that I’d like to congratulate everybody already for really doing a good job. 🙂

Now if you’re contest entry was not there, feel free to hit me up via comment form asap. I tried to find all the articles, tried to moderate all the trackbacks and even went as far as the spam comments page just to make sure all entries are received. Yes, I know how it feels when an entry is ignored. Anyway, again feel free to hit me up in case your article isn’t here.

So what’s next? Well there’s a lot of things to watch out for in this blog but as for the moment, why not try to support your favorite blogger by reading, commenting and retweeting his article above? What do you think?

Major Contest Announcement and Some Guest Posting Opps

by Melvin · Jul 17, 2010

The MelvinBlog Best Blog Marketing Tip Contest has finally come to a close and I can really really see it as a major success. Just with the fact that all entries are superb entries that it exceeded my expectations is a reason good enough to call this contest a success. And add to that, the massive interaction between the community of those blogs who participated in the contest. So again I’d like to thank the sponsors by presenting this uber big banner.

As I’ve said, that’s the goal of this contest. Sure it gave me a lot of traction for the entire 1 month of holding this one but it’s just all about the other intrinsic benefits I guess. So right now, I’m going to announce the winners.

And the winners are…

Congratulations to… uh oh! not so fast.. Actually as for the request of some of the contestant and as mainstream as it may sound, I am going to extend this contest. Yes, extend this!

I’m sorry if I spoiled you as I know you’re really excited to hear if you’re one of the winners but after much discussion with some of the sponsors, the contest will be extended up to July 25, meaning you still have 9 more days to either get as much people to read your contest entry or write another killer blog marketing tip to increase your chances of winning.

Another reason for that is the mini side-in contests. Do you remember that when I opened this contest I announced that there will be a lot of side-in type of contest? The reason Im extending this is because I still have some really nice exciting small contest for you in the coming days, so stay tuned!

If you haven’t joined yet, what are you waiting for, enter the contest and get a chance to win over $2000 of REAL prizes at stake.

Looking for Guest Writers

I don’t really want to do this but I have to since I’m still trying to figure out managing my time for work and for business. I’m now officially accepting guest post entries for this blog again. All you have to do is register for an account and then wait for me to upgrade your account. After all is done, you can now write your articles inside my wp-dashboard. That’s it.

I don’t want to put “what to post” and “what not to” here but obviously in order to land a guest post here in this blog, you have to submit a high-quality and unique guest article. Of course, I reserve the right to accept or reject articles if I feel they don’t meet my taste but rest assure, I’ll let you know about it.

So I guess that’s it for now. I made 2 announcements in this post and I’m sure there will be a lot of clarifications so just let me know through the comment form.