Internet Marketing

Can You Still Get Traffic By Being Active In Big Blogs?

by Melvin · May 25, 2010

Before, one of the most effective ways to get your new blog noticed is to comment on as many number of big blogs as possible. Back then it’s not just effective, it’s almost considered as a standard. You are basically going to be considered fool if you’re not utilizing this free traffic technique.

But like anything, as time rolls out quickly, things change so drastically. The once so popular blog commenting on big blogs has somehow declined. Not that people aren’t commenting anymore but these days, you’d rather see bloggers do a guest post, run a contest, focus on writing a series post or do more productive stuffs than by being active in their favorite top blogs.

It’s Not as Effective as What It Used To Be

There are really a ton of other things that aren’t as effective as they used to before. One good example is link exchanges. 5-10 years back, it was like the only method that webmasters use both to drive traffic and increase their rankings in the search engines. That’s why people always say that the pace of an online business is much quicker than the real world ones. This day what you’re using may be still effective, the next day you’re not guaranteed it is still gonna work.

As for being active on top blogs, here are some of the reasons that I see why it has somehow declined as not as good as what it used to be.

Poor Quality of Traffic – It doesn’t take a lot to see that most bloggers who comment on those sites do it for the lone sake of commenting. I don’t know but I’m really puzzled why bloggers like Chow allow comments such as “thanks for this interesting post” as it doesn’t really add anything. Most of these bloggers were inferred that they need to comment on 200 blogs a day so they do it as fast as they could.
Happy-go trigger audience – This one relates to the first factor. The good reason why no one will notice your comment is because 98% of bloggers don’t really read comments of other people. They just comment and then leave, comment and then leave. Oftentimes they don’t even recognize who have written the posts. For instance everytime I do a guest post, most commenters would comment and not even think the post was a guest writeup by another blogger and not the author.
Saturation – its plain common sense. Why does one thing work so well before than today? Because before, the method isn’t abused, its used by a reasonable no.of bloggers. But now that everyone uses it, its really hard to see a return.

</end of rant> Anyways as I was writing this post, I just thought it would be interesting to share with you a little case study on what interacting with big blogs bring to the table for me.

For the past month i have been really trying to become active lurker reader on some of the big blogs in our niche. I had observed what ZK has been doing and basically I gave myself a go. And here’s what I found out (in last months period):

From John Chow’s blog

From Shoemoney’s blog

From Carl Ocab’s blog

And from DailyBlogTips

It wasn’t ever massive but it’s a good proof that by being active on other people’s blogs you can still reap some traffic. It would also be interesting to see how different blogs have different visitors and behaviors. For instance Shoemoney’s blog, returned a bounce rate of 39% which is pretty good considering that all audience came from just reading my comment and then clicking my link.

John Chow has sent me the most no.but its hard to determine it since I’ve done a couple of guest post on that site as well. As expected it returned a higher bounce rate since most of the blog’s readers are trigger go-lucky ones.

Carl Ocab’s blog sent me a pretty nice stat to play with. His blog was like in hiatus for three months and to receive that no.of traffic and bounce rate is pretty amazing. DBT on the other hand, had the least new visits % . This means that most of the readers of that site also read my blog as well.

Importance of this

Why am I telling you all of this? You may probably have been scratching your head on whats the importance of this. Two things, first is I love playing with stats. I spend a lot of my free time with Analytics and analyzing my logs and second is that stats can help you a lot in terms of improving the usability of your blog and eventually driving more traffic. As an old adage says,”the number will always speak for itself”. I’m a huge advocate of that.

So to conclude, yes we can still get good traffic from being an active commentator on those big blogs. But it just does not gonna happen right away, you have to be creative and make sure you’re adding good value to the community and not just being spammy. After all, we’re not just concerned about the quantity, we’re all after the quality as well.

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?

The Only Thing You Need When Starting an MMO Blog

by Melvin · May 4, 2010

make money online blog It doesn’t take a lot to figure out that most of the bloggers who are trying to make money online is blogging in the dirty polluted make money online niche. Simon from Teenius.com has written a superb guest post here in this blog on whether you can still make money from the mmo niche or not. I’d recommend you to read that post as he has pointed out valid points about that topic.

Only a small fraction of bloggers in the MMO industry is actually making money (not a secret) from talking some craps about making money and the rest simply do not make anything. Listen, if you are a noob reading this and you’re planning to start a make money online blog then please don’t. Don’t and you’d thank me later, I swear. 😉

Credibility

In any niche, before people could even notice you on something you must establish credibility first and foremost. A good reason why a huge chunk of bloggers aren’t getting read is because they are not credible enough to pay attention to. Who would like to read an “expert” tip written by some Average Joe? “Heck, how would I even know this guy is for real?”

In MMO Niche, the only thing you need is…

…The actual experience of making money online. Yep, that’s right. In this business, today, you’ll never ever succeed talking about making money online if in the first place, you have no idea on how to do it!

I know what you are talking. How about the “follow me as I make money online” or “track the journey of a 12-yr old student on making money” kind of concept? The answer is those concepts are already obsolete. It doesn’t work anymore. A good number of people have probably had some success with that but right now, it’s already outdated and lame!

People are critical. If you speak on something that you really don’t know, even if you’re claiming it’s just your personal opinion, you’re gonna get busted. And the news that “your blog is just a crap” spreads faster than good mentions. You don’t want to ruin your ENTIRE name just because of this mistake.

Dig Deeper in what you really know

“How about you Melvin? You are blogging in the dirty niche; do you have an experience with the crap you’re talking about?” The answer is yes. If you are a long time reader of this blog, you probably already know everything about me. How I started within a sports niche, got into the beginners mistake of using Adsense ONLY, getting into internet marketing, making a ton of money (ton w/c is equal to my standards. 😉 ) with affiliate marketing, engaging into some blackhat, doing freelance work (for startup cash), doing SEO-related stuffs, and a whole lot more.

I probably am qualified (or not) to talk into this niche, but I beg not to. Why? Because mmo is already a niche that has a lot of qualified people to speak into. In fact, these are people who know MORE than what I know.

So instead I just dug deeper and went into the marketing part of blogging. I am an internet marketer, have bought tons of stupid eBooks, got enrolled in a lot of quality coaching programs and have about 3 years of experience. And that’s why I try to incorporate all of this into blogging where I know I’ve done well because of the fact that I have the knowledge on how to market my sites.

Ok enough self promo. We all want to make money online and become (or look like) expert in our own areas. But don’t do the mistake of getting into something, just because you feel it’s ideal. You cannot claim yourself as a blogging expert if you just write crappy articles, you can’t fool people you are a loss weight expert if you yourself aren’t fit.

Hmmm.. Is there something fishy that we need to know about you? 😀

Image Credit to: Paradigm Business Consultancy

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.

Widget Logic Plugin, Strategize Your Sidebar Widgets

by Melvin · Apr 10, 2010

All bloggers make good use of the sidebar in their template. Whether it is 2-column, 3 column-sidebar or just multiple sidebars, our aim as a blogger is to make good use of them all. Thankfully for us, WordPress has made it so much easy with the use of widgets wherein all we have to do is drag and drop things.

Of course just like anything, people sometimes abuse the use of widgets and sidebar elements. How many bloggers have you seen cluttering their sidebar too much? Or how many useless widgets usually do appear on most sidebars? The ease of using widgets have enabled bloggers to become a bit trigger-happy with putting so much at the same time.

Widget Logic WordPress Plugin

The topic above leads us to the widget logic plugin. What widget-logic does is basically lets user use conditional tags to control the pages where a certain widget will appear on. It sounds a bit basic but trust me this one is a helpful plugin.

Looking at my blog you would see that some widgets that appear on home don’t necessarily appear on the other pages and vice versa. If you’re more technically literate, you could actually play more with the conditional tags to achieve your desired result.con

For example here in my blog, I don’t display the top commentator widget anywhere outside the home page basically because the home page is the strongest page in my blog. Another is my “Blog Marketing for Fame” eBook widget wherein I don’t display it in the index page primarily because I already have it in the middle sidebar part. But when you go to the posts and pages, you could see it at the top most part of the sidebar. You can do your own variations depending on how you prefer it.

Its all about maximizing each and every part of your blog

When I went with the blog’s redesign, my aim is to maximize every space without annoying/cluttering my readers’ mind. So with widget logic plugin, I was able to really implement things that I want. It gave me the flexibility of mixing and matching different elements in the sidebar.

How about you, have you used this widget already? If yes, maybe you can tell me some of your implementation techniques and tips. If not, I would highly recommend using it. Check out the widget logic plugin page.