Preachings

Reviving This Blog & Some Updates

by Melvin · Apr 14, 2011

For the past 2-3 months or so I have been not that active in the blogosphere and that’s very evident with the lack of posts here in this blog. I have just 12 posts so far for the entire year and this is very different from the previous years that I had with this blog.

What I’ve been up to lately?

I’ve been up to so many things for the year and obviously you can never do so many things at a time. I have my normal day job taking still most of my time (8 hours). Then I have consulting and client work w/c is something that I have been doing since late September last year. That amounts to something like 12-14 hours a day of work. The remaining time is usually spent on some of my properties online that I try to maintain once in a while. Now do take note that’s just for work time and we all know living a life is not all about working if you know what I mean.

And that leaves to very little to no time at all for blogging. This kind of like sucks for me because I recently just published a post about maintaining your blog when you’re busy, yet its me who can’t maintain the blog while I’m busy. 😀

The original plan was for me to do blog-related stuff every weekend but that is often sabotage since I have to fill up some time during weekends for some of my clients in exchange for an added compensation. Sometimes, I do not work on some days during weekdays so I have to compensate during either Saturday or Sunday.

I gotta tell you that doing client work and consulting is so lucrative (especially for me who’s living here in Philippines). You can pretty much just do it for a couple of hours yet make more money than what you usually make in a day or 2 for your day job. But the drawback is its not as fulfilling as blogging and doing your own stuff. You could be enjoying it for first two months until you realize that your passion isn’t really there.

What’s Next For Me?

Believe it or not, I dropped consulting and client work. 🙂 I have a couple of reason for doing it. The first one is to revert back to me living a normal life (not a workaholic life) and the second one is for me to focus on doing what I really want which is blogging and doing my own stuff. That’s why I realized that maybe this is the right time to start doing what I have been doing for most of my life.

This means that I will be posting occasionally again to this blog, while interacting and being active on the blogosphere once more. I sure missed out a lot of the things that I’m doing like commenting, going to social sites and interacting, doing guest posts, lurking in forums and so on. Hopefully the free time that I will get will enable me to do these things again.

So that’s it. For some of my readers who were pissed off with my lack of activity, I would like to ask for an apology. Make sure you follow me up, and you’re hooked up with my newsletter so you don’t miss out things that I announce. 🙂 See ya!

Minimizing Blog Elements and Why Should

by Melvin · Mar 5, 2011

One of the more noticeable changes in my recent blog redesign is that there are way fewer elements than ever. The 2.0 version of the blog before was probably the most cluttered design I ever had and even though I really, really like it, I realized that there really isn’t that much use for most of the elements in there. Heck that design even had 2 sidebars in it and a bunch of free space to play with.

I’m not sure if bloggers are aware but minimizing some of the elements is really the way to go. I would use this blog as an example. Before, I used to have so many elements and widgets on the sidebar, footer, header and etc. For instance, I had those recent readers widget, that mini navigator plugin, a bunch of list of links and a whole lot of redundancies (duplicate elements etc.). Then I evaluated, am I really using these elements? Do I benefit from putting some of it here and there? Or am I just wasting some space?

Obviously the easy answer is yes, I’m just wasting space. A recent reader widget is nothing but a widget to show some flair, a mini navigator plugin is a redundancy since users can navigate themselves using the menu bar, excessive number of ad zones also harm since no one’s really buying them. Aside from that I looked at my stats using a bunch of my tracking tools and I saw that users don’t really use most of the elements that I put in the blog. The behavior of most of my readers is that they check out a post or two and then comment and then leave. No one’s looking at this, no one’s clicking there and etc.

To add to that, I looked into my Google Webmaster Central and saw that my blog’s loading time is really slow (as slow as John Chow’s blog, lol). Those things have strongly convinced me that a change is needed.

Cut Out Some Elements!

So that’s my advice to you. Look, as an average web surfer/reader/lurker, we can only do so much on one’s site. I occasionally go to NBA.com but do I really use all of their features there? No, but NBA is an exception since its a large website and is widely visited by a lot of people all over the globe. But us bloggers? I know we all want to keep people browsing and staying for awhile but trust me, that’s not the way to go.

Another factor is loading time which I mentioned above. I live here in Asia and I know our internet here is just sub par comparing to countries like say US or Europe. If you have all those elements and 50% of your traffic is coming from a country that has a mediocre internet connection then that would give a bad user experience.

If those factors still don’t convince you then just remember the things I mentioned above. You have this, this and this in your sidebar and this in your footer. Ask yourself a question. What is this for? Do I benefit from it or does my readers benefit from this? Does it fit in well with my branding and stuff like that? Why not run some advance tracking tools on your blog to see if your readers are really noticing and using those things?

Believe it or not, I still feel that I need to remove some more elements here in this blog. I need to fill in some spots (dang I have four subfooters!) but I have to balance that with what I want and what I don’t want.

Lastly, look at some of the cluttered popular blogs around. Most of them made some redesigns recently and one thing to notice is that they have undergone a major revamp by removing things that they no longer need and by putting up a cleaner design. How about you? Are you ready to cut down the clutter and excess?

Social Media Users Finding Better Jobs After College? Probably.

by Melvin · Mar 1, 2011

This is a guest post written by Jayson Jones

It’s a virtual age. Life is shaped by technology, the days are defined by online explorations, and all college graduates have been exposed to the world of networks and exchanges.

It is only wise therefore to expect those exchanges to yield results beyond the common greetings. They are instead to offer potential careers.

Industry is changing. What was once a limitation of resources, a force of on-site conversations, has instead sprawled out. Virtuality now connects all companies; and graduates seeking to inject themselves into the fray must understand how to use this to their advantage. Social media dominates all things — and, while there can be no guarantee of succeeding through this venue, the statistics are shaded favorably. The benefits can’t be denied.

Career Decisions

The future is a vast thing — frightening with all of its possibilities. There is no certainty of victory, only the desire for it; and recent graduates may find themselves overwhelmed, unsure of what career path to take. Social media helps to lessen the burden, however. Individuals who don’t know how to properly tailor their degrees can use sites like LinkedIn to discover all of the many opportunities.

LinkedIn (established in 2003) is a business-oriented network that encourages those of similar fields to become aware of each other. As of 2011, however, it also offers a unique tool for guests: the Career Explorer.

Graduates can provide information like their experiences, degrees and interests; and the Explorer will then calculate potential positions. Paths can be discovered, rewritten and possibly even began all from the computer. This helps to ensure no decision is ignored.

Network Aid

The world of business is shaped to communication. No company is formed of silent managers, the dull employees. Instead there’s a demand for words and ideas. Networking helps to make those ideas a little easier to trade, though.

Popular sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit allow individuals to recognize all relevant posts and conversations. Instant access is offered, and this ensures that no graduate will be without the necessary updates. All can instead track corporations, note any career openings and follow developments. Knowledge provides a better chance for success.

Brand Building

No resume is enough. No first impression can be won with just a smile. This is a modern era and the traditional notions of earning careers are now considered antiquated. Individuals must instead understand who they are and what they wish to offer. They must build a brand. Social media provides graduates with the ability to present themselves to the world — through videos, blogs, RSS feeds and more.

All information can be charted out and posted. A brand can then be formed, with readers gained and a presence developed. This makes it far easier to contact companies, offering credence to all inquiries (rather than simply sending in a dull page and praying it isn’t overlooked).

Conclusion

Business is no longer confined to the standards of the past. It’s instead reaching toward the convenience of the present — and graduates are urged to do the same. There can be no promise of an online marketing career, but there can be a promise of potential. And that’s all many need.

Jayson Jones is an art student with a focus in Fashion Design. He’s an amateur blogger, and you can find his work at http://www.catwalkcatfight.com/, or follow him on Twitter @jaysonjonez.

10 Signs that a Blog is Getting Bigger than Ever

by Melvin · Jan 15, 2011

Everyone starts out as small bloggers and over time eventually some of us reach the greener pasture and become a bigger blog. By saying big blog, what I mean is that the blog gets more readers than ever and obviously starts making more money. Not a lot of bloggers get into this stage and to be honest, I still think that this blog far from that.

Anyways in this post I just like to enumerate different things and signs that obviously make a blog bigger than ever.

1. Humongous number of comments

It all starts with this. I was reading shoemoney’s blog ever since not a lot of people are reading it yet. And when he started becoming popular, the number of comments per posts has started rising crazily. And long story short, Shoemoney’s blog is now one of the most popular blog in the weight loss internet marketing niche.

Of course this does not apply to all. Long time ago, I made a post about whether comments justify the success of a blog and in that writeup I revealed that anyone can really get 50ish comments per post, but that doesn’t make them established at all.

2. Increased number of ads

This is very logical. When a blog starts out with so many white space in its layout and all of a sudden looks like a Nascar, you know its just trying to make the most of its traffic. Again this does not mean any blog that looks like Nascar is a big blog, but its at least an indication that the blogger who owns it is trying to make the most out of the opportunity. 😉

3. The blog starts out churning out multiple articles per day

Heheh. This is so true. Look at problogger, look at JohnChow, these guys are posting 3-4 posts per day and the reason is sound, it is to maximize their exposure for their writing. Another more recent example is Hesham of FamousBloggers.com

If you get over thousand hits per day and 80% of them expect that you will post a couple more post before the day ends, how many repeat traffic could that possibly bring? 😉

4. When one can already confidently sell their own product or membership program

Most bloggers/marketers fail in selling info products and membership sites fora simple reason, they do it even before they establish a presence.

Now when a blogger can confidently sell something to its readerbase, then most of the time it means that he is getting enough traffic and enough publicity to be able to see his/her stuff to other people. That’s another sign.

5. When one tweets for 20+ times a day

Another thing related to getting bigger as a blogger is an increased popularity in social sites like Twitter, Facebook, or whatever it is. So naturally when you have already 10,000 (real) followers, you don’t want to waste that. Instead you want to make the most of it by either pointing them to your blog frequently or pushing affiliate products.

6. When a blog gets featured occasionally

This is pretty obvious. When someone makes mention of your blog even if its just a small mention, then it means you’re not just an ordinary blogger (lols).

A lot of mid to big bloggers occasionally do roundups of blogs that provide value to readers and when your blog gets mentioned in there, it means a lot.

7. Getting Interviewed

This is related to no.6. If you started getting those interview requests, then it means you’re slowly carving out your name in the blogosphere. Although like other reasons mentioned in this post, getting interviewed doesn’t directly mean you’re famous. There are a lot of bloggers who interview random people on a daily basis which I obviously find lame.

8. Making redesigns

Not really spoiling Problogger’s new design eh. 😉 Ok so its noticeable that once a blog gets big enough and come to the point that the theme can no longer handle whatever it has, bloggers will make that redesigns.

It’s always part of the reason. Most bloggers who start getting traffic decide to do other things like starting a newsletter or publishing more posts and in that case, making redesigns is almost always part of the equation.

9. Starts getting negative publicity

This is of course the bad side of becoming more popular. When your blog eventually gets bigger, you will start receiving troll/hate comments and messages from people who are wasting their time. You will also start getting into these controversies obviously created by other people who are looking to ride into your momentum upwards.

Its important to understand its normal. People love hating other people and they can never be contented with everything that they do. Negative publicity is still publicity after all.

10. Lesser activity in the blogopshere

This is sad yet true. When bloggers like Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse, David Risley and etc. are just small bloggers who own small blogs back then, you can almost always see them participating in forums, commenting on other blogs, replying to their readers frequently and just being active overall in the entire blogging scene.

Unfortunately as they started getting bigger, they realized its more worthy to start putting efforts on other things than interaction. Is it a bad thing? Definitively no because that is really how the process works. Hence, its a sign the blogger is getting bigger.

So you have any other ideas in mind? 😉

Reviewing Year 2010 – Just Another Year End Post

by Melvin · Jan 2, 2011

Time flies really fast, isn’t it? Just few more hours and Its already year 2011. So for that, I’d like to make a recap post about things that happened for this year. I’ve never done this before so I thought its exciting to do one now.

Year 2010 overall has been good to me. At the start of the year, I went back to my college university after two painful stints of OJT on some companies the past year. It was exciting because that happened to be my last term in college which means goodbye school. Here’s the summary of my 2010.

Early 2010

Everything started with the Advance English kind of like training for us. I live in Philippines and although people here speak better English than some other Asian countries, our school felt the need for this so that we’re more prepared when we go out and find/get jobs.

College-wise, its kind of like one of the most challenging trimesters for us because of the pressure of being a graduating student. There were some tough software development projects but overall it was just fine.

As far as my online stuff is concern, I decided to focus on growing this blog more and it did. I tried engaging to more bloggers and putting up better content. Luckily, this blog grew and obviously the income increased mainly because of increased number of ads.

Summer of 2010

I also held the best blog marketing contest and it had about over $2000 of real prizes from real people at stake. I was so glad that sponsors helped me out in this. The contest got good popularity around, a lot of people have joined but the best thing was it benefitted bloggers themselves.

In return I joined some contests as well and won some. It was always good and challenging for me to go out and try to win these contests.

Aside from that, I attended two blogging conference for this year. The first one was iBlog which is THE biggest blogging summit in the Philippines and it was a good as I met a lot of new friends and got to see people that I admire in the industry. The other conference was Wordcamp 2010 in which Matt Mullenwegg flew down to grace the event. It was equally a nice event and I was able to see Matt in person.

Getting Employed, & Starting New Stuff

Then June onwards became a really busy month. I got employed in a software development company as their online marketing guy and later I was also assigned as a software tester. From there on, I started spending lesser and lesser time in this blog and other of my web properties. I found that a day job really sucks time.

It didn’t prevent me though from pursuing other of my online businesses. I founded Killerlogodesigns late July (although we’re kind of like in beta) and got some good clients. I also started some sites in the sports niche just to increase my visibility in that space. Lastly I opened doing client work and consulting for clients. I used to do a lot of that couple of years back before I got bored with it. Late this year, I opened it up again.

Because of those things and my job, I was able to make tons of money in a very short period of time. Consulting and client work rakes in the most, then I still have passive income from ads from my blogs and then the day job. But then a good portion of it was spent to hospital when one of my family members got confined.. I also helped out my parents in paying some stuff.

Year 2010 in General

All in all, 2010 is a good year for me. I feel blessed to be given with these opportunities and feel equally elated that I was able to deliver and satisfy people that I’m working with. There were some challenges along the way, most are minor ones and some are tough ones but what’s important is that I was always given this opportunity to prove myself as a interim father of the family and the eldest son.

So to conclude in a long sentence, in 2010 I was able to grow this blog and monetize it well, was able to finish college and land a job, was able to make good amount of money in my first 6 months outside college and on the other side I was able to surpass most of the problems for me and my family.

Looking forward to 2011

So to be straightforward, I know 2011 is going to be a much more exciting year for me obviously equally full with challenges and obstacles. I’m not fazed with it and I want to continue improving myself and maximizing my potentials. How about you?

Why Productivity is Vital in Blogging Success

by Melvin · Nov 27, 2010

One of the the reasons why most bloggers can’t get pass the startup/newbie stage is because they lack a lot of things. From things like passion and determination to a more measurable metrics like traffic, lack of focus, incompetence or whatever it is, I can say that it can be all attributed to one thing, being unproductive.

I, myself is a big advocate of being able to produce consistently and riding on that to move up the ladder. I’m sure a lot of people would say they are exerting so much effort in it but still it doesn’t provide them a good outcome. Do take note that hardwork does not have a linear relationship with being productive. I mean I can work hard on reading a lot of materials in all my 24 hours but does that mean I’m productive? Naah!

The truth about being productive is that it still depends on whether you’re doing the right things. But how the heck do I know what is right from what’s not? Simple. If you’re focusing on exerting effort on things that you need to be doing, then you’re achieving to be productive. In other terms, if you’re working hard on some of the things that can have a dramatic effect on your own blogging and you’re working on it with such good focus then you are being productive.

What are the things that can have dramatic effect? Now this is where it gets a bit tricky. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot that doing small things can lead to big things which is true. Now the thing that I want to emphasize here is that if you have a plan and execute that plan in such a way that you’re doing it in a strategic step by step manner, thats going towards the productive way.

You see, there’s so many people wanting to do things all at the same time and want to exert an equal amount of efforts doing all those things successively. We all know that’s impossible and as a result, they get burnt out pretty quickly and they never really do any of those things properly. That being said, it’s really hard to be on a momentum when you don’t know what you need to do first, when you don’t have an idea what needs to be prioritized the most.

Final Words

I’ve read a lot of productivity tips and quite to be frank, some of them are really good and I use them coupled with my own implementations to maximize my productivity. But the main point here is that it all starts with you, yes you the blogger. What do you really want to achieve first and foremost? Most bloggers have this lucrative long term plan but most of them, if not all, lack the missing pieces in between to be able to move forward.

If my long term goal is to make money, how do I achieve that? Get traffic? Yes, but how do I get traffic? And the question and answer goes on. Until we can answer those things, then we can start working things on a more concise way, hence we can maximize our productivity on each of the tasks that we’re going to do. Again always take note that working hard doesn’t mean your being productive and being productive doesn’t even guarantee success!

Now you may probably say now that I’m pushing the thought that blogging is super hard. It depends on the way you’d like to think of it but at least you’re now getting the bigger picture in a clearer manner.

5 Different Things that I have to Accomplish Everyday

by Melvin · Nov 22, 2010

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

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

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

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