Ramblings

Confirm You Are Not a Spammer – Seriously?

by Melvin · Sep 13, 2011

I’m seeing this plugin in LOTS of blogs that I’m reading and commenting to and I wasn’t really that much concerned about it, initially. However when I started commenting again on lots of blogs as part of my back to blogging tasks, I started getting annoyed with this plugin. Why is that so?

Confirm you are not a spammer

What I’m talking about is this plugin called Anti-Spambot created by GrowMap and Andy w/c are people that I know and respect a lot. The way this plugin works is that there’s a checkbox in a comment form and before you can submit your comment, you will need to tick the checkbox to indeed confirm that you are not a spammer. How much sense does that make?

Well its not really that much of a big deal for me actually. I just find that its a workflow killer. I mean, you’re typing comments and doing this and that and when you click submit, you will get this notice that you have to confirm. Not that its annoying but it just gives me the ‘wtf’ look on my face. It doesn’t reload the page either so your comment will still be there but I guess its just human nature to get the ‘what’ look when you submit something and it doesn’t get submitted immediately. lols.

The other side

I haven’t tried the plugin yet so I haven’t had a chance to see what’s behind it yet. However from a bloggers perspective, I can’t really see much the value of it. I mean, what makes it different from a captcha? It requires you to do a thing before submitting your comment. Is it not making it hard for your reader to do commenting? Or maybe its just being lazy to moderate comments all in all?

If you’re reading this blog for a while you know that I value comments a lot and that I make it easy for people to interact (I always ask for their take, whatnot). With that I’m thinking having this ‘confirm you’re not a spammer’ box will only give your readers a step more before they can do what they want to do. And that maybe there’s a conversion part there that gets unconverted instead.

But again that’s just my opinion. Or maybe is there something that I misunderstood with regards to the plugin? Is Akismet not enough?

Is a Uniform Domain Name a Requirement in Blogging?

by Melvin · Aug 31, 2011

As newbies in blogging we are constantly taught that its a good practice to match the domain name of our blog to the market that we are into. So for instance if I’m blogging about tulips flowers, my domain name should be something like ‘pinktulipflowers.com’ or ‘tulipsflowersguide.com’. I can’t choose a domain name like ‘girlsoverflowers.com’ or ilovenmsname.com’. Yeah, I know the sample url’s are kinda creepy. =p

But does it really mean we need a uniform domain name or something that’s related to our niche? I myself is not a pretty good example as far as this is concern. This blog for instance is an internet marketing/blogging blog. But the domain name is too personal as it has my name on the domain name. Lots of my friends even think that melvinblog.com is nothing but a personal blog and people don’t initially realize that this blog is not really a personal blog.

Another concern is the branding. A blog like ‘internetmarketingsecrets.com’ can more likely be recognized as a marketing blog rather than a blog like [myfullname.com]. Of course this could also play a psychological role to your potential visitors. Imagine, a first time visitor comes in to your site because he was directed their by Google. And then he saw that the domain name is somehow very far from the topic he’s looking into. What do you think would be his reaction/response?

The last factor is the search engine rankings. This isn’t so much of an issue when you’re blogging in a general niche like ‘making money online’ or ‘buying cars’ or ‘insurance’. However it could play a crucial factor when you’re into microniches. Example is when you’re targeting your audience locally. A site like seomalaysia.com has a better chance of ranking better than a site called raneshabdulrahman.com when it comes to providing search optimization services to Malaysia. Or maybe a very small yet targeted niche like ‘beta fish’ in which most audience if not all come from search engines. That would then become a much bigger factor.

Defying the Odds

What I mentioned above are mostly the general rules that most people will really give you especially when you’re just starting out. And to be honest that should really be it. It doesn’t seem to make that much sense to have an unrelated domain name to the niche that you’re blogging to right?

But still we have lots of sites to reference to as far as not following that rule when it comes to naming domain names. Good examples in this niches are johnchow.com, shoemoney.com, entrepreneurs-journey.com, davidrisley.com. All of which have horrible (unrelated) domain names to begin with but they’re definitely the top guns when it comes to making money internet marketing kind of niche.And then we have crazier domains like icanhazcheezburger and a whole lot more raking in tremendous amount of search traffic without following the so called ‘standards’ with on-page optimization.

So I’ll leave it up to you. Honestly, I know people are obsessed with blogging and naming their blogs after them (or their nickname) so that might be the reason why. But considering a uniform domain name is still should be an option and besides, there’s really no harm in trying to be ‘uniformed’. What say you?

Officially Back in the Blogging Business. ;-)

by Melvin · Aug 23, 2011

Yohoo! Looks like I’m back for real! lol.

Shortly after the May 21 fake doomsday blog entry that I made, I gave a hint that I should be giving more effort in my blogging career or whatever it is you may want to call it. In fact a month before that, I wrote a post where I said that I was going to revive this blog.

If you’re a loyal reader of this blog, you’ll spot that the reason for my lack of activity (only 16 posts in the last 6 months) in blogging is work. Since June last year, I got employed and late last year I started taking consulting clients (regarding SEO and online business). That has pretty much made me indisposed up until early May.

But Where Have I Been?

If I got free since early May, why haven’t I been posting so much? The honest answer is:

“I got tired of blogging”.

Fact of the matter is when I started getting lots of free time, I replaced that with a).playing b). hanging out with friends and c).spending more time w/ family. I did so many things that teenagers usually normally do and it’s fun. Obviously it had some effects on the stats and profitability but who cares? I wanna enjoy life eh! Also aside from that I still have my normal day job w/c at times is labor-intensive.

Anyway I couldn’t believe I would say these thing considering that I have been blogging since my early college days and have been workaholic since then. But I guess I got hit with the infamous line ‘you might be missing a lot of things that you should be enjoying at your age’.

Plans

Strange enough, I should’ve posted this type of post a long ago. The reason and logic behind opting not to post this earlier is that I want to write content first on a continuous basis before claiming that I’m back with blogging. Prior to this entry, you can look at my archives and see that I’m back with my normal posting frequency. I don’t want to do the annoying mistake of writing a comeback post and then not post again until a month after which is pretty much what I’ve done in the past few months.

As far as plans, I don’t really have new plans yet aside from just regaining back my momentum in blogging. I would also like to recoup the lost traffic (lots) that I got for not posting and being active that much. From there, I’ll just see where it goes.

I’m also planning out on releasing some free materials that I’ll give out to my newsletter subscribers. Like with the blog, I haven’t been sending that much to my list that they might have gotten cold already. So its also a top priority for me to get my newsletter going as well.

Those are the things new to me, how about you?

The “Other” Things that You Can Enjoy in Blogging

by Melvin · Jul 31, 2011

So before I start everything else in this post, I just want to (proudly) let everyone know that I make money from most of my blogs and its one of the reasons why I really love blogging.

I said financial benefits is one of the reasons, the other half is the happiness and the satisfaction that it brings to me. It’s always been my mistake to write blogging and internet marketing tips to bloggers as if everyone is aiming at making money and being famous. It amazes me (and I’m thankful) when someone goes out in comments and says “not all people have making money on their minds and I’m one of them”. That gives me a very good realization that blogging for money like we do is just less than 10% of the whole blogging community.

I figured out that most people blog because they’re happy with it and it fulfills them greatly. That’s something that I’ve realized late last year and in this blog post, I’m going to tackle how you, as a make money online blogger can still be happy with blogging even though you’re not making that much money or not meeting your expectations financially.

1. The “intrinsic love” for blogging

When I started my blog MelvinBlog.com (see I’m not linking to it), I was very sure that I can do this forever AS LONG as I could make money with it. Its tricky but when I had hard times late 2009 and the blog wasn’t making that much money, I thought I would lose my interest in it but I was wrong.

The reason for that is the intrinsic love that I have for blogging for the topic. I do internet marketing since late 2007 and every time I talk about it in my blog, I really, really feel that great satisfaction for doing so. And that should be the case for most of us. People who have been blogging forever that aren’t getting compensated are the ones who have that “real love” for what they do and as a result, they don’t bother with the money that they make. That’s how I equally feel, how most of my blogging peers feel and hopefully that should be how you look at it as well.

2. The community

This second factor does not come immediately and it may take a while for you before you realize it.

The community is what makes a blog alive and without it, a blog is nothing but a plain static web entity. It just so happened that our blog community is one of the reasons why most of us stay and feel fulfilled. Imagine having tens of people, if not hundreds, commenting on our posts. Imagine thousands of people daily visiting our blogs even though its written by a simple person like us. Isn’t it self-fulfilling?

That does not even stop there. I know most of you here have received personal emails from your own audiences on how they’re so thankful for one of the things that your blog have done for them. It sounds corny, but that’s sweet right?

3. Friendships and relationships

While its very rare to see an occasion where two bloggers end up being into a romantic relationship (lol), forming friendships through blogging is a very frequent case. How many of you here have actually treated a blogger as a good friend of yours without even seeing or talking to that blogger in person? Yes, I know the feeling.

It doesn’t end with friendships. Most of the times, it leads to fruitful partnerships and joint ventures that can later on pay off for both of you.

You see, I could take 20 friends any time over 20 rotating 125X125 sidebar banners on my site. 😉

4. The Experience (with a big E)

Consider the following: I wrote a blog entry and got over a hundred comments. I got in front page of Digg, I got a thousand pageviews just this day for this post.

I can’t stress enough for myself how blogging has given me so much unforgettable experience in life. I was told that people don’t crave for things, they crave for experience and I can say that’s 100% true based on my experience.

All the things I mentioned above, the love for blogging, the community and the relationships. It all leads to a superb real-life experience on something. And I’m not just talking about good experiences that make us happy, I’m also talking about experiences that are a bit negative. No one actually forgets them and its equally memorable for us just as with the good ones.

5. The rewards (outside the money)

Every time I look back on what blogging has brought to me except the money, I usually end up smiling because it has brought me a lot more than I expected.

One of the best rewards that you can get from blogging is the increased expertise and brand that you get. “Who would think that by talking about this topic people would see me as an expert in this niche?” Is it not nice for us to realize that?

Another unsung reward is your personal learnings from it. I mentioned above that I learned blogging isn’t just about making money and we are just a minority of the blogosphere. That’s just one of the myriads of things that I’ve learned from blogging. I consider these learnings as a reward since I don’t really need to study something (formally) to gain those things.

I got tired of putting a heading called conclusion because not all blog entries have conclusions like this one right? I’ll let you put your own conclusion on this post. What do you think about blogging minus the “making money” part? Do you think its still as fulfilling?

Image credits to Smemon

Google Plus. That Damn Thing

by Melvin · Jul 13, 2011

I know its too late now to post about what Google Plus is and what I think about it but screw it, I’m gonna post about Google Plus anyway. 🙂

Google Plus was launched last June 28 although it was just like a week after before i got aware of it. Truth is it was just this Saturday that I got an account with it thanks to a very very beautiful lady named Pao (she gave me an invite). So I started using it and exploring it and quite frankly, its confusing. I mean just imagine how its so different coming from a platform like Facebook and then moving on to Google Plus and then thinking it just works like Facebook.

Anyway here’s my Google Plus account and you’re free to add me up if you think I deserve it. 😉 As of writing this blog entry, its already my fourth day using Google+ and I can definitely see its potential and how its so different from Facebook and Twitter as far as usability and worthiness are concern, yet they’re on the same plate when talking about ease of use. I see it as a combination of Facebook and Twitter plus LinkedIn. You can pretty much imagine it as something like Facebook yet with a professional ‘semi-corporate’ touch. With that, I don’t really see myself posting as often as I do on Twitter/Facebook as with Google Plus.

Google Plus for Internet Marketers

Well a lot of marketers and bloggers have already expressed their thoughts on how they can use Google Plus to market more and tap into a more “confined” audience. I would say I can’t agree no more.

Google Plus made it a lot easier to connect to the right people/demographics with the use of circles w/c is basically just like groups. The idea is that when you add people, you are allowed to place them inside these circles. So if 10 of these people are family members, then obviously I would place them inside the family circle and so on for the other groups.

With this you can ‘segment’ people that you are following and are following you and then share to them accordingly. Let’s say I’m voicing in something about internet marketing or a make money online tip, then what I will do is simply just allow people in that ‘circle’ to see it. The same way when you go personal and you don’t want your customers to see what you’re violent ramblings are. Now bare in mind that this is possible to when using Facebook, only that Google Plus has done a good job making this feature much more intuitive.

With that in mind, I’m seeing this tool as something that could potentially be in the same level as emails as far as marketing is concern. Because I feel that right now we’re getting into this point that a lot of people are getting more and more tired of the ‘usual’ marketing stuff and that they’re slowly tuning it out.

So does that mean Google Plus will be a good way to tap into a slightly different way to reach out and market to people? Absolutely! What’s remains unseen is how effective and worthy it could be since right now Google themselves are limiting people who can join and obviously they’re not gonna let marketers take over Google Plus. Google’s definitely not the easiest company to game with.

That’s my take with Google Plus and how it could impact us overall. How about you, what do you think of it? Perhaps, it might be a better idea to add me to Google Plus so I can test it out thoroughly and then let you know my findings. 🙂

Image credit goes to Dream Grow

May 21 Aftermath, Is Your Blog Still Alive? (lol)

by Melvin · May 22, 2011

We were long told by Mr.Camping that the world would end by May 21st and not surprisingly, it didn’t happen. Out of curiosity, during that day I kind of like acted like its going to really happen. I was very quiet and vigilant. I tried not to go online that much and just reflected on my own life. Well, just a weird act on my end. 😉

Anyway, May 21 has ended and one thing I realized is how I haven’t posted in this blog in a while. Its funny because I’ve just written a post on how I could focus on this blog again. Long story short, shortly after writing that post I went to the province and when I came back it seemed like I have forgotten everything about what I’m doing online.

May 21’s Doomsday

Obviously, that’s another failed ~~scholarly~~ guess by Harold Camping and every person who believed in that prediction is downright stupid. But even still, let’s not mention that. We could pick a few takeaways on that day though that we could use on our very own advantage.

In my case, I haven’t worked in this blog for like the entire 2011. All I have are plans, specifically elaborated by strategies. Yeah, I’m good at creating long-ass plans but whether I could take action and implement those things consistently remains unseen. So there, I could pick that up and use that deficiencies to my own wonder.

May 21 2011 is a date to remember in one that it brought a lot of humorous things online and offline. The hashtags related to that were so popular in Twitter and reading all those things could take forever. But maybe the important thing here for us bloggers is to evaluate if we’re still blogging at our very own pace. If not, then maybe we can use that day, reevaluate things and start working again like its a new beginning. I know it sounds corny.

Making Money Blogging What You Love

by Melvin · Apr 17, 2011

In a recent local blogging conference that I attended, I noticed that most bloggers here blog about things that they genuinely love and like. What I mean there is that they don’t blog about making money or blog about something that they would get easily bored. And of course that is always a good sign.

Just like majority of bloggers attending blogging conferences, these people want to make money with their blogs. In fact, maybe that’s a big reason why they attend conferences, to learn how to make money while blogging about something that they love.

But the question is, can you really make money blogging about what you love?

Two Part Answer

Yes

The first answer is yes, its possible. Look at a lot of famous bloggers out there. Darren Rowse for instance, loves photography so he has a blog with and he makes money. So that’s writing and blogging on a topic that he really feels good about. Look at the tech bloggers out there, they get a lot of free stuff because they write about technology. And writing for them isn’t hard at all since this is what they live and breath.

Another good example is myself. I blog about internet marketing and blogging and I make some money out of this blog too yet I really love to do internet marketing. I used to blog about basketball because I have passion for it and I made some money on that blog too. So the first of the two part answer is yes, it’s possible.

No

Obviously the second answer to the question is no (lol, its either yes or no so it shouldn’t be hard you to guess it ). One component that enables bloggers to make money from their blogs is the size of the market that they’re into. Imagine, most money is made because of things like advertising and selling products and stuff. And that only becomes possible when there’s enough people interested in that area/niche.

Take a look at the niches that we mentioned above. Internet marketing, technology, photography, making money online. Obviously what’s common with them is that a lot of people are looking for information about them. They’re scouring like mad people trying to find stuff to read regarding those things. For the most part, people are willing to spend for what they’re looking for! And when that’s the case, the thing that we love becomes profitable.

Now unfortunately it’s not a general rule which means it doesn’t apply to everything. Some people have interest in blogging about their own personal ramblings and they love to write about it. Problem is that’s not something that a lot of people are interested to so the size of the market is very slim and money is hard to make. Some others like to talk about let’s say naruto or some japanese anime. Maybe a good number of people are into the same thing but the monetization model that they can use is very limited thus very little can be made as well. Among all that, the size of the market is just one of the factors (but a very big factor to consider) that we must consider.

So that’s it. As what most people teach, the money can be made in blogging by finding the intercept between things that you care and things that enough people are interested too so that you’re not left out alone when you started blogging yourself. Not the most pleasing thing to hear but that’s how bloggers make good money out of doing something that they like.

I wanna know your opinion about. What do you think?