Ramblings

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!

iBlog 7 Experience and New Learnings

by Melvin · Apr 6, 2011

As mentioned in my previous local events posts, its just been since last two years (2009) since I started attending (or more so becoming more aware) local events here. I have been a blogger since 2006 but I haven’t been that much involved in the local scenes primarily because the demographics that I am catering to is more of foreign for most of my blogs / past projects.

Anyway iBlog7 is the second iBlog event that I attended. Funny how I missed iBlog 1-5 though. 🙂 Just in case you don’t know, iBlog is THE largest blogging summit here in Philippines in w/c lots of bloggers, PR practitioners, business persons alike grace the event. I met some people here last year that have become my friends since then while I also have finally seen some of the respected figures in the local scenes like Janette Toral, Carlo Ople and so on.

I’m not anymore going to discuss each and every talk made in the event since most people have already done that. Or you can just make a reference to the iBlog’s official site to see the topics that have been tackled all throughout the event.

Me Speaking

Yay! I haven’t really been posting a lot in this blog lately so you’re probably unaware that I was one of the speakers in the event.

So obviously I was feeling some nerves during my talk mainly because I haven’t spoken in front of that amount of audience. You can consider that as my first stint to a big blogging event so my mouth was kind of like drying as I was speaking.

The topic that I tackled is entitled “Blog Traffic 102” in w/c I talked about some ‘modern’ ways that I always use to drive traffic to my blogs. The way I planned it was for me to tackle that topic in-depth and obviously that didn’t turn out very well since I just had about 20 minutes to talk about it. But in the end, I thought I did pretty well but of course there are still lots of room for improvement.

If you’re looking for the PowerPoint presentation, kindly grab it here. Hint: The amount of helpful resource links inside is enormous and is something that a lot of people requested me to share in this blog post but you may want to look at the last slide as well since there’s a free gift link in that slide. =p

Learnings

The reason I attend these events aside from the networking part is because it always amazes me how I learn lots of things during the event. It’s not just about the tips or sleek tricks but its also about the intangible things that we, as bloggers usually forget. Like for me, I’ve been making money from blogging since a long time but I never really realized that much before how the money part is just 10% of the ‘industry’.

Sometimes its the other things that make blogging much more fulfilling. Things like helping out other people unknowingly, like fighting for something that we believe in, having our own advocacies, reaching out to people. Its about having that community that I admittingly, sometimes think I don’t have nor I cared about. And of course its the variety of people that you will meet that will help you grow more as a blogger.

I mean iBlog itself is a free event since it started. No one pays for anything, organizers work hard to do this and do that, and as a result of their hard work, bloggers benefit a lot. So that I think is my biggest reflection in attending this event. Hopefully I can comeback next year not as a speaker, but more of just like a normal blogger. Who knows, I might be able to do some sponsoring and organizing as well in the future. But for now, I’ll just cross my finger. 😉

I’d like to give special credit to the organizers, to Ms.Janette for organizing such a wonderful event. I haven’t done that much networking since a).I was too shy and b).I was too shy. But those who said ‘hi’ to me and asked some questions, I appreciate that.

P.S. If you have a picture of me while on the stage, then please let me know. 😉

The “Writing for Search” Experiment

by Melvin · Feb 19, 2011

As most of you know, I was never really the type of guy who writes for search engines. If you look at my archives, you could literally see that most of my posts are titled by choice and personal preference, and not really to attract search traffic. Aside from that, I don’t really try to do keyword research and see trends and then make a blog post about it just to get some search visitors. I can say that I do probably set up the basic things on this blog search-wise but I don’t really pay that much attention to it nor do I spend a lot of efforts in it.

Obviously that worked for me ever since. I’m more about building relationships and branding myself so most of the traffic coming from this blog are either referral or direct. On my other online businesses (affiliate marketing and niche sites), I probably do more SEO but again I know that’s very little as compared to what some other marketers do.

Early last year, I got curious about writing for search. I was thinking why do people desperately do that. Are they just THAT stupid? or maybe I’m being too harsh. So one day I wrote a test post on a topic that’s trending (I wouldn’t say the topic) and after about 4 days I have seen some traffic with that certain test post. It isn’t ever massive, just about 30 a day but its fascinating because it gets that amount super consistently day by day. Just in case you’re wondering, I did that experiment using my personal blog.

Anyway back to the traffic, the blog gets very little to no traffic since its just a normal personal site but when I did do that test post I started getting 20-40 uniques a day for like up to now (2+ months) which I thought was amazing since I never really did anything after posting that.

I didn’t try generating traffic for that, all I did was wrote a rubbish article on a trending topic and then published it. There’s no maintenance whatsoever too.

Writing for search is something that I loathe and feel that I don’t need to do and obviously I have proven that with this blog and some of my other sites. But that certain test has given me some pretty good ideas on my next upcoming experiments. Am I going to write for search now? Definitely no! An increased focus on search? Maybe.

I know a lot of you here search-optimize your blogs more than I do so what do you think?

MelvinBlog 3.0 – A Fresh New Design

by Melvin · Jan 26, 2011

So for most people, having a new blog design to start the year is uncommon. I don’t wanna say it’s something that I am looking forward on doing every year but for the third time in three years, I have always introduced a new design to refresh the blog and cater to my *new needs.

Now welcome to MelvinBlog 3.0! If you’re reading from your RSS, its time to come out of your shells to visit my actual site or you can look at this screenshot(click for a larger look):

As you can see, this blog still sports that magazine look although much more cleaner and less cluttered than the previous one.

Why Change?

First and foremost is to refresh the look of the blog. The Colormatic UBD theme has been in this blog for over a year now and we all know people get bored with same design over and over again.

The second reason is to clean things up. If you look at the mainstream blog redesign these days, you can see that most of them have started cleaning up the clutter. For instance, ProBlogger’s new design emphasizes a better spacing and lesser elements. Shoemoney’s blog is also just sporting a clean theme now.

When I decided to go to version 2.0, I had a lot of things in mind including some elements that I want to add that I haven’t added before. With that, I settled for ColorMatic, in which I can pretty much put a lot of things in one place without having users to scroll down.

A year has passed and I realized that some things aren’t really worth putting into the blog. With that I had to find a template that I can work with that still is a magazine theme, yet sports lesser clutter. Another factor that I always consider is that I don’t want to look like a mainstream blog (one which looks like another). So that’s why I settled for this design.

Websource Theme

The theme that you are looking now is called WebSource theme. It comes from ThemeForest.net and specifically a guy named DDStudios. You’re wondering why I didn’t go with top notch themes like StudioPress, Thesis, WooThemes, and etc. The reason as I mentioned above is that I hate being mainstream. Most bloggers would just want to jump into something just because a lot of people are into it.

Also as always, I did some minor customizations in the codes so to make sure that the blog will extremely look unique.

For me as long as the theme works, doesn’t have that much bugs and is greatly structured, then I’m in to consider it. And to add, Websource looks extremely unique while also fitting my needs and requirements.

The redesign isn’t fully complete yet. As you can see, there are some elements that still look weird or you may visit a certain page that looks odd. In fact, I don’t even have a logo yet as I’m planning to implement a new one for this new design so my designer is currently working on it right now. Let’s say the site is just 50% done and I’m just excited to launch it right away. 😉

The Old Look

So for the last time, let’s savor the old look for MelvinBlog which is also known as Version 2.0. This theme from ThemeWars has done a lot of good things, made me good money and helped me engage my content more to my readers.

So that’s it. I will just let you find for yourself some new features and elements that I added and/or that comes with this new design. Please also expect that there might be some bugs or minor flaws (as mentioned) that I haven’t found out yet or I’m currently fixing so please bare with it for the moment. 😉

As always you’re opinion matters a lot to me. 🙂

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?

MelvinBlog.com is now PR3 (Lol)

by Melvin · Dec 1, 2010

I’m not really sure on when exactly the pagerank update has occurred but last Friday I opened the home page of this site to see if its still functioning properly (lol) and then I easily noticed that the pagerank toolbar suggested MelvinBlog has now a pagerank of 3. Yay!

Actually I don’t really know how to react primarily because I never cared about pagerank anyway. In fact as I was writing this post, I was thinking if its even necessary to post this blog article. But because I see that most people post articles when pagerank update occurs, I was convinced. 😉

Back about not caring about pagerank. The truth is I never really cared. Most of the sites that I own do have pagerank yet my main business model does not really rely on getting huge search traffic or building tons of backlinks. But for MelvinBlog its quite a bit interesting. Here’s a brief story why.

MelvinBlog Pagerank Story

So everything started last August of 08 I think. I got PR2 and that was considering that my blog was just started just June of 08. So for 2 months only, I was able to manage getting my blog into that pagerank without doing anything at all literally.

Then 2 weeks after that, Google slapped me back to PR0 for no reasons at all. You see I don’t sell links, or if I ever do, it usually is redirected from OpenAds back then which means no PR juice is passed to a site. I do sell reviews but even that, I nofollow all the links. So even though I didn’t care that much with PR, I was quite baffled.

After two years, I still had PR0. And that came with the fact that I have over 10,000 backlinks, that I guest blogged for majority of big and reputable blogs like JohnChow.com & DailyBlogTips.com, and have never done anything that would piss off the search engines (Google in particular).

At the time, I was thinking that maybe the linking structure of my site is super flawed that Google cannot just read my entire site properly. That’s because my blog isn’t set up normally, I do usually try to nofollow page that I dont think add value, noindex tags and categories page and even do my robots.txt page extensively.

So with that I really lost hope that my blog would ever get passed PR0 and like I said, I have come to the point where I don’t care about it anymore since the bulk of the income that I make is through advertising, something that pagerank has nothing to do about.

So that’s it. I think it’s important to note too that we as bloggers shouldn’t be caring too much about these metrics because after all, it has nothing to do with our success or the money that we could potentially make.

Personally, I could say that its nice to see this blog get a PR3. How about you? I like to hear your say about this topic and I’d like to know too if your blog/s received an increase or decrease in pagerank as well.