MelvinBlog

A blog that chronicles my journey on online marketing, blogging, social media, technology and life.

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MMO Blog Monetizer Launch

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Ey guys nice to be back hear. 😀

You’re probably wondering where the hell have I been because of the lack of post and activity online. The truth is I always am online working with stuffs that I have to. And one of them is the launch of the MMO Blog Monetizer (click here for the salespage ).

My newest info product is basically about monetizing make money online blogs. Although it doesn’t really stop there. The ebook also covers monetization of blogs related to internet marketing, blogging, niche marketing, webmaster and any type of blogs that relate to making money online in general. The book costs $14 and is an 18-page ebook. I didn’t use big and wide fonts so don’t worry as what you’re getting there is pure meat (with marshmallows).  If you’re interested in maximizing your income potential from your blog then read on.

This product is intended for:

  • Bloggers who feel they’re not monetizing their blog to its full potential.
  • Bloggers who have blogs preferably that exist for over 6 months.
  • Bloggers who feel they’re blog is on the category listed above.
  • Bloggers who have had difficulties getting advertisers for their blog

And it’s not for:

  • Douchebags!
  • Serial refunder/fraudulent buyers
  • Newbies just starting their blog.
  • Bloggers who own a blog that have little to no traffic
  • It doesn’t cover setting up a blog (walkthrough)
  • Complete Newbie on Blogging

So to be honest I’m really confident with this own product of mine (w/c happened to be my first one). I actually launched a beta launch last thursday (via twitter and some social sites) and already managed to make 4 sales w/good feedbacks. So since this is my personal blog, I wouldn’t be retarded to do hard-selling as most readers here are my loyal readers. If you feel it’s not helpful, then don’t buy it. If you already bought it then let me know your opinion. If you are interested in buying then don’t go to my sales page, instead click this link and enter the discount coupon “goorlandomagic” to get a $4 off discount to the product (I know the Magic lost again). Questions, inquiries and criticisms are very much entertained in the comments section.

The Birthday Bash Contest Winners

The Birthday Bash Contest Winners

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As usual I am again late in issuing contest winners. I was very busy with my personal life and I’m very sorry for having this one a little late.

Overall the contest got about 25 participants for 12 prizes up for grabs which means the odds for winning is very very high. Anyway I have used random.org for the results and here are the screenshots (the first three are the winners):

Feed Winners

feed-winners

Tweet Winners

tweetwinners

Stumble Winners

stumblewinners

Blogroll Winners

blogrollwinners1

………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Again the first 3 people listed in the screenshots are the winners. Just respond to this comment form to confirm your winnings. After that I would hook you up w/the sponsors of the contest and they will send you the prizes directly. DON’t contact me! for the sake of life If you don’t respond in comments here for the next 2 days, I would pick another winner. Again I would like to thank the sponsors, if not for them our small contest wouldn’t be possible. I would also like to extend my hands to those who have participated and hopefully you don’t unsubscribe in the near future. 🙂

Link Lovin’ And Some Announcements

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Hi guys, another great week here in Melvin Blog and it means its time for another Link Love (words borrowed from Net Fool 🙂 ).

Before everything starts here. Let me remind everyone that there’s a small contest running here in MelvinBlog that would end at the end of this month. The contest has 12 great prizes up for grabs and there are 12 participants thus far. If the contest ends today, no doubt everyone is bound to win! Make sure to check it out.

So this week has been great as I can read a lot of blogs now because my summer vacation has started. A lot of great posts have been produced this week and here they are:

Shoemoney’s post discusses a very interesting topic which I think is a must read for all make money online blogger. Balkhis (or his wife?) puts up a nice post about how blogs and online presence could influence your life. My buddy Carl does a list of how a banner can totally suck someone’s eye. Tom from SOB writes a very realistic article about stuffs that are way more important than a blog and lastly Caroline gives her readers some tips on monetizing email lists.

Just Acquired AffiliateHat.com

Well in a seemingly fast pace of life, I just acquired an affiliate marketing blog. The former owner was a great friend of mine who happened to be real lazy in typing posts. Brim is a super affiliate and obviously who would want to exert more effort on something that would give lesser money? Just in case you don’t know, the blog is an affiliate marketing blog that focuses more on newbies trying to get off the ground and fly them to the outerspace. joking… Well I really like to domain name of it and now that I have it I am so excited. Because I was, I immediately replaced the generic ugly looking theme with the premium UBT theme and wrote the first post. I have also fetched some freelance writers to write for the blog since I couldn’t afford to write on two blogs with almost same topic. But anyway I would still love to have writers, so if you write about that certain topic you can mail me using my contact form with your rates and samples. If you feel it’s a nice blog, then feel free to subscribe to it. 🙂

Replying To Every Comments Is Silly!

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Interacting with your readers is one thing that makes a blog a tight community. As what has been said a thousand times, blogging is a two way process, providing something, and getting feedback. So in short, you cannot just provide good content and then take a nap. Your readers sure have their say, maybe they couldn’t understand something or want more clarifications. Either way, this is where replying to them takes place.

While I do reply to 15-35% of comments in this blog, I think replying to each and every comment is silly! Why? Simply it’s because you really don’t have to most of the times. I find it ridiculous when a blogger responds to all comments (including trivial comments). I read Neil Patel’s blog and to be frank I enjoy reading it. But I just don’t get why he needs to reply to all comments he receives. I also have done a guest post on Yan’s blog about reputation management. I was asked by him as well to reply to every comments, so I did (not all comments though). Anyway I know 60% wouldn’t agree on me but I just think I have these 4 reasons why I think it’s silly and here they are:

  1. Not all comments add value – Comments like “been here, nice blog” or “thanks for this informative post” are no way can be considered as useless comments. In fact, it always feels good when someone finds your article great. But, it doesn’t add value! I feel I could always go by not saying “you’re welcome”. Depends on my mood, though. 🙂
  2. 85% don’t even get back to your post – The truth about bloggers is that, they bounce so fast. I mean because they want to comment on as many blogs as they can, they don’t really pay much attention to the post and would just rather agree on it immediately or say thank you. So because of it, they wouldn’t even be able to read your reply. In this case, I always look whether someone is subscribed to the comments via email (always make sure it’s unchecked). In that way, I would know if the guy is really waiting for a reply or not.
  3. It inflates your no.of comments per post – In my previous post about whether comments could justify the success of the blog, I tackled that because some of the bloggers reply to every comments, it makes their blog’s community so huge. I’m not really against it but I think it can have a negative impact on a blog because the blogger may have been wasting his time replying to all comments instead of promoting his blog more.
  4. Face it, not all your posts can be liked! – Well in my blog’s case, I have a ton of personal posts rather than helpful posts. I understand that by posting something about my crush, or my school life, it would tune out some of the readers. You see, people always expect something from your blog. If they are into blogging and they think you could help them but suddenly they’ve read an affiliate marketing article, it’s very likely that they wouldn’t get it and won’t respond. Same with contest posts. They rack a hundred comments but that doesn’t justify the popularity of a blog.

Overall the number of comments is really a nice way to dress your blog up and have a nice community. It attracts readers, advertisers and so on. But I think it goes more than just that. If you could possibly work more on other important things that would benefit your blog then that would be nicer than just wasting your time replying to each and every comment, even though you know its just a spam. What do you think? Or maybe am I missing something?

MelvinBlog Dot Com’s Birthday Bash

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Well like what I mentioned in my last post there is going to be a ‘lil’ contest here in my blog because I just celebrated my birthday yesterday. 🙂 Anyways the contest is more of a “giving away” thing rather than the usual month-long, so many requirements type of contest. So quickly I’ll start explaining the mechanics.

The contest would run for only 10 days (which ends at May 1 2009). The contest is very easy, for you to win you just need to do the following:

  • Subscribe to RSS via email – This one is open only to new email subscribers so if you’re kinda an old subscriber unfortunately you are not qualified. Why? It gives equal chances to everyone. New subscribers would have an easier time winning because they don’t need to slug it out against the other one who subscribed before.
  • Follow me at twitter and retweet ““I just entered to win prizes from MelvinBlog.com! You can too, just follow @melvinblog and retweet http://xr.com/melvinblog” “. – This one is open for everyone. If you’re following me for a long time all you have to do then is retweet and you’d be fine. For new ones it’s easy as well. Again just follow me and retweet.
  • Blogroll Me! – If you can put me in your blogroll, then thats another way to win. Everyone is welcome to do this but there are restrictions. Your blog must have at least 20 rss subscribers and must be at least 3 months old. This prevents retards from creating a new blogger blog just to put my link there and gain an entry here.
  • Write a short review on my blog on Stumbleupon – Well its easy, all you have to do is click this link and write your brief review about melvinblog.com. It could contain constructive criticisms and anything that doesn’t contain slang terms. 🙂

Are you required to do all? No, but of course if you can do most then it could be better. There will be 12 prizes up for grabs, 3 for each category and while I did say this is a small contest, it doesn’t mean the prizes are crappy ass. I would rather show it to you rather than put the $$$ value here Look over:

Twitter Contest

Feed Contest

Blogroll Contest

Stumbling Contest

Flip Ace

$10

Flipping Sparks

$10

Work Smart, Get Rich

Flipping Sparks

Ultimate Blogging Theme

Flip Ace

1000 Entrecard Credits

1000 Entrecard Credits

Work Smart, Get Rich

1000 Entrecard Credits

So to add, everyone is eligible for only one prize per category meaning you can’t win twice in stumbling contest, but you could win twice or thrice in the overall contest. All entries would be drawn using the ever famous randomizer but don’t worry, this blog isn’t shoemoney or chow’s blog so the number of entries wouldn’t be so high whch means you have bigger chances of winning something. The prizes are listed in order so you’re not allowed to pick your own prize. Now as I promised the prizes aren’t crappy. Here’s a little bio of what the prizes are and the one that gives it:

  • Flip Ace (e-book) – Everyone who reads this blog knows Jason Pereira. He is the former owner of The University Kid and he’s been known  well to produce high quality content for the blog and for the info products that he sells. Now he runs Make Money Dynamo where he know shares some of his secrets in making money online. Flip Ace is basically an info product about creating and selling websites.
  • Work Smart, Get Rich (e-book)- The creator of this one is the pal of the former one, Jim Reagan. Jim is the owner of the famous Net Fool which blogs about making money as well. Don’t get him wrong, his blog is followed by a thousand of readers who were obviously satisfied by his works. His ebook is about making money online by working the right way.
  • Flipping Spark (e-book) – Flipping Spark is an ebook covering site flipping from Desmond Ong. He blogs at DesmondBlog.com where he shares his knowledge with site flipping. His latest achievement was selling his former site for $2000 for a very little work on his part
  • 2 $10 – Is sponsored by your one and only Melvin, the owner of this blog. I could’ve had certainly sponsored more if not for paypal limiting and locking my account.
  • Ultimate Blogging Theme – UBT is just simply the theme of the ever so famous Kid Blogger Carl Ocab. Carl ranks good for some really competitive keywords and he’s one of the younger bloggers that earns so much with his blog. Valued at guess what? 🙂
  • Entrecard Credits – A lot of people think Entrecard is useless but its not. Well how would you like a PR2 link for some credits eh? I have over 10,000 credits in my account and there’s a reason, for sponsoring contests. Glad we have blogtactic, contesthunter to sponsor some of their wealth here.

The sponsors of the contest are those reputable people that I have known for quite a while. Trust me, each of their info products are the ones that could very much help you start making dimes on the internet.  The contest goes as easy as that. No worries about needing to blog about me in your blog or stuffs like that. To add some more excitement, three lucky readers/commenters would be able to get free text sponsorships each (worth $30) for one month. The text sponsorship is in demand in this blog and maybe there’s a reason. 😉 Anyway for commenters, you have to specify the account you used in joining in your comments. Here’s an example:

Bilo: Hey dude I joined your contest. here’s my twitter account: @bilo, my stumbleupon username: bilo.stumbleupon.com, the email add I used to subscribe: bilo@bilo.com, and the site where I have placed the link: bilo.com

Well I guess everything has been explained well and good luck to everyone. Questions?

March Traffic, Earning Details & Announcements

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So it’s been a long time since I have done this one here so I will be writing one now. The reasons why I don’t do the usual monthly recap are:  1) my blog isn’t really wrecking high revenue numbers, 2) I don’t have the time to do this. But now I have the time so I just thought I would put an effort to do a recap of what has happened the past month. So here it is without much further fluff:

Traffic & Growth Related Details
  • Alexa Rank – 144,726
  • Technorati – 55,363
  • Average Uniques – 220
  • Average Pageviews – 620
  • RSS – 150
  • Pagerank – 0

The blog stat-wise has actually declined from almost everything except feed subscribers. I’ve been working so hard on getting returning visitors by forum interaction and commenting around. The pageviews is more than 2 times of what the average unique visitor is. Maybe it’s because of some folks who keep refreshing the page because they are waiting for a new post, LOL> 🙂 As usual, Pagerank is still 0 as I just implemented the canonicalization thing last month and I am hoping that it would get something on the next update.

Blog Revenue Details
  • Text, Sponsored Links – $30
  • 125X125 Banner Sponsorship – $80
  • 468X60 – $50
  • Paid Reviews – $50

As usual the blog almost had a sold out advertising spot (despite me refusing to

blog-earnings

use OIO). The text links are so cheap ($5) that a lot of dudes on digitalpoint forum don’t even ask for stats. 🙂 The popular banners at the sidebar is sold out as well. The premium banner at the top has 2 rotations each up for $25 and fortunately it’s taken also (thanks to the reverse funnel guys, 😉 ). I got 2 paid reviews this month and I gave discount on that one. Yes, I give discounts! The economy is tough so I understand that a lot of marketers are skeptic to spend. As much as possible, I give them 10-50% on the first month so they could decide whether the exposure fits well. Don’t be a moron dude, don’t sell your ad spot for $40/month if your Alexa is over 500,000 and you just get 1-2 comments per post.

As this blog is relatively small, I don’t spend much expenses here more than just the hosting and the flip-flops I use while typing here. 🙂 Unfortunately I have 5-6 other websites that aren’t making any revenue as of now so the income is good to cover up other expenses from failed investments startup investments.

What’s up this April & May?

Well I have done a couple of guest posts on different types of blogs w/different types of audience. I conclude it’s doing good actually because it kept my traffic steady while my blog is in lull. I still have about 5 more guest posts to issue so just look around me on other blogs. Also, you may want to greet me. 🙂 April 21 is going to be my 18th birthday and I am planning to hold a small but very nice contest here in Melvin Blog wherein everyone can almost win! Watch out for that! Anyway if you would like to send me something, like a car or a yacht just use a contact form. But don’t worry I accept small gifts like shirts, usb drives, steaks or any tangibles. LOL, just joking. You’re presence is more than enough!

When Your Blog Runs Out Of Great Content

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A lot of blogs start out well. They post superb content, have nice interactions between visitors and simply they just provide good value. Results? They get the initial boost, the traction, the followers/subscribers.

Then fast-foward, the blog has now posting “not so-good” content, articles that obviously are just rehashed articles seen on forums. Don’t be surprised, its actually the trend of most blogs.

Most blogs really has a “life-cycle” like that and unfortunately if you look at your own blog, that may even be the case. Providing great content is really the key to traffic, fame and possibly income for your blog. What makes it difficult is the fact that we cannot produce superb content all the time. I remember one time I was subscribed (using my feedreader) to almost 150 sites/blogs that interest me. Sooner I found out 30% of them are no longer providing what I used to enjoy with them before.

That’s really the case. Even if you look at most blogs nowadays you’ll see the same trend. Zacjohnson used to be one of my daily reads with his nice post with PPC Marketing. Now most of his posts are just about an affiliate network, some tools and something not as useful as before. Carl Ocab used to have some nice tutorial tips on some basic stuffs as well as some advanced tips but if you look at his blog now, you’ll see a ton of guest post(that promotes their own blogs), some offtopic posts, and none that are really related to making money online (a brand his blog is promoting).

You can look no further by just looking at my blog. Do you think I have run out of good reads for you? Or my blog has never had a great content even before? LOL… Anyway, I think picking the niche of your blog and its goal plays a strong role on how you must distribute great content to your readers. Lots of people starting out say “ah, I would make a blog teaching people about fishing”, and in the end they just ran out of nice content for their niche. Stating clear your purpose and niche helps a lot in defining what your blog is really all about. It helps to the extent that you would understand how much effort, time you need to exert to fulfill that goal. If you are in the helpful niche of blogs, then I’m afraid to say you have to do 100% more work than normal bloggers.

Back to blogs that I mentioned earlier. So, they don’t produce the same great content they used to produce before, but do you see people leaving them? Do you see a decline of traffic in their part? Partly yes! But the truth is they still managed to gain that same attention from the blogosphere despite the fact they are posting less value. At the end it speaks about “not the greatness of content” after all. Content is great, but that doesn’t mean its anything. 🙂