MelvinBlog

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

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Internet Babel vs The Germz, Head To Head 3

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So this one came a little very late because of the season. The June part onwards seems to be the busiest part of the year as some people focus on their work, young ones like me go back to school and so. This round of head to head is a pretty interesting one. I really haven’t had much time picking a nice matchup. It’s pretty a little contrasting. Dave of the Internet Babel looks like a old older person than most of us while Germz cannot even watch rated x movies at cinemas! But well oh well, like other previous head to head this is a pretty interesting one. Check it out:

Dave Germz
Describe yourself in less than 5 words? A handsome balding hunk. :) Easily Bored Person.
What is your favorite breakfast? Hmm – Crispy Bacon, scrambled egg and Toast. Coffee, it’s the only thing I drink for breakfast. If there is no coffee I won’t eat breakfast.
How long have you been blogging? Currently – 1 hour a day cos I have a lot of other work on. Hope to ramp it up a bit soon. Usually an hour, I spent way more time researching new business ventures and freelancing.
Any story behind choosing that domain name? I bought Internet Babel as a developed blog (but I liked the name). My friends call me germz, and Germz.com was already taken.
How many uniques are you getting monthly? July (my first month of owning the Blog) was about 2,000 UVs and 15,000 Page Views.. About 6000.
What is your average blog income? hah 😉 Only 1 month in so very little to show at the moment. Ask me again in 12 months ;-). About forty bucks per month, great thing that’s not my main source of income!
Do you read other blogs feeds? How many do you track? – not a big consumer of feeds – prefer to visit the blogs i like and just Google around the web I’m not a big fan of blog feeds, I don’t like having my email spammed with hundreds of emails per day with new articles. I hardly subscribe to any feeds unless I really like the content or I’m doing a favor for a friend. I currently only track about 3 or 4.
What are the other thing/projects that you are doing aside from blogging? – Website development (got about 20 clients at the moment)
– Helping develop some mining/data logging software
– domain flipping/speculation
– got a few websites of my own that bring in some Ad$en$e
– Writing articles
– drinking beer		 Studying, and freelancing.
What keeps a blogger from making money from his blog? a few things off the top of my head (in no particular order)
– lack of time
– lack of commitment
– not enough belief in their own skills/ability
– treating readers like idiots
– no interaction with community
– aiming for a saturated market/not finding a niche		 I don’t use my blog to make money, I don’t think it’s easy to earn money from a blog unless your blog has a niche that’s easy to exploit. My only source of income for the blog comes from the advertisers. I only use the money to pay for hosting and aweber.
When does a blogger have to consider monetizing Well, unless you’re doing it purely for the love of your subject and income is not a factor, then ideally you should be thinking about monetization before you start – it should be a part of the planning process. Money isn’t the key factor for a
lot of Bloggers though so they shouldn’t get hung up about it.		 As soon as possible, it’s best when you have some content otherwise no one will want to advertise from you.
What makes your blog unique from others? Me. Hehe. Well, that’s the main reason – the blog is about my personal entrepreneur experiences and projects, which differ from other entrepreneurs, good and bad. It’s written by me! 😀
What’s the biggest goal for this blog? Apart from the things I mentioned above:
– get the stats back up to where they used to be and then make them even better
– increase the earnings (although that’s not my primary driver)
– spread some useful knowledge
– have some fun “		 At the current moment I’m doing a very special project which I’m sure everyone will like.
Give me a blog you admire and why? At the moment, I like reading the Net Fool – a lot of good info in there usually, and a nice ‘tone’ to it. Thenetfool.com I visit his blog every time I get a chance, it’s very informative and I really like Jim’s point of view on most of his articles.

Can Blogs Help You Make Money?

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Well this is a great question by one of my childhood friend. He was very curious about how blogs can help people make money. In all honesty, blogs CAN’T make you money, and although they can help, it’s just not as easy as people think. Why? Well blogs first and foremost is a place bloggers where stuck their own notes and what they are putting their is all based on their OWN experience and opinion. You see guys put “Making money with PPC” or maybe with Website Flipping or so but the truth is it’s based on their own experience (most of the time). They have done it well so they can recommend it and in this way they can help you learn and gain some knowledge about it. But their’s no way they’re helping you make money, or maybe they do but it’s still up to you.

I don’t really have problems with this but it’s just that what worked for others doesn’t mean will work with you (or doesn’t mean it won’t work for you). Yeah, they are plenty of blogs there that provide useful and superb resources.  You can always read a good article about Pay Per Click and still suck at doing it. You can print a ebook about making money with articles but still fail. Bottom line is people do things differently and have different expertise. Or Maybe making money online is just not for you

7 Tips Before buying an Adspot on Any Site/Blog

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I’m really skeptic about accepting guest posts here but w/me being stucked on my schedules, I would consider accepting some.

In this competitive world ,everyone wants to promote his site. People use various methods for the cause. But the best way is paid advertising. Although advertising blindly may result in nothing but loss of money. So here are some tips which every advertiser should follow before advertising on any blog/site

  1. Create a Good Banner :- This is a point which most of the advertisers miss out .But having a good banner is equally essential as choosing a good place to advertise. Having an attractive banner results in more visits to your site/product.P.S If you are not good in designing then you can get your banners designed at Digital Point Forums at cheap rates.
  2. Keep Up with your niche :- The point becomes quite clear from its heading itself.Advertise on sites related to your product/site. e.g advertising on a blog writing about WebDesign having a Unique Visitors of 100 daily will give you better results than a site about gardening and getting 1000’s of Unique Visits daily.
  3. Get the Stats :- Before advertising contact the owner or the admin of that site.Ask the site statistics like Monthly Visitors , Page Views etc. Dont simply trust the written stats ,ask for screenshots for stats and if possible ask for public stats URL (in case of sitemeter and some other statistic service which support it ) to test it yourself as screenshots can be faked.
  4. Not just the Visits :- While checking the stats, just not ask for number of visitors ,bounce rate and average time spent by a visitor. Average time is very important as the visits may be of low quality.Dont forget to check the alexa rank,incoming links, yahoo domain links.Use plugins like SEO Quake or Search Status to get important informations about the sites.
  5. Position of Ad :- Ensure that your ad is on a good position.Header ads perform better than sidebar and footer ads in most cases.
  6. Posting Frequency – Make sure you see if the blog you are advertising on has a high of posting frequency. More posts will result in more visitors automatically.
  7. Go for trials :- If you are not yet sure about a site/blog’s performance then go for a paid trial ad.You can get it for 1 or 2 days and can pay the site owner a small amount of fee for it.If you are satisfied with the amount of visits you get , then you can go and buy ad for long term.Better lose 10$ then 300$

This is a guest post Written by Siddharth from Technoworld

Top Commentators, Prizes and Incentives

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So again I am stucked on a very busy weekend with all people making me look like a slave. Like what I have done last month I have given the top commentators some gifts back for commenting a lot. Last time it’s an ebook about incentive marketing. This time it will be entrecard credits and one will get a free advertising on this blog via a link. 😉 If you do not, I just won a contest on Grademoney’s blog and I won 5000 entrecards from Bloggernoob who will also do a review on my blog.

Also I was able to finally receive the Atomic Blogging package worth $37 which I have won Carl Ocab’s Contest. The ebook is a great book and there are some items there that is well worthed. Another thing to say is that I will doing some incentive marketing here on my blog and on some forums. Incentive marketing is something that I have NEVER tried before so i think i’m gonna try to put up some efforts to it. This one is a great and busy week with some great post from all over the world. Check them out:

Now who said its bad to give a lot of outgoing links? 😉

Don’t Bother With PM’s From Your Blog

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Since I have started this thingy I am always receiving tons of message from the contact form that are pissing me a lot. I’m not an impatient person but of course I don’t like craps. As this blog is getting read by more and more kids people there are also other things that are not so good to my eyes. Like the number of spams I am starting to receive and of course the messages from the contact form.

The purpose of the contact form is to contact. Sometimes my friends do not know how they can reach me so I put this one up. That’s also there for business purposes. But when is something not business related? Let me tell you a story. Sometime last month someone contacted me saying that their company is holding some promotional measures and would do me a free banner and logo in exchange for a linkback. During that time I think my header is fine but still I was like “Wow someone seems to be interested in my blog” But then the thoughts of beautiful design ala UniqueBlogDesigns was thwarted when the sample was given to me. It’s SO ugly that the drawing of a chicken could even look better than it. I swear! After that, I no longer respond. But that certain kept on sending me mails. After a week, they are already three! They all promote the same thing with the same company. Wow!

So things like that started off like comets falling here on earth. Most are asking/offering me about their services(which isn’t bad)! And a lot has been promoting untested networks with their affiliate links and wtf, their is even someone there saying she wants to be my husband! I guess this is really how things go. I can now understand how big and established guys and companies are having hard time dealing w/it. Before i am used to checking my email in this blog everyday, now it’s once a week and sooner it will be once a month!

How To Make Money Offline

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Making money online has never been so kind to you. So what to do now? Actually there are million of things and ideas that you can do to make money offline. Yes, actually these are ideas that a student or literally anyone can apply. If the online world is cruel to you, then why bother? Switch! Many people are so wrong on thinking that their time will come. My goodness, if this field isn’t for you then pack your things and go. So how can you make money offline? Well it’s up on your skills. But here I am going to specify how a college student like me who is handsome slightly lazy can be able to do it so easy. Actually it depends on your skills really.

  1. Do your classmates project. This is probably my favorite thing to do. This trimester we have a subject entitled Web Programming. We are using Visual Web Developer to make login pages and database. So this one happened just recently. The professor told us that the major exam will not be written. We just need to pass a .aspx website with login and register and masterpages and thats it. What happened? Sadly, most of the people on the other class do not have the software and some of them do not have an idea on how to do it. So here we come, we start offering our services and later charging $$$.
  2. Buy and sell. Another thing that can easily be done by everyone. Actually for me, it is very easy to pretend what I am selling is very expensive yet it’s not! You might earn not so much, but then you have literally done nothing to get the job done.
  3. Deposit your money. Last year upon the arrival of my WidgetBucks check, I have asked top personnels and some forums on what’s the best thing to do with it. Most say, reinvest it! Others tell you should keep on learning. What caught my attention was Shoemoney’s response via twitter saying “Put it in bank and sit on it’s interest”. This is true. You will do nothing and let money flowing. I know most of you do it the more hardcore way.

Making money offline is like a “lost art”. When the dot com boom started, it seems like everyone just jumped into it and forgot that there’s so much real business offline. I know you, as a reader understands my point. So maybe you can share me your own tips on making some cash offline? 😉

The Shoemoney Shirt

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Well Jeremy Schoemaker held a contest in his blog wherein one per day will win a shoemoney shirt and will be shipped to the winners house for free. Know what? I have been dying to have a shirt of him. Actually I love shirts the promote prizes, remember wtw shirt? Yes that’s true. Actually I had visited his Shoemoney store and have seen the shirt is not available for shipping outside US and Canada. Also I have looked at Ebay and didn’t find it either. Basically it’s hard to buy his shirt when you’re in Asia so I felt this is the best way I can get one and for free! 🙂

Right now, I am aggressively trolling commenting at every post. Wish me Good Luck.. 😉