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

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Internet Marketing

Have You Ever Thought of Revamping Your Marketing Plan?

Have You Ever Thought of Revamping Your Marketing Plan?

by Melvin · Oct 10, 2010

Revamping something is one thing that is always feared by people for two reasons, a) is because they’re afraid that everything or mostly that they exerted would put into waste and b). because of skepticism. It’s really hard and there’s no doubt that it would take much thinking and suggestion to actually decide on whether its time to change or not.

I myself had been into these situations. With affiliate marketing for instance where I mostly do my campaigns via PPC and Facebook ads, there were times that I had to change my strategies to adapt to some changes in guidelines that these networks usually impose (especially Facebook). The hardest part of this is that sometimes strategies that have worked a lot of times for you are the ones that you need to revamp.

This can also apply both to internet marketing product launches and just the typical blogging. Over the past few years we’ve seen so many guys changing their strategies/marketing tactics on their business. For instance Shoemoney which came from the pay-per-click/ringtone affiliate marketing has been into list building and product launches as you can easily notice if you’re subscribed to his email list.

Traditional marketers like Jeff Walker, Frank Kern and other ones are getting more into content-based stuff. You can see them tapping blogs or even incentivizing something for their joint ventures.

Another great example is our blog marketing plan and strategies. Before, its more on the more active you are, the more traffic you can pull. If you can be a top commenter on 20-50 popular blogs then it may alone be enough. These days it still works but we have to be more creative in order to justify a good return for our efforts. As you can see guest blogging seems to be the “in” thing since at the start of the year (although it existed a long time ago). Who knows, maybe next year it will not be as effective as it is right now.

Bottom line here is that marketing is a continuous refining process. There may be something that works superbly for now but is obsolete tomorrow. There are also some factors to consider like FTC intervention, saturation, legal type of stuffs and so on which just makes things more complicated. What do you think?

Filed Under: Blogging Experience, Blogging Tips, Internet Marketing Tagged With: blog marketing, Internet Marketing, marketing, revamp plan

The Best Blog Marketing Tips Around the Internet

by Melvin · Jul 31, 2010

The contest has finally ended and it’s really really such a great one. It ran for almost 2 months and we’ve had successful feedbacks all over. On top of that, the quality of the entries that we’ve received is just superb. So if I am about conclude now if the contest was successful or not, there’s no question it is.

Best Blog Contest

Anyways first I’d like to apologize for not having this post earlier nor reminding people that the contest has already ended. Actually, it is just this month that I started feeling the sting of having a day job. Although it’s enjoyable and exciting, it disables me to do a lot of things that I used to do when I was still in college.

Anyhow, the winners for the contest will be announced in August 5 as the current entries are already in the hands of the judges. But with that I’d like to honor those entries and give them some link love not because they participated in the contest but because they are really good reads. So if you’re looking for the best marketing  tips around, then you may want to read these articles:

  • My Best (so far) Blog Marketing Tips *ever* | Make Money Online with a Teenage Dad
  • 10 Best Marketing Tips that Will Blow Your Mind | Make Money Online
  • Blog Marketing Method – Comment Marketing | Agent Deepak
  • Blog Marketing Method – Social Marketing | Agent Deepak
  • Blog Marketing Method – Article Marketing
  • Blog Marketing Method – Giveaway Marketing
  • The best marketing tip for your site | How to make money blogging tips
  • Blog Marketing Method – Search Engine… | Agent Deepak
  • Guerilla blogging – one of the best way to market and make money from a blog | Make Money Online with a Teenage Dad
  • Best Blog Marketing Techniques | Blogging for Profit with Felix Albutra
  • The Secrets to Blog Commenting | D3so.com – A Celebrity In The Making
  • Write 10 Articles A Day, Market Yourself And Avoid Burn Out
  • Better Blogging: Be a Name Dropper – Cynthia Boris
  • 3 Effective Blog Marketing Strategies That I Use
  • Market Your Blog The Way I Did |The Art Of ‘Selling’ More
  • 6 Do’s for Blog Marketing With Twitter Fail

I’ve personally read all of them and I’m so happy with the quality. As I’ve said before, the goal of this contest is really to give back to the community and with the participants adhering to that, I think this is the most awesome contest I have ever  run so far. With that I’d like to congratulate everybody already for really doing a good job. 🙂

Now if you’re contest entry was not there, feel free to hit me up via comment form asap. I tried to find all the articles, tried to moderate all the trackbacks and even went as far as the spam comments page just to make sure all entries are received. Yes, I know how it feels when an entry is ignored. Anyway, again feel free to hit me up in case your article isn’t here.

So what’s next? Well there’s a lot of things to watch out for in this blog but as for the moment, why not try to support your favorite blogger by reading, commenting and retweeting his article above? What do you think?

Filed Under: Announcements, Contest, Internet Marketing Tagged With: best blog tips, blog marketing tips, Internet Marketing

Most Blog Fail at This, Marketing!

Most Blog Fail at This, Marketing!

by Melvin · Feb 7, 2010

Ever wonder why 90% of the blogs just can’t get off the ground? Simple, they suck at marketing!

Because of the nature of blogging and what it really is, a lot of people doing blogging just couldn’t really make it. Blogging is defined originally as a hobby, something that’s like a personal diary where you can enjoy doing it without needing to spend that much of time. So up until now this is the stumbling block that most newbie bloggers and even intermediate ones face.

Almost always, the case is that bloggers don’t want to learn marketing at all. Selling sucks isn’t it? And besides you never dreamed to be a sales person throwing up stupid sales pitches to your audience. That being said, it‘s safe to conclude that bloggers don‘t think marketing is essential for the success of their blogs.

If you‘ve been reading this blog for quite some time, you always hear me say that blogging is internet marketing. That is true and your success depends on how competent you are with marketing. Some people who want to learn it even pay for those expensive internet marketing courses and programs while others simply just try to learn it themselves.

In blogging, however you really don’t need to know each and every stuff about internet marketing, you only need a few of them to get started. Coupled with building relationships, good marketing can really skyrocket your blog/brand/profile w/c would get you more traffic and obviously the end result is income.

Blog Marketing for Fame

So for the last 2 and half months or so, I took some time in creating this guide w/c would help an average blogger grow their blog on a quick rate. Nope this isn’t a make money eBook or a crappy PLR product. This is a simple info product w/c is targeted to bloggers who like to explode their blog traffic, get their brand known and simply just slay it in the blogosphere. Whether you’re a newbie blogger or an intermediate one, I would like to hope that this product is one that can be very valuable to you. It contains tips on how you can grow your blog quickly in less than one month (or whatever pace you want to). And by saying growing your blog, it’s not just about increase daily hits or huge unique, it’s about building a real brand with real community that will be with you for the long haul.

Edit: This book has been rebranded and updated as ‘Blog Marketing Guide‘

Subscribe now & Get Immediate Access

After signing-up to my blog’s newsletter you will immediately be able to download your copy of the Blog Marketing for Fame eBook. On top of that you’ll also receive my exclusive tips and tricks to market your blog (stuff that is not published anywhere else), insider’s information about my upcoming projects and so on. The newsletter is totally free and if you think the content you’re receiving is crap, you can cancel anytime.

You can subscribe to the newsletter by going here.

 

Filed Under: Featured Articles, Internet Marketing, Money magnets, Product Launch, Traffic Tagged With: blog marketing, Internet Marketing, marketing

Demand & Supply – Understanding Blogging Economy

by Melvin · Jan 23, 2010

Currently Blogging is one of the greatest Internet Marketing Model. While many people use blogging for personal purposes, some use it as an Internet Marketing tool. The few people who use blogging as Internet Marketing tool are the ones who want to earn money, reputation and fame. But only a very few percentage of them succeed.

One of the reason of success of these successful bloggers (whom we call pro bloggers) is the understanding of Blogging Economy. The understand how to utilize their resources, where to invest and how to balance Demand and Supply. Demand and Supply is core of any kind of Economy. The relationship between demand and Supply underlines the forces behind the allocation of your blogging resources in the most efficient ways. It also decides the price (may not be a monetary value) of your content in the Blogging Community.

Before we proceed any further let us define Demand and Supply.

Demand refers to how much (quantity) of a product or service is desired by consumer. The quantity demanded is the amount of a product people are willing to buy at a certain price.

Supply represents how much the market/producer can offer. The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good producers are willing to supply when receiving a certain price.

How does Demand and Supply work for Blogging?

In blogging, a blogger is not always selling. So two cases arises, one when a blogger is selling his content (posting article/post) for free and other when a blogger is selling a product or service for a price.

CASE I: Blogger provides free information through an article/blog post

Here the commodity (information) is free to everyone, so money is not a factor. When something is free, it means the supply is theoretically infinite. The demand of the content decrease and so does its value. Now to increase the value of your content, we need to increase the demand. And since our commodity is free, its not that simple. There are two different ways to increase the demand.

  • First is decreasing the supply. But practically it is not possible to just decrease the supply. In case of a blog post once posted is available to everyone. One way to decrease the supply will be to password protect the whole/part of post. You may also consider having a free members area where selected few have access to the content. This way you virtually decrease the supply. This will only work if your content had high demand before.
  • Second is allocation of resources. Allocation of resources in blogging means investing more time (if required money) to research the topic you are about to write. Write the post in a unique way or better with a whole new perspective.

CASE II: Blogger is selling some product or service

Here the commodity is not free and those who want it or need it have to pay some price. When you are selling something, the price is decided by the demand and supply in the market (here blogging community).

When money is involved, it becomes easier to understand the market. Price decreases with higher supply and increases with increase in demand. So if the product/service you are selling is available elsewhere in plenty (may be lower price) you will have to decrease your price too. But if the demand is high and supply is low (only a few more sellers are there), you can increase the price as well.

There are some more factors which decide the price as well. One of these factor is customer awareness. Think of the condition when a certain product eg. Blogging Guide is available in plenty but the customer is aware of only your guide. The customer will buy yours. You can set higher price. This is a case of Virtual Demand (a imaginary high demand and low supply condition).

Whatever I have mentioned above are only few of the theories of Demand and Supply in Blogging. To succeed you need to understand them and apply these theory practically. For example, I told you about how demand and supply control the price. You can use it to decide the at what price you should sell your product/service, so that people buy it. How to make them buy your product and service at a ceratin price.

If you have any questions, just leave a comment and I will answer them.

PS: The most important thing to note about Demand and Supply is that how impractical (it is mostly theory) it may seem, it governs the market. You can think of cases where the theory may not apply, but in most cases Demand and Supply theory works with a high efficiency.

Editor of Agent Deepak – A student at IIT, Kharagpur. He has 3 years of experience in Blogging and also have 1 year experience in SEO, Graphics design and Web design. He is tweeting @AgentDeepak. If you are on Facebook you can also befriend him @AgentDeepak

Photo Credit from Chief Ingredient

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Guest Post, Internet Marketing, Traffic Tagged With: blogging economy, demand and supply, Internet Marketing

Look, We’re Not Idiots Here

Look, We’re Not Idiots Here

by Melvin · Sep 12, 2009

Note: This is a spontaneous rugged post with no proof-reading whatsoever..

Internet marketing is all about sales pitches and good copywriting skills. Those who make a good amount of income as a marketer usually do things right, good sales talk, then proper marketing. But 90% of people just don’t. I’m really very pissed off on how a lot of marketers do hardselling the ugly way. Of course hard selling is theoretically ugly but exaggerating it makes it then 1000% more ugly.

I have read a lot of pitches, either in a sales page, squeeze page, peel away, or just pop up javascript. They don’t lack the selling point, what they lack is realism. Most of them are thrashy and are fool in expecting prospective customers to buy their stuffs.

worthfreeYou probably have seen a package wherein you would pay the main product for $37 and then get bonus packages worth $5999 right? Well isn’t it hyperbolic? You’re not giving away that value of items, would you? Who’s fool would do a hardwork, get paid $37 per item, and give away  $5999 value per item? None! That’s because it’s totally untrue.

Another is the bullcrap use of strikethrough where the price starts at $1000 and for some reason, goes down up to $10 w/some bullshit reason. Ok, the use  of strikethrough is nice, in fact I have used it a lot in this blog and some sales page. But must be used in a realistic manner…

The problem with marketers today especially in the MMO niche is that most of them play things wrong. Look, you’re marketing your product, ebook, whatever to a fellow marketer. Whatever tactic you have, the other end knows it completely well! Well don’t market to me, I’m a marketer. What say you?

Filed Under: Advertising, Internet Marketing Tagged With: hard sell, Internet Marketing, sales pitch

How to Make Money Outside Internet Marketing

by Melvin · Feb 8, 2009

Although the title looks like that one you have been seeing in email spams and “get-rich quick sales pages, it’s actually not. A lot of people jumping into internet marketing always have this question “How do I start? I dont know anything about internet marketing?” The answer is always read, try to learn, test, then learn again.

But as always there are a ton of ways on how you can make money online if you’re dumb and poor about internet marketing. We all know it takes time before you can completely grasp the whole concept of it, but whats the need on learning it if you can make some cash without it? 🙂 Today I have compiled ways on how you can actually make money online without any knowledge about IM. The only thing you need is the basic read and write knowledge as well as some persistence on your part. I believe all of them costs nothing (although if you have the money, the better)  Here they are:

  • Forum Posting – Forum Posting is basically posting in a forum and getting paid. It’s not really that big but if you can work quick, then you can definitely have your earnings up. ForumsFirst.com is one that pays for it. They are probably the most reliable and better forum posting company. You can also look at some forums like dp and v7n, as normally there are people that look for forum fillers.

SECRET TIP: With this type people often whine “I don’t type fast” While typing fast is a huge factor in this one, it’s not totally the only thing that can give you success with it. Why not use a dicatation software? In my previous stints with doing it, I use Dragon Naturally Speaking. If you’re a Mac user you can use Mac Dictate. What is a dictation software? Basically its a software that converts your voice to text. COol? Definitely! You can make $50 a day easily with forum posting with this type of software. $50 a day? Yeah, something most affiliate marketers cant even reach!

  • Get Paid To Sites – GPT sites are sites that pay people to complete an offer. Maybe a short survey, or signup to a free site, or maybe something that requires a credit card. Believe me there’s no shortage of this sites. Why? Because some affiliate marketers are incentivizing some offers, thats why they come to these sites, pay them and earn. Win-Win situation for all! Jim of TNF has a list which he personally recommends
  • Freelancing – Contrary to what most people are saying, freelancing is really a lucrative thing. A lot of people are looking to outsource (including me). They look for designers, article writers, coders, data entry personnels, and many more. I mean Im sure at least you know how to do one of it right? Freelancers are the one whom I often called as “partners in business”.  Elance.com is one company which probably is the biggest.
  • Starting A Contest Blog – I hate doing stuffs like this but basically lets face it, you can actually make some cash/gadgets with contests nowadays. 85% of contests require blogging and doing it costs you nothing. What are you waiting for? Create a free blogger blog, fill it with some content, then start hunting for contests. I know a lot of people making good use of contest blogs and taking advantage of contests.

SECRET TIP: How do you know a contest is live? Easy, just look at other contest blogs and you will know it. Contest bloggers try to find contest as much as they can so they are actually doing the work for you. Search Google for terms “contest blogs” “blog contests” or so and you’ll find a ton.

  • Selling Photos – Selling photos is something that I have never done and will never do in my entire life. But after countless hours of doing research about it I found out it can really be a good business. If you have a camera, then go into a peaceful place (cemetery?) and take shots. Then sell it to  sites like iStockPhoto and StockExpert.

Now with this list, I dont really see any reason why people cannot make any money online. Although it doesn’t make you that big, I believe seeing your first dollars would make you more inspired. And inspirations do a lot. Anyway if you can add anything valuable to this list then don’t be shy to put it in the comments. Or if you have some questions, then ask them.  My goal is to get more to add in this list and hopefully share it in some of the local forums here in my country. 🙂 What say you?

Filed Under: Blogging Experience, Featured Articles, Monetization Tactics, Preachings, Ramblings, Top Posts Tagged With: Internet Marketing, make money blog, make money online, money outside internet marketing

Winning The Web Shirt is a Great One!

by Melvin · Jun 24, 2008

Well just this day I have received something in a brown envelope that I first suspect as a bomb. And upon looking at the back I saw the name Gyutae Park so I guess it’s his shirt of winning the web. I have purchased it last month from him because I’m a big fan of shirts that promote sites. I pretty feel the price is very fair with everyone. The shirt also looks better when you wear it than when you just look at it.

I guess the shirt makes me look better. 😉 For those who do not know Gyutae, he is the proud owner of Winning the Web, a site that is about internet marketing. He has a lot of great content there. I can remember he hosted a certain contest there that is really really great. His site definitely worths a look. For others who are selling great shirts, let me know it so I can take a look at it. 😉

me!

Filed Under: Ramblings Tagged With: Internet Marketing, winning the web

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