MelvinBlog

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

make money online

Blogger Head To Head Round 4; It’s The Kids, This Time

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Not really I am a big fan of long titles but well the part 4 of the blogger head to head has already come. This time the kids teenagers will take the centerstage. Not only they are young kids, but they are young and competitive boys out there who are not afraid with jumping into the online world. Rajaie is a guy from Rajaietalks which I believe has taken his blog into the next level w/his killer posts as well as hardcore tactics to increase his backlinks and gain readers as well. Ganesh on the flipside, from Blogsmartly is as impressive. He’s been busy w/school now but his presence is always felt with his comments and useful insights.

Anyway enough with the praises from me and let’s jump to their interesting tack on things.

Rajaie Ganesh
Describe yourself in less than 5 words? Humble, Friendly, Adventurous, and Outgoing studious kid with a taste for
books and computers.
What is your favorite breakfast? Some eggs, bacon, sausages,

and waffles. On normal days I like to have some

 Idly and Sambar (its the common breakfast
in South India)
Why did you choose a saturated niche? At the time I started blogging, I didn’t have the slightest clue of what a
niche was! Hehe, but I could say that I chose this niche because I enjoy
blogging about it		 There were so many blogs giving
blogging tips. But most of them wrote and re-wrote the same old content. I
wanted to start a blog that gave *smart* tips on how to blog. I wanted to
write content which would really be useful to the readers.
Any story behind choosing that domain name? To be honest, I actually forgot why I chose www.rajaietalks.com for my blog.
I guess it had something to do with me just talking about anything I had in
mind.		 I wanted a domain that
instantly made it clear to the visitor that this wasn’t just any ordinary
blog. 😉
How many uniques are you getting monthly? It varies between every month. In September, I got over 60,000 uniques, but
last month I got about 6,000+.		 Around 500.
How many hours do you spend with it? I actually spend hours and hours a day online, but less than 2 hours
blogging. I’ve been trying to focus on my blog mostly these past few weeks,
but I always seem to be distracted by other things online.		 When I first started
blogging, I used to spend long hours. Now, I usually spend 2-3 hours
everyday blogging.
Do you read other blogs feeds? How many do you track? Of course! 🙂 About fifteen or so, I try to keep it to a minimum so I don’t
spend too much time reading other blogs instead of doing actual work.		 I don’t use the feed
reader. I prefer receiving updates via email. I subscribe to around 10-15
blogs.
How do you split your time with school and blogging and being a son? Ahhh, this is a hard one. I try my best to finish my studies and homework
before surfing the Internet. But no matter how hard I try to finish early,
it just seems as though there is never enough time on my hands!		 Ah!
That’s a bit difficult. Since school and studies take up almost 12 hours
daily, I usually spend 3 hours in the evenings and 1 hour in the morning for
my blogs. As for my other activities like playing sports, games, reading,
etc. I do them on weekends.
Any other ventures aside from blogging? No, not the moment. But once I can figure out a schedule that will help me
maintain my blog and keep up with life, I am planning on jumping into
affiliate marketing, site flipping, and whatever else I seem to find
interesting		 I’m currently exploring microblogging
sites like twitter and plurk. I’m planning on building sites that aren’t as
time-consuming as blogging.
What makes your blog unique from others? It’s written by me I really put a lot of work and
planning into my posts, so I guess I write unique (and perhaps enjoyable)
posts. And there’s also the fact that I’m 14 which creates some buzz around
the blogosphere.
What’s the biggest goal for this blog? To become one of the top “make money online” blogs that actually teaches its
readers how to make money online		 I want to build up a large
subscriber base and provide useful and top-notch content for all of my
readers. That’s my biggest goal.
Give me a blog you admire and why? Copyblogger. I simply love it because of the awesome style of writing Brian
and the other authors have		 ProBlogger. Because Darren gives some
of the best tips on blogging and his blog shows that it is possible to make
a living out of blogging. His blog was a big inspiration for me to start
Blog Smartly.

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

CPM Ads: Underrated MoneyMaker

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I often hear questions in forums that say “I have the traffic but little income from my blog”. Well as what I have observed people saying it, are people who are putting their earnings largely on Adsense. Though Adsense has had been a great money maker for some, almost 85% of people in this world are still not successful from using it… So getting back from the statement, I always answer “try CPM ads”. CPM stands for Cost per Millie, meaning you are gonna paid per 1000 impression. Take note, impression is not unique visitors, its pageviews!

So why do I think it’s an underrated moneymaker? Well just look. If you’re blog is getting about the normal 5000 uniques a month and say 12000 pageviews, then you’re on your way to $30 per month. People oftentimes think of selling direct ad sales but sometimes you cannot find anyone who will buy it. Especially if you’re blog is something very unrelated to internet marketing, then chances are people will notcare about your ad space. With CPM ads you can make money easily. And the sky is the limit. On my basketball blog, I had a large leaderboard CPM banner at the top that really pays me well. What I have done is I have ordered a cheap 100,000 US traffic. And with some advertisers paying up to $4 per cpm (US based), thats a really great deal for me. And that’s just the prelude. You can do more, “read more buttons” hot or not, voting scripts, and etc) Just do note that some CPM networks are very strict with some shady techniques and you’re account can be terminated, do it at your own risk!

Well one thing famous bloggers don’t like CPM is that it gives user a bad experience. Oftentimes ads are not good to user experience because they are unrelated. ANother is that sometimes they show flash ads that slows down your site! They also take a huge chunk of your income, 30-40%. Sites like Chow and Problogger could have had tripled their earnings that easy. But well it’s really bad to branding so I guess theirs no way they would try putting CPM ads on their sites…

How about you how do you find CPM ads? Have you considered trying and using them?

What Makes You Rich The Most?

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So obviously you didn’t came here saying blogging is your primary source of income right? Also you’re not planning to do it by blogging. I was looking at different blogs and different people and seeing they were making a lot of money doing things very far from blogging. We all know it’s impossible to make a living out of blogging. Yes, some people do it, name them, Darren Rowse, John Chow and more. But the thing is its very hard to duplicate the feat they have achieved. When they started, they were not so many people doing it so they were getting a lot of attention and exposure. Today, you can always write a great post and no one can still read it. That’s how www is very competitive right now.

Back to the question, what’s the thing that had made you tons of money? or maybe the most money? Some do well in joint ventures, freelancing, offering professional services and so. As many of you know, I had made some success with Affiliate Marketing. Isn’t really big, but a three figure income a month is always better than nothing. And besides that is doing it part-time. You can see, people get what they want based on how focused and determined they are. Most people fail because they tend to do tons of things at once and the result is they never accomplished any of them. My word of advice is, do what you think you’re strength is! You code superbly, then why linger with affiliate marketing? You write like a god, then why not go with freelancing? For me it’s just how those things work. Many people see always the value of having multiple streams of income but what they never see is if they can sustain positive results from them or just waste their time and effort.

How bout you? What makes you rich the most? I know you have blogs (and you won’t be reading these if you don’t have one) and that’s what you share with your readers (and that’s what pay your bills and hosting). Maybe you can share it.

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

What Affiliate Network To Join

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affiliate networkThis is the second part of the series called Niche/Affiliate Marketing. I nearly forgot that I am doing a series here so pardon me if this one came after a month. The first part is niche research which you can find here

So you have now find a niche that you will be targeting what’s next? Obviously the next one is picking an affiliate program to use. This one should be very easy as most of the known affiliate network are legitimate. You can always sign up as many affiliate networks as possible. This is also because some networks are picky in terms of affiliates and sometimes you will get rejected. Another thing is to play around the networks you have chosen. Affiliate programs have different looks, pay differently, track not the same as the other and so. It’s important to know everything about the network. Remember to be focused on the niche of your choice. If you have done your research properly, you will probably have an easy time promoting high converting products. Here are the list of networks I have used and made money:

  • Commission Junction – Probably one of the oldest networks here. They are proven to be a great affiliate network and they also have a very large marketplace. They are a little picky in terms of products to promote and it depends on what methods you use.
  • Pepperjam Network – they have just started this year and they are overachieving. I have made a post last month on why they worth a look from everyone. They uses Web 2.0 and advanced tracking. There are also some big advertisers on them (such as playboy, disney and so). And we had a partnership that has extended until August in which publishers who sign UNDER me will get a $10 bonus signup.
  • Clickbooth – another network that pays very high. Clickbooth is one of the networks that has large list of email and zip submits. Most of it pay $1.5 for zips only. I know some people making millions w/zip submits. 😉 And another thing is that they have seemed to recover to the criticisms and frauds that most people say about them.
  • AzoogleAds – this is probably the best one if you are going to ask top affiliate marketers. They also have a large marketplace and they are combination of Clickbank and CLickbooth and PepperJam. Problem is they don’t likely accept affiliates outside US and Canada. We’re disqualified dude!
  • Market Leverage – has almost dominated the blogosphere these past months when they started sponsoring contest like a mad man! The control panel of theirs is a bit confusing but is very informative. I haven’t had much success w/Market leverage maybe due to the fact I am pressured to win most contest. 🙂

That are the top networks for me. Well actually that is what I have used and had made me some great money. But of course there are plenty others who so much worth a look. Clickbank, Moreniche, Copeac and etc. What I have included are the networks that I feel newbies can use and they can learn a lot from it while making some decent money… I hope I made everything clear. 🙂