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Why a Blog is your Best Marketing Asset

by Melvin · Oct 10, 2011

I have been blogging for about 4 years now and it still never ceases to amaze me how a blog can be utilized as a powerful marketing asset for whatever you’re doing. For example, this blog alone has helped me do a ton of things just because I write here. It has that leverage that gives you a pretty good advantage over your other competitors in your market. Aside from that it allows you to do direct response marketing better than ever since you’re hardly pitching them anything but rather just giving out good content.

Anyway there’s a huge contest over at SEM-GROUP in w/c I am currently participating right now. My writing entry to that contest is entitled Your Best Internet Marketing Asset – Your Blog. It’s a detailed blog post about what I said above. It also tackles how blogging alone covers all of the other components that you probably already need in order to succeed in marketing your business online. Again you can help me win the contest by reading my contest entry.

It’s not a traffic-getting contest actually but rather just a writing contest. However, its one of those rarely lengthy blog entries that I usually do and I think you can benefit greatly from that.

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A Guide on Doing Blog Marketing

by Melvin · Sep 19, 2011

It’s been a while since I created a guide on blog marketing/driving traffic to a blog and obviously the need to update the material has occurred to me. Especially with the fact that I got lots of feedback based on the old one that I created and those feedback that I received were really good.

Now if you haven’t been reading my blog since last year, then the book that I’m referring to is the one entitled ‘Blog Marketing for Fame’. This free guide generally received positive feedback from most of my readers and I was happy with how it turned out. There were a couple of good suggestions that I put into work with regards to the new one.

So there I upgraded the guide and it has been rebranded as …

‘Blog Marketing Guide’

Aside from the old one having a long flimsy name, another reason for the renaming of the book is the fact that there’s really no guide on blog marketing in general available. And perhaps, ‘Blog Marketing Guide‘ as a name is pretty good and something easy to remember. It may not really be the perfect name for now but its something that’s good to start with.

The book just like most of my guides are free if you subscribe to my newsletter which is totally a no-brainer if you ask me. :p. The book has 5 general sections on how and where you can get traffic plus a detailed explanation/elaboration of the different things that I do that has worked extremely well for myself and hopefully can also work for you.

But the book isn’t really just the cool stuff here as the newsletter is the one that I would say I’m pretty proud of. Over the past few years I haven’t really had gotten a huge amount of people on my list. I have a couple of hundreds to be honest but I’m very proud to say that the community in my newsletter is a tightly-knit interactive group. Lastly, I usually put out lots of great advice and tips that I normally don’t publish here. And hey there were a couple of times that I even gave free goodies there. 🙂

Why Blog Marketing?

Pretty simple. Just like in my old post about most bloggers failing at marketing, the reason I created this thing is to be able to help out lots of bloggers on how they can market their blogs competitively.

Not much has really changed. Most bloggers aren’t still good at marketing their stuff and its pretty understandable. When I was getting started I looked at blogging as just writing and I believe this is how most bloggers trying to carve their niche look at blogging as well. Obviously its the wrong way to look at it.

We, bloggers have to be somehow in the middle of ‘writers’ and internet marketers (salesmen). We need to write out our usual selves while being good enough to promote it and get enough people in our community. But we don’t need to sound like those marketers right? Nor do we need to push out one product after the other just to get affiliate sales. In short, we don’t want any part of being salesy yet we want to know how to market.

Hopefully that’s what the Blog Marketing Guide brings to the table.

So that’s my reason. Again, your feedback is highly appreciated and feel free to get this guide across the blogosphere.

Creative Ways To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

by Melvin · Aug 17, 2011

As a blogger, its one of our goals to try to reduce our blog’s bounce rate. Of course, we all want to have people read our stuff and if possible stay on our site for a longer period of time. And do take note that its not just about staying on our blog doing nothing, its about them staying on our site but reading various content from us.

In this blog entry, I’ll discuss different ways on how we as a blogger can reduce our blog’s bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?

According to Google themselves, bounce rate is simply just the percentage of single or one-page visits on your site. This is also when a visitor exits on the same page as they entered. So as an example, if you visited this post and then left my blog through this post, you will be considered as a user who ‘bounced’ from my blog.

A very high bounce rate is indicative of various things like a).incorrect sets of audience for your site, b).poor content on your end and etc. So generally if you’re having a very high bounce rate, then you must be concerned that you’re falling into one of those two things I mentioned.

And you can read the following tips below on how you can reduce bounce rate on your site.

Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate

1. Have a landing page

I have been preaching on this method ever since and it seems that lots of bloggers don’t really understand the value of it. I’ve written a post on how using a landing page can increase your traffic but more importantly by using one, you are allowing yourself to attract the right people for your blog.

Think about it, a visitor is more likely to stay and navigate if he is directed to a specific landing page rather than straight to the homepage. Why would we want them to read our stuff more? We want to prove that we’re worth reading of course and that we know what we’re talking about.

2. Eliminate annoying elements

If you think about it, most people who navigate away from your site do it very quickly. Most of time its as quick as less than 10 seconds. There are various reasons for this but by analyzing it yourself, its more likely because they are annoyed on your site as a whole.

Most people don’t like ads, or they don’t like those lightbox popups. Some of them don’t like the sliders and all the fancy stuff. Obviously its hard to please everyone but you should at least try to please the majority. Easiest solution for this is to try minimizing your blog elements.

3. Write good content

Visitors don’t just land on your homepage or designated landing page. Most of the times they land on the specific blog post or article. With this, its very important to write good content to be able to persuade first time visitors to stay more and read more. You can do a simple test and compare your crappy posts from your best posts. You can easily spot the difference in bounce rate and see that your visitors stay with good content. Pretty fundamental tip!

4. Improve Loading Times

I am guilty of this myself. I used to sport themes before that load horribly slow due to lots of javascript stuff. As a result, lots of my readers probably just went away.

Make sure to work on always improving loading speed of your site. Check with Google Webmaster Central Site Performance Tool to see if your site is loading quick enough to satisfy the majority.

5. Minimize External Links

As bloggers, we’re naturally aren’t too shabby to hand out links to other bloggers. Its definitely not bad to give link loves but it sometimes has its own disadvantages and one of those is people going away from your own content. Another is diluting your pagerank although if you know me, I don’t really care that much about search benefits.

So just try to limit linking externally to other sites as it may be one of the reasons why your bounce rate is high.

Conclusion

Just like anything else, bounce rate is just a metric. I am always a proponent of studying your numbers and tweaking based on what it reflects. But still, you must never ever dwell too much on it. Don’t look at your bounce rate stats every 6 hours or so as it can obviously hamper your focus and productivity.

Personally, I do analyze my bounce rate a lot and do the necessary things that I think can help me out more in the long run. How about you? What’s your bounce rate and what’s your best tip to reduce it?

The “Other” Things that You Can Enjoy in Blogging

by Melvin · Jul 31, 2011

So before I start everything else in this post, I just want to (proudly) let everyone know that I make money from most of my blogs and its one of the reasons why I really love blogging.

I said financial benefits is one of the reasons, the other half is the happiness and the satisfaction that it brings to me. It’s always been my mistake to write blogging and internet marketing tips to bloggers as if everyone is aiming at making money and being famous. It amazes me (and I’m thankful) when someone goes out in comments and says “not all people have making money on their minds and I’m one of them”. That gives me a very good realization that blogging for money like we do is just less than 10% of the whole blogging community.

I figured out that most people blog because they’re happy with it and it fulfills them greatly. That’s something that I’ve realized late last year and in this blog post, I’m going to tackle how you, as a make money online blogger can still be happy with blogging even though you’re not making that much money or not meeting your expectations financially.

1. The “intrinsic love” for blogging

When I started my blog MelvinBlog.com (see I’m not linking to it), I was very sure that I can do this forever AS LONG as I could make money with it. Its tricky but when I had hard times late 2009 and the blog wasn’t making that much money, I thought I would lose my interest in it but I was wrong.

The reason for that is the intrinsic love that I have for blogging for the topic. I do internet marketing since late 2007 and every time I talk about it in my blog, I really, really feel that great satisfaction for doing so. And that should be the case for most of us. People who have been blogging forever that aren’t getting compensated are the ones who have that “real love” for what they do and as a result, they don’t bother with the money that they make. That’s how I equally feel, how most of my blogging peers feel and hopefully that should be how you look at it as well.

2. The community

This second factor does not come immediately and it may take a while for you before you realize it.

The community is what makes a blog alive and without it, a blog is nothing but a plain static web entity. It just so happened that our blog community is one of the reasons why most of us stay and feel fulfilled. Imagine having tens of people, if not hundreds, commenting on our posts. Imagine thousands of people daily visiting our blogs even though its written by a simple person like us. Isn’t it self-fulfilling?

That does not even stop there. I know most of you here have received personal emails from your own audiences on how they’re so thankful for one of the things that your blog have done for them. It sounds corny, but that’s sweet right?

3. Friendships and relationships

While its very rare to see an occasion where two bloggers end up being into a romantic relationship (lol), forming friendships through blogging is a very frequent case. How many of you here have actually treated a blogger as a good friend of yours without even seeing or talking to that blogger in person? Yes, I know the feeling.

It doesn’t end with friendships. Most of the times, it leads to fruitful partnerships and joint ventures that can later on pay off for both of you.

You see, I could take 20 friends any time over 20 rotating 125X125 sidebar banners on my site. 😉

4. The Experience (with a big E)

Consider the following: I wrote a blog entry and got over a hundred comments. I got in front page of Digg, I got a thousand pageviews just this day for this post.

I can’t stress enough for myself how blogging has given me so much unforgettable experience in life. I was told that people don’t crave for things, they crave for experience and I can say that’s 100% true based on my experience.

All the things I mentioned above, the love for blogging, the community and the relationships. It all leads to a superb real-life experience on something. And I’m not just talking about good experiences that make us happy, I’m also talking about experiences that are a bit negative. No one actually forgets them and its equally memorable for us just as with the good ones.

5. The rewards (outside the money)

Every time I look back on what blogging has brought to me except the money, I usually end up smiling because it has brought me a lot more than I expected.

One of the best rewards that you can get from blogging is the increased expertise and brand that you get. “Who would think that by talking about this topic people would see me as an expert in this niche?” Is it not nice for us to realize that?

Another unsung reward is your personal learnings from it. I mentioned above that I learned blogging isn’t just about making money and we are just a minority of the blogosphere. That’s just one of the myriads of things that I’ve learned from blogging. I consider these learnings as a reward since I don’t really need to study something (formally) to gain those things.

I got tired of putting a heading called conclusion because not all blog entries have conclusions like this one right? I’ll let you put your own conclusion on this post. What do you think about blogging minus the “making money” part? Do you think its still as fulfilling?

Image credits to Smemon

Is Lightbox Popup Still Effective For Marketing?

by Melvin · Jul 19, 2011

If you’ve been reading blogs ever since like me, then you probably know that the use of popup lightbox is widely popular. The growth of blogs switching to it and using it has been enormous over the past year and more and more people seemed to be convinced into using it themselves.

But is it still worth using it? That’s my question. Obviously, the use of popup lightbox has something to do with marketing (and ‘psychology’ for some) since some bloggers are reporting a ridiculous increase in conversions by using it. So logically, when people start using the same thing over and over, it becomes saturated and less effective.

What’s a Lightbox Popup?

Lightbox is actually a programming term which is a javascript application used to display images using modal dialogs. In internet marketing, its more of popup that contains something that’s being marketed to the blog’s audience. It could be a form where users can enter their email to subscribe to newsletter, an advertisement or simply just a message that you want to deliver. The idea with it is that its simple, yet elegant enough to capture the attention of the readers.

Before, most blogs are just using it to display pictures from their galleries but now it has become more than just that.

Here are some of the screenshots I’ve taken from some blogs in the internet marketing industry:

Those popups appear when you visit their blog. The behavior is that these lightbox popups would take the focus by putting itself on top of any other elements in the blog. Its highly customizable though. Some bloggers have it appear all the time in the homepage while some just prefer to display it once on first time visitors.

What I think of Lightbox Popups

For a fact, I’ve used lightbox popups before and I even used it here in this blog. I removed it because some of my users were complaining that its kind of obtrusive and they suggested that it might be harming user experience.I listened to them and took it off.

I know a lot of my peers are using it and are reporting decent and better conversions as oppose to not using one. But bare in mind, they’re promoting a heavily marketed product too that I think is widely popular.

I haven’t really had time tracking my conversions closely so I can’t speak that much. But personally I’m thinking that lightbox popups are becoming overused which leads me to think that it ‘might’ not be worth using it anymore. Maybe just like the Amazon orange button when it first started and now its not converting at all anymore. But what do you think?

Making Money Blogging What You Love

by Melvin · Apr 17, 2011

In a recent local blogging conference that I attended, I noticed that most bloggers here blog about things that they genuinely love and like. What I mean there is that they don’t blog about making money or blog about something that they would get easily bored. And of course that is always a good sign.

Just like majority of bloggers attending blogging conferences, these people want to make money with their blogs. In fact, maybe that’s a big reason why they attend conferences, to learn how to make money while blogging about something that they love.

But the question is, can you really make money blogging about what you love?

Two Part Answer

Yes

The first answer is yes, its possible. Look at a lot of famous bloggers out there. Darren Rowse for instance, loves photography so he has a blog with and he makes money. So that’s writing and blogging on a topic that he really feels good about. Look at the tech bloggers out there, they get a lot of free stuff because they write about technology. And writing for them isn’t hard at all since this is what they live and breath.

Another good example is myself. I blog about internet marketing and blogging and I make some money out of this blog too yet I really love to do internet marketing. I used to blog about basketball because I have passion for it and I made some money on that blog too. So the first of the two part answer is yes, it’s possible.

No

Obviously the second answer to the question is no (lol, its either yes or no so it shouldn’t be hard you to guess it ). One component that enables bloggers to make money from their blogs is the size of the market that they’re into. Imagine, most money is made because of things like advertising and selling products and stuff. And that only becomes possible when there’s enough people interested in that area/niche.

Take a look at the niches that we mentioned above. Internet marketing, technology, photography, making money online. Obviously what’s common with them is that a lot of people are looking for information about them. They’re scouring like mad people trying to find stuff to read regarding those things. For the most part, people are willing to spend for what they’re looking for! And when that’s the case, the thing that we love becomes profitable.

Now unfortunately it’s not a general rule which means it doesn’t apply to everything. Some people have interest in blogging about their own personal ramblings and they love to write about it. Problem is that’s not something that a lot of people are interested to so the size of the market is very slim and money is hard to make. Some others like to talk about let’s say naruto or some japanese anime. Maybe a good number of people are into the same thing but the monetization model that they can use is very limited thus very little can be made as well. Among all that, the size of the market is just one of the factors (but a very big factor to consider) that we must consider.

So that’s it. As what most people teach, the money can be made in blogging by finding the intercept between things that you care and things that enough people are interested too so that you’re not left out alone when you started blogging yourself. Not the most pleasing thing to hear but that’s how bloggers make good money out of doing something that they like.

I wanna know your opinion about. What do you think?

Minimizing Blog Elements and Why Should

by Melvin · Mar 5, 2011

One of the more noticeable changes in my recent blog redesign is that there are way fewer elements than ever. The 2.0 version of the blog before was probably the most cluttered design I ever had and even though I really, really like it, I realized that there really isn’t that much use for most of the elements in there. Heck that design even had 2 sidebars in it and a bunch of free space to play with.

I’m not sure if bloggers are aware but minimizing some of the elements is really the way to go. I would use this blog as an example. Before, I used to have so many elements and widgets on the sidebar, footer, header and etc. For instance, I had those recent readers widget, that mini navigator plugin, a bunch of list of links and a whole lot of redundancies (duplicate elements etc.). Then I evaluated, am I really using these elements? Do I benefit from putting some of it here and there? Or am I just wasting some space?

Obviously the easy answer is yes, I’m just wasting space. A recent reader widget is nothing but a widget to show some flair, a mini navigator plugin is a redundancy since users can navigate themselves using the menu bar, excessive number of ad zones also harm since no one’s really buying them. Aside from that I looked at my stats using a bunch of my tracking tools and I saw that users don’t really use most of the elements that I put in the blog. The behavior of most of my readers is that they check out a post or two and then comment and then leave. No one’s looking at this, no one’s clicking there and etc.

To add to that, I looked into my Google Webmaster Central and saw that my blog’s loading time is really slow (as slow as John Chow’s blog, lol). Those things have strongly convinced me that a change is needed.

Cut Out Some Elements!

So that’s my advice to you. Look, as an average web surfer/reader/lurker, we can only do so much on one’s site. I occasionally go to NBA.com but do I really use all of their features there? No, but NBA is an exception since its a large website and is widely visited by a lot of people all over the globe. But us bloggers? I know we all want to keep people browsing and staying for awhile but trust me, that’s not the way to go.

Another factor is loading time which I mentioned above. I live here in Asia and I know our internet here is just sub par comparing to countries like say US or Europe. If you have all those elements and 50% of your traffic is coming from a country that has a mediocre internet connection then that would give a bad user experience.

If those factors still don’t convince you then just remember the things I mentioned above. You have this, this and this in your sidebar and this in your footer. Ask yourself a question. What is this for? Do I benefit from it or does my readers benefit from this? Does it fit in well with my branding and stuff like that? Why not run some advance tracking tools on your blog to see if your readers are really noticing and using those things?

Believe it or not, I still feel that I need to remove some more elements here in this blog. I need to fill in some spots (dang I have four subfooters!) but I have to balance that with what I want and what I don’t want.

Lastly, look at some of the cluttered popular blogs around. Most of them made some redesigns recently and one thing to notice is that they have undergone a major revamp by removing things that they no longer need and by putting up a cleaner design. How about you? Are you ready to cut down the clutter and excess?