MelvinBlog

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

Top Posts

It’s Not About Making Controversy, It’s just Being Me

by ·

If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you probably have seen me a lot of times really go into a certain topic and just write on it freely, most of the times really pouring in a lot of immature controversial  statements as oppose to just being balanced enough and having a milder take on things.

But it’s just recently that I’ve been quite getting some flak for that attitude and that lead to me writing this very interesting post about my take on things.

It’s not Being Controversial, it’s just being me

I don’t think a lot of bloggers have this attitude but when I write, I just speak myself out. I try to be as spontaneous as possible and I think it speaks very well on how transparent I am. But that doesn’t mean that I am being irresponsible. Obviously when you write based on how you feel, you’re most of the times wrong. And that’s what I try to avoid. I can always assure you that I do my research or own study before really speaking on things. For all those people out there, it’s crucial. If you don’t do your research first, it may ruin your credibility.

Back to being transparent, I think most people here have liked my spontaneity and personality. That being said, it’s equally important as well to try to connect to your readers by just being your own. Sure at times we feel quite pressured not to sound too personal (and quirky) fearing to lose our credibility, but the truth is what  all our readers care for is our own view on things. You could talk about this, talk about that and talk about all those latest trends but at the end, our readers will only care on our own tack on those issues and that’s why they comment on the first place. They either agree or disagree.

Controversy gives more risk as a blogger

A lot of people have gone down to this path. They start a blog, and to make a shortcut or to get noticed quickly, out of nowhere they hit big bloggers/people. They try to criticize them even though it’s not reasonable, they tend to create a lot of controversy so that they can get traction in as little time as possible.

I would tell you first and foremost to avoid that tactic. It’s an old blackhat practice and I don’t think it is going to work if you do it solely for bullshitting other people. Sure it can yield you great spikes in traffic but unless you give people enough proof on those, all of those craps are just deemed claims. And claims are just stuffs that you should never believe into.

Striking a balance

All in all it boils down to striking a balance between both. I am always a firm believer that you can get more people to read you by just being yourself, not pretending to be a lawyer or what. On the flip side, more people will actually then BELIEVE you by doing your research, thus boosting your credibility as oppose to just reading you.

Striking a balance is quite a work if you ask me. Sometimes we tend to be not fair but that’s where our readers come and rescue us. I always feel glad, actually really glad when a commenter opposes to what I believe and then explains his side on the comments.

What do you think about this topic?

How Landing Page Can Increase your Blog Traffic

How Landing Page Can Increase your Blog Traffic

by ·

It still continues to surprise me how a lot of people still DO NOT use a landing page for their blog. A landing page is just basically a page where you send majority of your new visitors. This is a crucial page because by letting them stay in that page, you’re persuading them to subscribe to your blog and become a loyal reader. Here’s an overview from my Analytics on how my landing page is faring:

You can notice that people who enter my blog through that page are less likely to bounce that quick. Because my best posts are showcased there, they oftentimes continue to read my post rather than just leave away. As of this writing, my blog’s landing page is located at /welcome. In that page you can see that I introduced first what my blog is all about, then presented them the best posts in each category and lastly offered them to subscribe to my RSS.

A lot of well-known bloggers do use a landing page for their blogs and that’s because they know the power of it. If this one is new to you, then let me present the benefits of using one:

  • Lets new readers read on your blog more – The bounce rate of a new user is usually in the range of 70%-100%. If you have a landing page, a new user would stay on your blog more, read more of your stuffs, potentially increasing the chance of that user to become a loyal reader in the future.
  • Increase subscribers – The no.1 point leads to this point. Since using this method I have seen a great jump on my rss subscribers. Consider this, would you subscribe on a blog where you have read the best posts of it, or on a blog where all you’ve read are the recent posts?
  • Increase your expertise – Since your best posts are showcased in your landing page, it gives your expertise and credibility a huge boost. Because of your good content, people will start to have that perception that you are a credible person in your niche, hence would keep them for the long haul.

But how do I do a landing page? Contrary to the belief that only sales pages and static websites can have a landing page, each and every blog should have one. Because of the overcrowded content in the internet, a lot of people have become used to what I call “skimming mentality”, where people just read a bit and then go away.

Landing page is a good tool to keep people on your site longer hence reaping the benefits I mentioned above. Anyways there are two ways on how you can your landing page and I would discuss both of them right now.

Traditional Landing Page

The traditional landing page involves creating a dedicated page showcasing the best stuffs in your blog (you can look at mine to see the pattern).  In that page usually contains the ff; a short description of your blog, why people need to subscribe to your blog, your best posts, and another for them to subscribe.

You can actually even alter and just use your creativity depending on what you are offering to the market. For example, I have a free eBook I am giving away so I would definitely add that to my landing page. You can name that page depending on your taste, just make sure the name is something relevant to accommodating new readers (mine’s title is /welcome).

Home Page as a Landing Page

The evolution of blog’s home pages from the standard chronological layout type from the magazine-style has also its reason. That is to make the blog more enticing to readers. Unlike the old layouts, magazine-style themes showcase more than just the recent posts. It gives emphasis to a lot of things, making good use of every space without looking too much cluttered.

Using a magazine-style template automatically makes use of the home page as a landing page itself.  We’ve seen big blogs like John Chow, Problogger and many more switch to that layout. Because of that, readers would not just focus on the recent post but most likely they will focus on the blog as a whole.

Conclusion

Using a landing page for your blog is imperative. As I’ve said, it continues to amaze me how a lot of bloggers still don’t do it. Thus far, I don’t see any disadvantages of having one and if you don’t have one right now, I highly suggest you to do your one now.

I would be interested to see your own blog’s landing page and would like to hear your thoughts about it.

Great Blog Design & Why it Can Make or Break your Business

by ·

Most of my readers here treat blogging as a business and if you’ve already read my Blog Marketing for Fame report (w/c is free!), you can see how much I emphasized good blog design as one of the keys in blogging success. Just by simply paying attention on the top blogs in any niche, it’s easy to spot that no one in them sports an ugly design. That being said, you can’t expect people to read your content (even if its a good content) if your design is crappy.

As always the best time to get the perfect design is at the start or at the earliest time possible. The reason is you don’t want to waste new readers by leaving a bad impression to your blog.If your design alone can persuade them to subscribe then why not! But what is a good blog design?

Great Blog Design

If you are thinking that a superb design is synonymous with the price tag, then you’re wrong. I’ve seen a lot of custom-designed blogs that sucked while others simply use a free tweaked theme and it looked awesome.

To achieve a good design, you don’t really need to pay for a custom unique theme from a certain company. All you need to do is grab a design and then lay out your brand properly and clearly. The key here is lasting impression and brand awareness. Of course the basic things are important as well like readability, typography, cleanliness and etc but these days one way that people can remember you is through your design.

For instance here in my blog, people (imo) do realize that I am using a custom theme when in fact it’s just a premium theme. Why? Because I don’t think anyone using Colormatic Theme (my theme) has done good branding for their blogs enough for people to realize them. In short, when people see my theme, they know I’m the only one using it.

Importance

Two things I’ve mentioned above is lasting impression and brand awareness. For me design is neither a part of content nor marketing, it’s actually a  part of both. People won’t read your content if your design sucks (debatable) and on the other hand I’m amazed to see how a lot of big firms have used attractive design as a major marketing strategy to boost their business! All together it speaks both of content and marketing.

How do I know I have a good one for my blog?

This is actually a pretty opinionated question but all I can say is your readers will tell you. I’m sure you all do forum reviews for your blog. If it’s your first time to hear it, its basically when you solicit reviews on large forums for your blog.

Funny thing is that most people view that strategy as a traffic generator but the real key in there is still the review itself. I, myself seek for tons of those forum reviews and it has really helped me out in improving the design of my blog.

You can also do so by observing the top blogs in your niche and see what they have. Although one can say it’s just a time-waster, you can still gain something because blogs from different niches accomodate different layouts so that may probably be useful as well.

All up to you

Tackling blog designs, how to have one and how to maximize it, is a HUGE topic. In fact there are blogs who are solely dedicated in writing about it. I’m no expert and heck no good designer (I always seek opinion).

What I intend to share here is the importance of good blog designs and how it can make you ahead of those so many lame bloggers sporting stupid crappy designs. 😉 What say you?

Your Guest Post was Rejected, What’s Next?

by ·

By now you probably already have learned that guest posting is a powerful way to drive crazy high quality traffic to your site. I’m not just talking about the hits here, I’m talking about traffic that could easily become one of your subscribers, more importantly your customers. Guest Posting really is going to do the job for your blog in terms of getting more publicity.

So because a lot of people already knew it and learned it’s benefits, it seems that every blogger in every corner is sitting, focusing and writing a guest post for the big blogs in their niche. But the question is, are they getting success by actually getting their post/s qualified? Or is it the owner of the other blog think their guest post suck?

Ok I will talk from experience here. Probably you have seen me and my blog on some other blogs having a guest post so it’s pretty obvious guest posting is my blog project since late last year. But I am going to confess that for every 5 guest posts I write, less than 50% gets accepted. For every 10, it’s just 4 and yeah it’s painful especially thinking about the time I spent writing and writing only for the author to say it has not met the qualifications. *sucks*

So that was my experience early this year when I was just totally new to guest posting. Obviously I have improved a lot but the question is what to do next when you get rejected? (ok, no list in this post guys!)

The answer is just keep on going. I know other people would say try to analyze, learn and improve but I think it’s just all about keeping on writing. I’d tell you’d be surprised on how just writing alone could unknowingly improve your way of writing. I love reading my old posts and it always amazes me how many stupid mistakes I have done before even though I (think) have a good english grammar (for someone who lives outside the US).

It’s ok to feel bad but that should never keep you from trying. Bloggers have different styles, so they also have different requirements, different take on whether the article is good or crap. If you’re guest posts got rejected then go ahead and submit it others. If its still discarded then don’t delete it from your hard drive. Even if it piles up there it’s still going to do you wonder by letting you become a better writer.

What do you think guys? I would really love to get your opinion about this topic.



I Am Going To Steal Your Ebook!

by ·

Disclaimer: This is not a post teaching you to do this evil thing. I, myself  HAVE NEVER EVER stolen any eBook. I don’t need to, I make enough money to live. Just look at this post as a guide to have a basic understanding on how this process works and how you can protect yourself when you do selling eBooks.

Internet Marketing in whatever niche you are, involves a lot of selling. And 90% of the products is what we known as info products or eBooks. But do you know that most of the eBooks that these people are selling are usually just ripped off for free? Or do you know that a lot of people have a ton of good quality eBooks they don’t even pay for? Well I’m sure you, as a reader of this blog are selling ebooks, or have plans of doing it, so this post can be a good read for you.

So most people do sell ebook via Clickbank. In selling, you are required to do two pages.  First is the salespage itself, where you would pitch your  offer and the second is the thank you page, a page where a paying customer would be redirected once they have made the payment. The problem that I see most of the time is that any user can easily access the thank you page!

One good example is the sales page Problogging BluePrint. So the main page is the index page while the download page is just located in /thanks.html part. Fortunately the link is broken (and its unfortunate for paying customers!). The surprising thing is that most salespage function that way! They have their download page accessible almost by anyone! I mean the usual locations are the ff:

  • /thanks.html
  • /thanks.php
  • /download
  • /download.html
  • several variations

That’s why Im not surprised that a lot of info products just leak like crazy. Another bone head mistake most marketers do is make use of robots.txt. Oh my god! I mean yes you can tell the search engine to hide your download page but have you forgotten humans can read it? So if you guys want to steal someone’s ebook all you have to do is try to go /robots.txt and see the page that they disallow, LOLS… Another problem is the noticeable increase of PDF search engines. It’s surprising that a lot of popular eBook shows up on sites like pdfsearchengine. So altogether, it’s an uphill battle to combat eBook fraud and many people so far fail to do it!

How Do I Protect My Ebook?

Well this post is not really a guide on info product protection but since we’re here Im going to give you some brief explanation of what I know. If you’re a clickbank merchant, make sure to have a third party plugin to protect your download page. One that I came across through is DlGuard. Since I have never done any clickbank thing I would suggest you to do your own research as to what the reliable third party plugins are.

If you’re just selling a product yourself, using e-junkie is the smartest thing. E-Junkie is one of the leaders in terms of handling info product automation, payment and delivering the product itself. So far I haven’t heard any issues about using it and even the top marketers like Darren Rowse is using it. $10 per month is a reasonable price for the protection that it gives.

Lastly, always do a simple Google check for your eBook to see if some asshole is sharing it. Use the query “title of your ebook” filetype:PDF, and then scan the search results THOROUGHLY. It’s because sometimes you protect your download page a lot that you forget the file itself. Again some morons do buy it only to share it to other people while other people accidentally (or not) stores it on their server only to leak when someone does a search. Just consider doing this like a maintenance thing.

It can also be a good option to use the PDF search engines we mentioned earlier to your advantage. Search for your eBook, then if you find it, contact the site owner and tell him to remove it (or send him a DMCA notice). Obviously when someone shares it, he knows it’s illegal so he’d just more likely laugh at you when you contact him. The best thing to do is send the notice to their hosting provider by doing a quick whois on the site that distributes your copy illegally.

Conclusion:

Selling eBooks is a big and still growing industry and unfortunately not a lot of people are techy enough to protect the hardwork they exerted. Protecting your own info product can be really hard but there are ways. Im not saying people are evil but put yourself in their situation. You are craving for some expensive info product and you see a flaw that would make it free for you, are you not going to download it? The obvious answer is the answer for 98% of us!

I don’t know about you but if you’re just letting your product leak like waterpipes, then I think your product and you deserves to be ripped off for free. After all security is part of any business model both online and offline that should never be neglected.  I would really love to have your opinion about it. Or maybe you can share your own tips that you implement yourself!

This Thing Pisses Me Off With Bloggers

by ·

Bloggers can either be amiable or despicable, no doubt about it. In my 2+ years in blogging I can say I have seen all types of bloggers. While most of them are really nice and great to be with, there are certain portion of bloggers (or qualities of them) that really make me pissed off. What is it? read on…

For some reasons, some bloggers piss me by commenting on posts while not reading it. Ok, we all know that most ‘guru’ bloggers would suggest you to comment on as many blogs as you can for two things, 1). to get traction and traffic and 2). for backlink purposes. I don’t oppose that. What I do oppose is the fact that a lot of bloggers overdo that and the result is that they actually don’t really read the content of the post and their comment is totally unrelated. That is what pisses me off.

I know that ‘maybe’ I, myself have somehow done that but I think I have never ever commented on a post w/o understanding (worst, reading) it. Most of the times I skim the content but then i always grasp the concept first before actually putting my piece into it. If you’re a serious reader of my blog then probably you might have found some totally douchebag unrelated comments. Much more if you’re an avid reader of famous blogs in the industry like johnchow.com, shoemoney and etc. A lot of comments there are just junk comments (different from spam ones), ones that were created for the sake of futility. 🙂 It even pisses me more to learn that those comments are actually legit and not trolls, just totally unrelated…

Oh well, just my opinion about it. Again its your own blog and there is a whole lot of freedom of expression within the blogosphere. Just make sure you don’t hurt yourself and the image of your blog by being a douche. Remember, the real value of comments in blogs is not about the quantity or the proper use of anchor text, it’s the quality and image that can make your blog standout.

Can Ebooks Help You Make Money?

Can Ebooks Help You Make Money?

by ·

LOLz, I know I’m probably gonna be biased in talking here because of I, myself having an upcoming ebook but trust me I’m not. 😉

A lot of people who are starting usually ask ‘if ebooks can really help them start making money online’  or if it’s just a complete worthless crap. Most people who ask this are probably getting lost because they see a lot of people selling ebooks but on the other side they see different types of people saying 99% of ebooks are scam and worthless. Can ebooks help you make money?

The short answer to the question is no! Ebooks can be informative and rich in content but we also need to take a look at the fact that most ‘gurus’ who sell ebooks aren’t really making money online outside of selling their books! I once bought an ebook w/c exposes how to do your own make money online book w/o being an expert in the certain niche and I was flabbergasted. Not only I discovered how anyone can easily make a book but also how idiots can make big bucks writing ebooks they don’t even implement. Another thing is that most ebooks are effective for just a very short period in time as it easily gets saturated. It’s not timeless. Most guru would discover a new way to make $100 a day, then test it more and more. After it they would sell the information only to find out that its not as profitable anymore as it once started.

Theoretically the answer could be yes as well. Over the course of my young internet marketing life I have purchased over 50 books related to mmo. 80% are junk, 20% ‘can’ be useful but not really implementable. I say yes, because there are really some useful infos on an ebook that’s not about getting rich but is about something you think is more trivial yet, can really be a good find. What I normally do is just pick something from the book and implement it to my own ideas. I’m not saying my ideas are better but it’s far better to believe more in your own skills (so not to blame anyone).

So to end this one, if a good friend of mine asks about that question my answer would definitely be no! I really used to have grit with ebooks as most marketers who market other people’s product rather than creating their own do. Buying ebooks ‘may not’ be a good way to start or it could be. And since ebooks are way cheaper than buying a pair of Nike shoes, there really isn’t anything to lose in buying one. So my piece of advice? If you have the money (and good faith in that certain ebook/s), then go ahead and buy as much ebooks as you can. Just don’t expect too much from it and stop being a crybaby afterwards.