Archive for December, 2008

Blogging – step one

Even though I have several blogs, most were thrown up in a higgledy piggledy way — the purposes varied; as support to an existing website that I have, others are a commentary and still others are on personal development. I want to do this one differently. This one has to be an example on how to blog for money. With this as the prime reason for starting a new blog, I have to give more thought about the way I go about it.

Immediately questions need to be answered:-
- what is the topic going to be?
- who is my target audience?
- should I use blogger or wordpress?
- should this be a stand alone blog or should it promote one of my online businesses?
- how do I best monetize it?

The first question that I am going to tackle is topic. There is no shortage of topics to write about. If I want to make money on this blog then I have to be able to rank high in the search engines, choose my keywords carefully, even the domain name makes a difference.

If the topic is too broad then I have a lot of competition out there. An example would be both my Buy Me a Mercedes Benz site and the corresponding Mercedes Benz blog. I threw both of these sites because I like the car and just wanted to write about it. Even though I am making some money on the site (the blog is not monetized for a reason)I don’t expect that it will be up on page one of any of the search engines any time soon. This will be a labor of love and who knows, years hence it just might show up on page one!

The way to success is to “niche” your topic. The saying in the internet world is “inch wide and mile deep”. An example of that, still staying on the topic of Mercedes, might have been on the McLaren.

Between now and the next time I post here, I will do some research on my topic and will post here on how I arrived at it. Till then …. happy blogging to you!

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Blogging – The First Step to Mastering the Internet

If I were to launch my Internet Marketing career today, I would start by blogging.

Its been two years since I rolled up my sleeves and decided to become an Internet Marketer. No, the money truckmoney truck has not pulled up to my driveway … yet. An income is however becoming regular and I see that money truck pulling up, maybe a Tonka to start with.

In the two years that I have been a student of Internet Marketing, I have learned a lot. In retrospect I might have done things differently and perhaps would be further ahead by now. No matter. The foundation has been laid and it is solid.

Knowing what I now know, if I were starting in IM today, I would certainly start with a blog. To me this is the easiest entry into the Internet Marketing world. Consider these points:

Ease of Entry: The learning curve is not as steep as say starting your own online store but if that is your ultimate destination, a blog would be like the hot dog stand that eventually gets you to owning your own kick ass gourmet restaurant.

Affordability:Like the hot dog stand, blogging is cheap – sheesh! even free if you want. Blogservers such as Blogger and Wordpress are free and you do not need to learn any cyber language such as HTML or hire a webmaster to throw up a site for you. Both Blogger and Wordpress offer a wide choice of templates and quicker than you can say “what’s a blog” you’ve got one!

Easy Back Office Management: You can take your time to familiarize yourself with all the options that are available to you to make your blog unique. The good thing about this is that as you become more confident on the net, you can always log into your backoffice and tweak both the appearance and other elements of your blog, such as comments, ads, social marking. As an example, this blog is not fully populated with many of the options that are available. Over time you will see small changes, changes which are meant to drive more traffic to this site.

Money:. You can start making money right away. It more than likely won’t be high on the decible charts of WOW! but it will open the window to the view of the money truck pulling up to your driveway.

Time Friendly: Most people who look at the net as a potential source of income have a J.O.B. and would like to

a. earn an additional income and
b. to develop a secure financial safety net. Many want to quit their j.o.b.

By just devoting a mere hour a day, you will be taking action and begin to build your IM Muscles. Equally important, a new brain power blueprint will begin to emerge.

While posting this I just talked myself into starting another blog (I have several). Here’s the deal. I will be completely transparent. I will post the steps, the fine tuning, the tools, the results of that new blog on this one. Since it will be a fresh one, it will be easy to follow and measure the results. I will share the resources I use, bearing in mind that your money truck is still revving up, the tools and resources will either be free or nominally priced.

My challenge to you: subscribe to this blog by clicking on the RSS feed or registering in the “follow this blog” option on the right hand menu and follow in my footsteps. I do not promise a specific result in terms of income, but what I do promise is that if you lift when I lift and run when I run, you will be on your way to becoming an Internet Marketing Professional. There will be mistakes enroute, we learn from mistakes. There will be obstacles. We will learn how to overcome those obstacles. There will be celebrations … we really like those. We’ll surf the net, master the waves, and we’ll let ‘er rip!

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