Blog Income Life

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Are you on pace for your 2010 internet marketing goal?

In three weeks and a day the first quarter of the year will have come and gone.  If you are serious about your blog income business this is the time to take a quick overview of where you’re going, where you are and where you’ve been so far this year.

Reviewing your progress in anything that you do is critical to success.  Goals drive success.  So you need to review the progress of your goal for the year.  I review by day, week, month and quarter.  I don’t spend a lot of time on all the details, but come the end of a quarter,my blog income business undergoes a microscopic review. Year to date results are tallied  and adjustments where necessary are made.

This is a good time to take a quick overview of the current situation vis a vis your blog income goal.  With three weeks to go there is still time to save the bacon.

Am I on track?

NO!

Do I know how far off track I am?

YES!

Here is a quick way to review your progress and maximize your internet marketing performance:

1.  Goal.
You can do this for any part of your life, but for the purpose of this blog and post let’s stay with your blog income business.  What was your goal for the year?  .

A common annual goal is to achieve a certain income.  Assume that your goal is $100K  for all your internet marketing streams.  A very simple plan might look like this

1Q = $10,000
2Q = $20,000
3Q = $30,000
4Q = $40,000

Total = $100,000

2.  Progress to date:
What is your year to date income?  With three weeks to go, if you do not make some quick adjustments will you achieve $10,000?  If not how far off the mark are you?  If the shortfall is just a projected thousand or two, what can you do to turn up the heat.

3.  High Gain Activities
A quick review will tell you what in your marketing mix has worked the best and brought you the money to date.  You will notice that every time you took action there was an upward  spike in the results.  Very quickly identify the action that brought you the most income.  Take that model and ramp it up for the rest of the month.  If it is affiliate marketing that is the major contributor, see which affiliate product contributed the most to your bottom line.

4. How Many Sales Needed?
If your current track projection shows that you will be $2000 short of your 1Q goal, what are the steps that will lead you to reaching $10K?  Ask yourself these questions:

a)  What is the commission for each sale?
b)  How many clicks to reach one conversion?
c)  How much traffic  per click?

For ease of calculation:
commission per sale:  $100
clicks to make one sale: 10
traffic to generate 1 click: 10

Armed with this information you come up with this formula
2000 visits = 200 clicks
200 clicks = 20 sales
20 sales @ $100 commission = $2000

5. Which Piston Is Firing  The Traffic Engine?
Look through your statistics to identify which marketing action drives the most traffic.  Isolate it and increase that marketing action in direct proportion to meet and deliver the additional numbers.

This is also a good time to look at your second quarter.  Based on your 1Q results what are the action steps for the coming quarter.  What adjustments do you need to make?

Look at your business as sailing.  When you sail you know what your destination is.  You have a mapped out route.  Depending on how the wind is blowing, how the currents are running and daily weather changes, you need to continuously tack your sailboat to reach your destination.  A review of your  results is just tacking your internet marketing business to success.

In short:  review, correct, continue.

If you value your blog income business – and you should – then you simply must backup everything that you have on your computer.  It will save you worry and needless hair tearing as well as gnashing of teeth.

A little over a week ago my dear old laptop that I called Big Money died.  Poof!  Gone!  Panic engulfed me as reboot after reboot failed.  Bluescreen, Fat 32 rebuild successful but the mouse would not cooperate and I could not log in!  My whole internet marketing life dwelled in that computer!  Life looked dismal.   Blog Income was dead.  I was dead.

After the initial shock I went shopping and got me a brand new snazzy looking Toshiba job.  The first thing that I liked was that the prices for PC laptops have really come down and boy, do they pack a lot more toys and whistles than dear old Big Money had!  But of course there were additional items to purchase, such as configuring the new darling – which I quickly christened Money Magnet – transferring everything from Big Money, a new office software package, Outlook which is I can’t live without, and of course the extended warranty plus those pesky taxes that the government seems to insist on.  Add it all up and the computer has just doubled!  Ouch!

Never mind – this one is called Money Magnet, ergo it will attract money, not like Big Money which didn’t quite get the gist of is moniker that it was supposed to MAKE, not cost, big money!

Granted at almost 5 years of loyal service Big Money had run its course but OMG!  Everything of any value rested in that sleek silver rectangular thing called a computer.  We had a relationship.  It had traveled the world with me.   All my courses including the videos, all the PDF’s that I downloaded, all my original work that has been published online as well as off, all my usernames and passwords!  They were all there!

I vowed that never, NEVER, again would I be so careless.  From here on in, I would backup everything and if you haven’t been backing up all your valuables then its time you do.

Job One:  Terrabyte external hard drives can now be had for under $100.  Another option is to backup everything in a cloud … new term for me too.  Basically what it means that all your content can be stored somewhere out there in uber space, with the clouds sort of like self storage boxes in the sky.  There are free ones but as you need more and more storage room, you have to either upgrade to a paid version or open yet another one elsewhere – now we have clutter.

I was recently introduced to DropBox.  You get some free space and can increase that with referrals, or just bite the bullet and buy what you need – it can always be increased.  What I like about this system is that it is so user friendly for us non-tech types.  Just drag and drop.  I had a huge file that I wanted to share with my friend.  The attachment was way too big to send by email.  I was faced with either breaking it into several pieces or creating an online document that would be hyperlink downloadable. The notion of each option took me down into a tizzy downward spiral and I kept putting it off.

Dropbox to the rescue.

First I created a share file in my dropbox with my friend’s name.  Then I dragged the whole schmiel into that file and voila!  Just like that my friend had full access to the goods!  Check Dropbox out (yes, that is an affiliate link

Job Two:
Create a document for all your products that need a username and password.  Yes, store them on your computer for ease of access but also up in that cloud or Dropbox.  Go low tech if you need to and write them down in a notebook along with other important data and put it somewhere safe. I actually did have a lot of my usernames and passwords in my little black book.

Job Three:
Keep your computer free of clutter.  It’s not just your closet that needs a good cleaning. Go over what you have on your computer.  Do you really need everything that you have there?  What about things that you downloaded years ago but have not even cracked open yet?  If you are still married to the thought that you will someday read those files move them over to your new storage in the sky.  My dear old Big Money got so bogged down with downloads that eventually I could not even defrag it as there was less than 15% free space (actually less than 5% which is a cardinal sin).  I started to toss things out but the space was slow in being freed up.   While at it go to all of your email accounts, or  your Outlook;  if you haven’t read it and the dateline is a month or older, be ruthless, be strong:  DELETE!  Ditto your “sent” and “junk” files

Des out at Affiliate Progress has some good suggestions on how to use Filezilla and FTP to back up all your sites as well.  Hop on over there.  She writes good stuff – makes tech seem like a cake walk.

Come to think of it – spring is a mere two weeks away.  That closet is getting rather full.  I am sure that there are clothes there that will never see the light of day again, at least not on me.  They belong to a different era – one that was slimmer!   Yeah.  Bundle them up and take them over to the local goodwill store!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Whoa!  That’s two weeks!

Yes.

Between Olympics, workshops and a computer that finally went to its final reward in the sky there was no “Week That Was” last weekend.

Got my new computer – a snazzy looking black lacquer Toshiba job with more space in it than I know what to do with. I could no longer defrag my dear old laptop because space available was below 15% – this one has 4 times as much space on the hard drive.  I know, over time that space will be filled too.  Oh nooo…. I will move lots of stuff for storage to a cloud, or buy an external hard drive. Or both.

Do you name your inanimate objects?  For example does your car have a name?  Mine doesn’t.  Several cars ago it did.  It was given a name by my daughter.  Her toys had names, she reasoned, so why wouldn’t a car.  Yes.  She still names her cars.

I name my computers.  Do you believe in the power of the word?  There has been a lot written about NLP (Nuero Linguistic Programming).  My dearly departed laptop had a name, I called it Big Money.  Perhaps my intentions weren’t clear.  The idea was that with the use of the laptop the Big Money truck would drive UP to my driveway but what happened was that it drove AWAY from my driveway.  I don’t regret it one bit though. The big money was spent on courses, so I chalk it up to education.  My brand spanking new laptop is named Money Magnet.  Do you think I did better this time?

So to the Weeks that Were – summary of posts published since my last weekly review.  If you haven’t read the post  in full these summaries give you a glimpse.  If one catches your attention hop on over and read the whole meal deal.   Comments are welcome and encouraged.

An Open Letter to Nathan Hangen – 22/02/10
I hang out at Nathan Hangen’s Blog.  I buy his products, the latest one being Beyond Blogging and am a great admirer of his but a recent post on his blog got my hackles up so I put on my boxing gloves and gave him the old one two in an open letter. He was OK with it.   To read what it was that got me in the ring with him and his reply, read the whole article which addresses blogging on blogging.

Blog Income To Go Under Knife – 23/02/10
At my regular   Monday night Internet Marketing Mastermind meeting, I had this blog critiqued.  There were lots of good suggestions.  The recurring theme of the comments suggested that it looked, well, a bit too cluttered.  I had already clued in to this and it was good to have my hunch confirmed.  Readers are encouraged to send in more suggestions.  Read the full Blog Income article.

Blog Income Month In Review: February 2010 01/03/10
Each month I review the results of this blog.  My current push is to increase traffic as I believe that all else will fall in from there.  Did I achieve my traffic goal for the month of February?  Yes.  Two valuable lessons learned which I think everyone can apply to their own blogging agenda.  For the full report just log on to Blog Income Month in Review

Twitter and All That Social Media Stuff
Spent two jam packed days learning about the basics of Social media at Matt Astifan’s Workshop.  We learned how to Twitter, all about Facebook and the importance of You Tube to internet marketing.  Am I an expert now?  Absolutely not.  Read about my experience and why I plan to play pretty with Twitter and other social media sites,

Is Centralizing Your Internet Marketing Services The Best Option?
When buying your services for your internet marketing business is it better to bundle and buy from a single provider or should you spread out and buy independently?  There are pros and cons for each.  Weigh in with your preference in the comments section.  Read full Centralizing Services article.

Alright!  We’re up to date!   Tomorrow: Sunday Morn Musings!

Why would anyone ever want to deal with ten when one can handle all?  Central based management eliminates layers, promotes efficiency and peace of mind.

Well, call me a nutcase but I don’t buy into it.   For online as well as offline I like to decentralize and that’s true for my  personal as well as blog income business services.  It may mean a little more work but that’s the way I prefer it.  Centralizing in my view is surrendering unnecessary control and no, I am not a control freak (at least I don’t think so).  It’s the way my daddy brought me up and for good reason too!

This is a conversation I have had on and off for many years.  For the last few it seemed to have retired into a dormant state .  A few weeks ago it stirred, awoke and surfaced again and it just won’t go away.  I thought you might like to weigh in with your point of view on this – besides I’d love to know what your opinion on this subject is for while not exactly earth shattering it does impact every one of us in some way or another.

Central or regional management?  That has been an age old battle in the corporate world and depending on the trend, objectives of the company or the personal preference of the top man at any given time, companies have taken one route over the other suffering confusion, issues  of resentment, loyalty and trust in the transition.  It seems that when a company’s fortunes are  contracting the troops are reigned in, when fortunes  are on the rise employee empowerment becomes the modus operandi.

Centralized management may be an operative model for corporations and governments too, but I question its validity when it comes to You Inc., especially to those of us who are on the internet to earn an online income.  The issues are small, but then as you grow so will the issues.

There is a school of thought that subscribes to centralizing as much of your internet marketing as possible.  Some of the biggest names support the concept.  Bundle up as many services and buy them through one provider whenever you can.    The obvious pro for such a system is that you have everything ready in one spot, don’t have to go looking for things – they are all there under one roof, so ease of access and efficiency rule.

But I prefer to purchase my services independently rather than bundled and directly from the vendor if possible.  My father was a business man.  Historically my family have had to fly by the seat of their pants – long story but it began in 1917 in Russia when the Russian Tzar lost his country and his life, whilst my grandparents on both sides merely lost their country.   So this might be taking it to the extremes but my father often told me that how not having all the family eggs in one basket enabled them to first make a life in China then Japan eventually Australia … and then here I am, in Canada!

What I learned at my father’s knees was that one should not give up control over that which is yours.  So I come by this bullheadedness quite honestly.  At the most basic level of my blog income business I buy the following services separately:

-         DOMAINS: I use a broker, Go Daddy, even though I may be paying a bit more than if I used another broker because amongst other things, I find their services and support to be outstanding.  No Go Daddy is not the actual registrar of domains and to be honest, I,m not sure but I don’t think that you can buy domain names directly from the registrar.

-          HOSTING: I could, but don’t, have Go Daddy host my sites, instead I use Hostgator.  Hosting is their specialty and once again I have found that their support has been exceptional.  On the reverse side, I could but do not buy my domain names through Hostgator.

-          BLOG PLATFORM:  I choose to use Wordpress Direct.  This is a second layer, if you will, on Wordpress.  This appears to be contradictory to my mantra of buying direct from the service provider.  I have good reason.  For someone like myself who is not the best at tech type stuff (and not wanting to be a master of all) I like this platform because they offer full support.  They do the initial heavy lifting but I still have direct access to the back end admin area of Wordpress.  Once again I could but do not use Go Daddy as my site platform.

What if I had decided to use Go Daddy as my one stop shop for the above three services and something went wrong.   I don’t just mean that Go Daddy would go down.  An extremely successful internet marketer I know had come to some sort of an impasse with his domain broker.  The breakup was not pleasant.  Imagine the additional work he would have had to go to move his many, many sites from the domain broker’s basket   Fortunately, he subscribes to the same principles that I do.  All he needed to do was move all his domains to another broker.  The adjustments were minimal.

I have spoken with people who bought their domains through their hosting service.  The hosting service disappeared.  They had no idea how to recover their domains. Moreover it was not clear if it was the host company or themselves who were registered as the owners of the domains.  Eventually after much hair tearing they were able to find the domains and come to a happy conclusion .   In my instance, should Hostgator run into difficulties I know  that my domain names are not affected.

This is just an example.   It is obviously over simplified.  I use it to illustrate my point.

As you begin to earn more and more from your online business you will want to outsource some of the daily tasks.  What are your thoughts on this?  Would you prefer to centralize, appoint a company to handle the many aspects of your business and just deal with one person?  Or … would you rather select individuals who specialize in certain tasks and have them report to you?    Which model do you think is better suited for you?  Why?

Last week I attended an intensive workshop on social media marketing – 14 hours of hands on type stuff on Twitter, Facebook and You Tube.  I am always looking at ways that I can drive additional traffic to Blog Income Life so when Matt Astifan, a member of my Internet Marketing Mastermind group announced that he was running a small private workshop on social media I quickly jumped at the opportunity and thought this would be a good place to share.

This is not going to be a step by step dissertation on how to run your social media campaigns – just thoughts that flooded my brain as I sat through two very interesting and even fun filled days.  I think when you can say workshop and fun filled in the same sentence it has to have been a successful event.

We were a small group of five – I think it safe to say that each of us was a confirmed social media neophyte.  None of us quite understood the “why” of any of this phenomena but  were in agreement that we needed to get with the program and see how we can apply it to our own businesses.

Of the three disciplines Twitter was the one that captured my attention the most and entertained me the most, probably because it is like being in a foreign country; it also stretched my mind which surprised me as I had a tendency to dismiss all this babble on the net as just being mindless prattle about nothing.

We spent the better part of day one on this phenom and by its end each of us was a bonafide tweep – yes I know, there is this devil in me that wants to say twit but no, there are no twits on twitter, just tweeps who send out tweets in 140 characters or less.  Now correct me if I’m wrong because I have also heard the word peeps but would those be the tweets who are your followers?  You know “ … have your peeps get in touch with my peeps…” kind of idea?

First thing I notice as I am sitting on my very own perch “goldenkoi”  is that this is a very noisy world. Because I already had a twitter account set up from when I took the 30 Day Challenge last summer I actually had a small following of tweeps.    Spending just few minutes in my domain the tweets kept running like a ticker tape at the stock market.  After just 7 minutes I had well over 36 new tweets!  Now how the twit am I supposed to keep up with all this?   Imagine what the home perch looks like of  someone who has thousands and thousands of followers?  Ah but that’s not the point.

The point is relationship building and here was a revelation … for the longest time I believed that he who has the most followers wins, but the emphasis has shifted somewhat, it is now quality over quantity and how do you attract quality?  Keywords, my dear, keywords.  The right keywords attract the right followers and you can engage in short but meaningful conversations.

These conversations bring a whole new meaning to the phrase short conversation – at a max of 140 characters these aren’t even sound bites!  They are … aah, tweets!

Now trust me these birds might be short on their vocabulary but they’re no birdbrains as they have mastered the art of twittery and can lay a clear and distinct path of breadcrumbs that lead to a conversation that actually makes sense. The mastery lies not in just tweeting about “What’s happening” but in participating and engaging with others on a topic.  It takes a bit of time but I am told that soon I too can learn the nuances and proper use of just tweeting, RT (reply to), @ (the tweet or tweep), the URL and the somewhat confusing hashtag #.

Since attending the workshop I have visited my perch several times and selected a tweet to follow by clicking on the  appropriate links to see how far I can follow a conversation – gosh, I’ve even tweeted a few times!  You know it’s kind of fun.  After following only a few breadcrumb paths I have come to the conclusion that there are some really smart tweeps (and tweets)out there – it challenges the brain to be creative and I have come across bits of brilliance that are nothing short of awesome.

If you don’t have a Twitter account yet hop on over to http://www.twitter.com and open one.  Choose an appropriate username.  Here once again I committed the cardinal sin – my username is goldenkoi which means squat when it comes to either blogging or internet marketing.  When I first started visiting forums I chose that as my handle.  To me it has meaning.  I grew up in Japan where the koi is revered.  The fish comes in colors of red, white, grey, black and shades of gold so “goldenkoi” has intuitive appeal to me.  Matt suggested that I check to see if the domain was available – of course not.  GoldenKoi.com belongs to someone in the business of selling koi fish!

You can have several accounts with Twitter but not so with Facebook – so choose carefully as to how you want to brand yourself.

I found it interesting that in terms of developing online relationships there is a structure and that Twitter is where it begins.  Look at it as a funnel if you will.  You meet people at Twitter, get to know them better on Facebook and eventually that leads to loyal followers on your blog.  Sounds like a long and protracted process but it isn’t.

In my Internet Marketing Mastermind group there are members who have met key and influential people in their business that they would not have otherwise and those people were just as likely to be in their own backyard as somewhere across the world.  Aside from the growth in their social capital this process has also grown their businesses and bank accounts.

It is easy to get lost in the social media world and to let the time just drift away.  Be cautious.  Allow yourself a small block of time for your social media marketing.  I would say that 15 minutes twice a day is sufficient time to spend in this area of your business especially if you are just dipping your toes into it.

To Tweeting to Success!

Valentina

What a month!  Where do I begin?

How about starting with the end?  The Olympics.

The Olympics Closing Ceremony was on the last day of the month – yesterday.  We in Vancouver had the distinct honor of hosting the world to the 2010 Winter Olympics.  What an exhilarating experience that was!  I have to admit that many a time I absented myself from my computer and spent the hours glued to the TV, watching as the best of the best squared off each other for that most desired of metals – gold!

There is so much I could write about these 17 days.  As always I am amazed at the strikingly small difference between the finalist and the last – fractions of seconds.  That would beg the question that perhaps this is just a crapshoot, that on any given day the last place athlete could just as easily be a first  place finish.  But then you need to look deeper – and when you look at the performance of each athlete at world class events leading up to the 0lympics, the results have typically been consistant across the board.  Top three almost always place top three.   It makes me think that the athletes have the same potential, their talent is outstanding – so what is it that makes the ultimate difference?  That would make for a good topic for a Sunday Morn Musings … and perhaps it is something that we internet marketers could take a page from.

And speaking of which, there was no Sunday Morn Musings this week!  Nor was there a The Week that Was.  For that matter there were precious few posts in February (just 15) and only 2 in the last week!

You know how they say that the road to hell is paved with intentions – and they do.  My intentions were to post on Saturday and Sunday.  Early Saturday morning my trusty albeit museum vintage laptop expired!   Yup!  It just died!  Now I have to admit that this was not as sudden as I would like to believe, for several weeks now Dear Laptop had been giving me clues that it was not long for this world, and after four and half years of loyal service with no breakdowns or glitches of any sort it wasn’t just being capricious, its just that I was  hoping that it could last another month or two – or miraculously six!

Have you ever spent a whole two days without internet?  Addiction is one thing – but the falling behind in everything is another and most frustrating.  The good thing is that I now have an awesome machine that is sooooo much faster, has lots more bells and whistles and my goodness!  Have the prices of PC’s come down!  I had a MAC as my next machine but with a difference of $2000 for the time being I thought that sum would be better put to use for marketing and earning shekels … another time cher MAC!

I have to say that I am grateful that Dear Old Laptop performed well during the two-day workshop I attended on Thursday and Friday.  Matt Astifan from my Monday Night Internet Marketing Mastermind which I mentioned in my Power of Mastermind series put on an excellent workshop on social media (more about that in the future) otherwise I would have been up the proverbial creek!

One thing about brand new computers – it takes time to get used to the new programs, the idiosyncrocies if you will.  On my old computer I had Gadwin for my printscreens.  I downloaded it here so that I could include the screen shots of my February results.  For some reason it isn’t working in the way it did – it captures everything including tool bars at the top and the sidebars.  I am sure there is a way to capture only that which is relevant, but it will probably take time.  So I’ll just give you the results below along with my comments.

#1.  Traffic:  Visits:  475 – up from 360 for January which is a healthy 36.89% .  My goal is to increase traffic by  10% – 20% each month.

#2.  Search engines delivered 5.68% of the traffic.  You may recall in my January report that SE had fallen to below 1%!   So the move up to almost 6% is encouraging.

#3.  Alexa moved up from 404,842 to 307,910.  I know that there are those who put little stock into Alexa rankings, but it is still a measure that is taken into account when the value of your website/blog is assessed – you can charge more for ads, you can sell your site/blog for more, and besides, I accepted Sam’s  Alexa Challenge at Financial Samurai to reach a ranking of under 200K by July.  Remember, with Alexa, the lower the number the better.

Lessons learned:

#1.  Publish.  Publish,  Publish.
For blogs still trying to establish themselves, daily posts make a big difference in traffic.  I have noticed that on the days that I have new content the visitors increase.  Most successful bloggers do not scale back their publishing from daily until they are well established with the search engines and have amassed a good loyal following.  Some stay with the dailies, think Darren Rowse of Problogger

#2.  Carry Inventory
Have a stash of articles ready to publish for those times when other activities (Olympics) divert your attention from your business. Carlos  Velez of Conscious Me wrote an excellent two part article over at Website In a Weekend –  Benefits of Prewriting and he’s also thrown out a Prewriting Challenge.

What’s Up for March?
My focus continues on traffic – that will be a recurring theme not only for this quarter but for the year as a whole.
- Staying within the 20% growth per month, that would be 570 – so I’ll stretch that to 600+ in traffic
- Gee, wouldn’t it be great to reach the under 200K Alexa by end of March?  Lets see how close I can get to that.
- Finally, definitely, increase frequency of posts, in February the trend was 1 for each two days – well if I can make that 1 per 1.5 days it would make a huge difference.
- Put into practice some of what I learned on social media at Matt’s workshop.

That’s it folks!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

Nathan, dear boy, I love you  – honest I do.

I buy your products and visit your blog often but a recent post of yours  got my hackles up.  In your post of Feb 09 “Where 99% of Bloggers Go Wrong” you pulled no punches and pretty much told those of us who are blogging about blogging to pack it up.  The topic has been done to death and extremely well by uber bloggers who cut their chops on this subject and have entrenched themselves as experts for life.  They hold top positions and rankings with all the major search engines for just about every keyword associated with earning an online income and its not likely that any new blogger can add value or anything new to that which has already been written about in every which way except Sunday.

The “A” Listers have got it in spades and who are we to think that our humble efforts would ever see the light of day or  receive the blessings of Google and rub shoulder with the likes of Darren Rowse , Yaro Starak or John Chow – just to name a few.

Whew!  Nathan, you might be right.

That’s a lot of humble pie to eat.

But not so fast my boy.  At the risk of offending someone I admire – yes, you Nathan  here are my two cents worth, a retort if you will:

I am a “Z”Lister – no, you know what, make that a “Y” Lister (recently promoted myself).  I am a shameless hussy climbing the ladder to success and I notice that there are other aspiring bloggers blogging on blogging who are riders on the up escalator ahead of me.  I notice that they have good rankings of PR3 & PR4, and even PR5 with Alexa’s below the 100K mark.  That escalator is pretty crowded but my faves are:

Glen Alsopp of Viper Chill

Dave Doolin of Website in a Weekend

Gabe Young of Free Blog Help

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income

Caroline Middlebrook of Caroline Middlebrook

There are plenty more and they all provide some valuable info.  Granted some of the above are not exactly wet behind the ears when it comes to internet marketing, and they brandish some sharp cyber smarts, but for all intents and purposes their blogs on blogging are.

I have learned a lot from these potential usurpers to the number one spot which is not to say that I have not learned from the current reigning kings.  But here are the reasons I like to visit the “new” blogs:

1. Inspiring.
   I can relate to these dudes.  Yes, they are ahead of me but not so far that I need to genuflect at the altar of their blog.  If they can be where they are in less than 2 years, and in Gabe’s case less than half a year, glory be.
2. Timely Information.
   Yes.  I can visit the uber bloggers blogs and go through their archives for content that is relevant to where I currently am in my blogging career.  But quite honestly, that content is somewhat wilted by now.   I realize and recognize that the basic info hasn’t changed, but I like the fresh approach that the new lot is bringing to the make money online market.  They are not so far ahead that I have to dig into back issues to understand what they are talking about.
3. Fresh Perspective
   Did I mention fresh approach?  No matter how grand the symphony a young conductor can infuse it with a new richness, a new energy, show a side that the audience may not have heard in quite that way before.  I also think of the new covers being recorded by no-name artists of the Beattles classics – and you know what?  Great as the originals are, the covers are smokin’
4. Community
   No offence here but what are the chances that a fledgling like myself would ever be noticed by oh say the likes of Darren Rowse (hey I like the guy and have opted in for the membership).  Those lower down the food chain still have the luxury of being able to mingle with us babes in swaddling clothes and actually helping us – they reciprocate with visits to our sites and leave valuable comments, they private message us with helpful suggestions, they give of their time in a way that the A Listers cannot if for no other reason than that logistics just get in the way.
5. Potential Alliances
   Just like the A Listers, this new lot is active and aggressive – they have products in the pipeline, we mere PR oners do too.  Can we ride on their coattails?  You betcha!  Can we form strong strategic alliances?  Ditto.  Can we eventually look to joint venture partnerships?  You bet your sweet bippy we can!

I don’t know why the current upwardly mobile bloggers blogging about blogging  got into that saturated niche.  My guess is that they felt it isn’t so saturated after all, that they had something of value to say.  Maybe they’re just an ornery lot who look at the face of impossibility, stare it down and grapple it to the ground.  I dunno know but I thank them.

I do know why I got this market.  Actually I was visiting Caroline Middlebrook one day and noticed that she was just blogging about her experience in blogging, talking about her success and failures and things to fix and so on.  I thought that was rather brave of her – moreover I liked her online voice, felt the sincerity and thought, hey, I can do that too.  Yup!  I quickly appropriated the idea and wrote and told her so.

By blogging about blogging, or at least my trials and tribulations and ultimate small granules of success I have learned things I probably never would have otherwise.  You see, I had been trying to get into the internet marketing arena for some time (well at least two years prior) and took course upon course.  In retrospect some of those courses were damn good, but honestly, I wasn’t fully up to them.  Almost without exception the early chapters were easy (they seemed to get easier with each course) but within a short period of time the eyes would glaze over and the brain would go on strike.

I thought about that and about Caroline and came to the conclusion that blogging would be the best way to put into practice that which I know – and I felt I knew plenty after all the credit card statements supported that feeling.  So I began my blog about blogging.

By applying things I knew I found holes.  Moreover, now that I was writing something, I had to do some checking to make sure that what I was saying was indeed so.  My atrophied internet marketing muscles began to gather strength.  I have laid a foundation, one that I can now build on.  I have launched other “niche” blogs which blush, yes, do bring in some shekels, but it is this blog that I look to as my flagship.  It is this blog that makes the others possible.

From this blog I learn.  It is my practicum.  Along the way I hope that my experiences are relevant to bloggers newer than I, that my content is helpful to them.  Because of my newbie status I still speak in a language that is devoid of blogspeak although I have caught myself drifting that way occasionally.  I am still at that place of my blog career that fledglings can look at me and say “I have a chance.”  And that is all I want.  It is a right of passage – maybe we will never sit side by side with the Darrens and Yaros and John’s, but we’ll have learned a hell of a lot by trying.

Nathan, forever your admirer …………..

Valentina

What is a control?

In its simplest form a control is that system, process or campaign that produces the desired result; in affiliate marketing that result is sales.  The campaign that delivers the best sales results becomes the control.

The dilemma that an affiliate marketer faces is do I first set up a system or do I first make the sales and build a system around that result?

Answer:  yes and yes.

Sales is the backbone of any successful business – you can have the best product in the world but without sales you have no business.  By now you have selected your affiliate product.  Here is what a typical marketing funnel looks like:

You now have the bare bone structure for a system. That is where you start.  Lets examine the flow of such a funnel:

1. Advertising:
   First you have to create the offer.  With affiliate marketing, especially with information products, this is often already done for you. But remember if you send your prospects directly to the affiliate’s sales page, you do not capture the lead.
2. Capture:
   The way to get around this is to create your own offer.  It can be a free newsletter, an e.book, an introductory 7-day course, a CD or some other ethical bribe.   The idea is that you give it away for free.  It should be something that is in alignment with what your affiliate product is.  Let’s take my affiliate Atomic Blogging which is advertised on this site as an example.

   My options are:

a)  Just put up the banner which when clicked goes directly to the vendor’s sales page.  If the visitor buys, I make a commission.  That is good.  That is the job of the banner to the right.

or

b) Develop my own ad.  I have done this with the ABC’s of Blogging banner which you see on this site.  This is a free PDF on blogging for money.  When a visitor clicks that banner, they are directed to a capture page which asks for their name and email.  This is needed so that the visitor can receive the link to the download.

When the visitor submits the information it is directed to my autoresponder which “captures” the visitor’s name and email and immediately sends out the link to the PDF download.

I now have a qualified lead.  I know that this person is interested in blogging. The name is loaded into my blogger prospects list. My loaded autoresponder follows up with an email within 24 hours inviting the prospect to purchase Atomic Blogging

3.  Follow Up:
I am currently working on another option. After clicking on the download link, a popup sales page will appear with the Atomic Blogging offer.  Why?  Because the visitor is in action mode and may be ready to make a purchase right then and there.

Because this involves some tech type stuff my goal is to have it all up and running by the end of the month with tracking implemented for each option.  The method that delivers the best results will become my control.

4.  Relationship Building
Not everyone that downloads the free PDF will buy the Atomic Blogging product.  These people will receive my pre-loaded, time spaced  emails with helpful information on blogging.  Some of the pre-loaded messages may include some information on Atomic Blogging which hopefully convert into a sale.

5. REPEAT.
Each option is a separate campaign.  Each will be tracked to the minutest detail.
The campaign that becomes the control will be the one that all other campaigns will be measured against.

It is best to run your control several times, tweaking where necessary.  Run the identical campaign but with two small differences and test to see which one pulls in the better results. It can be something as simple as the placement of a word.  This is called split testing or put another way it’s fine tuning the art of internet marketing and the way to building an enviable blog income.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

Before I get into the week, I thought you might be interested in these photos I took just a few weeks ago.Once a month on a Saturday afternoon a small group of us get together for a friendly game of Cashflow.  Today was that Saturday.  We have a good time, but more importantly we are learning the art of the deal.  Our host is a master at the game, both on the board and on the real boardwalk doing the deal.  Recently he and his wife bought some metal – silver metal.  This is a photo of their stash.

This little bundle of silver, 412 oz to be exact,  is worth $7799.16.

This second  photo is a 1/20 of an oz gold coin and is worth $58.24. Just to give you an idea of the difference between silver and gold … if that stash of silver was gold, it would be worth $479,856.40

All prices are based on the price of each metal on the date of purchase net of fees.

Today we decided to make the game more interesting.  Starting next month we’ll all throw in ten bucks.  The winner will get a 1 oz silver coin.  Overage stays in the pool to eventually fund an ingot, then a bar and perhaps eventually a brick.  I think it’s a lot more fun than just cash.  Eldorado anyone?

Now to the week at hand and the blog income life:  there was lots of internet marketing stuff but not much blogging. The week began with the Monday Master Mind meeting, which now has a name:  Internet Marketing MasterMind Group.  In my MasterMind Series over at Dave Doolin’s  I wrote about the formation of a third mind wherein things begin go move in a certain direction, without directing.  This Monday I had such an experience.  One of the members and I found out that we have a mutual connection – we are now talking about a strategic alliance.

Then there is the Internet Marketing Bootcamp.  Of course there was homework which took some time and effort.  I am putting up another blog on the Wordpress platform but  this time without the benefit of Wordpress Direct.  I want to have a better understanding of the underpinnings of Wordpress and I thought that putting something up from scratch would be a useful exercise.  It is – if somewhat painful.

Friday was a full day with my monthly Smart Thinking MasterMind Group.  This coming week I will post some of the things that I took away from this day that can apply to the online world.  During the time that we devote to “masterminding” members with their business, I took the opportunity to have my Blog Income Life  turned inside out.  I was pleasantly surprised that marketing wise it is on track based on traffic, conversions, and sales. When the numbers are crunched the ratios are decent after all.  Whew!  I also got some good feedback on how to fine tune some areas.

New Posts This Week:

Musings on a Sunday Morn …On Money, Elitism & Olympics: 31/01/10
With the Olympics on our doorstep I took the morning to express my thoughts and in that way pose a reply to those who are the perpetual complainers on monies being spent, on elitist athletes and why the Olympics.  I like to see people rise to the top of their game

Month in Review – January 2010: 01/02/10
Traffic increase by 78.22% over last.   First time on Google page one for keyword phrase “Blog Income”.  WooHoo!  Sam over at Financial Samurai has thrown down the gauntlet (or whatever it is that samurais wear) to members of his community to get their blogs to an Alexa ranking of under 200K :   Creating Power Friends: Samurai’s Alexa Ranking Challenge

Meet My Friend – Author Wendy Atkinson 02/02/10
What’s the point of owning a blog if you can’t occasionally bring out the pompoms and cheer on with a big Sis Boom Ba! for your chum?  Meet Wendy Atkinson, brand new published author and imaginateure (I think I just made up a word) extraordinaire.  Read the post and then hop on over to Amazon for your own copy of  Law of Attraction A Fable: Mr. Moon & Friends’ Simplified Blueprint to Health, Wealth and Happiness

Till next time …

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

Did you hear that whishing sound?  That was January, the first month of a new decade rushing by!  How is your year so far?  Are you on pace for your goals? Personal, career and blog?

First day of a new month.  That means  a review of the month that was.  This has been a busy month and a lot got done.  One of the main objectives for 2010 is to grow traffic on Blog Income.    Traffic increase is goal one for 1Q.  I go for a monthly increase of 10% – 20%.  When the numbers are scant to begin that is not exactly a stretch.  I have chosen this rate of increase for two reasons:

1. I read in one of Darren Rowse’s posts that that is how he began.  I like to follow in the footsteps of success.
2. I am creating a mindset and therefore a pattern for results.  As traffic increases the 10% – 20% will be tougher, but by then it will be a pattern that my brain is set for and will inform my actions accordingly.

So, how did January stack up?  I am pleased to say that it was a good start to a good year.

#1.  Google Analytics Traffic up by 78.22% = reached 360 visits

#2.  .One of my goals for this year was to be on page 1 of Google for the keywords “blog income.”  I can now cross that one off.  This was a June 30 goal.  I gave myself that much time because I was so far down in position and found that it had wide and wild swings – now that may happen again, but it seems to have settled in on page one for several days now.  Here is an excerpt from my post of  September 28 which explains why I chose “blog income” as the keyword phrase that I wanted to dominate.

Blog Income is already a crowded playing field as I expected it to be.  Needless to say Blog Income was not available as a domain so I added the word “life”. The two key deciding factors were the two figures:

SEOT = 91
SEOC = 39,200

I learned at 30 Day Challenge to go for a niche (read that keywords) that has more than 80 SEOT and 30,000 SEOC (OK… this one is higher).  I have been peppering my posts with other keywords and now have to decide which is the next one that I want to get on page one for. (Blogger to Wordpress full article.  Whichever one it is it will be far more competitive than Blog Income.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MONTH

-         Played host to Mike Paetzold for a week as he published 5 guest posts here on his “Blog Tour”

-         Played guest blogger at Dave Doolin’s Website In A Weekend with four posts on MasterMinds

-         Published 18 posts

Sam over at Financial Samurai has thrown down the gauntlet (or whatever it is that samurais wear) for his community to get their blog to an Alexa of below 200K by June 30.    I started the year with an Alexa of 504,964 and ended January with 409,922.  I know it gets tougher and tougher as you approach the 200K mark, but I am confident that 200K will be toppled … of course, there are some awesome bloggers in that community that will be brandishing their “katana”  with impunity to get to that benchmark!  I have no katana, which is a samurai sword … maybe I should become a ninja (oh yes, isn’t there a course on Ninja Online Tactics … did not buy that one)

WHAT’S UP FOR FEBRUARY?

Staying focused:  Traffic increase by 20% =  432 so I’ll make that 450.  It’s a short month … amazing what a difference 3 days can make …nevertheless, the stretch is 500 plus.

I also need to work on my SE.  A few months ago I zigged in the backend – the admin area, and lost links etc.  and my SE plummeted to below 1% – gulp!  Now when I look at the actual number that come in via SE, it is not far behind what it used to be.  My referral stats have really gone up.  I read somewhere that a perfect pie chart is equal parts of 1/3.  Being as that the world is not perfect … I don’t think I’ll be seeing that any time soon, nor is it a big item with me.

I have noticed that as I keep pushing myself, my concentration is improving as is my output, not just here on this blog, but in my other businesses as well.  This is a neat game.  I like it.

Enroute to reaching that number I am sure there will be other highlights that I will be able to share with you at month end.  I wish the same for you.  In the meantime please visit often – the door is always open here and your comments are most welcome.

To Your Blog Income Success!

Valentina