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

Regular readers here know that Monday night is my Internet MasterMind Group meeting – yes, skipped the ice dancing!  Never mind, making up for that today with a day down at the Olympics.  My friend Cheryll and I are going down early and see if we can get into the Canadian Royal Mint pavilion – that had a 7 hour lineup (no seriously)over the weekend and I hear that Russia House (as the hosts of the next winter Olympics) is pretty good too.

But I do digress.  To the point.  I had this site critiqued last night.    It’s something we do – one site a week.  The short of the long of it is that it is going to undergo a complete overhaul.  Even to me it was beginning to look cluttered and there were changes I wanted to make.  Visiting other blogs helps to polish and develop a discerning eye, but I had changed the theme only a few months ago and thought I could live with this one for a few more – oh say till June.

I got a lot of helpful comments from the group but the main thing appears to be the theme.  This time it won’t be an overnight change.  As with so many other colleagues who have recently undergone a similar metamorphosis, I will take a bit longer and will come up with something that will stand me in good stead for a year or perhaps even two.

I’m going to have some awesome people helping me – I hope you will join them.  I am looking for comments, observations and suggestions.  What do you like about this blog?  What should be scrapped altogether.  What needs to be added?  Any suggestions for themes?  Throw it all at me.  The more the better.   Together we’ll make a good soup.

I look forward to hearing from you – you awesome lot YOU!

Valentina

-  Highlight of the week for me was “guesting” at Dave Doolin’s Website In A Weekend blog.  Dave invited me to submit an article or two on MasterMinds.  I submitted a mini-series – what Dave terms as “shingling” your articles, yes, new term for me too!  This is my first “guest” gig and I am so honored to be on Dave’s blog.  You can read the articles:

How 5 Boys Achieved Unparalleled Success
A story is told of a handful of pals who achieved extraordinary success in their lives.  With the telling and retelling, the origin is somewhat hazy, but it is supposedly based on true life and while the details may be a bit scant, the concept is powerful. … read full story

Napoleon Hill Father of MasterMind
In his book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill outlines 13 principles that his 29 years of research defined as common to every successful person.  One of those principles was the Power of the Master Mind which he defined as: “Coordination of knowledge and effort in a spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose.”  … read full article

Two more articles are scheduled for Jan 25 and 27.  Be sure to hop on over to Dave’s and read them, or better yet, subscribe to Website In A Weekend’s RSS feed.

Articles published at Blog Income Life:

Golden Nuggets for Your Blog Income – 18/01/10
A very special THANK YOU to Mike Paetzold for guesting here at Blog Income Life for the past week.  The series gave me some golden nuggets and exposed areas where I can certainly do some tweaking.  Below are some things that I took away … read full article.

Blog Income Org Chart – 19/01/10
Expand your thinking and your blog income.  It’s time to think beyond just a blog.  If you have not already incorporated yourself as a business, you will definitely want to do so as your online earnings grow.  I like to see things and thought it would be fun to put up an org chart of what my internet marketing business looks like….read full article and see the chart

Five Basic Steps to Start Your Affiliate Marketing: 21/01/10
What is so powerful about affiliate marketing is that you do not need to have a product of your own.  You profit by someone else’s research, development, production and fulfillment.  All you need to do is promote and convert your promotion into sales. In other words you get to make money without the worry, stress and up front costs of developing a product. … read full article

As to those items that were left undone … I think that I tend to put too many on my list.  I read somewhere that it is best to scale down the number and complete them, that way the  mind is being programmed for completion rather than partial completion.  Habits are being formed.  Done is better than almost done ……..hmmm… article brewing there.

And now for something a little bit different – starting tomorrow there will be a new feature to this blog “Musings on a Sunday Morn”  … Once upon a time I started a blog which I titled  Four O’Clock Thursdays.  The blog had no purpose other than to write on whatever it was that captured the mind at, well four o’clock on Thursdays.   After a few posts the time allotted was given a different job and the postings disappeared.  I miss writing that blog and thought that Sunday morning would a good time for those musings.  Now, I don’t promise a “musing” every Sunday … but do drop by on Sunday morns – or any morn for that matter,  the door is always open at Blog Income Life!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

Monday, I am going through my Inbox and there is an email from Twitter advising me of a direct message from Steve Atwal:

“Valentina, happy holidays! Just checked your Blog – very nice, but lots of bad links. Buzz me if you want to chat over coffee..”

Steve and I belong to the same Internet Marketing Mastermind Group.  As mastermind members we of course support each other.  I know that Steve is an IT and an IM type  (good combination to have) and am at once pleased and upset; pleased that he visited my site, upset that there are lots of bad links.  Yes of course I buzz him.  It just so happens that we both have time and within the hour we are chatting over lattes at the local Starbucks, laptops up and running.

I visit my Blog Income Life and am horrified when a series of 404’s keep showing up in my categories.  A quick check in the categories section in my wp-admin shows that they are all set up properly.  Steve has another idea and quickly zeros in on another possible problem.  He has me go to the Settings, and walks me through several options.  It’s like having a personal trainer.  Within minutes the problem is corrected!  MINUTES!

Frequent visitors here know that I am a self avowed non-techie.  The mere thought of anything beyond the barest minimum in the world of HTML, c-panel, FTP and what have you is enough to give me a nosebleed and a crushing migraine.  I have in times past spent hours, no, really, HOURS on fixing a small problem and here, within minutes the problem was solved.

One of the issues at hand is that many of us who are into internet marketing are not into tech fundamentals.  We lose a lot of time trying to right a small error, time that could be put to better use.  It’s just like when we first got our computers, we learned by pecking here and there even though there were plenty of hands-on  introductory courses available.  How much faster would we have been able to navigate our computers and put the many available tools to use had we attended those introductory courses?

Returning to the question posed at the start of this post: have you ever gone through a hair tearing blogging tech related experience?  I have no idea how long those links were dead or if for that matter  they were ever live.  Steve holds a hands on bootcamp for people just like me. It is exactly what I need – a series of hands on evenings at the end of which I will be in the comfort zone when working with my computer , no more 404s or other strange messages that leave me gazing in clueless wonder at my  screen.

If you are a non-techie type who is blogging to earn an online income I encourage you to find a Steve in your backyard.  Register, tuck laptop under arm and heist yourself off to  a bootcamp to brush up on your online navigational skills.  Guaranteed.  You’ll be glad you did.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

We are a rag tag group.  Most everyone is in internet marketing.  There are people who are already successful with full blown companies and employ staff.  Others are employed  in IM or IT and moonlight on their own online businesses when not at the nine to five.  Then there are people like me – apprentices, and still others who have only just dipped their toes into this wonderful, mystical world.  For some IM is still very much a part time gig, for others their livelihood.  Everyone seems to have a blog or wants to get one started and develop a blog income business. We sit in as many chairs as can be crammed into the room, perch on anything that might give our bods some support or just lean against the wall. At some point in our lives we were all infected with the entrepreneur bug and now can’t shake the addiction – moreover, we don’t really want to.  Oh yeah, the venue is a beauty salon!

Those with credits of success and knowledge generously share their information with us.  Monday was Twitter night.  I added a new word to my vocabulary:  socialnomics. Did you know that Twitter is some four years old?  It hit the mainstream conscience a scant year ago and has been on an upward trajectory ever since.  Social media hasn’t been the easiest concept for me to embrace … I’ve got a Twitter account and a Facebook account and more that I don’t even remember opening accounts at, but largely they are ignored.  Periodically I will log on to one or the other to see if the seemingly senseless prater has gotten any better.  It hasn’t.  I leave without so much as a comment, tweet or whatever the appropriate verb is for the social site I am on.  There is a part of me that knows that I need to get with the program and learn how to socialize on these sites.  What I learned on Monday confirmed that.  More importantly I learned social media etiquette and how to have meaningful conversations which can drive traffic to your blog – now that is music to my ears

Related Twitter Posts:
Is Tweeting for Bucks the New Blogging for Money?
There’s a Whole Lotta Tweetin’ Going On

Here is the thing, mastermind groups are powerful.  If you don’t belong to one, I strongly urge you to find one or form one.  As an example, in the short time that my group has been getting together (my first attendance was mid-September) we have progressed from watching videos to setting up projects, the intent being that we will participate in one form or another in making money with these projects.

About a month ago members were asked to pitch the group on a project that they want to launch. The following week  some ten people gave us an elevator pitch (2 minutes).  We voted.  The person who was selected will get the collective support of the group which includes technical and marketing know how.  The time frame is 6 months.  At the end of the six month period there will be a new product on the market. Another project is at the incubator stage, is taking a different model of development but it too will be a product.  We engage, learn and gain financial profit.

I think it is important to find a mastermind group that meets “in person”.  There are plenty of online or teleconferenced mastermind groups, but from my perspective you just cannot get the juice online that you do from an offline group.  The in-person dynamics just can’t be beat.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina

Mastermind groups are big cheese.