Blog Income Life

Archive for the ‘Blogging for Money’ Category

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

Increasingly people are turning to blogging as a means of earning an additional income.  The reasons vary but I venture that the economic meltdown of 2009 was a major motivator. Sadly many jump on the bandwagon expecting instant results – and who can blame them, what with all the ads promising the money truck to roll in overnight!

I was speaking with a retired gentleman a few days ago.  He took early retirement because he could.  His income was almost entirely based on his stock portfolio.  With last year’s debacle he finds that he now has to look for a job, not exactly a promising prospect.  He knows I blog and asked if this might be a good direction for him.

It might be.  He brings a wealth of knowledge from the corporate world.  He could launch a business to business blog, start a paid subscription newsletter, build up traffic and subscribers and sell ad space on his blog and newsletter.  He’s a quick study and I have no doubt that with laser like focus, consistent effort and bulldog tenacity he would succeed.  But it wouldn’t be overnight.

When speaking with would be bloggers who want to earn an online income, my advice to them is to keep the big picture in the background, and work towards small achievements that are part of the picture.  Yesterday’s post was on 5 milestones that are easy to achieve and a good starting point for any blogging career.  One of those milestones was to eliminate one bill.

Intuitively the mind jumps to the biggest bill – the mortgage, or car payment.  But what if instead of the big bill, you decide to tackle the smallest one first?  Here is what you do:

1. Make a list of all your standing order bills along with the monthly amount
2. Pick the smallest bill and make that your first target
3. When you eliminate that bill, take the next smallest one and add it to your blog income goal.
4. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I’d like to take credit for this process but I believe I first heard it from Kevin Wilke of Nitro Marketing Its brilliant and here is why I think it is so:

1. It’s doable.  You are not starting out to conquer Mt. Everest, just a local hill.  You can relate to it.
2. It’s friendly:  you don’t need a lot of expensive equipment to scale this little incline in your neighborhood – just the will to step out and walk it.  Maybe you haven’t done any exercise for a long time and the top of the hill is a ways off.  Never mind, daily effort eventually brings you to the top of the hill.
3. Success:  When you look at your standing order of services/payments, I bet you’ll find something that is less than $10.  Mine is $1.96 for a membership to Problogger’s Forum (I got in at the first offer – even at $5.95 it’s a good value).  Well, that was easy.  I have several recurring monthly fees that are in the $9.95 bracket – bet you do to.  Decide which one you want to topple first.
4. Success builds on success.  A funny thing happens when you first experience success – your personal energy changes and that changes you forever.  It may be just $1.96, but that is one bill that your blog income is paying for and suddenly your backbone strengthens, suddenly there is a new will and resolve that keeps you moving to the next post and then the next.

Soon the process becomes a new habit – it’s now deeply embedded in your DNA, trust me.  The car payment and the mortgage?  They too will topple.  The debt?   That too will be erased as your blog income grows.

To An Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

Officially I launched my career as a blogger a year ago here.  Had no idea where it would go but was hoping that by year end there would be a four figure blog income for my efforts.  While I have had some paydays no way do the checks add up to four figures; what I have, however, is learned a lot  for which I am grateful and as they say, that’s priceless!

I thought this would be an appropriate time to share my reflection on the passing year, lessons learned and a bird’s eye view of 2010.

Birth of a Blog:
This blog began as a “buddy” system for some friends and myself who bought a program that promised to be a money machine without any heavy lifting..  We found that not only was there lots of heavy lifting but that we did not understand most of it.  We hoped to attract other customers of that program and share experiences here.  Frustration set in. Very quickly my colleagues decided that it was not for them and moved on to other, greener pastures.

There is a stubborn streak that runs down my back.  I don’t easily give up or maybe its just plain pride that does not want to own up to failure … or it could be my downright orneriness.   Right about that time I came across several blogs on blogging, Caroline Middlebrook’s was one.  I thought I could do something like that, chronicle my journey on blogging.   The idea being that I had taken several internet marketing courses and could apply what I learned here, and learn more as I blogged.  Got myself a new domain name, redirected it to the  Blogger one, changed the title in my header.

Plan to Succeed
The danger of knowing a little bit is that you don’t know what you don’t know.  I had the basic text book knowledge down pat – or so I thought and wrote about it.   Anemic results did not phase me, at least not at the beginning. Contrary to my training which I apply to all my businesses, I did not develop a business plan for this blog so did not even have benchmarks to reach.  In retrospect, even though I “launched” my blogging career at the start of this year my approach to it was less than businesslike.  To succeed in anything you need a plan.

Anemic monthly results continued to dog me and began to take a toll … should I just give up?  Was this a bad idea?  What do I know about blogging anyway?  What hope did I have of ever getting Google’s blessing and traffic let alone make money? The temptation to throw in the towel was strong.  Numbers tumbled – ok, slipped – tumble would suggest that there was a long way down to tumble to.

Defining Moment
Attending Frank Kern’s Mass Control was a major turning point for me.  I went not for the blogging, but to learn more on internet marketing.  Suddenly the penny dropped.  Here I was yet again taking another internet marketing course.  Just how many of these do I need? Don’t get me wrong – the event was stupendous but I asked myself, how much of what I learn am I going to implement?  Knowledge is good, but for it to be effective you have to use it, to apply it.

One of the speakers was Ed Dale.  He got a standing ovation.  The man impressed me enormously.  He mentioned his Thirty Day Challenge which he runs every year in August.  One of the uber gurus present, Jason Moffat, apparently was the first winner of the challenge some five years ago.  Thinking about this blog I decided it deserved another chance, or more to the point, I deserved another chance to make something of it.    I would take the 30-Day Challenge.  That was the best decision I made.  I learned a lot.  As a result of that “challenge” I made the following changes:

1.  New Domain Name
Using my newfound knowledge and a nifty tool called Market Samurai I changed the domain name   from Blog Along With Me to Blog Income Life.  I wrote about the reason for the change in this post

2.  Switched from Blogger to Wordpress Direct.  This version of Wordpress is a little bit more user friendly for us non-techie types while still offering flexibility and entry to those who are to be able to work behind the scenes in the html/c-panel/ftp world.

3.  Started to find other blogs of similar content – yes the biggies to start with, but my Google Alert and Google Reader (two services I was not aware of before) introduced me to others who were not yet well known, indeed newer at the game than myself and with better results.

4.  Became a commenter on some of them.

5.  Changed my template when a successful blogger whom I admire observed that my theme was blah … he also suggested that I should write about something I knew, but by then I realized that I actually enjoy writing on this blog, and that what I “knew” is that I have a long way to go before I can actually hang out the professional blogger shingle.  So I continue as a willing apprentice.

6.  The shingle I have hung out is “Open for Business.”  In my 2010 business plan, Blog Income Life figures prominently with stated goals and objectives.  One good thing about having kept track of my journey thus far is that I have data which I am using as my starting point.

I can honestly say that in the last two months I have learned more and done more here than in the previous nine.

My blog related goals for 2010 are:

1 -     Google PR3 for Blog Income Life by year end

2 -     Launch a project blog that is centered around a newly planned trip to China in June … it is both a human interest blog and based on a significant but not well known historical event.  My intention is twofold:

One:  for the interest, learning and my roots.

Two: to draw attention and gain interest from print media to publish my experience/story/visit to China, carriers for contra air in exchange for an article or two for their in flight magazine and ad sponsors on the blog.  In short, I am looking to fund the trip.  I am very late getting into this game, but only recently learned of the pivotal event that is drawing me to China.  The goal is scary, the journey sure to be enjoyable, time will be my biggest challenge.  I also anticipate enormous growth … and some hair tearing along with it!

Thank you for allowing me to share my musings of the past, the current and the future.  Please share yours with me.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

I think the cheese will have to be shelved for 2010

What do stories have to do with blogging for money.  More than you think.

Sundays are catch up mornings for me.  Typically it’s the time I spend catching up on the little things in my e.box, you know non blog income items flagged but not urgent, jokes, Facebook and Twitter announcements of new followers or invites to become friends – ok, the last two could be Blog Income items, but you get the idea, it’s not a blogging for money day.

I give myself two hours – what doesn’t get attended to suffers the fate of the delete key. I give myself another hour to go over my Google Reader and read up on items of interest that I may have I missed on my daily scan of this service.  After that it’s a day off.  Today, maybe dim sum in Richmond and then a walk by the bay – yes, even in the rain.

The first item that caught my eye this morning was a post by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.  I don’t know how I missed this earlier.  I am a raving fan of his.  It is an article on story posts on his blog.  His observation is that over the years the posts that told stories were the most popular. That is not surprising as stories engage the reader.  It is that rule we learned in sales:  facts tell stories sell.  You can read the full article here

The post got me thinking.  I prefer writing stories over technical reports and have enormous admiration for those who can present good, clear facts without much froufrou and still keep the reader engaged.  I had such a challenge this week.

Recently I was invited to author a chapter for an upcoming book.  It was on a subject I know well but the publisher asked for a slightly different twist on it.  For weeks I had the devil of a time trying to manipulate the information in such a way that it would mesh with the new angle.  Writer’s block loomed large as deadline date drew closer.  What to do.  What I had in my computer was dull and boring even to me.  How could I expect others to read it. How could I let the publisher down?

Then I had an idea.  What if I approached the angle from a storyline?  I phoned the publisher and told him what I had in mind.  I can tell you his response wasn’t exactly extatic.  “Sure” he said tentatively “send me a few paragraphs and the rest of the content in point format.  I did.

Suddenly my creative juices began to flow.  I finished the chapter in two days.  Had it reviewed by a friend who said she was galvanized every step of the way. Submitted it just under the wire.

Haven’t heard back from the publisher yet.  I think he’ll like it.  If not it’s not a bad piece of work and I can certainly put it to use in some other way.

Stories are easier to write, at least for me and for most people.  When you think about it blogs started with stories, that’s what a journal is, it is the daily story of something, often that of a personal experience.  The next time you are faced with writer’s block dig deep into your own experiences and fish out those that have a connection with the topic on which you write, guaranteed, your fingers will start flying over your keypad and you’ll be one step closer to an awesome blog income life!

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogging for some good cheese.

If you are blogging for money, then you have opened your own blog income bank, or, as I prefer to call it, The Bank of Blog Income.  I rather like the thought and the image it brings to mind, but I tell you, I am absolutely, positively in love with the notion that blogging and banking are the same thing and I don’t just mean the money.

What with all the hullabaloo on money and banks these days, I decided to attend a seminar on wealth creation. To get us thinking in the right direction, the speaker started off by telling us about the rule of 72.  You’ve probably heard about this but just as a refresher, the rule of 72 estimates the length of time it will take you to double your money at a given compound interest rate by dividing that rate into 72, so, if your interest is 12%, you divide that into 72 and the answer is that it will take about 6 years to double your money.

The interesting thing with this rule is that once you begin to double your money it begins to take on a snowball effect as each year thereafter is a rolling 6 years.  That’s when your money begins to grow at increasing rates of speed.

It struck me then that a blog is much the same.

Never mind the paltry interest rates banks pay us today.  Just stay with me.  The more frequently you make deposits into your bank, the better the balance.  The better the bank balance, the more interest accrued each year which means more money.  The early deposits are the most powerful even though they may be smaller than later ones.  The early deposits are the ones that gather most steam.

That’s what got me thinking that a blog is just like a bank – your bank!  The most basic fundamental of a blog is posts, consider them as deposits or investments of time and talent.

The more frequent your posts, the more notice your blog will get from the search engines which in turn means more traffic which then turns into conversions or sales.  Its hard work at the beginning and at times may seem that you are standing still maybe even going backwards.  Eventually consistent effort begins to pay off: traffic increases, visitors begin to post comments, your blog begins to gain credibility which means more traffic.  It’s a numbers game from there on – more traffic, more conversions be they Adsense, affiliate or sponsored ads.

Just like the example that our seminar presenter gave us on money doubling every so many years, your blog results will be more significant if the hard work is put in at the beginning and by beginning I mean it could be a year, two or three.  From there on as your results multiply, the amount of time and attention given to the blog can be reduced somewhat and still bring you growing results.

Here is what I really like about this, the investment/deposit is your time.  Everyone has  the same amount of time.  How you use it determines how you live.   Carve out some time, take it away from watching TV and put it towards growing your blog income. It’s the best kind of return on investment that I can think of.

Life gets good.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogging is the big cheese!

Well hold on to your horses and smack those bots that visit your blog.  If you have a blog that is meant to make an income, listen up, this is important.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has laid down the law as to what can and cannot be claimed on the internet and if “claims” are made, a disclosure statement needs to accompany it. Furthermore, if we stand to make a financial gain from any content on our blog including advertising, affiliate promotions, links and anchor text that may take the reader to a “sales page” where they then purchase a product, a disclosure needs to be made.   This takes effect December 01, 2009.

To put this into perspective lets take this new law outside of the internet; it would be the same as if magazines and newspapers would have to put a disclosure clause somewhere on each of their publications that they get reimbursement for all the ads that appear on their pages. Golly, gee, whiz!  You mean that these publications are in the publishing game to make money?

I suspect that this new law came into being because of the bleating of the “I want to get rich quick” crowd, those who want to get rich quick without lifting a finger and when it doesn’t happen, they cry foul!   Bull dung!

This new law is just another example of the creeping molly coddling of our society.  It is there to “protect” the unwary from falling prey to promises of riches and presumes that the average human is unable to make a logical decision – ok, they may have a point there as time and time again, someone is left holding an empty bank account after replying to that infamous Nigerian letter and it’s morphed offspring of lottery wins and the hapless soldier who found a stash of moolah while serving in Iraq/Afghanistan/pick a country and needs help to get it out of there –   and we the sheeples genuflect on bended knee and say it is good!

OK … this blog is not meant to be a commentary on human behavior … !!!  Lets get back on track.

What we have to do.

If your are blogging for money, if  there is the remotest possibility that your blog will make you some money, you need to post a disclosure.  You can get one done for you for free at  Disclosure Policy.  Just log on, answer the questions, and voila! your disclosure statement is done for you.  Post it on your blog.  I just published mine on the Contact Page of this blog.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for money …
… it’s all about the cheese.

Market Samurai is my radar system for so many things including advance scouting for up and coming competitive sites for keywords that I am fighting for.  I find that the usual suspects hold sway over the top ten of most of the keywords – the weaker ones playing one-upmanship and sometimes dropping off to temporarily make room for a site that is muscling its way up to the top.

This morning when I was checking in on Blog Income there was a new interloper, yup, right up there in spot no. 5!  I blinked.  Could I just not have noticed it before?  The short domain suggested a long ago purchase, back to the days when it was still possible to buy a single word domain and this one had it in spades:  http://www.income.com/blog Everything about it was loaded.  Nah!  I would have noticed it if it was there before.  Quicker than you can say John Reese I boogied on over there.

What a surprise!

It IS John Reese!

He’s got www.income.com !  I mean, how cool is that?

For those of you who may not know of John just Google him.  He is one of those uber gurus and is a household name in any decent internet marketing household.  I met him at MC2 in San Diego this spring.

I mean, I had no idea!  I spent the best part of an hour reading his entries … interesting stuff.

Now John’s a smart cookie and I respect what he has to say … today, John not only upped my level of respect for him, but he stole my heart too! He has some interesting things to say about social media, especially about Facebook and Twitter.  I have said many a time here that while I do not dispute the importance of social media marketing, I’ll take my time getting around to it.  Whoa!  It seems that I have some commonality with a guru!  A legend no less!

John has published a free report:  Internet Marketing, 2010, The Road Ahead.  It’s a fascinating read.  Go ahead and download it, there is no opt-in, no signing for anything, just a PDF download … oh, and you’ll lean how he got to owning www.income.com

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money ….and big cheese too!

As I was doing some research on the top bloggers blogging for money, I came across a posting by one of my “follow” bloggers, the author of The Digerati Life which is a whole year old but the thread of comments keeps lengthening. Here is the link to her post titled
Make Money Blogging: Top Bloggers And How Much They Earn

Of course the stats need updating, notably her own. Two years into blogging she was making 50% of her corporate income as an IT engineer in Silicon Valley. That can’t be too shabby. It is now three years. Is she at 75%?

This is the time of month that bloggers who publish their monthly results … well, err..publish. So I am putting together a list of my own, which will not be a complete list, but its one to start with.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money

PS… today, blogging for cheese!

Quick Links
The Digerati Life
Make Money Blogging: Top Bloggers And How Much They Earn

I just read a post by a blogger colleague and I am super disappointed … in essence this blogger is saying that you should first and foremost blog because you have a passion for blogging and to forget about blogging for the purpose of money. That most bloggers blog from the crack of dawn and deep into the night. This person obviously subscribes to that group that believes in living your passion and the money will follow!!! Or another way they put it “do what you love and the money will come.”

Bull Dung!

I am getting tired of hearing this refrain. It gets me angry. It does a disservice to those who are serious about making money online. Blogging for money is a business and should be treated as such. If you are going to spend your waking hours blogging then why not make money? I have yet to meet anyone who was able to walk into a bank and deposit a whole bunch passion. Try paying your rent or buying groceries with love. Lets get serious.

First, if you want to make money at blogging you have to treat it like a business. That is why I wrote my ABC’s of Blogging for Money so that people can follow a system to lay down a foundation for success.

Yes, you also have to work at it. Nothing for nothing. But from crack of dawn into the dead of night??? I know several bloggers that are making money that CEOs of companies would eye with envy. You do need to put in consistent effort but I can guarantee you that these successful bloggers are not not up at the crack of dawn and working into the dead of night blogging.

You also need to be an ongoing student. Even my ABC’s of Blogging for Money is just the start. You need to be continuously learning about how to be a better internet marketer – that’s how you become a successful blogger. That’s how you start making a bit of money which with effort becomes some money and then one day you wake up to lots of money.

It helps if you blog about something that you are knowledgeable on, and if it happens to be a passion, great! If you want to make money blogging about it, you need to make sure that there is a market out there that actually wants to know more about your subject (covered in my ABC’s of Blogging for Money). No market, no money honey.

As I mentioned earlier, blogging for money is a business. Apply business principles and through diligent effort the money will indeed come. There is an excellent online course right now, the 30 Day Challenge that I encourage everyone to register for and apply. It is free. You learn how to select a profitable niche, install a blog with Wordpress Direct and most importantly you learn how to market. If you have not signed up for it yet it is not too late. What is great about this is that you can work on it at your own pace.

Happy Blogging

Valentina
Blogger for Money

PS… oooh! It gets me angry when someone tries to tell me there is no cheese!

Quick Links:
Fee PDF Download of ABC’s of Blogging for Money
Register for 30 Day Challenge