Archive for category Starting a Blog

Blog Income Life: November Results

Dec 1

Posted by Valentina in Goal Setting, Month in Review | 2 Comments

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. I celebrate Christmas – two of them. My ancestral heritage is Russian. The Russian Orthodox Church never switched over from the Julian to the Gregorian, so Christmas falls on January 07! How cool is that? This is a month of many celebrations, and whether you celebrate Christmas or something else, I want to begin by wishing each and everyone who comes here, joyous celebrations, goodwill and blessings for you and your loved ones.

It is the first of the month which means a review of the month past for Blog Income Life. My goals for the month of November were:

1. Increase traffic by 20%+ (I’m following Darren Rowse’s formula here.
2. Get back on to earning some dollars.
3. Spend less time checking my daily stats.

Let’s look at the traffic first:
analytics - nov this is IT

analytics traffic source Nov 09 Last month’s visitors = 130
Target: 20% increase = 156
Actual results = 158

Just squeaked in! In actual fact it is probably more like 15% growth seeing as last month’s stats did not include the first 5 days of the month! I know this is anemic compared to many newbies who are getting that and more PER DAY. I am a great fan of Darren Rowse’s (is there anyone who isn’t), and I read with great interest that he focused on growing his blog traffic by 10% – 20% per month. I am also a great believer in building momentum. On that note I will be trying something in the new year that is meant to increase the traffic significantly – 200 per day by end of QI of 2010 is the big stretch.

Search engines stats fell from 15.38% to 8.3%. I ascribe this to my letting up on my focusing on the keyword that I am fighting to get on page one for. I am of two minds here. Everything I have learned stresses the importance of optimizing your posts with the main keyword and sprinkling others here and here. I feel that to do so for every post is somewhat artificial. Yes, I want more search engine traffic, I also want to write in a non-forced style. I think that my readers are intelligent enough to be able to tell the difference. My readers are my guests. Foremost in my mind is to treat them as welcome guests. This probably comes with experience – write keyword optimized posts and make it flow in the most natural of ways.

Income: Alas, none to report from this blog. As mentioned before my performing blogs are my stable of doggie sites — even Adsense is delivering. But I did have an awesome day – my first ever $1000 day! This was in one of my other businesses. What I loved about this experience is that it is now in my system. Once experienced it’s in your DNA. I look forward to many more $1000 days in 2010.

Checking Daily Stats: Done! The temptation, especially at the beginning was hard to overcome. Eventually I just got fed up with myself in wasting time checking stats on my various sites. I figured that I was wasting at least an hour. Now, I check the stats in the mornings – it gives me a sense on what I need to concentrate on for the day and make adjustments to the plan I wrote the night before if needed – and leave them alone for the day. Yes, sometimes I still sneak a peak before the end of day, but that too is declining.

What Do Stories Have To Do with Blogging for Money?

Nov 22

Posted by Valentina in Blogging for Money, Miscellaneous, Random Thoughts | 11 Comments

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.

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Tags: blog, blog income, blog income life, blogging for money, cheese, story blogs

Blog Income Goal Setting

Nov 17

Posted by Valentina in Goal Setting, Making Money, Starting a Blog | 6 Comments

Something different today but very important. If you are blogging because you want to develop a blog income, it is that time of year to review your current situation and set goals for the coming year. In corp speak that would be working on your business plan.

Why is goal setting important?

The most obvious reason is that it gives you something to work towards, a destination that you want to reach by the end of a certain time line and it must be committed on paper.

Why on paper?

One, the very act of writing something down has neurological implications. There is a connect between the brain and the writing, a greater commitment and a message to the brain that this needs doing. The goal is then accepted and submerged into the sub conscience.

Two classical studies underline this importance of writing down your goals. The first dates back to the 1953 graduate class of Yale. Armed with impressive degrees the graduates were eager to take on the world, to redefine the meaning of success. Twenty years later the graduates were contacted as a matter of interest to measure their level of success. While most were found to be doing well, a small group stood head and shoulders above others – a mere 3% had achieved enormous financial success, more than that of the 97% combined. When interviewed further one commonality was found amongst this elite 3% group: each one had written down their goals, something none of the others had done.

A subsequent study at Harvard had similar results. The year 1964. Once again all graduates stated that they had lofty and clear goals to achieve. Only 5% took the trouble to write down their goals. A follow up twenty years later showed that of the 5% who wrote down their goals, 95% achieved their goals, while of those who did not write down their goals, a mere 5% did.

Goals can have different time lines: lifetime, 10 years, 5 or maybe just one. Daily factor in as well. Goal experts recommend 5 year goals, with checkpoints along the way, usually at the 3 year mark and 1 year mark. They can be complex or simple. I like simple.

Set a goal for each area of your life for 2010. Make it doable but not a gimme – it needs to be something that you have to stretch for. Start with the current situation, and end the year with where you want that situation to be.

In terms of blogging my goal for Blog Income Life for this year was to be at a four figure income at the end of 2009. I had nothing to base this on. It was a figure I thought would be nice to achieve. It’s not going to happen. What I have achieved however is a stronger understanding of the business of blogging. On review I know the mistakes I made, I know what works, I know what I need to concentrate on to make the desired income. I now have a base from which to work for my 2010 goal.

Perhaps the biggest lesson learned is that an income goal is not the best to get started with, I would leave the income goal to a longer term. Here are some benchmarks that may help you with your goal setting

- frequency of posting: 3 times a week or more

- first 100 visitors

- first 1000 visitors per month

- first 100 subscribers to your newsletter/email list

- backlinks: 1000 backlinks

- first $100 from adsense

- first affiliate sale

- first affiliate campaign

- first 1000 Twitter followers

- first e.book written

There are plenty more but the above should get you started. Begin with where you are right now and determine where you want to be on December 31, 2010. If your current situation on traffic is an average of 5 visitors per day, you may want to look at an average of 100 visitors per day. Now make a plan for achieving that.

What will it take? What do you already know on generating traffic? What more will you need to learn? Where can you get that information? Is there a Traffic Generating course that you can buy?

I subscribe to The Goals Guy to plan the year ahead and to keep me on track with my goals. When you draw up your plan for achieving your goals for 2010, make sure you set up review dates, I make mine quarterly. It is a good practice to see what is working and what is not. For that which is not working identify, correct and take action.

Here’s to great goals and great achievements!

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
The cheese is in the goal.

Technorati Tags:U6SNUZFUK97S blog income, blogging, cheese, Goal Setting

Tags: blog income, blogging, cheese, Goal Setting

Review: Viper Chill Blog

Nov 16

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Reviews, Starting a Blog | No Comments

On my top ten “blog income” blogs to visit regularly is Glen Allsop’s Viper Chill. Glen apparently started this blog several years ago, let it lie dormant for four years, and has just re-launched it with impressive results. Now we’re not talking newbie or even competent here, we’re talking super on the way to uber.

Glen’s online business drops a significant five figure income to his monthly bottom line. It’s not surprising. The man knows his stuff.

Viper Chill delivers content like no other blog on blogging that I know of – there is a freshness to it, a lot of punch, but most importantly, Glen mines his knowledge and presents information that is beyond the typical white bread content that proliferates the internet. He dives deep into his own practices and shares them with his readership which is rising faster than a loaf of bread dough.

And talk about value! Case in point is his latest post on his 24 point checklist that he implements with every new blog he starts. Not only have I bookmarked that post, but I have actually hard copied it so that I can follow each step, point by point. This is now in my internet marketing tool box and I will use this checklist for all future blogs as well as go through the list for all my current ones - I already started on this one and found that there are many holes that need to be filled. Watch for subtle and maybe not so subtle changes here to see what I mean.

What I find most interesting is that part of Glen’s blog flies in the face of “basics” – the domain name is absent of any hint of what the content may be. Everything I have read and learned to date is that having the domain name congruent with content is an important factor and topic keyword is highly recommended. Hey I like the domain name, it captures your imagination and is memorable but never in my wildest would I look at the domain of Viper Chill and say to myself that this is a blog I need to visit because it obviously holds a ton of content on blogging. Nope. This is branding at its best. It just goes to show that in the hands of a master, a domain name bereft of topic/content keywords can fly with the best of them. Before you let your imagination take hold however, the keyword here is “master” and it takes a master to develop a brand.

I encourage you to go read the article for yourself at Viper Chill and save a copy of it somewhere so that you can reference it on a regular basis. It’s that good!

Happy Blogging!

Valentina

That is some potent cheese there in Viper Chill

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Tags: blog, blog income, cheese, online business

Blog Income Sports a New Look & A New Feature.

Nov 15

Posted by Valentina in Link Building, Making Money, Starting a Blog | No Comments

Short and sweet on a rainy Sunday afternoon …..

Two things:

1. New Look of Blog Income Life
2. New Feature for You

1. New Blog Income Life Look.

How do you like the new look of Blog Income Life?

I changed it because a blogger whom I respect suggested that the theme I had was bland (or words to that effect). I often thought about that myself and chalked in “custom design” as a future expense item for when the blog starts to bring in the bucks. But when Glen Allsop, who owns and authors Viper Chill pointed out the blandness of the theme, I thought it was time to take action now.

Still I did not want to dig into my pocket to the tune of $2K for a webmaster just to redesign my blog and header and you know what my thoughts are when it comes to anything techie … not my strong suite, not an area I want to become an expert in.

What I did instead was to visit some other successful blogs. I looked at their designs. I noticed that while most were extremely well designed for SEO they did not really have bells and whistles and pictures and graphics and a slick “professional” look(well OK, Glen does have a slick logo on his header) – they were bang on about what it is that their blog is about and, I noticed, they were well monetized.

Back to the drawing board. The good thing about WordPress Direct is that there are plenty of templates to choose from. After going through the choices several times I chose this one. It’s cleaner, modern and to the point and took me all of a minute to change the template … I also like where the comment option appears.

Do you like it? Yes? No? Post your comments below.

New Blog Income Life Comment Feature.

This is a do follow blog, in other words, if you comment on this blog the bots will follow your comment to your blog and give you what is known as link juice, or backlinks, but unless you know how to check this out, there is nothing to show the visitor that this is a comment friendly blog.

To those with quizzical looks on their faces now, the common practice these days is to not allow “do follow” in which case, when you post a comment to someone’s blog, the bots will not follow the link back to your site. This was implemented some time ago to discourage spam comments. If you comment on such a blog, your effort is not entirely wasted, as if your contribution was worthy, some of the readers may visit your blog, so inch by inch, traffic becomes a synch.

While visiting other successful blogs I noticed that many used the Comment Luv plugin. Success leaves clues. I went and registered at Comment Luv and downloaded the plugins for both the Comluv and Twitterlink features. Now, when you comment here, the title of your latest blogpost will appear and it will be tweeted to your twitter community. You do need to register at Comment Luv to activate this feature and while you are at it, add the plugin to your own site – it also has an affiliate.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Comment Luv luvs cheese!

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Tags: backlinks, blog income

The Bank of Blog Income

Nov 9

Posted by Valentina in Blogging for Money, Making Money, Time Management | 2 Comments

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!

Technorati Tags:U6SNUZFUK97S blog income, blogging, blogging for money

Tags: blog income, blogging, blogging for money

FTC and Blog Income Disclosure

Nov 6

Posted by Valentina in Blogging for Money, Internet Marketing, Making Money, Miscellaneous | 2 Comments

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.

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Tags: blog, blog income, blogging for money, Federal Trade Commission, FTC

Blog Income Page One Newcomer … or is he?

Nov 6

Posted by Valentina in Blogging for Money, Making Money, Miscellaneous | No Comments

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!

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Tags: blog income, social media marketing

13 Reasons Why I Chose to go With WordPress Direct

Oct 15

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Starting a Blog | 3 Comments

Elaine Babauta of SweetStacks writes:

“Hi Valentina,
I enjoy reading your newsletters as I learn something new each time! I do have a question for you. Why did you switch from Blogger to WordPress Direct? What are the advantages that WordPress Directs provides over Blogger? I guess I’m out of the loop with blogging sites. I use Blogger to blog about SweetStacks.
Elaine Babauta
SweetStacks, Inc.
www.SweetStacks.com

The first point of consideration when deciding which platform to choose for your blog is to answer the question: what is the purpose of my blog?

If the purpose of your blog is to serve your main website as a promotional tool, to help drive traffic to your sales page, then the Blogger vs WordPress debate is not that critical, in fact, I almost always recommend that if you are completely new to the internet and techie type info gives you a nosebleed, Blogger is a good place to get started. I started all my first blogs on Blogger. It’s easy, you can plod along at your own pace, and as you begin to develop some net muscles you can even pretty it up a bit here and there.

Early on this year I began to notice that most of the internet marketing professionals were using WordPress. I looked into that and found it very confusing, my techie skills were not up to it at all. Notice, I said WordPress.

This is a little confusing. WordPress is not created equal in all its guises. I found two very good articles that you might be interested in:

WordPress, WordPress.com & WordPress.org
WordPress vs Blogger

Another interesting thing I began to notice was that it wasn’t just blogs, but what looked like websites were being powered by WordPress. I became intrigued that with WordPress you could have both static and organic pages in the same blog/site. It lent itself extremely well to both squeeze and long letter sales pages. My challenge at this point was still having to learn how to use FTP, and c.panel.

Enter WordPress Direct. I found out about WordPress Direct when going through the 30 Day Challenge this summer. Here was an answer writ in heaven: a system that offered the flexibility of WordPress and the user friendliness of Blogger, I started a fresh blog for the 30 day challenge and as I followed along, I found that it was a no-brainer to switch to this system. Yes there were differences that I had to get used to but they were not difficult to master.

The main reasons I chose to switch this blog from Blogger, and others from other platforms to WordPress Direct are:

1. Bigger selection of done for you templates. Over 150 templates The recommended ones come with tech support. For the tech advanced or gifted crowd only your imagination and level of ability limit the possibilities.
2. Done for you system. WordPress Direct templates come loaded with widgets that help you with Search Engine Optimization and other important gizmos that enhance your online marketing efforts.
3. Direct online tech support. This is a major difference between WordPress Direct and Blogger. It used to frustrate the living daylights out of me when I had to resort to the forum for responses to glitches that I was experiencing.
4. Point and click installation.
5. Easy to follow video tutorials guide you through the back end office – the admin area
6. Ownership of content. What you publish on your WordPress Direct site is yours. With Blogger, which is owned by Google, Blogger has the rights and ownership to your content.
7. Ease of customization.
8. Mix ‘em up static and organic pages. The importance of this is that you can feature your online product for sale on a static page, while the organic pages which is where you blog give continuous fresh content. This means that your “site” is constantly being crawled by the spiders, increasing the probability of moving up in search engine positioning and ultimately page rank.
9. Automatic fresh content pings increase traffic to your blog/site
10. Categories. Each blog post, in addition to a running dateline order can also reside within one or more categories, determined by you. Enhances keyword recognition by search engines and ease of navigation of your site by visitors according topic interest
11. Selection of themes that offer two or three columned templates.
12. Templates with pre-set ad space
13. Detailed statistics on your site – although I still use Google Analytics in addition for a different reason.

Interestingly, in the war for blog supremacy, even though Google owns Blogger, according to the tech experts, WordPress is favored by Google. This goes for all stripes of WordPress I gather. If there was one thing I wish could be improved on it would be to have automatic updates at the press of a button. WordPress’ open source status makes it a robust program. There are frequent updates, however they are not automatic for all areas that WordPress Direct manages.

WordPress Direct is a for fee service. You can get one free site but it is recommended that you get it hosted. I started with the entry paid version which gives me 10 sites/blogs for $19 a month and I chose Hostgator as my host at the baby level with unlimited hosting for $7.95 a month.

In conclusion my experience to date has been nothing short of excellent. In my opinion if your blog is set up to derive a blog income then it is worth the initial learning curve to start with WordPress Direct.

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Tags: blog income, blogger, Wordpress, Wordpress Direct

New Address – New Domain Name & September Statistics!

Oct 1

Posted by Valentina in Starting a Blog | 5 Comments

Can you believe it? We’re in to the last quarter of the year! The next two months are traditionally the most productive make it or break it months of the year and statistically bring in more new business than at any other time of the year. Back in the days when I was with Corporate America these were the big bonus months for those of us who were in sales. How it generally works is that your quota is based on a calendar year and the big bonus paychecks don’t kick in unless your quota has been reached and then watchit baby! The more over quota, the bigger and fatter the bonus check at Christmas!

Staying on that theme, I would have fired me from this blog by now. The showing has been abysmal. My target was to reach a four figure income by year end from this blog alone. It just ainta gonna happen!

Before the stats get published … stay with me:

As detailed in Monday’s posting, I uncovered many areas that needed adjusting – this is something that typically one does on a quarterly basis, but I was still testing the waters at the end of QI. By the end of QII I knew I had to do something. I took the 30 Day Challenge and uncovered some whopper type errors!

1. From the name Blog Along with Me, the keyword was blog in the domain name yet for me to get Google’s or any other engines attention would prove to be extremely difficult. With over 2 million searches daily, and almost 2.5 billion blogs or sites with that word in them, it would be a very long time before my position would deliver much traffic to my blog. That is why my search engine results were anemic – heck, lets be honest, they were on a lifeline!

2. OK … the bulb went on early. I decided to start fighting for blogging for money keyword phrase which is once again crowded but at least it seemed that there would be a light at the end of the tunnel — one day. But then the keyword phrase was not part of the domain name. Its not mandatory but it helps and when you are still green behind the ears like I am, its best to stay within the rules. Yes. You can break the rules AFTER you understand them, know them and know how to break them in your favor. I am a long way away from that yet.

3. Blogger gadgets just simply do not compare with all the bells and whistles of WordPress Direct plugins.

4. With my new domain name, Blog Income Life, my keyword phrase is blog income, which is still a very competitive field, but looking at the top 10 in Google, there is room for some muscle flexing. Not saying that this blog will up there terribly soon. As I have only just moved it over, there are still no new stats. But I’ll be watching them daily.

Now the Stats:

screenshot - analytics september 09

I stopped posting on this blog on September 09. Typically fresh content brings in visitors. So, anemic and pathetic as it was, search engines were still directing some traffic to the blog. screenshot - analytics september 09 traffic sources

Those that visited and stayed spent an average of 4.38 minutes each. that warms the soul. I hope its because that those who choose to stay and read find the information valuable. I have to tell you that none of my other blogs have the visitors spending that much time on the site.

Earnings:

Adsense           $ 4.78
Clickbank           14.00
Hostgator        50.00

Total $68.78

I am also happy that my e.book ABC’s of Blogging for Money is being downloaded at an average rate of 15 – 20 per month.

There is a lot of work to do with this blog before it is up to scratch. For one thing I need to figure out how to keep the two sidebars from duplicating each other, for another – I have to monetize it quick or there will be no sales at all to report for October! And put up that ABC’s of Blogging Banner! I had “followers” on Blogger – that part did not transfer. Don’t know how it will affect those who had me on their Google Reader, maybe it has to be re-subscribed. So some of what I have to do is starting from ground zero. From that point of view, I’ll be happy if I can at least stay even for the month of October. Many questions I have, the answers will soon appear.

Thank you to everyone who visits and reads. I hope that you find this helpful. If you find value here, send it over to a friend or colleague and please do comment, what you like, don’t like, improvements you think I could implement, suggestions … hey, tell me what you want to know, all will be welcome.

Now stay for the ride.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money – living the good life!

PS: Living the good life IS the big cheese!

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