dogging the blues

What can you do about it?

Question.  As you have been writing on your subject have you at the same time continued to increase your own knowledge base on it?  If not, this is a good time to do so.  Here are some good ways to broaden your scope on any given subject/topic:

1. Visit your colleague’s blogs.  Guaranteed you will find something that will get your attention.  A new slant, a new resource, a fresh approach, perhaps even the appearance of your colleague’s blog may give you some ideas.

You may want to visit blogs that have a commonality but not necessarily the same niche as yours.  For example while Blog Income is a blog on blogging I find visiting sights on personal development and personal finance to be both inspirational and broadening.   I apply some of what I learn at those blogs to some of the other areas of my internet marketing – and to my personal life.

2. Review a colleague’s blog – or a post – on your blog.  Why you like the blog.  What attracted you to it. What keeps you coming back.  Is there a suggestion you can make that would enhance that blogger’s results.This is a tactic I should follow myself.   Now that I have established a list of blogs that are on my  follow list, a review of each of them would introduce my readers to some really good (and sometimes irreverent) bloggers,  content and diversity of style.  A funny thing happens when you begin to review something – precious gems are unearthed, gems you can pocket and apply to your own efforts.


3.  Interview a blogger: This is a natural gimme.  It’s fun to come up with questions.  I like interviews where the blogger answers questions that are yes, helpful, but also that may be off topic and put the blogger in the hot seat.  It’s a way to break through the din of what is expected and perks your reader’s interest.

4. Invite a colleague to be a guest on your blog.  Pick a favorite blogger:  one whose sun is rising.  In the make money online grouping you are more likely to have such a blogger accept your invite than if you invited a big name guru.   Moreover I like the guts and nerve that the newbies display – they have to do something to rise above the noise and they have to differentiate themselves from the pioneers while basically still writing the same stuff as others who have gone before them.



6. Republish some of your earlier posts.  Some of your best writing may have been done when you first began.  Lets face it that was when you were pumped and bent on showing the blogosphere that you knew whereof you wrote, and you took time to polish the prose so that it came across as being professional.  The thing is that was early on in your blog income career when hardly anyone was aware of your blog let alone visiting it.  New traffic typically reads the current post yet some valuable stuff may be buried in your archives.

7. Last but not least – hit the internet for information on your subject, go to article directories and simply bone up.

These are simple steps which if followed will remind you why you decided to blog, why you chose the topic you did and guaranteed invigorate you to continue.

Blogging blues!   We all get them.

You know, you’ve been blogging for a while happy as lark, topic after topic tripping off the keyboard like there was no tomorrow.  Traffic is growing and even some comments are being left by your appreciative  readers when BAM!  Just like that when you should be feeling like you’re sitting on top of the world, the blogging blues take hold.

Suddenly:

-          You have nothing more to say

-          A commenter challenged your content and therefore (you think) your authority is being questioned.

-          Traffic has stalled

-          Alexa no longer loves you

-          You are not making any money

-          Doubt sets in – is this the right niche?

-          The topics on other blogs are always more enticing

-          You begin to flirt with the idea of a hmmmm… an online affair of a different kind

-          Your blog no longer appears attractive to you

-          Posting becomes a chore

-          Google has banished you to the sandbox

If you have ever experienced any of the above – or, all of them at once – you’re in good company.  There isn’t a top blogger around who at some point or another didn’t come up against the same challenges.   It’s as if you turn a corner and the road ahead is nothing but one speed bump after another.

You feel as if all your hard work is for naught, that the universe is set against you and you sink into a real funk – you get the blues and you get them bad.

If there is anything I can say to you at this point  it is that you do not give in – don’t succumb .  Simply add the experience as one of the rites of passage in your blog income career.  There are ways to deal with each of these speed bumps.   Check in tomorrow and the day after and then again … all of the above will be tackled one by one until once again you feel like you are standing on top of the world – a champion blogger!

Gather Success

Today is a holiday here in Canada – Victoria Day.  Funny thing.  Every day of the weekend they have been predicting rain.  Every day of the weekend, the morning overcast turned to sunny.  Today appears to be a repeat!

What are some of the outstanding moments in my blog life this past week?

Well for one thing, the blog life has had to make way for a non- blog life and that may be the case for the next few months but it is all good.   To maximize my efforts and put some efficiencies into play I have made the following decisions regarding my Blog Income Life:

• Focus on the “income” in Blog Income Life.  To that point I will be looking at my aggregate internet marketing income as my Blog Income Life.   I am giving myself the balance of Q2 and all of Q3 to ramp this up.  My first report will be published in October. 

 

•  As the focus shifts to income, I have decided to concentrate on affiliate marketing.  Affiliate marketing has paid me in dribs and drabs, but nothing sustainable and no plan in place for sustained results.  I am currently looking at all the programs that I am affiliated with a view to begin to marketing  them – beginning with one.  Reviews on these programs will be posted here.  In the meantime, any advertising banners on Blog Income are those of products that I personally have bought and am pleased with … I know, none here right now, but there are quite a number and I’ll put them up soon.

There is plenty more on the horizon which I will share with you as time, plans and results unfold.  I am excited.

Now for the week that was – summary of new posts since May 16:

Gather  Success Challenge III – Affiliate Marketing :
As a contestant of Alvin Phang’s Gather Success Blogger Reality Show I “attend” the weekly call-in and take notes to both apply to my own efforts and to post here so that you can take away a gem or two that  may be helpful  too.  Lots of gems on this call.  Read them here.

sidenote:  this is the call-in that made the penny drop for me re affiliate marketing and earning a sustainable online income.

Gather Success Challenge IV – Retweet Challenge
My bête noir!  For some reason I have been dragging my feet when it comes to social media, particularly when it comes to Twitter.  Alvin  makes it clear:  we need to become more familiar with Mr. Twitter!   This week I have been reluctantly visiting Twitter and making a few tweets here and there (not enough I am sure to garner me in the top three, but ok, it’s dipping my toes.  This post is all about me being a shameless hussy and “chirping” for RTs … that would be “retweets!”  (I think).  

Sunday Morn Musings: Learning to Dance in the Rain
A very short post – I give deference to the video, which is (I think) profound.  I couldn’t say it better.  Enjoy the video!

red cross receipt

Just as an aside – if you ever need an instant econfirmation on a purchase (or donation), do it online, not by phone.

Once again … Thank You.

Alvin Phang’s Super Blogger Challenge is in full swing. Our 2^nd challenge is to raise money for a worthy charity organization: The American Red Cross.

I don’t think Alvin could have picked a more universal charity organization. The Red Cross crosses both geographical and political boundaries. Whenever disaster strikes, Red Cross workers and volunteers are first on the scene, helping out with manpower, supplies, food, medical care, water and doing whatever is necessary to bring the area to as near normalcy as is possible.

Recognized as a universal sign of help and hope the Red Cross is more than just a logo. It’s workers and volunteers put in selfless hours of physical work, often under difficult conditions.

The Red Cross is a confederation of relief societies in different countries acting under the Geneva Convention. In 1863 an international public conference was held at Geneva, Switzerland. Twenty-five nations attended and struck a treaty which was adopted as the Geneva Convention.

“…the treaty provides for the neutrality of all sanitary supplies, ambulances, surgeons, nurses, attendants and sick or wounded men and their safe conduct, when they bear the sign of the organization: the Red Cross.Although the convention was international, the relief societies themselves are national and independent.

It was necessary for recognition and safety and for carrying out the general provisions of the treaty, that a uniform badge should be agreed upon. The Red Cross was chosen out of compliments to the Swiss Republic, where the first convention was held … The Swiss colors being a white cross on a red ground, the badge chosen was these colors reversed.” Excerpted from ‘The History of the Red Cross”

The origins were founded on devastation of war. Today the Red Cross is present not just on battlefields of conflict and at scenes of disaster, but in the humanities of all societies.

In the wake of Haiti, Nashville, Chile, Indonesia … the list of the Red Cross presence is inexhaustible, its funds are not. The objective of the Gather Success Charity Challenge is to raise as much money as possible by May 11. I am taking part in this challenge.

Any contribution is appreciated, every amount, no matter how big or small makes a difference. As a small gesture of my “thank you” to you, I am offering a free PDF of my e.book, The ABCs of Blogging For Money (Value US$47.00). To donate just click on the donate button below

You will be taken to my PayPal. After all the funds are collected I will issue a check made out to the American Red Cross and will publish both the check and the receipt from the Red Cross for the contribution.

I am taking part in Alvin Phang’s “Gather Success Charity Challenge“ if you wish to take part please click here to find out more.

Welcome to the new look at Blog Income.

How do you like it?

It’s been a long time coming.   Back in February I had posted here that the site was to go under the knife.  The site had just undergone peer review at the time and the verdict was in loud and clear … Change the look!

I had just changed the theme about 6 months ago and was mindful that frequent appearance overhauls were not the best thing – visitors get used to a certain look and expect it.  But these were people from my Internet Mastermind group and there is some real deep expertise in that room.  I decided that a change should be made sooner rather than later but this time I was going to take my time before choosing a theme.  And take time I did!

Aaahhh – procrastination!  Actually I was dead scared.  Given some of the technical issues I had experienced in the last few months  I would was so afraid that I would  just screw it up and so  I kept putting it off.

Now I mentioned in my last post here that I am part of the Gather Success Super Blogger Reality Show. Wednesday was our first check-in.  Blog Income was reviewed.  One of the areas of suggested improvement was to move content to the left and keep the sidebars to the right.

OK.   No more procrastination.  Time to make the bold move.

I actually had been doing some homework already.  Perhaps my experience might be of some help to you at some time in the future if you too are looking for a new look to your blog.   Here is the process I went through:

BLOG THEME WINDOW  SHOPPING

Now when I went blog hopping in addition to reading the posts and commenting I was looking at the design of the blog itself.  What did I like about it?   What was the overall look?  I checked out the theme name and made note of it.

CUSTOMIZABLE

What I began to notice is that a handful of themes began to appeal to me.  Interestingly enough even though they were just a handful, each blogger made their version a little different with some customization.  Now I know that a skilled tech type can do wonders with just about any theme, but the main reason I want a theme is so that I don`t have to take a separate course on how to hard code my CSS, so easy customization options were important for me.

NO PREMIUM THEM

I read somewhere that premium themes – i.e., paid themes – were better because they were more reliable in keeping up to date with Wordpress advancements and they were extremely flexible when it came to customization.  I noticed however, that many of the bloggers I respected were not using premium themes.  I contacted them re their experiences and was really happy with the feedback I got, and blown away with the unconditional offer to help in any way they could.  You know who you are – THANK YOU.

ARCLITE

In the end I chose Arclite from the Elegant series of Wordpress Themes.

The main reason is that it has some customizable features but not so many that I would need to buy a manual to implement my choices.  I like it`s clean lines.  No clutter.  What you see here today is not the finished product.  There are still lots of tweaks here and there and I would be most grateful for any suggestions you might have.

I`m sure this is not the last time that Blog Income will undergo a reno.

Oh yeah … the thing I was most scared of?  Having to spend hours and hours and the real possibility of screwing everything up?  LESS THAN AN HOUR!  And no problems!

You know what they say.  Face the thing that you fear the most and do it first. Your fear may have nothing to do with the look of your blog, but I bet there is something that you cringe having to do every time you think about.  Whatever it is JUST DO IT.   It`s keeping you from moving forward.

That was just one of the nuggets I took away from last night’s call-in for Super Blogger Reality Show. Actually it was the first call-in and with just 16 of the 100 plus registered reporting in, it was like a private chat with Alvin of Gather Success in a cozy online living room.

The challenge was to post daily from May 01 – 04 inclusive.  That was an easy gimme for 10 points and all reporting got the full 10.  But things are heating up for the coming week and getting very interesting.  The curve just took a sharp uptick.  More on the details later – suffice it to say that we’ll be raising dollars for charity and I’m hoping that you’ll respond to the tap on the shoulder.  A few things need to ironed out first.

Alvin went over a few of the blogs.  Yup.  Blog Income was one of them.

Alvin is using UStream so it’s like a classroom tutorial – you get to see exactly what he is talking about.  Here are just a few of the gems I took away and want to share with you:

CONTENT LEFT THEMES

No contest here.  Look for themes that have content to the left, sidebars to the right.

Reason?

Google reads left to right (whod’uv thunk!) but only the first 50 words.  What that means to those of us who have sidebars to the left of content is that we are wasting a lot of precious real estate on items such as, for example on Blog Income, social media chicklets, archives, blogrolls, tags, and other minute type stuff.

The default to this is that when writing include your keyword(s) in the first 50 words if you can – this is something I struggle with.  First I don’t get keyword obsessed when writing, sometimes the keyword(s) don’t show up until several sentences later.  But now that I know the 50 word rule, I’ll try and play pretty with Google without sounding stilted.

OPT-IN BOX

You have to have a way to collect names to create a list.  I know it sounds trite.  We have heard it sooooo many times, yet it is an oft overlooked item. Most of the reviewed blogs fell down on this one.    Make a free offer.  Make it a call to action.

Something like

CLICK HERE FOR FREE WEEKLY BLOGGING NEWSLETTER
AND GET MY ABC’S OF BLOGGING FOR MONEY EBOOK (VALUE $47)

I did have an opt-in for my ABC’s of Blogging for Money up as a banner and yes, it did generate signups. Huh!  Wait till I get my new theme up!

AFFILIATE LINKS WITHIN YOUR ARTICLES

Unless you are blogging as a charity case with no intention of making money, you have to sell.  It doesn’t have to be salesy, but you should have affiliate links within the body of your article.  It doesn’t have to be every article and go light on the links, which should all be anchor text.

Just about all of us who had our blogs reviewed fell down on this one too.  We had banners up but any content linking was geared towards reference rather than product.

Here’s a sobering thought:  On average your product needs to get 100 click for one sale.   Track, track, track.  Use Google’s Analytics “Goals” to get metrics on impressions to conversions, for example how many eyeballs have to fall on your article/page for the affiliate to be clicked once?

Of course there was more.  You can still register and participate in the challenge.  Each week appears to be a standalone but the longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to catch up.

Stay tuned for the details of the Gather Success Charity Drive …

Last night I was listening to a radio talk show – a money talk show.  I like to tune into this show as a way of keeping myself somewhat current with what is happening in the world of finance.  This is a show that is targeted to the average person, people like you and me; not bankers, not economists.  Tuning into this show does not make me an expert but at least I get a good layman’s perspective on the world economy and how that impacts my country on a larger scale of things and me on a minute scale of things –  I also get some good tips on how to manage money.  It’s my way of improving my financial IQ.

On yesterday’s show the host challenged us to create our own economy.

Create my own economy?

As I listened I realized how powerful that challenge was.

I also realized that without knowing it I was already creating my own economy and could do a lot more to make it a much healthier one.

The more I listened, the more the idea of a personal economy appealed to me.  The imagery is far more powerful than the one that comes to mind when you say budget.

But an economy is more than just a budget.

Creating your own economy is just another term for personal finances which includes income, budget, asset growth, net worth, wealth preservation and that most sought after position of all:  the cashflow. Cashflow is the money you have left over after the bills are paid.

The talk show host went on to say that in your economy, everything you own should cashflow.

Well, there it was.  Pure and simple.  That is why my net worth suffers from anemia.  Most everything I own drains and costs rather than contributes and that it seems, is also the main problem with the world economy right now, but there are bright spots, countries like Brazil and China are enjoying good economies compared to most other countries; he posited these two countries vs what is now being termed as the Greek Tragedy.

You can’t do much to make a difference to the world economy, but you can to make a difference in your own.

To create a healthy personal economy you have to turn the tables and start thinking differently.

Whether you are employed or are in business for yourself, how much of your money do you put to work for you?  For that matter how much do you pay yourself?  You see it appears that most of us don’t do a good job of our income and outgo.  We get the money and pay bills.  We may contribute to some sort of a retirement plan and perhaps put a few dollars into a savings account.  The reality is that most of us don’t even do these bare minimums, let alone grow our net worth.  Even high earners are up to debt in their alligators.  Now according to the talk show host, debt does not necessarily have to be a bad four letter word, there is such a thing as good debt, and that is when the debt incurred actually produces cashflow. Most personal debt produces outgo.

That got me thinking.  The concept is not new to me and I am sure it is not to you.  But it got me knoodling.

I wrote out my financials.

Not a pretty picture.

Too much red ink.

Now in my case a lot of the red ink is tax deductable.  Items such as communication, transportation, insurances, accommodation and utilities are partially if not completely tax deductable as my businesses are  run from my home office and each qualifies as a home based business.   Still, when examined with microscopic attention the economy on the home front needs a lot of restructuring.

The biggest gaping hole was that the “economy” was not set up for preservation of capital.   That according to the talk show host should be job one because preserved capital grows, and as it grows it can be put to better and higher use so that the resulting cashflow is passive rather than linear.

Aha!  But isn`t that what you and are trying to do with internet marketing?

Yup!

We’re on the right track.

But don’t you just love the concept of creating your own economy?

Somehow the sound of  “creating your own economy” has a much more powerful ring to it than budgeting

Are you ready to set out and create your own economy?  A buoyant one?  Let’s go for it.

So what happened in April?

1. Don’t know.  April is a total stalemate.  Granted, the time devoted to Blog Income has been scaled back.  What this means is that the automatic growth engine needs a lot of stoking yet cause it certainly isn’t steaming on its own energy.

2.  Traffic via Twitter is now noticeable.  This is a mixed blessing as the bounce rate is now in the 70% range.  Gulp!

3.  Average time on page is 4.38 minutes – OK, those that stay read.  Thank you.

4. More and more pages are getting pushed up in rankings both on Google and Yahoo (I  don’t check the stats for the other search engines).  This is encouraging.

What’s up for May?

FUN.   Not just for May but for June and July as well … participating in Alvin Phang’s Super Blogger Reality Show.  We will be given tasks each Wednesday and have to report on results every Tuesday.  Results are then awarded points.  The higher the points, the further along towards winning the prize.  The challenge starts today.   The first set of tasks that need to be accomplished is to post daily on a blog of our choice.  I have decided to work on Blog Income as the blog of choice for the challenge.

SIMPLIFY.   I have way too many blogs that are just sitting around doing nothing.  Some of them have commercial value so they are going up on the auction block.  I can always expand again when the time is right.

COMMITMENT.  Playing 100% in the Super Blogger Reality Show.  I think it would be cool to win, but more importantly I will have to exercise discipline to keep up the pace.  That will do several things for me, not the least of which are:

a.  Increase speed of critical thinking

b.  Improve efficiencies

c.  Learn new things and implement

d. Focus

I look forward to swerving out of the stall and to reporting much better results for the month of May.

I will be participating as Blog Income.  Haven’t the foggiest as to what we will have to do – there will be different tasks assigned every week and you earn points every week – so if you see some strange shenanigans happening here, it’s all in the spirit of winning the Challenge.  Over 100 bloggers have affixed their chops!

Will this be the Ultimate Extreme Blogging of the year?  Bloodied monitors and splayed keyboards floating aimlessly in cyberspace?  Lonely posts languishing on the ropes.  Bloggers scouring the blogosphere for commenters?  Content schmontent!  No holds barred – and tonight John Chow helps open the show … no, apparently he is not a contestant, would he be one of the judges?

Bring it on!