Blog Income Life

Blogging for Money and Loving It!

Posts Tagged blog income

The Week That Was: Apr 19 – 25

Apr 26

Posted by Valentina in Weekly Review | No Comments

There are times when one has to step away for a time, to view something at a distance, to recharge and then to charge.  This was just such a week.  Spent very little time here at Blog Income.  That is not to say that the keyboard was left idle nor that time wasn’t well spent.

One:  The week was heavily scheduled outside of the home office — mostly business meetings.  In the winter I like hunkering down and working in my bunker, but come spring and the rest of the year it is nice to get out and about so the business meetings were welcome.

Two: It is time to simplify.  Taking stock of all the domains and sites that I own, I have decided that it is time to sell some of them off.   I signed up for Starting from Scratch which is all about flipping online real estate .   This week I took one of those sites, dusted it off and worked on making appropriate changes, applying stuff I learned here and within another week off to the auction block it goes.  It’s been refreshing to work in a niche that has been neglected for some time now.  Note to self:  don’t fall in love with it (again)?

Related post:  There’s Money In Them Thar Blogs

Three:  Have also been working on the new theme for this site.  Have taken an obscure domain that I own and am doing the dry run on it before taking the big leap (to which I will undoubtedly have to devote the better part of a weekend – oh please let it rain!)

These are the posts since the last Week That Was:

Wonder Wheel Great Tool for Cluster Blog Posting
At the regular Monday Night Internet Mastermind group we were introduced to Google’s Wonder Wheel.  It was presented as yet another useful tool to fine tune our keyword researching skills but I looked at it as a great tool for related topic clusters that will get the hay burning and the posts coming. … read the whole cluster

Sunday Morn Musings: Screw It, Let’s Do It!
I am a toastmaster. Recently I gave a speech and the opening line was “Screw It, Let’s Do It”. If you know anything about Toastmasters this would ordinarily be one of those out of bounds moments and I would have been cited for this sort of unacceptable language … but this is not milk toast club so that when I opened my speech with “Screw it, let’s do it” they thought that I was merely swearing!   What was it really about?  Does Richard Branson ring a bell?

Here’s to your awesome blog income life!

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Wonder Wheel – Great Tool for Cluster Blog Posting

Apr 20

Posted by Valentina in Making Money, Plan Development | 11 Comments

Writing a series of related posts is a great way to market your blog.  Sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch to get the content all lined up so that it flows and stays on target.

At last night’s InternetMasterMind meeting, we were introduced to a really neat Google tool:  the Wonder Wheel.  It was presented as  another tool to your  keyword research arsenal but I looked at it and thought that it is an excellent tool for scoping out  and planning out your post series on a specific topic.

To show you what I mean, below are the screencasts for Blog Income:

1.  Just above the number one spot, there is a plus sign and a “show options” button.  Click that on.

2.  The resulting drop down will look like this:


3.   Click on the Wonder Wheel – this is the result I get for Blog Income.  See all the possible related topics that are an expansion of “blog income?”  To go even further, you can click on one of the “spokes” and generate another wonder wheel to expand on that topic.

How you can apply this to your own blog is to search the keyword of your blog and go through this process.  What I really like about this is that you can do this for every keyword and come up with a lot of different “series” … and that should keep you busy for some time to come.

I think this is an excellent way to make progress on your own blog and to cluster series on a given niche within your topic.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!


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The Week That Was: April 11 – 18

Apr 19

Posted by Valentina in Making Money, Time Management | No Comments

It has been my practice here to post a weekly review.  It was typically published on a Saturday. I’ve changed it to Monday.

Why?

It is my belief that things flow better when things are in alignment.  I found that with my Saturday weekly review I was at sixes and sevens.  Here is what was happening:

  1. For all my planning my week starts on a Monday
  2. My publishing schedule includes a Sunday post under the title of Sunday Morn Musings
  3. A Saturday review of the previous week looked like this
    -  the week ends on a Friday
    -  the week starts on a Sunday
    -  according to my planning board, my week actually begins on Monday

You can see what I mean – I was all over the map.  As of this week The Week That Was will be published on Mondays.  That could mean that on some Mondays there will be two posts … the operative word being “could.”

This was a good week.  For time management I have returned to my previous practice of blocking time and I find that it is a model that works for me.  I plan my week on Sunday night.  It supports my plan for the month.   Tasks are written out for the week in order of importance.  These tasks are separated into the proper business and listed according to priority.  Then I block time for each business for the week from Monday through Friday.  Weekends are free fall and may or may not include working on a business or two, more likely if I’m not hanging out with friends I spend the time on my internet marketing “studies”  and implementing what I learn  – the only scheduled task is the Sunday Morn Musings.   What this means to me is that the important tasks for each business are handled.  Taking a suggestion from  my coach  Steve Keough I now allow time for unscheduled daily time because sure as there are little green apples, something is going to disrupt my schedule.  No disruption?  Great.  The low on priority tasks get handled.

Here is the summary of new posts since the last Week that Was:

Sunday Morn Musings:  On Overused  Words – 11/04/10
It’s time to retire certain words and phrases from the English language – or at least, give them a rest, a long rest.  Perfectly good, honest, strong and hard working words that have become hackneyed through overuse … time to give some of them a rest.  I list some of my pet peeves, you’re welcome to add your own.  Full article on overused words

Blog Hopping to Success – 14/04/10
Blog hopping is a smart thing to do.  It’s fun.  You meet good bloggers.  It helps you to establish your online presence  … and it’s just plain good business..  Today I met Maren Kate.  Never heard of her before.  I met her on my blog visiting route over at Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income … it’s what I call blog hopping and in this article I share my views on its importance to your blog income business

What Does a Blog Income Life Look Like?  17/04/10
“What does a Blog Income Life look like?”  People have read and heard that there are bloggers out there who are living the life of Riley, drinking fine wines, dining on epicurean delights, travelling to exotic destinations and living in the house of their dreams and they want to know if this.  What they are really looking for is a validation, they want to “know” someone who is  … the article on what does a blog income life look like is my answer

Sunday Morn Musings: Living the Life of Riley   18/04/10
Who was Riley and why do we want to live like him?  Songs, WWI, Reilly coins and a real life spy by the name of Sidney Reilly factor in this Sunday’s morn musings

Wishing you a great week of blogging!

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What Does a Blog Income Life Look Like?

Apr 17

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Making Money | 6 Comments

“What does a Blog Income Life look like?”

This is a question I often get asked.

The real answer is that it differs blogger to blogger.  But that’s not what the question is about.  The question is about my blog income life.  It’s not stated that way but I know.  So I answer accordingly.

I think that there is some disappointment when my answer fails the litmus test.  People have read and heard that there are bloggers out there who are living the life of Riley, drinking fine wines, dining on epicurean delights, travelling to exotic destinations and living in the house of their dreams.

The answer is that yes, there are bloggers who do pull in the big bucks and enjoy a lifestyle to which many aspire – bloggers or otherwise.  The disappointment is in my answer.

Amongst my friends I am living the life of Riley – now wasn’t he the real life spy after whom Fleming supposedly modeled James Bond? – after all I ditched the 9 to 5 a long time ago, have the luxury of doing what I please during the week as opposed to leaving things like mountain hikes and day fun trips to places like Whistler for the weekends.

Actually I probably put in longer hours than my 9 to 5 friends.  Not all my time is devoted to blogging.  I have several businesses and each needs my time.  Internet marketing is a new venture for me and so far the ROI, both in terms of money and time invested is miniscule.  So if I do drink a fine wine even if only now and then it is not because of my blog income – not yet.

The question that goes begging then is why do I persist with blogging if my other sources of income are sufficient to buy me that fine wine – even if only now and then?

The answer is passive income and living the life of Riley – eventually.  Fine wine any time I want it!

Most of my business activities are linear – that is, produce the results and make the money.  There is no recurring income for having done something one time and having a  check arrive in the mail on a regular basis.  No, actually I do have one such business in network marketing and it is the reason I looked at internet marketing in the first place – to market it online.

I got hooked.

Internet marketing had a lot of intuitive appeal to me.  I dove in head first.

After taking several courses the penny dropped – the best place to cut your teeth on internet marketing is in blogging.  Hard costs are minimal.  Expertise is gained on the job and progress is largely dependent on time available and general comfort level with the internet.

So perhaps the proper question at this point of my blog income life is

“What does the time you spend on blogging look like?”

On average I put in four hours a day.  Not all those hours are devoted to Blog Income Life as I have other blogs which I market online.  Ironically it is these others that make bank for me.   Here are the activities that make up the four hours a day on blogging:

  1. Writing content.  I write fresh, original content for all my online marketing – that goes for blog posts, article marketing, long sales letters, squeeze pages  and feeder pages.
  2. Publishing to appropriate venues.
  3. Visiting similar content blogs
  4. Commenting on blogs
  5. Visiting forums
  6. Social media marketing

These activities are what I would term as high gain, their function is to ultimately make me money.

In addition to high gain activities I also schedule at least an hour a day to continue my internet marketing studies.  I still buy courses that I think will help broaden my knowledge and more importantly online experience – it`s what I call muscle building.  Confession:  sometimes this part of the day does not get done.

Sorry … the blogging money truck may have left but it has not arrived at my doorstep yet.  The little guy, the tonka truck makes frequent stops though.

What do you think is at the core of the question of “What does your blog income life look like?“

Curiosity for one.

But I think the question is deeper than that.  I think that the real question is `

“Is it true about what they say about blogging – that you can make a lot of money in no time flat and with little effort?”

They have seen the ads, read the long sales letters, watched the videos.  What they take away is that this is a piece of cake and anyone can have the cake and eat it too.  Overnight success is shouted from one guru to another.  The questioner wants me to validate this with an affirmative, that yes, I make gobs of money blogging.

The truth is that overnight success can and does happen – most often after months and months, even years of continuous effort.  Ask any guru – most have put in the time in some way or another on the internet.  Even John Chow who started to make $40K per month in less than two years on his blog already had another online business.  To hear him tell it, his John Chow blog kind of just happened.  It appears that way, but John has smarts and had already built up his internet muscles and when you already have muscles, the heavy lifting isn`t so heavy.

What I find enormously rewarding with my internet marketing in that for the first time in many years there is a learning curve to scale.   Too often we  get into a groove that has become comfortable and that groove provides us with what we need.  We don`t need to learn new things to perform well.  For me internet marketing was completely new.  I had to engage my brain and apply.

On this blog I write about things I have learned and experienced in my blogging career.   I hope that the content is of value to you, my visitor; that you can take a nugget or two away with you and that it will help you in your own journey to a profitable blog income life.

An unexpected bonus.  Well you could have knocked me over with a feather as I never would have thought that I would enjoy studying but I find  the challenge of learning invigorating, it’s like feeding your brain that has been starving all this time.  Feels good.

So for now my blog income life is mostly about learning, applying and measuring … and a whole lot of satisfaction with the progress I am making.  Financial success?  Promise, I’ll let you know.  If there is one piece of advice I can give it is simply this:  stay the course,  correct, continue.

Here’s to your blog income!

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Blog Hopping to Success

Apr 14

Posted by Valentina in Making Money | 9 Comments

Blog hopping is a smart thing to do.  It’s fun.  You meet good bloggers.  It helps you to establish your online presence  … and it’s just plain good business.

Today I met Maren Kate.  Never heard of her before.  I met her on my blog visiting route over at Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income.  She is a guest blogger there and her article is about how to turn an active income into a passive income , I’m not going to go into the details here as you can just hop on over there and read the whole original article, it’s what I would call PDG – pretty damn good.

Of course after reading the post I took the time to visit Maren’s own blog – Escaping the 9 to 5. Impressed me all to bits – of course I subscribed to the RSS.  But that’s not the point here, the point I want to make is that if you are an aspiring professional blogger, blocking a bit of time for blog hopping is a smart thing to do.

I admit that for the longest time I was an online hermit.  Staying at home at my Blog Income. Write and they will come was my modus operandi.  Then some kind visitors left a comment here and there.  That got my curiosity up.  Who are these people I thought. Why don’t I find out more?  Why don’t I go and visit their blog and find out what they are all about?

Timidly I ventured out.  First I just hung out – then one day steeled up enough nerve to make a small comment and that is how I discovered a whole new community of awesome bloggers.   Now I go blog hopping several times a week – and daily if I can.

Here is how blog hopping helped me:

FRESH CONTENT

By fresh content I don’t mean that the blog is original in thought, topic or presentation.  No.  Fresh content is the first sign of a good blog and by that I mean that the blog owner has taken the time and effort to write the article herself.  There is nothing new under the sun after all, but originality in perspective is compelling.

I was once on a tour in a foreign city.  The tour guide showed us where to stand and click for the best photo shots of famous landmarks.  I was pleased that when I had them printed they looked just like the postcards I bought and sent home.

But the group I was with was made up of journalists and photographers.  The photographers snapped from different angles, played with shadows and lens filters and created a view of the same scene that was so very different.

That is one of the major reason I like to visit other blogs.  To read about the same topic as seen through the lens of another.

GOOD CONVERSATION

Blogs are set up to be interactive.  Readers are welcome to leave comments on the post.  Often the comments present yet another aspect of the topic at hand.  This opens the mind, broadens not only your knowledge but also introduces you to the way others think.  Sometimes the comments are thought provocative and take you to places you would not have visited on your own, sometimes they pose a question or answer one and sometimes they prompt you to write a comment of your own.

It won’t be long before you recognize the regulars and just like in real life you’ll “bump” into them as commenters on another blog.  You bond. Each blogger brings something unique to the table and I have found that the community of bloggers is a generous lot, sharing and offering to help.

LINK JUICE

When you finally get out of your shell and start to post comments, there is a section in the comments format to leave your blog URL, this is a backlink. Backlinks are desirable to have – the more the better.  Somehow they factor in the algorithms when search engines rank your site, moreover when a spider crawls a site with your URL as a backlink, it will go and crawl your site as well.

One point to consider here. Many sites are  “no follow” which means that there is a message to spiders not to follow the backlinks back to the commenter’s site.  Some people won’t leave comments on “ no follow” blogs.  Frankly, if I like the blog and its content and wish to comment I will whether it is a “do” or a “no” follow blog.   The link to your site is live no matter whether it is a “do” or a “no” follow and often other commenters hop on over to your blog.

You might be interested in reading in these related posts:

Link Building Part I
Link Building Part II

BLOG ETIQUETTE

Remember when you are visiting someone’s blog you are a guest.  When you join in the conversation and make a comment make it relevant to the content on the post, and please, please, please do not leave throw away lines like “cool stuff dude” … that smacks of milking for link juice and is spamish.

Comment spamming is on the rise and many bloggers have posted their policies as to what will and will not be approved for publishing.  Generally speaking Akismet or similar plugins catche most spam and it never sees the light of day but I have had a spate of spammy stuff recently that is why it is a good idea to configure your own comment section so that comments need to be pre-approved  before publishing.

When someone has taken the time to visit your blog and leave a comment, it is common courtesy to acknowledge the commenter.  A return visit to the commenter’s blog with a comment of your own is a nice touch.

Here’s to Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

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Four Bleeping Hours!

Apr 12

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Time Management | 3 Comments

Four Bleeping Hours! Daily!

Just to keep up with your emails!

I recently had a discussion with a colleague — someone new to the world of Internet Marketing. Like so many newbies, she had subscribed to several guru newsletters and had bought a course or two, OK, make that three or four and maybe more. What this means of course is a very active Inbox. In the course of our conversation she fessed up that going through the emails took as much as four hours every day. Four hours? Four bleeping hours! She was frustrated that after half a year the results were abysmal and was wondering if she shouldn’t throw in the towel with this latest venture of building a blog income and try something else.

Ok, four hours may be a bit on the high end of the spectrum for just “managing” your inbox, but honestly, don’t all of us fall victim to doing exactly what my friend did? Lets do a quick inventory. How many newsletter subscriptions do you have? How many courses have you signed up for – the freebie ones, the cheapie ones, and the not so cheapies? You get emails from all of those too even after the course has run its course (yes pun intended … ok, I just couldn’t help myself). Never mind the plethora of jokes from friends who obviously have no intention of making money on the internet. Then of course those jokes have to be forwarded to your own special inner joke circle.

STOP! This is insanity! If you’re serious about becoming an Internet Marketer – one that makes money that is – then you have to declutter, unsubscribe, don’t open the jokes – or at least save them for “break” time. I save mine for the weekends, and if some don’t get opened, so what.

The first thing that newbies need to know is that the internet is not a free ride. It is a continuous process of learning, and, unless you have the basics down pat, you’re never going to join the ranks of the gurus whose newsletters you so readily subscribed to and from whom you bought the courses and for which you now have no time because it takes you four bleeping hours every day just to read all that good stuff that comes into your inbox. FOUR HOURS!!! … and there is so much information you don’t know where to start and then you get frustrated because nothing is working and you throw up your hands in frustration and start looking for the holy grail of the internet and you can’t find it! Whew! Months go by, even years.

Don’t fall victim to this trap.

I bet you have emails in your Inbox that have not been opened.  I would even go so far as to say that some have been sitting there for over a week, maybe even a month!  Be ruthless with the stale dated ones – open and unsubscribe.  Don’t start reading!  If you haven’t read something for a month don’t read it now!  If you really like the newsletters save the links.  You can always resubscribe at some future date when you are ready for more and have learned how to manage your online time better.

Good News/Bad News. The good news is that you know more about the internet than you think you do. You’ve gone through kindergarten. You know the basics of being on the computer: open, close, send & receive emails, browse, Google something. You might even be active on some social marketing sites … you know, Facebook, Twitter and perhaps niche specific social media sites. Later on you will learn how to use these sites as valuable marketing tools, but for now, put your time into the action packed basics that will help you towards earning an online income.

Take these steps immediately:

1.  Email all your joke buddies. Tell them that you love them and appreciate their jokes but could they put them on hold for several months. Tell them that you are working on a very important project to build a blog income and much as you love a good laugh here and there, for the time being the Ha Ha’s have to stop.

2.  Love em and leave em. Unsubscribe to all but 5 of the top newsletters you receive.  Make sure that the ones you decide to keep will add value to your online income career.  I would suggest that you keep one or two that give information on how to maximize your blog, the others should be about your niche so that you can broaden your own expertise in your field.

3.  Those course gather dust on the shelves are never going to do you any good unless you crack them open and start in on them.  If you more than one still sitting there (or downloaded into your computer), choose one to work on now.  Calendar time to work on it.  . Whether you decide to devote 3 or 4 hours a day or a week, schedule it. This is very important. I would recommend scheduling some time on a daily basis, but if the weekend is all that you can realistically devote to your course, then bunch up the hours, four or five on Saturday and another four or five on Sunday. 

4.   Resist the temptation to check on your Inbox all the time.  I used to check three times a day, now I check only twice a day.  Once in the morning and again at close of my official business hours.

5.  Small consistent steps will pay off.  Do whatever you can to free up more time to do that which is a high gain activity … write daily.  You don’t have to publish daily, but by putting in even 30 minutes a day on writing, you will be building your blogging muscles and will always have articles on the go.

this post was first published in December 2008.

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What is Your Blog’s USP?

Apr 6

Posted by Valentina in Plan Development | 8 Comments

What is your blog’ USP?

To earn a substantial blog income you need to define your USP (Unique Selling Proposition).  If you did not include this part in your original plan development this is a good time to revisit the process.

What is the feature of your blog?

What is the benefit?

We know the importance of USP when it comes to selling tangible items, but when it comes to the non-tangibles the lines begin to blur.  Consider:

Car
Feature: Heated/cooled seats and back rest in car
Benefit:  instant body comfort no matter what the temperature is outside.

Restaurant
Features:  authentic home-made Italian;
Benefits:  better tasting than others

A blog by definition is not a tangible, you can’t pick it up, package it and deliver it to someone.  But it is a product. To uncover the USP of your blog ask yourself these questions:

  1. BENEFITS
    What are the benefits of the blog?
  2. NICHE APPROPRIATE
    Are the benefits appropriate to your niche?  i.e.  does it solve a major problem?
    Helps people eliminate debt?
    Improve self esteem?
    Shows how to plant patio gardens?
  3. MEANINGFUL SPECIFICS
    What are the action steps
    What are the best tools
    What to look for when purchasing equipment
  4. EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS
    Whom do you appeal to and why do they keep coming back  time and time again?
    You can get a profile of your visitor at Alexa.  Alexa is not just a ranking system but is a good source of info on the type of traffic you attract.  So if your traffic is made up of mostly 50+  women, who have a college education, are empty nesters and looking to retirement in the near future, what are some of the emotional triggers that would keep them engaged with your blog?
  5. TIED TO MARKETING SALES PROCESS?
    Is it tied in to a marketing sales process?  i.e., do you offer products, either affiliate or your own that would be of interest to your niche?  If your blog is all about patio gardening and you attract women in their fifties who are empty nesters, what could you offer as an affiliate?  Videos on how to plant in planters, how to choose planters.  How to position them.  Outdoor living room. Show off your green thumb without spending hours of backbreaking work.   Maybe you are a horticulturalist.  Have you thought of making your own videos or DVDs and marketing  them to your traffic
  6. WOWFACTOR
    After your visitor finishes reading your latest post, is he intrigued?  Did he feel that you gave value for the 2 – 4  (or more) minutes it took him to read it.  So what do you think your WOW factor is?  AHA!  Could that be your blog’s USP?

I think that what each blogger brings to the net is their unique voice and that is difficult to define in a USP – unless the “voice” is a dog that publishes a blog, or a celebrity or a well known personality, but other than that, how do you try and differentiate your blog from that of your competitors?  Or do you follow the successful ones and use their formula with your own spin on the topic?  What has worked for you.  The comment section below is all yours.

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Blogger Reality Show Challenge

Apr 5

Posted by Valentina in Miscellaneous | 2 Comments

Alvin Phang lives in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.  He publishes  Gather Success and he reported earnings of $66K for the month of March.  Not exactly chump change.

Now he’s has thrown out a challenge – it had to happen sooner or later, a reality show for bloggers!

About The GatherSuccess Challenge:
The World’s 1st Reality Show For Bloggers To Challenge Each Other Each Week To Out To Win The Ultimate Prize To Be Alvin Phang’s Apprentice!

This is going to be fun and it’s open to everyone – even if you don’t have a blog yet!  The first session will be about how to set one up.

I’ve been a fan of Alvin’s for some time.  When I first became aware of him he was already pulling in between 5K and 10K per month.  He works hard.  In the time I’ve known him he’s gotten married, bought a home, a new car, and got a dog.  Alvin also takes time to enjoy the finer things of life as he and his wife travel often to places that you and I dream of, staying in deluxe 5 star resorts and shopping (a favourite of his wife’s pastimes)  – in other words, he is living a true blog income life!

And now you can become Alvin’s apprentice.  How cool is that?

It’s definitely something worth burning the midnight oil for.

Hop on over to Gather Success Challenge  and sign up.  I just did.

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Blog Income Quarter One Review

Apr 3

Posted by Valentina in Making Money | 4 Comments

That which gets measured gets improved.

Regular readers of Blog Income know that  I am a stickler for tracking, reviewing, correcting and continuing.  It’s a leftover habit from my corporate days.  In business it’s the surest way of knowing where you are, what has been working and what has not, and making changes to ensure that your yearly target is achieved.   As mentioned more than once I start the day with the metrics for both the previous day and month to date.  Each month is reviewed and published.

Although I have always done a thorough review of  my business at every quarter throughout the year I have never published a quarterly review.  It’a a standard business practice.    I thought this was a timely opportunity to  post my review of Blog Income and open the window to how I  will approach Quarter Two.   I encourage you to do the same with your internet marketing business.

What should you be looking at?  Here is what I looked at:

  1. Goal for 2010
  2. Compare January 01 to March 31.
  3. Are you on track
  4. What is working
  5. What is not working
  6. What changes can you make –
  7. What additional tools might be helpful
  8. Does  year end goal need revising?

Based on the above, what is the picture like for 2010.

Blog Income 2010 Goal:  Increase Traffic.
Increasing traffic is by far my top goal.  There are other metrics I want to achieve but I feel that most will fall in place with increased traffic.  My first inclination was to put a way out there figure and then just go for it.  Sometimes that works for people.  But I have a paradigm – put out the big figures and the big dreams, but make the steps to reach them both attainable and a bit of a stretch.   Darren Rowse of Problogger wrote in one of his posts that when he began some 10 years ago, all he was aiming for in terms of progress was an increase in traffic of between 10% and 20% month to month.

Here are my graphs for the period January 01 – March 10.
ScreenShot Q1 Traffic Gra[h

ScreenShot00 site usage III

Jan 01 Stats Published December Review and additional metrics I keep:

Item: January 01, 2010 /Q1: Jan 01 – Mar 31
Visits:  208 = average 6.7 per day/1268 = average 14 per day
Alexa :504,964/ 243,547
Google Page Rank : PR1 /PR 2 (just updated Apr 03)
Position:  Google Broad: 130/14
Google Phrase : 7(Jan 31 stat)/ 4
Yahoo Broad :33/ 5
Yahoo Phrase : 5/ 5
Posts to Date:  129/173
Comments To Date: 298 (Jan 31 stat)/396

Note:  positions may vary depending on country from which search is being made

My answers to the above questions:

  1. GOAL: – 10% – 20% increase month by month.
  2. Am I on track?
    YES
    March however was static vs February and had I had at least the 10% growth the results would have been only  marginally better.  Why did this happen?  There were two days when the site was completely down.  If the site was up an additional 28 visits could be added, but that would still been short of 10% growth over the previous month.
  3. What is working?
    - Google Page Rank up from PR1 to PR 2
    - Alexa ranking improved by a whopping  261,417
    - Search Engine traffic which inexplicably dropped to below 1% in December is picking up.
    - comments are trending well
    - Position for the term Blog Income holding well on page 1 for phrase, ie., “Blog Income” in both Google and Yahoo,  while as the broad, i.e., without  quotes, is page 2 with Google and page 1 with Yahoo.  The broad phrase has appeared on page 1 with Google on several occasions but there is a lot of jostling going on for page 1 spot.

  4. What is not working?
    At 44 additional posts in 90 days, that is .48 posts per day.  I was going for 5 posts per week which is .71 posts per day which would have ended with an additional 64 posts instead of only 44.  March had fewest posts.  Had the schedule been maintained it is safe to assume that traffic would have been higher.

  5. What changes can be made?
    a.  Shorten length of posts, increase frequency of publishing to 5 or more per week
    b.  Invite guest bloggers.

6.  What additional Tools/activities?
a.  Submit articles to other bloggers as a guest blogger (this drives traffic to your own site)
b.  Increase article marketing

7.  Does year end goal need revising?
When results are on track, stay the course; when results are way below, revise & downshift if needed; when results are way above, revise & upshift.
Prognosis:  Stay the course.

Top Posts:

People do want to know more about you .  The “About Valentina” page is the most visited page.  In addition the following posts drew the most traffic:

Meet My Friend – Author Wendy Atkinson
Twitter and All That Social Media Stuff
The Mitts That Were Seen Around the World

SECOND QUARTER GOALS:

1.  visits = 2000+ = average visit more than 22 per day
2.  Alexa = under 200K (am participating in challenge and need to hit the 200K mark – shooting for 150K mark)
3.  Google: PR3 (this will probably be more difficult than reaching PR2)
4.  Google Broad Phrase page 1 for Blog Income
5.  Secure positions for another term/phrase I am going for (currently only given by Yahoo phrase at 59) – will let you know this new phrase when I reach my target.
6.  New theme for Blog Income

Here’s to an awesome blog income life!

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7 Reasons Why People Buy

Apr 1

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Making Money | 5 Comments

New month, new quarter.   Is your blog income growing?

Usually my post on the first of the month is a review of the previous one.   This will be included in my Quarter One review which will be published April 03.  Instead this post will be all about ramping up your blog income for the rest of the year.

Although  Blog Income is all about how to blog, most blogs are about something else, sometimes even about things like pet balms, swim fins and chess sets.  The purpose of the blog is to promote  and help sell  the product in your niche market.  That applies across the board whether your product is digital or physical.

What can you do to increase your online earnings?

Understand why people buy.

Geoff Ayling in his book  Rapid Response Advertising provides 50 reasons why people buy.  There are plenty more, the ones he lists are the main reasons.

We tend to think that people buy because they need something – they might, but they are more likely to buy when they want something.  Emotion over logic wins hands down.

I went through the reasons and list a smattering here.  Go through them and see how you can apply these reasons to your product then go blog/market in such a way as to appeal to these reasons.

  1. To make more money.
    There are those who scoff at money, that it does not buy you happiness, yet that same crowd is often front of line if they can make money from something.  If your blog is centered on finances, working from home, or internet marketing, this is a strong reason for people to buy your product, whether it is your own or an affiliate you are promoting.
  2. To become more comfortable.
    The same market as #1 applies, but in addition this is also a strong reason for the marketers of health products, furnishings, certain types of clothing.  If yours is the high adventure market, certain types of clothing are much more comfortable for each type of activity than others.  Think running shoes vs hiking boots, they are specialty products and do not cross over.
  3. To possess things of beauty.
    Beauty nourishes the soul and whether that thing of beauty is an exquisitely handcrafted chess set or a bronze casting keep this reason first and foremost if yours is  an aesthetic  product.  Stress how the product will look, feel and  give them great satisfaction in owning it.
  4. To avoid effort.
    Nobody likes to work too hard and if a way can be found to lessen the burden of hard work then sales will be made.  I think of the car.  In North America we take it for granted that every household has one but that is not the case in the rest of the world.  Think of China.  Until recently the bicycle was the equivalent of the car in North America.  With an improved economy the roads of Beijing and Shanghai are now as clogged as ours.  Does your product help lessen the burden of work?
  5. To be in style
    Yes, we still like to keep up with the Joneses and every niche has its own set of Joneses.  People like to be in style – would you like to be tagged as someone who is not with it?  Style does not just mean how you dress.  Within your niche there are things that are at the cutting edge, the “have to have” items that the hip and the progressive are buying.  When the iphone first came out, people lined up from the night before just to be amongst the first to own this new phone.
  6. To become more efficient
    A close cousin to item 4 above but different.  Efficiency improves output, reduces time and perhaps even develops an improved item.  Time management systems trade heavily on this and have done extremely well over the last 40 years.  In the internet world something as simple as a plugin can increase your site/blog performance for just having taken the time to install.
  7. To escape or avoid pain
    Again somewhat counter intuitive – we think that people are more inclined to buy for pleasure but statistics prove otherwise. Which of the two would have you reaching for your wallet first:

    -  a gizmo that guarantees to rid you of your chronic back pain
    -  an online game that will give you hours of pleasure

Just recently I was speaking with someone who has been experiencing excruciating pain in his right shoulder.  He has already spent a small fortune on remedies, none of which seem to have worked so he is now looking at a product that aligns his body, a gizmo with scientific research behind it.  Is this going to cost?  Yes.  But he is willing to try it before agreeing to go under the knife (which also, according to his doctor does not offer long term guarantees).

The 50 reasons that are listed in Geoff Ayling’s book are shades of the same thing, but shades do make a difference i.e. items #4 and #6 have a similarity, yet are different.  The book at $211.00 is somewhat pricey – head on out to your library.

For the rest of the year, when marketing your product think about how it might fit into one of the reasons that people buy.  Marketing to the reasons that people buy will give you more sales and help you earn a better online income

Questions:  What other reasons can you think of?  What reasons to you strive to meet when you market your product?  Other comments?

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