Blog Income Life

Blogging for Money and Loving It!

Posts Tagged blog

Banish the Blands

Apr 28

Posted by Valentina in Making Money | 4 Comments

No, no, no.  Not the Blaaahs – yes, those should be banished too, but the “blands.” What are blands? Oh, I think I just made that up as a noun – you know, when something is bland? Well the blands are just a lot of bland.


While blog hopping earlier this week I ended up at Mars Dorian’s where he writes a thought provoking blog and shoots an equally wicked vidlog … all in one.


Just as someone tells you that the blogosphere is saturated and that it’s going to be a long slog to just get traffic and get noticed and have visitors leave comments and never mind about the money because those that are making it aren’t going to tell you how and how the hell do you think you’ll be different from the millions and millions of other blogs out there ….???


Along comes  like Mars.


I chanced on his post on setting yourself apart. .  It was a good intro and the video was an excellent watch.  Hop on over there and watch it, it’s worth it, then, if you like please come back here.  Mars talks about being yourself when you write and how if you are just part of the noise, no one will hear you.  In other words, put some spice and don’t be bland.


I can tell you there is nothing bland about Mars.


That’s when I got the idea of banishing the blands.  Like there ought to be a place in cyberspace where anything bland on the internet is banished to, sort of like living in exile in the sphere of Blandistan – sorry Dave,  borrowing from your Blogistan.  Those in exile will need to work on their unique and true self and present themselves in that way and not try to be like someone else.


Of course bland is very subjective.  It’s like the color beige, no one – at least no one I know – gushes and coos about how they “… just love beige, I mean don’t you?”  Beige on the other hand can exude elegance and class if styled “just so” whether it is a coat or a couch, and it is not just in the eye of the beholder, when something is done right, you just know it.


So who is going to be the judge of bland and how is that going to be handled? Who else?  Surely Google would be the obvious arbiter of whether a piece of work is bland or not.  The spyder bots can be trained to recognize bland when they crawl and quickly, just like that, a bland  piece is banished to Blandistan.


Hmmmm….. there are holes in this thought, but it’s got merit, it can be worked out,. Stay with me.  What do you think?

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Blog Income Org Chart

Jan 19

Posted by Valentina in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing | 8 Comments

Expand your thinking and your blog income.  It’s time to think beyond just a blog.  If you have not already incorporated yourself as a business, you will definitely want to do so as your online earnings grow.  I like to see things and thought it would be fun to put up an org chart of what my internet marketing business looks like.  It also gives me a structure, one I can add on to – or make adjustments as needed.  Here is what my org chart looks like:

I’ve put INTERNET MARKETING as the holding company.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT  and BLOGGING  are each an “Internet Marketing” company.

BLOGGING is  the owner of each blog.  Each blog has its own set of affiliates.  Under Blog Income I have listed my affiliates for that blog.  This list will continue to grow as I add other affiliates.  I have a white board in my office and have drawn this chart on it – I see it every day and it gives me a better sense of business – it’s easy to lose sight of that fact when the commute is a scant minute and the dress code doesn’t stop at pajamas.

Just for the fun of it, put up your own org chart.  The good thing is that you can draw one any way you want.  Just imagine what you want your internet marketing business to look like in five years.  The parts that you can flesh out right now are the affiliates.

Select just one affiliate to start with and treat it much the same way that you did your blog.  Experts recommend that you have a domain name for each of your affiliates, or, at the very least, have each of your affiliates as a sub domain.

An example would be:

-  www.AllanasFavoriteAffiliates.com or
-  www.BestAffiliates.com

Both are fictitious.

Then for each affiliate you can have a sub domain without paying for a new one.  Here are some examples:

- www.AllanasFavoriteAffiliates.com/dogtraining
- www.AllanasFavoriteAffiliates.com/rawdogfood
- www.AllanasFovoriteAffiliates.com/puppytreats

Next stop for me is getting unique domain names for my affiliates.  I haven’t decided on how to organize them yet.  For the moment they are just being marketed directly to the vendor’s sales pages.

I’ve mentioned this before but it begs repeating – choose an affiliate that you are familiar with, whose service or product you are personally pleased with.  This is particularly important in the early stages of your affiliate marketing.  Later as you get to know your vendors well and trust them you can forego the third degree before promoting a new product of theirs.

Last week Mike Paetzold talked about  getting quality affiliates and pointed to some that are so obvious that they slipped right under my nose.   He said that the services you are currently using make for a good start – most online services have affiliate programs.  The only “service” I promote is Hostgator by just putting up a banner ad.  I just checked Go Daddy where I buy all my domains, and yes, they have a revenue sharing program as well but I think you really need to be a substantial internet marketer before going that route.

What are your thoughts about where your online business is going?  Do you see yourself  incorporating it into some sort of a legal entity?  How do you envision your chart?  What does it look like today?  In five years?

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Best……………valentina

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Blogging and list building

Jan 12

Posted by Mike Paetzold in Guests | 1 Comment

Mike Paetzold back again for day 2 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour.Today the discussion will be on integrating your blogging, list building and email marketing.

As an example Valentina and I had a miscommunication and my post from yesterday did not actually show up until earlier today here. Because she builds a list she could get people here by sending out an email to those people.

Now the blog can integrate into your marketing with list building and email marketing in 3 ways.

  • Getting people to sign up while they are visiting the blog
  • Letting people know that you have added new information on the blog
  • Using the blog as a pre-sell for your affiliate promotions

Lets deal with them one at a time starting with adding subscribers.

There are numerous ways that you can add subscribers and I probably use most of them.

  • An offer to join in your side bar
  • A slide in that is delayed
  • Light box pop when they go to leave
  • The new ribbon opt ins that you see on the bottom of some blogs

Now some of those require a plugin or to purchase a script to run they will increase the number of subscribers that you get on your list.

Now depending on your autoresponder the second item can be automated to send out an email when you add a new post or to send out a notice of new posts every so often. Aweber and Get Response will tie in directly to your RSS feed allowing you to automate this process.

Anything that I can automate to save time and keep people informed are items I love to add to my arsenal. Check with your autoresponder provider to see if they have RSS automation if you do not use one of those two. A gentle reminder like that will help to increase your traffic.

The final item though is my favorite – Pre-selling your affiliate promotions.

With tougher spam filters making email delivery tougher and tougher if you use any of a number of terms like free, money making, etc this is a perfect way to incases your delivery rates.

Put your actual promotion on your blog where you can use those terms that help you sell but can ruin your delivery rate. Send a short curiosity arousing email and link it back to your blog post.

This way your email avoids the spam box and your promotion just may end up getting indexed highly on the serps. A winner all the way around.

Be back tomorrow to talk about finding the right niche and keywords for your blog.

 

About the author

 

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Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends.

You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy.

Follow Mike on Twitter

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Reflections On 2009 and On Things Yet To Come

Dec 15

Posted by Valentina in Blogging for Money, Internet Marketing, Random Thoughts | 9 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.  Became a commenter on some of them.

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

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

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

My blog related goals for 2010 are:

1 -     Google PR3 for Blog Income Life by year end

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

One:  for the interest, learning and my roots.

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

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

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

I think the cheese will have to be shelved for 2010

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The Power of a Mastermind Group

Dec 3

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Mastermind | 8 Comments

Monday I attended my regular Monday Night Internet Marketing Master Mind Group – we really don’t have a name, I just defaulted it to this. We started just a few months ago with only a few, last Monday I venture we were easily at 45!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Blogging!

Valentina

Mastermind groups are big cheese.

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No. 2 Sucks!

Nov 28

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

The worldwide metals value hierarchy goes like this:

No. 1 = gold
No. 2 = silver
No. 3 = copper

Today, gold is trading at US$1176, silver at US$ 18.34 and copper at US$3.13. There is a chasm of a difference between number one gold and number two silver.  The same applies to the world of the internet and blog incomes.

I’m a note collector.  The notes would be better served if I also noted the source of those notes.  Recently I was going through my “ blog content” file and came across a sheet of notes.  At the top I had written “No. 2 Sucks!”

Looking at the numbers I immediately understood why.

The numbers addressed Google, but as a rule of thumb you can easily apply it to any sort of traffic driven income.  Under discussion was the income that the top ten ranked in Google would get as a percentage of total traffic for a keyword.  Number one position can expect to get 42%, number two 11.9%!  The drop off after that continues but is not as dramatic, by the time you get to number ten, you are looking at 3%.

Let’s just stay with positions one and two and ten for the time being.  Take an extremely competitive keyword phrase, but an extremely lucrative one such as internet marketing.

Daily searches:  73,647

No. 1 ranked receives 42% of traffic:  30,930
No. 2 ranked receives 11.9%  of traffic:  8,763
No. 10 ranked receives 3%  of traffic:  2,209

Here is how the potential income for the keyword phrase internet marketing looks like in rounded off numbers

No. 1  = $259K
No. 2  = $ 73K
No. 10 = $ 18K

Now granted $18K isn’t exactly chopped liver IF you can get to that page.  Considering that there are almost 7 million pages which mention “internet marketing” the jostling in the lineup starts long before page 1.

What if you have a niche market where the daily search is 217 and the total number of pages that the keyword appears on is only 40,000.  Say the total purse for your chosen keyword is only $316.00, then this is what the figures begin to look like:

No. 1  = $138
No. 2   =$37
No. 10 =$9

In both instances the biggest drop is between position no.1 and no. 2.  It’s like that in everything in life.  The brand new car driven off the show room has the biggest depreciation in value after year one.  The leading movie star gets millions, the co-star thousands.  The gold medal winner makes the money with lucrative sponsorships, the silver gets the second tier.

That reminds me of the time my accountant and I were discussing my income and tax strategies.  As an employee I had only the most basic of tax deductions available to me.  I fell into the highest income tax bracket and was crying the blues about how little of my hard earned money I got to keep.  No wonder it was tough meeting all my financial obligations, I blurted out, how can anyone live on that amount?

My accountant looked me straight in the eye, and after what seemed like an eternity of time, he broke the silence and told me that I was in the top 3% income earners of the country, of the COUNTRY!  I was aghast.  I had no idea I was in such an elevated percentage. Considering what I was making, I didn’t think that was all that impressive. I immediately asked what did the top 1% make?

“Aaah, that’s a different story” he said.  “The difference is huge.”

If you want to develop a blog income life, to drink fine wines, dine on epicurean delights, travel on exotic vacations and live in the house of your dreams, then you have to write a “different story” and leap the chasm.  Work smart, put in the time and get to position one or at the very least on page one.  That goes beyond Adsense.  The no. 1 affiliate for a product is light years ahead of no. 2.  The highest traffic generating blog asks for and gets the highest sponsored ad dollars.  Pick your battle and go win it.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina

The Big Cheese is No. 1

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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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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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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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Blog Income Life October ‘09 Report

Nov 1

Posted by Valentina in Making Money, Month in Review | No Comments

screenshot - analytics Oct 09 graph chart

screenshot - analytics Oct 09 traffic sources

October was a challenging month but so well worth it.  Visitors are up 27% over September.  Search Engines delivering 15% is decent.  Actually, I read somewhere that the ideal traffic pie would be equally divided into 33% from each source.  So that is something I am going to keep an eye on.  Clearly, more search engine traffic is needed.  Most “exotic” visitor was from Tanzania.

No income to report for this month but some important changes and the results of those changes are chronicled below.  While you may not be in the same boat, if ever you want to make “changes” to an existing  blog, my experience may be helpful:

  1. Changed  Domain Name:
    Former domain name: Blog Along With Me.
    New domain name: Blog Income Life.
    The driving force behind this was the realization that Blog Along was not a keyword optimized domain for anything other than blog, which is extremely competitive and already well entrenched in the top 10 of Google’s list.  Blog Income as the main keyword for the new domain has a fighting chance to get top positioning with Google, and by default, other search engines.
  2. Change of  Platform
    Exported from Blogger to Wordpress Direct.  The transfer was painless.  To think that I had put it off for some time literally trembling at the thought that somehow all would get lost in transit.
  3. Domain/URL Redirect:
    http://www.blogalongwithme.com     redirected to http://www.blogincomelifie.com
    This was a small tactical error.  While all the content of the original blog transferred to the new one, the hard fought for backlinks did not.   There were over 230.  For one scant moment I thought of reversing the redirects.  Chose to stay.  Chalked it up to experience. Fresh beginning.
  4. Analytics
    Forgot to add the analytics code to the new site until October 05. Consequence is that the above chart is for October 06 onwards. Wordpress Direct does gather similar statistics however they seem to include my own visits, so the accuracy is flawed.
  5. Monetization
    Banner for ABC’s free PDF installed right way.  Half way through the month added an affiliate banner.   Am still ambivalent about Adsense; still not here but have noticed that a blogger no less than Alvin Phang continues to use Adsense.  Maybe I’ll add it for November and see what happens.  More banner ads to be added.
  6. Course Purchases
    Have bought several new courses addressing blog improvement and affiliate marketing.   Will review in good time.

This has been a useful exercise.  While the transfer of the blog from one platform to another was painless it was not without its growing pains – mainly, getting familiar with Wordpress Direct, or more to the point, not all templates are created equal.  More on choice of templates in the future.

Traffic Bug is now part of my blogging tool kit.  It’s a great little program and has freed up a lot of my time.  This little bug is my introduction to automating some of  the daily tasks such as  post and article submissions to search engines and directories.  The escalated growth of backlinks is encouraging and I am confident that the number will soon catch up to and outpace the previous number.

Market Samurai is another valuable program in my tool kit.  It is invaluable for research and keeping track of marketing campaigns.   The more I use this software the more I realize its value.  Cannot recommend it highly enough – everyone, in my opinion should have it.  If you are just starting out and dollars are scarce, a ramen noodle diet for a week would be worth it to just be able to buy this program.

What are my goals for November?

-         Increase traffic by 20%+ (I’m following Darren Rowse’s formula here)

-         Get back on to earning some dollars.

-         Spend less time checking my daily stats which is so addictive now that I can see the needle move, either up or down, daily.  Maybe the novelty will wear off and I’ll do this just once a day, in the morning.

And speaking of the needle moving – it is amazing how volatile Google’s ranking/positioning can be.  I guess until you earn your stripes you are susceptible to swings that take you up or down by several hundred.  I was surprised when I checked the statistics for a competitor which had a PR of 2, and now suddenly no PR!   It could be a glitch or is this the famous Google Slap?

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money
… cheese servings were scarce this last month

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