Blog Income Life

Posts Tagged ‘blogger’

Nathan, dear boy, I love you  – honest I do.

I buy your products and visit your blog often but a recent post of yours  got my hackles up.  In your post of Feb 09 “Where 99% of Bloggers Go Wrong” you pulled no punches and pretty much told those of us who are blogging about blogging to pack it up.  The topic has been done to death and extremely well by uber bloggers who cut their chops on this subject and have entrenched themselves as experts for life.  They hold top positions and rankings with all the major search engines for just about every keyword associated with earning an online income and its not likely that any new blogger can add value or anything new to that which has already been written about in every which way except Sunday.

The “A” Listers have got it in spades and who are we to think that our humble efforts would ever see the light of day or  receive the blessings of Google and rub shoulder with the likes of Darren Rowse , Yaro Starak or John Chow – just to name a few.

Whew!  Nathan, you might be right.

That’s a lot of humble pie to eat.

But not so fast my boy.  At the risk of offending someone I admire – yes, you Nathan  here are my two cents worth, a retort if you will:

I am a “Z”Lister – no, you know what, make that a “Y” Lister (recently promoted myself).  I am a shameless hussy climbing the ladder to success and I notice that there are other aspiring bloggers blogging on blogging who are riders on the up escalator ahead of me.  I notice that they have good rankings of PR3 & PR4, and even PR5 with Alexa’s below the 100K mark.  That escalator is pretty crowded but my faves are:

Glen Alsopp of Viper Chill

Dave Doolin of Website in a Weekend

Gabe Young of Free Blog Help

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income

Caroline Middlebrook of Caroline Middlebrook

There are plenty more and they all provide some valuable info.  Granted some of the above are not exactly wet behind the ears when it comes to internet marketing, and they brandish some sharp cyber smarts, but for all intents and purposes their blogs on blogging are.

I have learned a lot from these potential usurpers to the number one spot which is not to say that I have not learned from the current reigning kings.  But here are the reasons I like to visit the “new” blogs:

1. Inspiring.
   I can relate to these dudes.  Yes, they are ahead of me but not so far that I need to genuflect at the altar of their blog.  If they can be where they are in less than 2 years, and in Gabe’s case less than half a year, glory be.
2. Timely Information.
   Yes.  I can visit the uber bloggers blogs and go through their archives for content that is relevant to where I currently am in my blogging career.  But quite honestly, that content is somewhat wilted by now.   I realize and recognize that the basic info hasn’t changed, but I like the fresh approach that the new lot is bringing to the make money online market.  They are not so far ahead that I have to dig into back issues to understand what they are talking about.
3. Fresh Perspective
   Did I mention fresh approach?  No matter how grand the symphony a young conductor can infuse it with a new richness, a new energy, show a side that the audience may not have heard in quite that way before.  I also think of the new covers being recorded by no-name artists of the Beattles classics – and you know what?  Great as the originals are, the covers are smokin’
4. Community
   No offence here but what are the chances that a fledgling like myself would ever be noticed by oh say the likes of Darren Rowse (hey I like the guy and have opted in for the membership).  Those lower down the food chain still have the luxury of being able to mingle with us babes in swaddling clothes and actually helping us – they reciprocate with visits to our sites and leave valuable comments, they private message us with helpful suggestions, they give of their time in a way that the A Listers cannot if for no other reason than that logistics just get in the way.
5. Potential Alliances
   Just like the A Listers, this new lot is active and aggressive – they have products in the pipeline, we mere PR oners do too.  Can we ride on their coattails?  You betcha!  Can we form strong strategic alliances?  Ditto.  Can we eventually look to joint venture partnerships?  You bet your sweet bippy we can!

I don’t know why the current upwardly mobile bloggers blogging about blogging  got into that saturated niche.  My guess is that they felt it isn’t so saturated after all, that they had something of value to say.  Maybe they’re just an ornery lot who look at the face of impossibility, stare it down and grapple it to the ground.  I dunno know but I thank them.

I do know why I got this market.  Actually I was visiting Caroline Middlebrook one day and noticed that she was just blogging about her experience in blogging, talking about her success and failures and things to fix and so on.  I thought that was rather brave of her – moreover I liked her online voice, felt the sincerity and thought, hey, I can do that too.  Yup!  I quickly appropriated the idea and wrote and told her so.

By blogging about blogging, or at least my trials and tribulations and ultimate small granules of success I have learned things I probably never would have otherwise.  You see, I had been trying to get into the internet marketing arena for some time (well at least two years prior) and took course upon course.  In retrospect some of those courses were damn good, but honestly, I wasn’t fully up to them.  Almost without exception the early chapters were easy (they seemed to get easier with each course) but within a short period of time the eyes would glaze over and the brain would go on strike.

I thought about that and about Caroline and came to the conclusion that blogging would be the best way to put into practice that which I know – and I felt I knew plenty after all the credit card statements supported that feeling.  So I began my blog about blogging.

By applying things I knew I found holes.  Moreover, now that I was writing something, I had to do some checking to make sure that what I was saying was indeed so.  My atrophied internet marketing muscles began to gather strength.  I have laid a foundation, one that I can now build on.  I have launched other “niche” blogs which blush, yes, do bring in some shekels, but it is this blog that I look to as my flagship.  It is this blog that makes the others possible.

From this blog I learn.  It is my practicum.  Along the way I hope that my experiences are relevant to bloggers newer than I, that my content is helpful to them.  Because of my newbie status I still speak in a language that is devoid of blogspeak although I have caught myself drifting that way occasionally.  I am still at that place of my blog career that fledglings can look at me and say “I have a chance.”  And that is all I want.  It is a right of passage – maybe we will never sit side by side with the Darrens and Yaros and John’s, but we’ll have learned a hell of a lot by trying.

Nathan, forever your admirer …………..

Valentina

Exactly two weeks today on February 12 my home town welcomes the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.  It seems only yesterday that Vancouver was awarded this singular honor and now we are in the throes of last minute everything!

This morning the radio practically crackled with all the last minute things that the city is going through.  Today the flag bearer for Canada will be announced – speculation is rife as to who that might be and why.  Listeners called in to weigh with their preferences.

With coffee firmly cradled in my hands I got to thinking … I got to thinking that there are momentous events in our lives when you just jump in and learn to swim with the tide, and other times when you need to plan everything to the minutest detail.  I think that our first day at school is just jumping in while weddings, even elopements, take some planning and of course the bigger the happy day the more details to tend to – these are the Olympics of our lives. Would I be stretching it if I said that this thinking applies to internet marketing as well?  Stay with me.

Blogging is a just jump in event.  I think it is momentous because it sets us on a new career in the world of the internet.  Sometimes we don’t even know that, it just happens.  We know of course that proper planning ups the success factor as a blogger, but really, how many people do you know who sat down day one and said, yup, gonna create me a blog, choose my niche topic, select my primary keywords, optimize my site for search engines, monetize and then sit back and enjoy an awesome blog income life?

None!

If there is a blogger out there that is pulling in the big bucks who started out that way I have neither met nor heard of him.  Most bloggers, even the superstars, began by just jumping in.  Along the way they learned to swim.

Think of it this way: as a blogger in the water your skills improve and you jump from pool to pond to bigger pond to lake to sea and finally to the ocean.  How far do you want to go out in the ocean?

At this point the landscape takes on a different perspective.  The blogger is now a full blown internet marketer and is about to launch her own product.  Just jumping in can kill you.  Takes good detailed planning – form a team, design and develop the product, beta test, form strategic alliances and joint ventures, promote, check that all engines are firing on full throttle.

LAUNCH!

Now that’s what I would call an internet Olympic event!  How do you want to participate in such an event?  As a spectator?  A supporter?  A joint venture partner?  Or do you want to be the host and throw the party?

No matter how, before the launch ever happens, you have to just jump in!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

Elaine Babauta of SweetStacks writes:

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

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

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

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

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

Wordpress, Wordpress.com & Wordpress.org
Wordpress vs Blogger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the crossroads of Crisis and Desperation entrepreneurs are born. It’s true. Tough times bring out the latent entrepreneurial spirit in all of us. Whether that spirit moves us to successful entrepreneurship is up to you. It’s akin to leading a horse to water.

I believe there are two types of entrepreneurs. There is the A type of entrepreneur, the individual who may have tried the nine to five but couldn’t stomach the stifling atmosphere. Typically this type of person has an innate restlessness, an impatience for something bigger and better and quite honestly, does not make for a good employee. Such a person has a different agenda. You see such a person in the faces of Richard Branson, Warren Buffet and Phillip Knight.

Lesser known and flying under the radar of visibility is the entrepreneur who becomes one out of necessity, or, for want of a better term, the B type of entrepreneur. These are legion and account for a significant portion of multi-millionaires – not a bad place to be financially. Faced with economic uncertainty they actively cast about for opportunities and finding them take action. Today that opportunity is writ large on the internet and the entrepreneur born is often a blogger.

Blogging for money is the easiest introduction to making money online. Everyone can write, the cost is negligible and it is a user friendly introduction to cutting your teeth in the field of Internet Marketing. In fact knowing what I now know, after having taken several internet marketing courses, were I starting in Internet Marketing today, I would definitely start with blogging.

A word of caution though, you need to do more than just publish posts on your blog. If you want to make money blogging you need to treat it as a business. There are some basics that need considering:

1. Select a niche
2. Select the blogging platform
3. Monetize your site
4. Market, market, market.

Each of these basic to the bones steps form the foundation upon which you will build your business. That is why I wrote the e.book ABC’s of Blogging for Money which you can download in PDF format for free.

Once you get the basics down pat you can expand, bit by bit and eventually become a super blogger pulling in at the very least a mid-six figure annual income.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina Bellicova
Blogger for Money

Blogging is all about getting your own cheese.

Quick Lins:
ABC’s of Blogging for Money

Happy Labor Day everyone! Last days of summer barbeques and the wearing of white. Hmmm…I will continue to wear white.

Here in Vancouver the weather has decidedly cooled from just a few weeks ago when we were melting from the heat … yes, they were scraping us off the sidewalks then! I love working from my home office which looks out on a grove of oak trees. The leaves haven’t even got a hint of rust anywhere, they are green as green can be. It won’t be long though before the squirrels start coming to gather the acorns of which there will be plenty.

I always look at Labor day which usually is a bit earlier in September (I guess September 7th is as late as it can be)as the beginning of a new year. To me this is more of a new year than January. I guess it goes back to school. We always started a new grade or “year” in September and finished in June, with the summer off for fun. I still do that now with my business. I have noticed that this is also a time when people start new things – not make resolutions like they do on New Year’s Day, but things like signing up for a course on something they’ve always wanted to learn, or sign up for a new activity like fencing or aerobics.  Corporations typically ramp up their efforts in sales and marketing to finish the year strong … statistically October and November are the most productive months of the year, both in business and personal lives.

Ok… enough of the musing already.

Found a site today that publishes blog incomes of bloggers who, well, publish their incomes publicly. I wrote last week that I was going to try and compile such a list well Jeremia Froyland has done it. I noticed that the big earners were absent, Jeremia and I had a little bit of online conversation about that and agreed that when you start pulling in the really big bucks, a la John Chow, Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak to name just a few (easily in the half mil a year league)then you stop publishing. Privacy and other things come into play. So the big guns are missing but it will be interesting to see the incomes of the current list members rise over time. Hmmmm….. gee, I’d like to be on that list soon … and then earn to the point where I will stop publishing.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money

I guess acorns are like cheese for the squirrels

Quick Links:
Jeremia Froyland

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

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

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

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money

PS… today, blogging for cheese!

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

In my last posting I set out a few goals for February one of which was to fix the Google “adsense” space on the sidebar of this blog. It appears very nicely at the end of each post, but for some reason the sidebar has given me nothing but grief. I fixed it for a nano second, or so it seems as it appeared for a while, then I went into my Adsense management section in blogger to add another one and voila! It has disappeared again! Slavishly I have followed the instructions on how to activate it- but still no joy!!! aaaaarrrggghhhh!!!

Having said that I still think that Blogger is the easier platform upon which to build your blog. It is very forgiving and does not require you to learn anything about other types of software. So, if this is going to be your first blog or if you are new to blogging, it is Blogger hands down. .

On the other hand if you are a techie type or if in real life you find yourself gravitating towards Operations rather than Sales or Customer Service, then Wordpress is your platform – it is also the platform that most professional bloggers choose. For my next blog I have decided that I will use Wordpress, not because I am blessed with a left brain nor that I am a professional blogger - I am learning on the job in public view – but because I feel I need to stretch my muscles. Remember, if it doesn’t scare you, its not much of a goal, just business as usual. If you don’t exercise your muscles, atrophy sets in. Frequent visits to the gym builds healthy muscles.

I am being asked if I have selected my next niche topic and was I successful in finding a good domain name. Yes, and Yes. I am torn between revealing it now or waiting to make a full announcement as the new blog goes live. I think I’ll defer this decision for a few more days.

Meanwhile if you are struggling between Blogger or Wordpress this may help: Blogger is free and money friendly, that is you can monetize it with Adsense and Affiliates; Wordpress has a free and paid version. The free version has limitations.

Till next time ………..

PS… sprinkled within this post are hints of the my next blog topic. See if you can find it and post in comments below:

REPLY WITH COMMENTS BELOW

OK. You are ready, able and willing to go.

“LET ME AT IT! Let me start on that blog already!” you say.

Not so fast my little chickadee. We’re almost there, patience. Success is an 80-20 rule and like Dan Lok says, the 80% is the work that goes in at the beginning, the preparation, the research. When all is done your chance of success goes up when you are ready to launch.

So let’s recap:
- niche topic: you’ve got one
- buyers/advertisers exist for this topic
- available affiliates
- keyword rich title picked for blog
- keyword domain availability checked
- decision made to purchase the keyword domain
- READY TO GO!

Not quite!

Your next step is to decide whether you want to use Blogger or Wordpress as your host. Things to consider:

BLOGGER – www.blogger.com

What’s good about Blogger:
a) Easy to set up. Everything is done for you. You just open a Blogger account, register your blog, go through the tutorial, set up your specifications and you are ready to go. All this should take no more than two hours, I know some people who have done it in half an hour!
b) No need to know HTML (that’s a whole different internet language that webmasters are whiz bang kids at, but not you and certainly not me)
c) No need to worry whether you have a c-panel or an how to use FTP
d) No need to know when to upload and when to download — yes Virginia, there is a difference!!!
e) FREE! Unlimited number of blogs.

The downside of Blogger:
a) There is a limited selection of templates.
b) Tabulated pages are not an option
c) If you have a problem and need technical support, they expect you to rely on the forum for your answers – i.e., there does not appear to be a way to be able to connect with Google staff to help you with any technical problems you may be having.
d) Changes/additions you make sometimes don’t take. As an example if you look to the right hand side of this blog, you will notice that there are two gaps. Those gaps are supposed to be carrying Google ads, but for some reason I have not been successful in having them take.

WORDPRESS: www.wordpress.com

What’s good about Wordpress:
a) looks more like a website
b) functions more like a website
c) many more templates available
d) many more options
e) professional bloggers’ choice

Downside of Wordpress:
a) Not as much of a point and click system.
b) Offers two programs – one much more like the blogger, the other (the one with many more options) requires at least a familiarity for HTML, FTP and a c-panel
c) Up to three blogs free (after that it’s a for fee usage)

Most of my blogs are on Blogger. The few that I have with Wordpress were set up for me. My recommendation is that if you are new to Internet Marketing and to blogging, then you cannot go wrong with Blogger. I would go so far as to suggest that your first few blogs are with Blogger. Look at these as your “starter” businesses. As you begin to build your IM muscles, then go further a field.

If you are an experienced Internet Marketer and have some knowledge with HTML, FTP and c-panel, then I would recommend Wordpress … you know, as Mark Burnett says: Jump In! Even if You Don’t Know How to Swim!

There are other places where you can have your blogs hosted, but the above two seem to be the industry standards.

ACTION: Open an account with either Blogger or Wordpress. Don’t go live yet.  Take the time to go over the tutorials

Quick links:
Dan Lok
Blogger

Wordpress
Recommended Reading:
Jump In! Even If You Don’t Know How to Swim! Mike Burnett of Survivor Series