Gather Success

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earn Money with Affiliate Marketing

Tonight was call-in number 4 for Gather Success’ Blogger Reality Show.  Our challenge for the last week as centered around affiliate marketing, we were to promote, market, and ideally make a sale of Atomic Blogging 3.0 system.    At least one challenger had a sale.

I did not even attempt this challenge.  Last week was crazy busy with non-IM type of stuff.  So of course I did not get any points awarded.

Speaking of points,  Alvin made some good ones on how to choose your affiliates.  For the purpose of the call he used Clickbank as a good example of an affiliate directory.  Here is a step by step process on how to find a good affiliate:

1. If you don’t already have an account set up go to Clickbank.com and set one up.  It’s easy and its quick

2. To select a product click on Marketplace.  It seems that many of the challengers are in the make online income niche, which is very competitive and even though Alvin makes good money in that niche, his suggestion is that it is much easier to make money promoting affiliates that are not in the  blogging for money business.  The competition is significantly less

3. Clickbank is really good at giving statistical information on the affiliate program.  One of the statistics that Alvin likes to look at is the gravity.  Gravity tells you how popular a product is so the higher the number, the more popular or demand there is for it.  There are several factors that contribute to the popularity of an affiliate program:- collateral support such as banners, sales page and ongoing marketing  including but not restricted to emails.

   -  conversion
   -  commission

4. After selecting a program, check out the sales page and any other promotional material the affiliate publisher is offering.

5. Where do all the screenshots come from?

6. Transaction records

7. Be sure the product has testimonials

8. Get your link, button or banner and test it.

9. Try the buy button to see whether it works or not

10. Check the bottom of the page to make sure that the affiliate link is the same as your Clickbank ID.  If its not then don’t promote this product.  Go through the process with another.

From the submissions it seems that many of us have our own challenge with affiliate marketing.  How many times have you been told to promote a big ticket item because the amount of time and effort spent is  the same as for a small ticket item but the financial rewards are much greater even if you sell far less.

That might work if you already have your affiliate marketing chops down pat.  You really need to build your affiliate marketing muscles before going for the big game.  Alvin’s suggestion is to challenge yourself with small weekly goals, something like “… I am going to earn US$200 this week selling product XYZ  at $20 each…” and then set your whole campaign up for the week.  See what results you get at the end of the week.  Make small adjustments to the campaign for week 2.

Track everything.  You may hit your $200 mark the first week, maybe not.  The thing is now you have a goal and a method and as you continue to improve your marketing skills, the sales will begin to come in.  This takes practice.  As you get better you can start marketing higher priced products.

Affiliate marketing when mastered  is an easy  way to earn an online income.

You know what was so good about it?  Yes, spending time with family and friends, but the truly surprising part was that it was really invigorating to get back on the computer and get moving again.  I got a surprising amount covered.  The brain seems to think faster and I think you waste less time, because, well there is so much to make up for.  I think I’ll do that more often.

I was intrigued that one of my posts this week was not only indexed , but actually got a Google Broad position of 98 and Phrase position of 48 – OVERNIGHT! I’ve never had anything like that happen.  The post in question is This Too Shall Pass.  I think it’s the video which I embedded into the post .  Now I don’t think that any video would garner that kind of attention, but this one is really tops.  You just gotta watch it.

Summaries of articles posted since the last review

Blogger Reality Show Challenge 05/04/10
The World’s 1st Reality Show For Bloggers To Challenge Each Other Each Week To Win The Ultimate Prize To Be Alvin Phang’s Apprentice!
Sooner or later it had to happen – a Blogger Reality Show and Alvin Phang of Gather Success is the man to have put it together.  Everyone can participate.  The show starts April 30 so hop on out on over there and register.  It will be fun.

What is your Blog’s USP? 06/04/10
Do you know what your blog’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is?  What sets your blog apart from the others.  Some things to consider and apply to your blog that will have your tribe growing and following you consistently.  Read the whole blog post

This Too Shall Pass – 09/04/10
This was my first attempt at embedding a You Tube video.  I think I missed a step or something as after you click on the video it asks you to click again … but the video is so hilarious.  You really do have to watch it.  I then drew some parallels from the video to blogging.

The gloves are off.  Two of my fave bloggers Dave and Pat  seem to be duking it out in the blogosphere  or so their posts seem to suggest.  They’re both sharp dudes though and even though the titles  seem to be at polar opposites,  there is some common ground there.  Definitely a must read.

Pat Flynn -  Its Dumb Not to Dumb it Down

Dave Doolin – “Dumb it down” they say… No! I say, “Smarten it up!”

I’m not going to even give a summary – honest, just go read both posts.

Tomorrow Sunday Morn Musings returns.  Adios!

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?

How, you ask, do you network online?  Networking has spun a whole new business model –daily there are several networking events held throughout any major city at venues as diverse as the people who attend them.   For a small entrance fee and the cost of a wallet full of business cards you can attend these well orchestrated functions where it goes without saying that the reason you are there is to make connections and so is everyone else.  No need to chit chat about sports, kids or the last adventure down the Amazon.  Cut to the chase and go for the jugular:  What do you do?  What are you looking for?  How can I help you?  No fit, no worries, move on no offence taken.

But how do you do that on the internet?

There is no virtual room that you can enter, tap someone on the shoulder and exchange  URLs, contact info and other bits of   critical information about each other’s businesses.   But …  develop online  relationships you can

First off I am not a great fan of the organized network functions.  They are too frenzied for my liking.  Long before someone came up with the idea of throwing a party for no other reason than to facilitate encounters of the business kind, networking was alive and well.  Have you ever moved neighbourhoods or cities, perhaps even countries.  How did you meet your new neighbours ?  Chances are that you joined some associations,  societies, private clubs and extended and accepted invitations to social gatherings.

If you are new to internet marketing think of it as a new neighbourhood.  How might you meet others on the internet and more importantly how do you meet the right crowd?  Here are a few suggestions:

1. FORUMS:
   Search for online forums that are either complimentary to or the same interest as your own. Register for an account and start visiting.   There is usually an introduction thread going, do that.  After that just hang out a bit, read what others are saying and if you like the tone and the content, participate.  Best way is to be helpful.  When someone is looking for an answer to something and you know it, supply it, or weigh in with your opinion or suggestion.  The key is to make your responses of value. Get noticed.
2. BLOGS
   Find blogs in the same or complementary niche as yours.  Visit the blogs – some you’ll like some you won’t.  Bookmark the ones you do and make a habit of dropping in and not just reading the posts, but commenting as well.  Think of yourself as a guest and what is the role of a guest?  To enjoy oneself of course but also to add value to the host’s party.  The blog is the party. Be gracious, read the whole post and make a comment, either by complimenting the host on the article or suggesting something that may extend the value of it.
3. TWITTER
   Twitter is a great place to socialize and is perhaps the best gateway to online relationships.  Done with an end purpose in mind you can develop strong relationships with others of a similar industry or common goal.  Most people go about “meeting” people on Twitter the wrong way – they immediately start following people without any thought as to whether they should.  I mean when you think about it would you go out on the street and tap people on the shoulder to say that you are new in town and want to get to know them?  Of course not.

   Similarly with Twitter.  Ideally you should start by only following people you already know, but if you are completely new to this scene and you don’t know anyone – or at least, you don’t know that you know anyone  –  you start with a simple search.  Look for people in your profession or industry, similar hobbies or common goals.  Select no more than 10 to start with and before you follow them, visit their profile.  Do you like what you see and read?  If you do then go ahead and follow.  Be sure to log in once a day to see what your new online compradres are tweeting about.    Follow the thread.  If you like what you are reading,  stay a follower and begin to engage in the conversation, if you don’t, then simply unfollow.

4. FACEBOOK
   Similar to Twitter but different.  Matt Astifan likens it to the next step after Twitter.  Twitter is where you meet someone,  get to know a bit about them sort of like doing due diligence, and then if you decide that this is a keeper, invite them to your Facebook.  Facebook is a slower pace where you can get to know your new online friend a bit better – it’s like slow dancing vs rock or hip hop –   perhaps even give a referral or two.
5. OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS
   Twitter and Facebook are the two most popular social networks out there, but you may want to look for specialized social networks – you know, something like where all the medical doctors hang out if you’re a doctor, or a neurosurgeon  or where budding authors exchange good tips on editors, agents and publishers.

Do all of the above without expectations.  You will find that visits will be returned, tweets will be forwarded, invitations will be given.  Not only will you be joining a community of like minded people but  people who are willing to support each other’s endeavours, perhaps even signing on as affiliates and even joint venture partners in the future.

Now doesn’t that look just like offline networking?  Have you in fact been doing online networking without knowing it?  What have you done that has grown your community?  Can you suggest other ways of online networking?  Have you benefitted from online networking?  How?  Don’t be shy, post your comments below.

Timing is everything.

I’m in love

Earning an online income is not easy, it may be simple but not easy. But it is immeasurably easier if your internet marketing life is good, if timing works in your favor and if you have a love here and there to take you through the rough times.  I just had such an experience.

LIFE IS GOOD – AGAIN!
Today calm has returned to the domain of Blog Income and that makes life good but it’s been a few hair raising and tearing days.   At first annoyance, then disbelief, then as the reality began to seep in utter panic.  Allow me to walk you through the turn of events  of the last two days– perhaps my experience will help you avoid this type of pain.

When you begin to know a little bit, you become a little brave, and a little bravery can be plenty dangerous.  I refer specifically to the back office – the admin area of the blog which is where I was on Monday morning.

As mentioned before, Blog Income is going to have a complete new facelift and that is in the works, but… said I to myself, in the meantime, could I not make a small change?  One of the suggestions made by my Monday night Internet Marketing Mastermind members was that maybe I could make the font a little bigger.

As chance would have it that Monday morning I came upon a blog that tackled that very same question and the answer was very simple.  Install the TinyMCE Advanced plugin.  No problem.  I knew exactly how to install a plugin. I did.  For some reason it did not take.  For one thing the “settings” option did not show up. I pressed a button here and a button there, looked at some of the other plugins.   Came back to the new plugin, tried editing an existing post.  Nothing happened.

Went back to the blog that wrote about how to change the font in the first place and wouldn’t you know it, there was no way to contact the author!  Now that in the world of the internet is a cardinal sin.  Before logging out I pressed the view site button – nothing, blank, zero!  Hmm.  Opened another window and put the URL into the browser line.  Nothing, blank, zero …. oh yes, bottom left hand corner “done.”

Worse yet – I could no longer log into my admin!  Same blank and “done” results.

Several  times on this blog I have mentioned that my sites  are powered by Wordpress, and  supported by Wordpress Direct. (WPD).  I sent in a ticket marked “urgent” and went about doing other things on the internet.  Annoyance began to seep in.  Last week of Quarter 1 and my blog is down!  Google will come crawling and surely write up enough demerits to put me in the dog house I thought,  Alexa will demote me, traffic will meet a blank white space and never return.  This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

That night at my weekly Internet Marketing Mastermind meeting, I mentioned my dilemma to the group.  When two of the top and most savvy IM types both said “oh oh” at the same time, annoyance turned to queasiness. “Oh oh” is not a good response.  Jason offered to help by going into my c.panel but of course I could not remember  either the username or the password!  We agreed we would connect the next day

I was sure that by next day WordPress Direct would have a solution.  Next day dawned and still nothing.  Panic.  Left a message for Jason.  Resent ticket to WPD.   Acting on Dave Doolin’s suggestion,  closed shop for the day, went out enjoyed the ocean, the flowers, and the company of non internet marketing friends.   Completely cleared my mind.

Came home refreshed and resolved to rebuild the blog – with the new look.  Fortunately I have all the content.  After dinner checked with WPD , still no response.  Opened Ewen Chia’s tutorials on Wordpress and began by finding the theme I wanted to install and was at that point in  Fantastico when the next step was to press “install”.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING.
My finger was poised over the install button.  The phone rang.  It was Jason returning my call.   Told him I was ready to start rebuilding the blog and that I was just in the process of installing.

“Hold on” he said.  “What’s the name of your blog again?”

I told him.

“Works for me” he says.

“What do you mean it works for you?”  I wanted to know.

“Well my browser brings up your site”

I was astounded!  Floored!  Flabbergasted!

I checked on my own browser .

YUP!   There it was!

I told him what I was about to do.  He told me that had I gone ahead with the new installation (outside of WPD)I would have have created even more problems.  I was literally seconds away from pressing that install button, in other words, seconds away from more problems.

I sat there and thanked my lucky stars, the universe and the creator of all whom I call god.  Seconds away from screwing the whole thing up.  It’s amazing how so much of everything we do is in the timing.

Dave’s suggestion that I take the day off kept me from making further decisions and taking action in the heat of the moment.  The day grounded me.  It gave time for Jason to call me.  Equally importantly it gave the time needed for Wordpress Direct to address my problem and fix it.  But that call from Jason was the most critical of all.  Timing plays a greater role in our success than we realize and the whole day ultimately was all about timing.

I’M IN LOVE

After taking a few deep breaths I was able to collect myself.  Checked on my ticket …  there is a message from Alex:

“Valentina,

Your site went blank because you had two XML plugins (different versions) activated at the same time. The Google Sitemap XML and the karaliev’s plugins (older version) were both activated causing the error.  I upgraded the Karaliev’s plugin and everything should be working fine now.”

It hit me!  When I was going through my plugins I remember that my Google Sitemap XML was not activated.  I recall that in some recent course it was to have been activated – so I did!

It was love at first sigh of relieve!  This was not the first time that Wordpress Direct saved my bacon – err … that would be site.  They have helped me many times with this blog and the other sites I have with them.  The issues were never as big as having my site disappear and I was beginning to feel fairly confident about Wordpress, thinking that I can now put up a Wordpress site without the benefit of the heavy lifting that Wordpress Direct provide.

HUH!  Are you kidding?

Not on your patoeey!  Never!

I’m in love with Wordpress Direct.  I love Alex and Brian and Roy  and all the other support that have patiently helped me out time and time again.  They have never failed me … and when you’re in love with that good, it’s a keeper!

Oh yes, another thing.  Wordpress Direct comes preloaded with a lot of goodies.  I just found that I do not need TinyMce for font etc. – I have the kitchen sink that gives me that option. How did I find out?  There is an icon that I never pressed before… well, you know all about bravery now, it turns out that its the kitchen sink.

It’s all good.  Experience makes you stronger, even wiser but I still buy into Steve Jobs “stay hungry, stay foolish” even if foolish is sometimes all wrapped up in bravery.

In fact I was just visiting over there this morning, and was keying away my comment to his post and question What’s more important to you: Quantity, or Quality?” when my flying fingers hit the wrong key and voila!  The whole comment vanished.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Thoughts were running away and the comment was in danger of gulp! Becoming a post … which is why I decided to tackle Pat’s question here and well,  make it a post.

Pat is a master at posting thought provoking content and this was no exception.  The devil has a wicked streak of bent humor and easily bounces from seemingly complete irrelevance to “… right on, that hits the nail on the head …”  AHA moment for the reader.  So bananas to you Pat!

The question at hand quality vs quantity deals with blog content vs frequency of posting, i.e. which do you subscribe to.   Predictably most of the commenters  opted for quality which is both admirable and intuitive to our “better, inner” selves.

Pat’s own answer to this question is “It depends”

I agree with the “it depends” and have a few thoughts of my own.

#1. QUALITY
The first thought that comes to mind is that quality to some degree is subjective, particularly when it comes to writing.  What might be quality to one person may be just recycled drib drab to another.  So to some degree quality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Some might point to style, or correctness of grammar and spelling as constituting quality, yet, I have read some really good stuff on some blogs where English is definitely a struggle but the info was good, grammatical, spelling errors et al and conversely where the spelling and grammar were stellar but the content was not.   And then throw style into the mix … you want to talk subjective?

Another spread in perception of quality would be determined by the demographics of your readership.  A blog who’s readership tends to be in the 34-45 age bracket – apparently Blog Income -  may not be considered quality by say the early twenties crowd.   You can get your blog demographics from Alexa.

#2 QUANTITY
The argument for posting quantity is driven by the attract search engine traffic crowd.  The more fresh content on the blog, the more frequently the bots crawl the site, the higher the ranking, the more traffic the search engines send your way.

“Screw the search engines” said one commenter.

OK.

If you blog purely for the joy of blogging and have nary a thought of earning an online income, by all means post as the moment moves you and let the reader decide whether that is a quality post or not and worthy of a return visit to your blog.  That of course presumes that you do indeed have a reader.  An established blog hopefully does, a brand new one is just whistling Dixie.

Exceptions abound of course – Glen Allsopp at Viper Chill immediately comes to mind as he seems to break every rule in blogging:  infrequent posting, long articles, free of monetization(at least  on his Viper Chill blog – he does extraordinarily well with his online business) and that domain name certainly doesn’t scream “blogging”  but damn!  The content is to kill for and his followers boarder on being cult fanatics  and the numbers just keep growing and growing.

If on the other hand you are blogging for money then you cannot ignore the engines – they are the lifeline to your earning an online income and frequency of posting should be part of your blog income business plan.   I can tell you from experience that how often you post is how pretty the search engines will play with you.

Daily posting draws daily traffic, some of which is return and some new, but more importantly there seems to be a spill over effect.  The more new traffic that comes to your blog, the greater the chance that your return traffic also begins to gain traction.

I stop at the 2 to 3 times daily though.  There are bloggers who do that, and do so successfully but my thought here is that the post does not have the benefit of time exposure and I wonder if multiple daily posts enjoy a significant return of visitor metric.

#3 : QUALITY & QUANTITY
The perfectionist in us cries out “Both!  Both” but I can tell you, it just ain’t a gonna happen!  Even the uber bloggers who do indeed post daily, have off days … and many of them have staff!

If you are a part time blogger holding down a 9-5, posting daily may be a stretch, yet if you can do it, its the best way to get your blog off the ground.  Many new bloggers bust their keesters for the first three months to gain traffic and ranking, then scale back a bit to say 3 times a week.  At this point they have established a presence and a readership and can concentrate more on quality.

So as with the bananananananas … you need to read Pat’s post … the answer is:  IT DEPENDS!

Huh!!!

Read on:

“Don’t ignore the fries,”

Those were the words I was hearing on the phone.   My friend Nelson called me this morning and we chatted away.  He’d just returned from Hong Kong and we were doing a bit of catch up as he asked me about business.   He always does.   I told him about my progress in internet marketing.

“Has it replaced your network marketing income yet?” he wanted to know.

The answer was no and a further confession that the network marketing business wasn’t getting much attention these days, in spite of being the primary source of income for me.

He then took the time to tell me about MacDonalds, how they keep introducing new items to their menu, how they experiment with eggs and salads and coffee and even different types of burgers.

“But” he said “They don’t ignore the fries”

Meaning that the fries are a profitable staple item and they don’t fool around with them – in other words the fries always get attention at MacDonalds.

Nelson and I go back a long way – back to the days when I was still in Corporate and so was he.  He was the local big honcho for a major insurance company and I was an executive with a Fortune 50.  Often we shared the elevator on the way up to the floor of  our respective offices, down for lunch or when just calling it a day.  We became friends.

Years later we started a new Toastmaster club – one that met on Saturday mornings.  Neither of us had any toastmaster experience.  Each of us felt it was a good personal development for the coming year – and well, why would we want to join a club when we could start one?  We were told that no one would come to a toastmaster meeting on a Saturday morning.  The maverick in me was being tested.    Nelson was unflappable.  We went ahead.   Not only did they come but they came from as far away as an hour’s drive away!  Today it is one of the most successful clubs here in Vancouver and until recently it was the only toastmaster club that met on a Saturday morning in all of British Columbia.

Over  the years we each went through some good times and bad.  It is that same unflappable demeanor that took that Saturday morning club to success that helped Nelson weather some real tough challenges.   Sometimes I feel that my decision to become an internet marketer is akin to the decision to start a toastmaster club on a Saturday morning.  The probabilities of success are not exactly a given but the maverick in me is still alive and well.

Nelson is never short on advice.  I respect what he has to say.  I hope that at  times I return the favor.  He wasn’t telling me  anything I did not already know.  We joked about it.  He too likes to try out new things and told me that the penny dropped when he was filling out his tax return… the biggest contributor to his bottom line is still his insurance business.

In marketing you learn that even though you want to add a new product, a new source of revenue, you never do so at the expense of an income producing item. The only time an income contributing item is up for discussion is when the new product has replaced the income of the old one.

This is true in anything we do in business.  If your desire is to earn an online income because you want to escape the tedium of the 9-5, don’t even think of throwing in the towel and going full time without first building a strong and viable online business.   Build it up on a part time basis while being the best employee that you can be.  Block time.  Work it.  It won’t happen overnight – guaranteed – but you will begin to see increments of progress and one day there it is, an online income equal to that of your employment!

Along the way you will be making many decisions.  What affiliate products to promote.  Which ones to continue with, which ones to drop.  What marketing channels to use.  Which ones to increase, which ones to stop.  Whether to develop your own product.  How to joint venture.  As you navigate through the intricacies of business  don’t forget to ask yourself the question:  what is my french fries?

It is when your online income  equals that of your employment that you will have an enviable choice to make:  whether to stay as an employee and continue  your internet marketing on a part time basis, or to become a full blown entrepreneur.  You might surprise yourself and find that the job you hate isn’t so hateful after all.  It’s amazing how people see things differently when faced with a choice driven not by need, but by success.

But until then, don’t ignore the fries!

Well, call me a nutcase but I don’t buy into it.   For online as well as offline I like to decentralize and that’s true for my  personal as well as blog income business services.  It may mean a little more work but that’s the way I prefer it.  Centralizing in my view is surrendering unnecessary control and no, I am not a control freak (at least I don’t think so).  It’s the way my daddy brought me up and for good reason too!

This is a conversation I have had on and off for many years.  For the last few it seemed to have retired into a dormant state .  A few weeks ago it stirred, awoke and surfaced again and it just won’t go away.  I thought you might like to weigh in with your point of view on this – besides I’d love to know what your opinion on this subject is for while not exactly earth shattering it does impact every one of us in some way or another.

Central or regional management?  That has been an age old battle in the corporate world and depending on the trend, objectives of the company or the personal preference of the top man at any given time, companies have taken one route over the other suffering confusion, issues  of resentment, loyalty and trust in the transition.  It seems that when a company’s fortunes are  contracting the troops are reigned in, when fortunes  are on the rise employee empowerment becomes the modus operandi.

Centralized management may be an operative model for corporations and governments too, but I question its validity when it comes to You Inc., especially to those of us who are on the internet to earn an online income.  The issues are small, but then as you grow so will the issues.

There is a school of thought that subscribes to centralizing as much of your internet marketing as possible.  Some of the biggest names support the concept.  Bundle up as many services and buy them through one provider whenever you can.    The obvious pro for such a system is that you have everything ready in one spot, don’t have to go looking for things – they are all there under one roof, so ease of access and efficiency rule.

But I prefer to purchase my services independently rather than bundled and directly from the vendor if possible.  My father was a business man.  Historically my family have had to fly by the seat of their pants – long story but it began in 1917 in Russia when the Russian Tzar lost his country and his life, whilst my grandparents on both sides merely lost their country.   So this might be taking it to the extremes but my father often told me that how not having all the family eggs in one basket enabled them to first make a life in China then Japan eventually Australia … and then here I am, in Canada!

What I learned at my father’s knees was that one should not give up control over that which is yours.  So I come by this bullheadedness quite honestly.  At the most basic level of my blog income business I buy the following services separately:

-         DOMAINS: I use a broker, Go Daddy, even though I may be paying a bit more than if I used another broker because amongst other things, I find their services and support to be outstanding.  No Go Daddy is not the actual registrar of domains and to be honest, I,m not sure but I don’t think that you can buy domain names directly from the registrar.

-          HOSTING: I could, but don’t, have Go Daddy host my sites, instead I use Hostgator.  Hosting is their specialty and once again I have found that their support has been exceptional.  On the reverse side, I could but do not buy my domain names through Hostgator.

-          BLOG PLATFORM:  I choose to use Wordpress Direct.  This is a second layer, if you will, on Wordpress.  This appears to be contradictory to my mantra of buying direct from the service provider.  I have good reason.  For someone like myself who is not the best at tech type stuff (and not wanting to be a master of all) I like this platform because they offer full support.  They do the initial heavy lifting but I still have direct access to the back end admin area of Wordpress.  Once again I could but do not use Go Daddy as my site platform.

What if I had decided to use Go Daddy as my one stop shop for the above three services and something went wrong.   I don’t just mean that Go Daddy would go down.  An extremely successful internet marketer I know had come to some sort of an impasse with his domain broker.  The breakup was not pleasant.  Imagine the additional work he would have had to go to move his many, many sites from the domain broker’s basket   Fortunately, he subscribes to the same principles that I do.  All he needed to do was move all his domains to another broker.  The adjustments were minimal.

I have spoken with people who bought their domains through their hosting service.  The hosting service disappeared.  They had no idea how to recover their domains. Moreover it was not clear if it was the host company or themselves who were registered as the owners of the domains.  Eventually after much hair tearing they were able to find the domains and come to a happy conclusion .   In my instance, should Hostgator run into difficulties I know  that my domain names are not affected.

This is just an example.   It is obviously over simplified.  I use it to illustrate my point.

As you begin to earn more and more from your online business you will want to outsource some of the daily tasks.  What are your thoughts on this?  Would you prefer to centralize, appoint a company to handle the many aspects of your business and just deal with one person?  Or … would you rather select individuals who specialize in certain tasks and have them report to you?    Which model do you think is better suited for you?  Why?

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