eXtra For Every Publisher

I recently got in touch with Gerard McGarry, someone I’ve quickly come to know online and respect, and he was up to sitting through my amateur interviewing process.

Check out the full interview below.
Read the rest of this entry »

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A good friend of mine, Ahmed Bilal, has put up a post on Performancing asking Google bashers to stop complaining.

I really enjoyed how direct he was, and so I thought I would share the article here:

You can’t pass a day in the blogging / SEO / make money online niche without hearing someone complain about Google. For some it’s about getting shafted by the search ranking algorithm, for others it’s a tiff over things such as the no-follow debate and paid links mess, and still others who have a deep-rooted mistrust for all things Google because of Google’s increasing influence over the web.

Here’s the hard reality - at least ONE of your top-ranked sites will eventually suffer either through a hand-job or because of some quirk in the algorithm. You WILL get screwed over by Google and your rankings WILL drop. It’s how the game goes - if you cannot control 100% of your ranking factors (and you cannot), then you are not 100% safe. There is ALWAYS a risk with Google or with any other vehicle that you depend on to earn your livelihood.

He then goes on to giving some tips on how you can avoid this eventuality, but I think he said it best in his first two paragraphs.

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Net Business Blog has a great post up entitled “Increase Your Profits Exponentially By Targeting Popular Bloggers” where they mention how Nate of Unique Blog Designs was brilliant by getting John Chow to use him for his new design.

Unique Blog Designs (UBD) landed Shoemoney as a new client. Shoemoney found out about UBD through John Chow. And Shoemoney has even more RSS subscribers than John Chow.

Shoemoney: 10,000 subscribers
John Chow: 8,000 subscribers

With these two clients, do you think UBD will have trouble getting more clients in the near future?

It has been said that Nate has already earned himself over $13,000 in client work thanks to his growing list of high profile bloggers using his designs. A very smart move, and a great article listing out the how and why of targeting popular bloggers.

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A long time ago, there was a meme circulating asking about what blogging has given, and it was primarily focused on items like cell phones and whatnot.

While I am no Darren Rowse, I have been able to purchase many things thanks to blogging, and have been given quite a few things as perks from my blogging efforts.

Here is my list of things given to me:

• a digital camera: Canon PowerShot S1 IS, 8AA rechargeable batteries and charger as well as a 512MB memory card
• a game console: Microsoft Xbox 360 Premium Bundle, and the game Kameo
• a LCD monitor: 19? Samsung SyncMaster 915N
• various Belkin iPod products and accessories
• Samson Q1U podcasting microphone

And here is a list of things I have been able to buy thanks to my Problogging job:

• two great laptops: IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T43, and MacBook Pro
• a nice glass computer desk
• a few games for the GameCube
• a wide variety of DVD Movies
• various Computer Parts (headphones, RAM, hard drive, video card)
• a small, but nice, brand new house

As you can see from this list, blogging can be very profitable, and very fun for gadget geeks, podcasters and gamers, so if someone tells you that blogging will never get you anything, please show them this list.

Also, please feel free to add your own items via comments. I always enjoy seeing what others bloggers have bought from their efforts and if you haven’t been able to buy anything yet. What are your goals with blogging? What are you hoping to one day buy using money you made online?

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There are many routes to the goal of being a problogger. To me a problogger is someone that can pay his way in the world from his efforts in blogging. Under this definition, I am a problogger. I work for Bloggy Network doing various things including blogging, though that has become less and less part of my daily job.

What I wanted to point out with this article though are some failures on the part of people that want to be probloggers.

Don’t Undervalue Your Time

One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making is that they don’t put enough value in their time. Writing articles takes time, especially if you want to create quality content. Especially, when you are going to be working for anyone else, you will want to figure out what your per hour wage is going to be. If you are doing twenty-one posts a month for twenty-one dollars, and each post takes you twenty minutes. You will be making three dollars an hour.

You can’t think of your per hour rates when you are working on building up your own blog or blogs, but you still have to find value in your time. You can’t just give all of yourself to your writing without getting something back in return.

Currently, with this site, my return on investment is traffic. If I hit certain goals in my traffic, I feel as though writing here is time well spent.

Realistic Goals

So many bloggers think that if they set up a blog that it will only take them a few months before they are earning a full time wage off their blog, and while this has happened to some people, it is the exception, not the rule. Most bloggers that get to the full time income level are able to leverage something else. Maybe they had a fair bit of celebrity, money, or a product, but there is something that set them apart from the rest of the blogosphere, but for every success, there are thousands of failures.

I have witnessed many blogs that I thought were amazing in concept, dry up and disappear only half a year later, as the writer wasn’t getting the kind of income he expected for his efforts.

You have to set realistic goals, and the only way you can do that is to research the business behind blogging, which brings me to my next point.

Lack of Research

So many bloggers throw up a site, not checking to see if there is any major competition in their niche, or how much competition they will have to fight against. Most don’t even research the blogging tools they will use. They settle on Blogger, WordPress, or Typepad. They have no idea what it takes to really make a business from blogging.

I have seen bloggers amazed at a blog that gets twenty unique visitors a day because they don’t understand how much traffic a blog needs to be successful.

Take your time, check out all the great resources online about making money from blogging. Also, making sure to listen and learn before you leap into such a huge community, will help you get off on the right foot.

Some sites I have been part of took two months to organize, research and prepare before launching the blog, and you would be amazed to see how fast and high its traffic continued to double.

Conclusion

With a little common sense, preparation, research and realistic goals, I do believe that anyone can get to the point where their blogging is making them enough income that they can live off their efforts. When it comes to blogging, it is better to do it right the first time, or else you will be lost in the noise that is your competition.

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