Category Archive:
Posted by Commie B on July 14, 2011 at 10:42 pm
I’m personally not a big fan of PPC advertising online, unless you can really hone in on your audience. Facebook and LinkedIn provide you this, but the statistics leave much to be desired. With time, though, one of the big things with advertising businesses like Google Adwords, AdBrite and others is behaviour based advertising.
Whilst is may sound like behaviour based advertising is a great idea – well, it’s really a blackhole that will suck your advertising budget why. But first, for those who don’t know, let me explain what this is.
Behaviour (or behavior in the US) Based Advertising
So you’re browsing the internet and you come across something you like, or click on a certain link or ad and land on a website which may be of interest to you. A cookie gets generated and stored on your machine. Now, until you clear your browser history and delete this business or company knows you visited their site, and each time you land on a site that uses a network that these guys advertise with, you’ll see their ad – over and over again. Confused. Here’s a scenario:
You visit website X to see a product. You don’t buy it and you leave the site. Then you come land on Asifism.com, which has Google Adwords ads on it. If website X advertises with Google Adwords, you’ll see a website X ad on Asifism.com any other website that uses Google Adwords until you clear your cookies.
So, what’s the problem? Well, this may be great because marketing experts (also known as morons, sometimes) claim that it takes 3-5 times for someone to see your ad or message before they will act on it. It’s a bit like suggesting an idea to a visitor again an again until it becomes acceptable. So, if you sell a web app that may have been of interest to someone, and you float your ad to them long enough, they may just come and sign up. And this is where the problem begins.
The Problem
I’ve recently been trying out a bunch of CRM applications. I personally think MS Dynamics CRM is great, but it’s quite comprehensive and a tad bit costly, especially if you start piling up some users. So, I researched a whole bunch of these CRMs at work and decided I’ll sign up for a couple of them. But I didn’t sign up on the same machine I browsed the websites with. I signed up using another PC. Now I spend 8 hours a day doing various things on the internet and keep seeing ads for a CRM application for which I’m running on a free trial. I conveniently click on the add and end up on their website. If, after 15 days, I decide I don’t want to use their service, they’ve probably paid at least $2-3 each time I clicked on the add and got zero business out of it.
So why do businesses do it?
Probably because they don’t realise that this really is not that brilliant a marketing tactic.
I’ve received repeated mail and invites from marketing experts who’re going train you on how to use this to your benefit – don’t buy their baloney. Ultimately, as the advertiser, you can’t do much to stop me from seeing your ad once the ad network picks up that cookie and starts displaying your ad. In fact, if I am a competitor and know that you are using behaviour based advertising, well, I can run out your PPC daily allowance rather quickly.
Advertising on Facebook, for instance, is just as risky. The same person can see your ad 10 times and come visit your site 10 times and not sign up. Or, they could keep clicking on the ad and coming to your site to log-in to their account. Until these kind of, well, holes in the system can be addressed, I recommend staying away from behaviour based advertising.
Besides, PPC is not for everyone. More businesses now probably shutdown because of how much money they spend on Google Adwords than make a killing. It’s not 2001 anymore!
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Posted by Commie B on November 18, 2010 at 9:22 am
This is really a simple one – you can harness the true power of twitter by saving yourself time and NOT using it.
Really, the best you can get from Twitter is by reading this and other articles like it and not being sucked into the black hole that is Twitter. Save yourself time and do something that’s really productive.
And grow up – no body on Twitter gives a toss about what you had for breakfast, where your last meeting was or where you are now headed on the train.
Now, if you just want to feel and look important, get in touch and I’ll show you how to rack up thousands of followers. Most of Social Media is based around you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
And I won’t charge you a dime for it. I just want to expose this stuff so fewer people in my line of work bother me about this obsession with twitter.
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Posted by Commie B on June 12, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Those of you who are big social media fanatics and live in the world of one man entrepreneurs are probably well versed with social media and all the nonsensical talk that goes along with it. Until now, I had been quite patient, putting up with all the crap that we all get fed by social media experts who serious overrate their own value.
As business has taken off over the years and I’m no more flying solo, I’ve taken the time of to personally indulge in some of the ‘so called’ marketing and contact enhancing techniques that so many businesses swear by. Now I started my business in London online – I got my first client because of social media and the millions of online marketing tools out there, and for years I have been hearing these online marketing, SEO and Social Media Consultants talk shit. Frankly, now I’m a little bored of it.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a networking event in Central London. As with many networking events across this wonderfully pathetic city (see this article for more details), you’re expected to give your 40 or 60 second pitch summarizing your business and then you’re supposed to listen to 20 more people and pretend to really care. Then we had this social media and online ‘guru’ tell us about how you can and must use online marketing to enhance your presence and gain market share. He, like the many others, talked about how he had made a living doing this and why all the others should do it. Like the billions of such experts available today, he charges you a set fee to manage your social media presence initially and TRAIN you on how to do it – then you’re on your own. At this point, I didn’t say anything. I’m not one to bash technology, but I will take a shot at any salesman 7 days a week.
A few days later, on one of the business forums in London, another such online specialist had posted a message asking what complaint business owners primarily had with online media – why they struggled to manage their social media presence and campaigns. That’s a ridiculously pathetic question, and every person who sets up a business doing this get rich quick stuff needs to be shot dead. They’re a bunch of lying morons and should not be given a dime.
Now let me tell you why you should not talk to these experts. First rule of thumb is those who can’t do, teach. So if someone is willing to teach you for £1,000 how twitter and facebook work and how you should go by getting followers and fans, tell them to fuck themselves. You don’t need 1000 twitter followers to run a business, and if it was this effective having 5,000 facebook fans, this person would actually be doing real business with all these fans and followers rather than preaching how to gain a following. The same applies to general sales and marketing consultants too. Here’s how you get a good expert or consultant – ask him to generate a sale for you and take a big percentage. If he’s that good, he’ll accept. If he wants to take money to teach you so you can continue to get rich on your own, he’s an asshole, not an educator.
So, back to social media. Let me tell you a little secret about this industry – besides all the lying scammers that promote it, trying to market in social media is like a drop in the ocean. If you’re going to do this, you have to make it count. If you’re a small business with real work to do, don’t bother much with it. If you’ve got time, sure, but if you don’t leave it be.
I’ve recently setup a personal twitter account on http://twitter.com/cynicalhoot. Our corporate accounts only have under 100 followers each, and although we’ve got very little business from them, they’re there because as a business you’re judged by all this rubbish – because of all the scamming morons and the low IQ individuals who generally tend to fall for their scams. Think about it, twitter experts say you’ve got to make your posts count, you’ve got care about the people who follow you. Frankly, I don’t think most of these people have more than 3 friends in life they really care about, and if you delude yourself by thinking that 1,000 people actually care about what you say and they’re gullible enough to believe you actually care about them by following them on twitter, well, stop reading and go on wasting your life. Just because you have 1000 followers does not mean they all read what you tweet; they certainly don’t give a toss. It’s just a good way to get your ego boosted. A major part of the twitter following is you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. Follow me and I’ll follow you. Then you’ve got these morons who will literally spam twitter with posts. Well, guess what, those of us who have work to do don’t really want to read your shit. So fuck off and don’t tell me what your plans are for tonight!
Now, for all those twitter success stories. Out of the hundreds of millions of people who use twitter, there have only been a few successes. The truth is, it is really not worth the effort for most small businesses. Yes, it’s a channel you must keep open as it’s just another source that could get you business, but you’ll be much better off trying to understand a target market and go after them. If you tweet prospects, how seriously do you think they’ll actually treat you? If you disagree, good for you. Just don’t preach the social media religion to me, and don’t make it out to be what it’s not in public, or I’ll call you out.
I’ll leave LinkedIn out of this discussion. It’s actually an OK tool and as long as it doesn’t turn into an eAcademy, I’ll feel safe using it. Facebook is OK for business. Again, it’s not something you should spend your life on UNLESS you sell consumer products. If you sell B2B products, social media is just another way of getting some brand recognition, like getting your logo printed on t shirts or coffee cups. The chances of that converting to cash in the near future are slim – very slim.
So, if you really want to use social media networks to get business, research your market, find the people who need what you sell, define your unique selling points and know WHY they should buy from you, and then initiate contact with them. People always buy from people because they get something worth getting. Nobody who knows anything about twitter or facebook will buy from you just because you have thousands of fans and followers. Almost everyone who’s willing to kiss ass can accumulate followers – that doesn’t mean they’re good at running their business or doing good work. Just like talk, social media is free, so there’s way too much noise in this industry.
Ignore it and confront the liars.
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Posted by Commie B on June 27, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I’ve been on the smartphone bandwagon for years now. I bought one of the first Palm’s to hit the stores, followed by the Tungsten, followed by various versions of the Treo and I’ve now been running on a Palm Treo 500v for over a year. Over the years, my only non-palm phone has been the Sony Ericsson p990i, which wasn’t all that bad.
One of the reason’s I stuck to Palm was Palm OS, which ofcourse is now history. My biggest frustration with the Treo 500v has been it’s speed and functionality. It works like a clunky windows machine would work in the early days, which means it crashes or freezes and becomes extremely slow at times. The time to open an application is too much time for a mobile device, and of late my Palm has certainly been trying my patience.
I’m thinking about getting a replacement, but alas, there is much choice in the market and not enough experienced information out there to make a decision. The new Palm looks promising. Blackberry has always ruled the business world, but iPhone is fast catching up for both business and leisure.
As a hard-core business user, I need something that can handle all my email, wifi, web browsing and mapping needs without choking or slowing down the device. Blackberry is the unparalelled leader on the email side of things and over the years the one thing that always made me go for a Palm has been the QWERTY keyboard, which is something that Blackberry shares in common with Palm. This is possibly the only department the iPhone is lacking in.
So, the million dollar question (not quite, more like £200-£300) question is which is it, the Blackberry Curve or the iPhone 3G S. Well, both operating systems seem genuinely reliable. Blackberry is also fast developing its applet store to compete with the iPhone. The Blackberry OS also looks to work smoothly and looks great, although it’s not as flashy or as graceful as the Mac. I’d personally prefer a Windows Mobile device, and I had given some serious thought to the Sony Xperia X1, but the lack of speed in windows devices simply turns me off.
With reviews floating around, it seems pretty clear that the iPhone is the device of choice when it comes to browsing the web or using maps, or getting other apps. The only department the iPhone falls short in is the keyboard.
Here, however, is where the iPhone makes up for it. As someone who has to frequently travel on London’s dismal but loved Underground, I very much like the idea of having to carry only ONE device for my music, video and phone needs. That’s a plus, provided the battery can survive me a comfortable 10-12 hours.
I’ve also considered Google Android phones, but their limitation to T-Mobile hasn’t done much for them. The iPhone seems like it’s fast becoming the winner, but somehow that Qwerty keyboard attachment is hard to part with.
Suggestion or advice, anyone?
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Posted by Commie B on May 8, 2009 at 1:01 am
Here is something that your SEO consultant or marketing firm will never want you to know: there are 2 parts to SEO. And here’s the second part of what your marketing or SEO consultant will really not want you to know at all: most SEO consultants and marketing firms do, respectively, one half each. This is a topic I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, but since I don’t spend a whole lot of time doing SEO for any of my own websites or businesses, well, I haven’t really had the motivation to pen (or in this case, screen) the issue. Now that I’m done sorting out some of the basics that I consider more important than issues like SEO and PPC marketing for a business, I’m coming back into this rather messy affair.
I can name many of my clients who consistently spend hundreds, if not thousands of pounds and dollars every month in trying to get their SEO to work. Let’s get one thing out of the way before we have the marketing folks butt-in: SEO is not the same as PPC, so let us not confuse the two. PPC optimization, although similar in some regards to SEO, is a different line of work. There are no, per se, two parts to it on a macro level, although I think you can break up PPC into two different parts if you want to get a view from the inside out.
So, what really are the two parts of any SEO campaign? Well, let’s see…
The Technological Part
If you have a marketing firm that claims they’ve got SEO down, this is the part they are most likely not doing. I personally know firms who are spending 5 figures of Great British Pounds Sterling every month in an attempt to get their SEO up and running in addition to a GBP 20k+ Pay per Click bill, but SEO is just not working. The content may very well be right because that’s probably what their SEO provider is OKAY at (not brilliant, just OKAY), but the reason that Google or Yahoo don’t give them any importance is simply because their pristine, apparently clear and clean-cut looking design isn’t so clean when you look at the source code. It’s rampant with violations of W3C XHTML and CSS standards, javascript errors, lack or misuse of meta tags, and many more to name a few. What’s worst is that these chaps still haven’t figured out what they’re getting wrong, and it’s not all their fault.
To develop their mammoth online project, they hired a technology consulting giant like Sapient, but got a possibly unqualified employee to manage the relationship. So, in essence, the code produced is not particularly garbage, but it is something most decent developers wouldn’t feel heartache about trashing. Second, the XHTML and CSS interface was developed by an idependent party which, it seems, specializes in developing interfaces that work toward the stern purpose of being non-standard compliant. The SEO company has no clue why their magic doesn’t work and the reason why that’s happening is because they don’t fully understand the business or recognize or realize the techological or technical faults that are holding the company back.
It’s the same old issue: marketing firms become web development and web 2.0 software consulting firms, create garbage product, but sell it hard by throwing money on PPC and Out of Home Advertising (OOH) and all their client seem to think they’re doing a great job, without actually realizing that they could save a huge amount of money spent on PPC every month by simply streamlining some of the technology issues involved in SEO.
I’m not going to go into what it is that you need to do to get the technology right; at least not in this article. What I do want to do is illustrate the benefit of having the technology issue resolved. Let’s be clear on one thing: with the right age and domain length and correct coding, etc. (i.e., fullfilling the techincal requirements of SEO), you’ll certainly land yourself a higher Google PageRank than a website that foscuses solely on cosmetic appearance and writing fancy content but misses the boat on writing Google friendly code. If your competitor has done this part right and you’re relying on your good old marketing man to provide you with SEO services, when somebody does search for your keywords you will end up getting the small corner to the right that google has reserved for AdWords, where as your competitor, even if he doesn’t have the right kind of content on his website (which is valid to a search term), is getting a good 80% of the screen. Who do you reckon your potential customer will click on, someone Google thinks is providing valid content or someone Google says is paying money to ‘appear’ to provide valid content. Maybe not all clients work like that: I sure do.
The Marketing Part
Okay, this is the part where you need to not listen to your SEO consultant, who knows the technical aspects of what Google, Yahoo and MSN like to see, but has no clue about how to sell. Remember, most technical people suck at selling. They like to brief and give information, not make the effort to pretend like they care about your business and sell you their skills. Hence, that’s what you need to use them for.
I can’t stess the importance of getting this part right. As much I bash marketing firms for getting the technology part of SEO wrong, ultimately, selling lies at the heart of every business. No sale means no business, so get this right!
Here is an example of how companies get this wrong: Fix all your tags and content on each page, so that when google does list you organically, people at least land on the correct page. Not landing on the correct page means you’ll never make a conversion from visitor to customer. The first part giving yourself the ability to appear in the 80% portion of the screen of a Search Engine by getting the technical portion right. The second, is to strengthen the credbility of the visitor who trusts the judgment of the search engine to list you in their organic listings by giving the visitor what he or she is really searching for.
Once there, the content needs to be right. Don’t hire a car salesman for this unless you are selling cars. You need a short, sofisticated form of copywriting, not those long sales letters that eBook copiers and MLM scammers have used and misused and abused over the last decade.
Here is the most important thing you need to take away from this article. Don’t believe everyone you see on Google or Yahoo’s first page. Most often than not people will show up and stay there until the next crawl when the search engine realizes that a certain website has cheated. So, look for decent history when picking a provider. Also keep in mind that not all businesses that do SEO spend resources on SEO: they don’t need to. They get their business from other resources like management consulting. In fact, that’s how some of the largest contracts are signed, by consultants know nothing except for how to close a deal.
Lastly, there are very few companies out there who can do SEO and PPC right at the same time and score both on the marketing and technological front. It’s the same reason why marketing guys are horrible at using technology AND the same reason why your IT guys can’t sell for shit. Get your technical SEO person to liaise with your marketing team. That’s how you can results out of your Search Engine Optimization efforts.
Lastly, always remember this simple piece of advice: you get what you pay for and here is why: opinions are free, consultations are NOT. Which one are you looking for?
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Posted by Commie B on April 19, 2009 at 10:10 am
That’s right, I just called DMOZ, the Open Directory Project (ODP), a demon.
There was a time when I had great respect for projects like the ODP and how effectively they actually were, and although I have recently seen articles from some ODP editors / moderators defending what they do on ODP, well, I think that the DMOZ Directory is fast loosing its charm.
Yes, as per the basics of SEO, backlinks are great and very helpful. Backlinks from sites that have a high PageRank are very valuable, and better yet, in Google’s books, sites that are built with the open source or volunteer framework in mind are even better. However, there is no way that I will believe the argument that, quite frankly, a vast majority of DMOZ editors are, well, infact, rogue.
Despite how seriously some of them take their work to be, I can’t help but think that there are others who simply fob off every request they simply because they can. George Carlin would have called these chaps the likes of George Bush: monkey faced pea brained folk who project their insecurities on other users of the internet.
In all fairness, I haven’t submitted a lot of websites to DMOZ in the past 12 months, but those that I have haven’t gone through. Agreed, maybe I was sloppy with some of my submissions, but I can tell you that some of them weren’t quite as sloppy and were in full compliance with the ODP guidelines. Better yet, I don’t know how the ODP goes by qualifying people who apparently have the right to determine whether or not your website is in violation of copyrights? They’re probably not and take the play it safe approach.
Of course, ODP has other issues: some websites have 30+ listings with some very irrelevant descriptions. As with all volunteer organizations, though, the quality of work and the product diminishes, which is what we are seeing with the ODP. They don’t pay attention to standards compliance or any other criteria, just what they think may or may not comply with their guidelines, most which many of their editors probably don’t understand. I guess that’s the kind of work you get from free volunteers.
But low and behold, this is not all bad news. Back in the day, ODP was vital to get a listing on; it is not anymore. You can try, but I wouldn’t pull my hair out worrying about why some ODP editor cannot read english and figure out the relevance of a particular website to a certain category.
There are hundreds of other directories on the web: granted they are not as effective as DMOZ (and the ones that are charge money), but then you can get links from other high ranked websites too.
Yes, the internet is not fair, and probably neither is Google’s support of DMOZ. But then you’ve got to live with what’s out there, right?
Oh and this site is not listed on DMOZ. I’m not even sure what category to put it in. Anyone have any ideas?
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Posted by Commie B on April 13, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Okay, so this month I’ve finally crossed the $100 mark in Adsense earnings. It’s been a long journey, after just a little over 2 years, my earnings reached US $100, at an unusually low rate of earnings per click of $0.16.
But here is the kicker, $ 57 of this $100 I’ve earned has come in the last 6 months, and i’ve been publishing adsense ads since March 24, 2006.
So, how have the earnings gone up, and as you can see, they doubled from February to March, and I think they should be hitting $ 25 this month, at least that’s where it seems the earnings are headed.
So, how did I get here. The truth is, like many, I’d given up on earning any adsense money at all, but that I am getting some traffic, crossing 13,000 unique visitors last month, there is something I would like to share with everyone about how, at least, I’m driving traffic to the web site, of which adsense revenue is a direct result.
Content, quality of content. You have to have content that is relevant, engaging and that invites people to come back to the web site. HP QuickPlay may be the primary traffic driving factor for this site, but lately I have diversified the content, and I now get over a thousand visitors a month here looking for information on accounting certifications, or shopping cart software, or simply people who enjoy whining about London, New York, and other odd topics. In addition, I think adding Polls has been of substantial help.
Here is a tip I’ve read elsewhere: if you focus your content on high paying adsense ads, which primary include financial institution ads, insurance, loan-related ads, etc., chances are you can get paid over a dollar per click. I’ve had days with more than 30 clicks where I’ve earned all buy 90 cents, then I’ve had days where I earned over $3 with just 3 clicks, and ultimately, the high revenue is driven by the kind of content. As the content becomes more diverse, the ads diversify too, and if you make your content diverse in a certain field, the ads change accordingly.
But I’ve seen blogs that have lost quality in content with aim to getting the high paying adsense ads, and I don’t hink that’s worth it. Ultimately, even if most your traffic is from search engines, you won’t see it increase if your content is useless.
There are hundreds of ways to monetize your website, and hundreds of website that cater to monetizing your website. However, since the topic of discussion here is solely adsese, here is an article that discusses on how to increase your CTR using adsense: http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2005/03/increase-google-adsense-ctr-by-500/. It’s a well written article, that gives you rather decent guidance on how to go about placing adsense ads on your page. Ultimately, you don’t want your ads to be disruptive, because that will cost you readers, and google is working on cracking down bloggers who post ads inside posts, since you get clicks by mistake and it makes for untidy, frustrating, and a painful experience for the user.
Now, if you are interesting in trying out other things and truly developing a passive income from your website and by doing other things, well, here’s a comprehensive website for you to visit: http://www.livingoffdividends.com/2008/04/04/how-i-made-2667-in-passive-income/.
Happy blogging!
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Posted by Commie B on March 7, 2008 at 1:58 am
Lots…
Last few days I have kept pretty busy, and I think it’s going to get like that, but I’m going to work Asifism.com into my schedule too.
I’m currently setting up a new business (more information on that will come soon). I’m also in the process of working out with a franchise issuing organization to purchase an accounting/bookkeeping franchise (more information on that will follow too). In addition, I am studying for CIMA and actively working on DesignerPottery.com (http://www.designerpottery.com/blog). I need some help on this, so if this even remotely sounds like something you can help out with, please visit the blog and give me insight, feedback, or simply contact me for how you can help.
Of course, business is my priority. As part of marketing my accounting/bookkeeping consultancy, I am launching, in conjunction with VAFTA Solutions Limited (http://www.vafta.com) an accounting blog, which will start with me completing the second part of the accounting software article, where I will discuss and compare various accounting software. Consider it a QuickBooks Vs. Peachtree Vs. Sage Vs. Microsoft Office Accounting. Oh, and for the record, Sage sucks. Don’t buy it if you can avoid it. Get Quickbooks or Peachtree or Microsoft Accounting. They’re all three about 10 times better than Sage.
Basically, this new blog/section is about the following: many modern accountants/bookkeepers are able to use accounting software, but really, when you have a complex issue at hand, you always need to go back to your basic T-Accounts, i.e., the debits and the credits. I’ll start off with the basics, and as I study for CIMA, I’m also getting a refresher of all the basics. In addition, and this is probably going to be extremely productive and useful for some accountants or professionals, as I embark upon this journey to discuss accounting in hopefully an unambiguous way, unlike any other damn book (published by CIMA or Gleim or Kaplan or anyone else), I will point out the differences in the way the accounting is done under US GAAP and the way it is done under UK GAAP / IFRS. This itself is a bit of gap bridging activity for me, since almost all of my practical experience is US GAAP driven, and now I have to adjust to the IFRS. Please note that the differences arise at the basic level, and are carried through to the final stages, and there are problems if you hold a reluctant frame of mind about how the accounting needs to be done. Consistency past borders is hard to find in this profession, and that can get frustrating.
In addition, I will discuss some of the certification processes along the way. I am a member of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) in the USA, although I never really got a chance to sit for the Certified Management Accountant (CMA) exam while I was there. In the UK, CMA doesn’t mean much, but CIMA means everything for good financial & management accountants. So, I’m indulging in CIMA now, unfortunately, from the basics, and I’ll explain why when discussing the certification.
However, stay put for this new set of articles and lessons in the Accounting & Finance Category of Asifism.com. In addition, these lessons may be reproduced on http://www.vafta.com/blog, but I’m not so sure of that. If anyone is interested in writing on accounting, please be sure to email me at asif[at]asifism.com for more information.
For those of you who come here for QuickPlay. That will keep coming, as will more information regarding it that comes irrelevant. I’ve had some new problems with my HP dv2415, and I haven’t really had time to key that in, but I’ll be discussing that too. More Memoirs of the HP dv2000 series! Please, the offer for the DVB Card/Software article is still on the table, but unless people are serious about it, we won’t be spending time putting that together. Please vote on that:
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In addition, if you have hard success or failure with HP QuickPlay via Asifism.com, please let me know and leave comments on what needs to be changed.
Of course, as I get time inbetween, I’m also dying to give my cynical political insight on things like the triple victory of Hillary Clinton over Obama (in Texas, Ohio etc.). And of course, I’m dying to put down a few lines on Bush backing up McCain, and John McCain being very happy about it. Like anyone cares what George Bush thinks anymore!
Well, that’s all for now folks! Let’s get this rolling!
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Posted by Commie B on February 25, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I recently wrote a small, not so comprehensive post about how my blog went from receiving 34 hits a month to over 5,000 unique hits a month in under a year. I also mentioned that your primary goal, when making money, is NOT to get people to visit your blog and click on your pay per click ads like Adsense and make you money, but it is to provide genuinely relacant and good content with an ultimate goal to drive traffic. Once you get some of that with good relevant content, well, there are much more efficient ways than PPC advertisements to monetize your blog.
What if you got paid to blog rather than get paid if someone clicks on your PPC ads? Sounds more attractive doesn’t it. It should, because maybe, MAYBE 1% of your visitors will click on your PPC advertisements. If you were actually getting paid to blog, you would have two benefits that you wouldn’t with pay per click advertising:
1. You’re blogging on a topic or content someone wants you to blog, which means there is a market for that particular product out there, and that actually means that you’re putting useful content on your blog, thereby inviting more traffic to your blog.
2. Your making money from your blog is NOT solely dependent on pay per click advertising, which can be a nice alternative to you logging in to your adsense account 5 times a day to see whether you’ve actually made any money.
In addition to the above two benefits, your visitors will NOT be bothered by obstructive pay per click advertising banners all over the place, which will make for a more pleasant experience, possibly attracting more traffic to your blog.
I know you’re dying to know what this way of blogging for money is. The good news is you CAN make money from your blog, but the bad news is you CANNOT do it with bad content. You have to be willing to blog, and NOT just to make money. Here’s how to actually make money with your blog, or what can actually being coined as ‘blogged advertising.’
Use Smorty, a blog advertising service.
Smorty is a service connecting advertisers with bloggers. Advertisers can pay bloggers to write opinion posts with links back to the advertisers site. Smorty can tell you who’s willing to pay what. This is something you could attempt as an individual too, but unless you’re someone who gets over 20,000 unique valid and relevant hits on your blog, chances are an advertiser will turn you down. With Smorty, you don’t have to worry about that. Once your blog is approved for writing, you can make money with articles you write on your blog!
This may sound too good to be true to some of you, but it isn’t. And, quite frankly, if you’ve been relying on PPC networks to make you some extra money from your blog, this will sound like quite the pay rate! Check it out for yourself!
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Posted by Commie B on February 24, 2008 at 4:17 am
I’m aware that there are hundreds of articles out there that tell you how to blog, how to drive traffic to your blog, and how to get rich off of your blog and get an independent income. Well, that’s not what I’m going to do here.
First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who has made this site a success, whether or not you came here for HP QuickPlay, you contributed to making this a site where thousands of people come every month. Here, then, before I go on telling you how I accomplished it, is proof that the site has increased traffic on a monthly basis.
Asifism.com is a domain I bought at University some time in 2003-2004, to build some kind of a personal website. From that time, the site has taken many different faces. However, this blog was put up a year ago, and from the 34 visitors I received in February, 2007, I am now expecting the total number of vistors to cross 5,400 for this month. That’s a sharp increase, keeping in mind that this is a unique number of visitors, and is not the number of hits, which, as of this moment, are 14,598 for the month of February, 2008.
You’ve seen all the guides on the internet on how to get traffic to your blog: widgets, domain name, content, advertising, marketing, etc. etc. However, ultimately, your strongest source of traffic is going to be the major search engines: Google, Yahoo!, & Microsoft Live Search. Even your advertising and marketing, be it on forums, blogging networks, or via social bookmarking can help drive an extremely decent amount of traffic to your web site.
But the magic, the key, to getting traffic, is content. You need to have the content that people want. If you have the right content, that is written well, you’ll get listed on the search engines, and your social bookmarking will get visitors soaring onto your web site. 95% of the traffic on Asifism.com has come from search engines, and it’s not because i’ve spent time writing some fantastic articles, but because I offered something no one on the web did.
I spent many, literally hundreds of hours pulling my hair out and trying to resolve a problem that quite possibly had a solution somewhere on the internet, but it was scattered, and scattered all over the place. Before that solution disappeared, I was able to collect and put all the pieces together, and become, at some point, the only web site to offer a solution. Then, I was willing to help out. HP QuickPlay was the product that I spent hours with, and the experiences I had with my HP laptop, support, and software were so horrid, and I figured since I’ve been able to get through, I can help others with it. The idea was not to get traffic, but it worked wonders as you can see.
As traffic relevant to HP grew, I wrote another article on getting deported from the US. Again, this article did well, and immigration and deportation, always being a hot topic in the US got some hits. At one point Asifism.com was listed # 1 on google when someone searched for “US Deportation Facilities,” and people searched for that term because the beloved ICE would move people to facilities without telling friends or family of the deportee.
The social bookmarking thing is new. I have recently started to promote the web site on social bookmarks like BloggingZoom (http://www.bloggingzoom.com), Technorati (http://www.technorati.com), Delicious, Digg It (http://www.digg.com) & Mixx (http://www.mixx.com). Social Bookmarking can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your site, but you’ve got to be crafty and skillful to lure people to your content. It takes practice and time, but it’s something that most people can do.
When blogging, I think the key is to not focus on the making money part. Once you have the traffic going, you can worry about placing your adsense ads or other widgets that can help you monetize; but if you keep wondering about how you’re failing at making money, you probably won’t make it. This article: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ways-to-make-money-online-with-website/ is a wonderful tool on how to monetize your blog, but it’s phase 2.
Remember, when blogging, quality matters. If you have content that people want to read, that has continuity, people will keep coming back and possibly subscribe to your feeds. That’s key, just like any business, repeat customers do the trick! Scout the internet for what kind of articles and blogs are doing well on the web, and write content on similar things. Alternatively, you can write on something you’re good at and come across likeminded people. Remember, just one or two articles won’t do it. You have to keep plugging away, add more information, and eventually, through a social bookmark or a search engine, the right people will find you.
Concentrate on giving the information people need. That’s the most important thing when getting traffic. This isn’t a detailed article on how to conquer the internet, it’s me, in very simple terms, telling you how I got traffic to my site. If I can do it, so can you.
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