Should It be Done Every Day?

Since I started this blog my aim, besides making money, was to write a post every day. I felt that this was necessary for all sorts of reasons and something I had to do.

Over the last seven to ten days I haven't been able to post something daily because of other commitments. I was slightly concerned about this.

The strange thing is that my worries have been unfounded. The blog is still getting the same amount of visitors and I'm getting the same number of clicks.

In fact, if anything, the number of hits has increased - though I suspect that this is purely because of the time of the year. January is an active time for people and their New Year resolutions about making money.

So I have broken what I considered to be the great taboo but it's virtually made no difference to this blog.

The question is: Is writing a post every day essential to success? Or perhaps even more than one post.

Personally I still feel that something should be written every day, and I hope soon to get back to this, but it does sort of show that there are a lot of myths about blogging. The 'experts' aren't always correct.

Probably when starting blogging regular posts are essential to build trust and to show that you are serious about what you are doing. Once established though, it may be preferable but not quite so necessary.

It would be interesting to know how other bloggers feel about this.

Good luck,
Mike.

How To Be Successful

So how do we make a blog or website successful?

The answer is really quite simple: fulfil a need.

Once we know the need, or niche, that we want to fill we should talk about the benefits that this will bring to our readers.

Everyone wants benefits from life whether this be financial, with relationships, spirituality, some short term solution or whatever.

Why do we want to be successful with our blogging?
Perhaps because of the benefits this will give us - financial, prestige, status etc.

Why do we want a relationship?
Perhaps because of the benefits this will give us - companionship, love, sex, children etc.

Why do we want to make money?
Perhaps because of the benefits this will give us - security, freedom, food etc.

And so it goes on in every aspect of our lives. We all have needs to be filled and the successful people are those who tell us, or infer, that they know how to fulfil these needs.

It's why 'How To' manuals and information is successful and profitable.

When I used to publish magazines I also sold 'How To' manuals on all sorts of things. These fulfilled a need - a need for answers and solutions. So they gave benefits to the readers - and made me money as well - a fair deal!

If we want to sell or promote something we should hone in on the benefits not the features.

We don't need to know, for example, that a lawnmower has a super duper new fangled engine. What we want to know is that it will benefit us by cutting our lawn in double quick time leaving the grass looking perfect - for others to admire.

The formula, therefore, to be successful with blogging or with anything else in life is:

(1) Find a need to fill.
(2) Tell others about the benefits.
(3) And be successful.

Good luck,
Mike.

Money Making Egg Scrambled

I used to make $5 now again by referring others to AdSense. I didn't make a massive amount, which is just as well, as this option has now been removed by Google.

Okay, commission structures are often altered but Google have gone one stop further and have said that:

If you're outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan, AdSense referrals will be retired.

Note that the only change is with referrals to AdSense - all other products and ads etc remain the same.

So this referral option has been taken away from us in the UK, Europe and Australasia and so on.

For those in the favoured USA etc. the commission has reverted to how things used to be:

The payout for referring a user who generates $100 with AdSense in the first 180 days will return to $100.

Now as far as this is concerned it will become more profitable for Google. Let's be truthful and say that the majority of small bloggers never reach $100 commission in 180 days - therefore less bonuses will be paid out.

And, of course, many never receive any AdSense payments, because they never reach the $100 payout figure - very profitable for Google.

But why rule out us other international bloggers completely? Like a lot of bloggers the main bulk of my traffic arrives from the USA - probably nearly 70% overall on all my blogs.

It's difficult to speculate why this has been done by Google. Perhaps it's the advertisers profiles, the volume of ads or a shift in the main targeting areas for adverts - who knows. I guess we are unlikely to get a defined reason.

All of this probably won't make a very big difference to the majority of bloggers. There is, however, still a lesson to be learned: we shouldn't put all of our money making eggs in one basket.

Instead we need to plan things so that if one source of income disappears we have other revenue to take it's place. Nothing is certain with money making on the Internet.

Never become reliant on one particular way of making money.

Good luck,
Mike.

Are Your Stats Accurate?

We all like to have some form of tracker or hits counter on our blogs but are they accurate? Well I guess they can't be as they give differing statistics.

When I first started blogging I used eXTReMe Tracking. This worked fine until I started using hit exchanges such as Blog Soldiers, Blog Mad and Blog Explosion Any hits from these sources weren't registered. I tried also running sitemeter and the hit exchange traffic was then captured.

Though I've long forgotten hit exchanges - they only give artificial, cosmetic traffic - I still have problems getting accurate figures.

On my celebrity blog my IceRocket tracker often shows nearly 1000 additional visitors to eXTReMe Tracking - but as far as Google Analytics goes, along with Alexa, they seem to reckon that the blog is getting only 100 or 200 hits a day when in reality it's attracting several thousand. I get more Google clicks than they say I have hits! My celebrity blog Alexa Ranking is therefore way adrift.

It's all a bit confusing.

Actually though I try not to get too bogged down by studying statistics. I'd rather spend my allotted blog time doing something practical that might just earn some money.

Of course it's useful to see such things as the number of visits, page reads and how many clicks there are on on the varying adverts - though not all trackers do this. MyBlogLog does and also FeedBurner has interesting stats for free.

In the end though, if you have a money making blog it's the money you make that's the important statistic. It's so easy to get sidetracked into various statistical measurements and rankings and forget what the real reason is for blogging.

Stay on track.

Good luck,
Mike.

0 to 6000 In Four Days

I've been using, what I call satellite blogs, to make money and also to attract visitors to my celebrity blog.

I actually started a new satellite blog four days ago and this has already had nearly 6000 visitors - see below (today's visitors not included).


What I mean by satellite blogs are blogs that are spin-offs from your major blog. For example, if your main blog was all about, say, General Health you could have spin-offs featuring on things to do with general health.

These could be about Influenza, Aerobics, Insomnia or absolutely any specific subject relative to health. The blogs don't necessarily have to be updated daily (though it's an advantage if you have the time to do this) but just when you have something extra to say about that particular niche.

Now the advantage of having satellite blogs is that this can keep readers longer perusing your own material.

Plus when you write a post about one of the satellite blogs subject matter, on your main blog, you can use a link to direct your traffic to the satellite blog.

When doing this make sure the satellite blog opens in a new window (i.e. use "_blank" within your link). This way readers will hopefully return to the main blog once they have seen the satellite blog.

Conversely there should also be links from the satellite blogs to the main blog.

It may look as if readers are simply circulating but they are doing more than this. Every visit you receive to any blog is an opportunity to make money. So you monetize each blog to the degree that you are happy with.

The satellite blogs themselves will also generate their own traffic.

On my latest blog I had my first referral from the Google search engine within six hours. This can be done if you use the right keywords and have reasonable content - which people want to read.

Over a period of time it's possible that a satellite blog could in fact also turn into another main blog, and could then also have it's own satellites. Using the example I initially gave - the satellite blog Influenza could have it's own satellites about the various strains of flu.

I'm not suggesting that you use general Health or Influenza as blog subject matter, by the way! The niche could be about absolutely anything.

What I don't think a lot of new bloggers realise is that the 'names' who write about money making do not necessarily make their incomes from the money making blogs they write. I see many new money making blogs flounder because of this.

To make an income I feel that you have to expand, linking all of your efforts together.

Good luck,
Mike.

Can't See The Money For The Trees

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Alternative words: surf blogosphere blog or blogs content subscription

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If you were to go for a walk in the forest there would be thousands and thousands of trees and all of them would seem to look very similar.

Occasionally you might find a tree that is of interest and one that impresses you. You might even notice it sufficiently to remember to look out for it the next time you are having a walk in the forest.

But as for most of the trees they will hardly ever warrant a second glance. And, let's face it, most of them won't even be seen because of the sheer number of trees within the forest.

Of course, you might just be lucky and walk along the right path and come across a special tree. Perhaps one that has extra special fruit, the sort that you enjoy.

There will no doubt be lots of other people around this tree also enjoying the fruit. Other people will have told them about how useful the fruit is and the word will have spread about this special tree.

You will probably tell friends and colleagues yourself about the fruit as well and will definitely make a special note to look out for the tree the next time you are in the forest.

Enjoy your walk.

Good luck,
Mike.

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And the BIG celebrity story is about Britney Spears:

Four Ways To Get 1200 Referrals

On my celeb blog I had over 111,000 unique visitors last month (December) and someone asked how I did this. The easy answer is to go on about keywords and content but I don't want to cover old ground. Instead here are a few other things I have used to get visitors.

My main referrers are the search engines but the following have contributed in a smaller way. I can't promise that they will work for you. All I can give are the stats so you can see what they produced for my celeb blog. There are no guarantees in blogging!

Mahalo.com - December 557 referrals
I suppose this is cheating in a way because it's another search engine but with a difference. In their own words:

"Mahalo is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. Our search results only include great links."

Looks like I must have some great links! With Mahalo it's also possible to make a little cash as well by creating search result pages - see their Greenhouse for info - yes Greenhouse!

Technorati - December 330 referrals.
Actually I usually get more referrals than this from Technorati. I'm sure nearly everyone will be involved with Technorati but if you aren't - join.

I had a slight fall out with them as they blacklisted Mikes Money Making Mission for quite a while, and no idea why. At last I've got it reinstated but have lost a lot of my 'authority' unfortunately - it has almost halved. Despite this I think it's necessary for bloggers to be on Technorati.

Zimbio - December 174 referrals
This doesn't work so good for MMMM but it does okay for my celeb posts. It's all quite simple: submit your blog and your posts will be entered onto appropriate wikizines if there are any - or you can start your own.

All I have ever really done with Zimbio is join and let everything take care of itself.

Wikipedia - December 138 referrals
I guess most of us use Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, for reference. What I've managed to do is get my blog listed on a couple of popular pages as a 'Reference' and an 'External Link'. These are at the foot of most Wikipedia pages and seem to produce referrals.

I'll leave the suggestions there. It's really all about trying different ways to attract traffic. Some will work and some won't - but if we don't have a go we won't get anywhere.

The above produced 1199 referrals. Now if you have a dozen such ideas, along with the power of the search engines and other bloggers' links, traffic starts to build nicely.

And, of course, referrals = making money

Good luck,
Mike.