After a forced hiatus I’m slowly getting back into my normal routine and hopefully the new features for March should be up soon. Today I want to talk about something everybody has been asking about: my best earner.
Over the last 3 months I’ve been reading a lot of questions and even complaints in the comments about the fact I don’t “share” my biggest earner, some have even tried to claim that I’m faking my earnings in various funny ways.
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In this post we continue the series about paid reviews, it will give you no less than 12 tips on getting the most out of your reviews, whether they’re paid or not. Read the first two posts in this series before trying to grasp this one:
In the first post of this series I took John Chow’s review of my blog as a case study, my verdict was that the review was well worth the $100 I paid. After that post a lot of people were asking if it’s worth the current price - $250. Well, let’s see.
Before I you we answer this question, let me note that this article may be geared more towards those who are looking to buy reviews specifically from Chow, but outlines the same principles of buying paid reviews from any blog.
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Finding the right niche is often about finding the right audience, the audience you can connect, inspire or just feed with news and information from that topic.
Regardless of how well you’re currently doing with your own audience, expanding your potential reader base can only benefit you, delivering whatever kind of value freely to as many people as you can is they key for success, especially with blogs.
Here are 3 tools you can use to expand your potential reader base:
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I’m sure most bloggers have already heard of the “Top Commentators” plugin as it is now being widely implemented in a lot of blogs. For those who don’t know - this plugin lists the top x commentators on a blog’s homepage.
Another comment related plugin that is now being adapted by many is “The yesfollow Project“, if you integrate this one into your blog, all comments’ ref follow attributes will be switched from no to yes, which basically means comments will pass pagerank & search engine credit.
While these are allegedly beneficial plugins for both the blog author and readers, I will be using neither of them. Not because I don’t understand the importance of linkage in the blogosphere, we already discussed this and said that all blogs should refrain from using ref=”nofollow” for links, but here’s why I think comments shouldn’t be given the ref=”yesfollow” attribute:
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While instant messaging with one of the readers I was asked whether I’d prefer to have few established online earners or many small ones that would add up my income to a good sum each month.
My immediate response was “excellent question! you just gave me something to blog about”, obviously I had other posts waiting on the dashboard, but since I felt my answer to him wasn’t a satisfying one, I decided to get this one done first.
The short answer is: I prefer to have few established websites over many small earners. Below you can find 6 reasons for my preference, but remember that many more dis/advantages can be found in both sides, there is no wrong or right here as long as your actions are valid; everyone should choose their preferences according to their own needs, goals and considerations, and I chose mine.
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Regardless of your niche, your expertise or your writing quality, kicking off a blog is one of the hardest stages you’ll have to go through. Since I’m going through this myself with AlleNation, I know one of the most frustrating things about it is the fact that what I write today may not be read by the large(r) audience base I may have in 1, 3 and 6 months.
And since I’m putting much thought and time into writing articles on this blog, I figured it would be a shame that today’s article would collect dust and no traffic in the archives once it’s off the homepage.
If you’re writing long or thought-invested articles but haven’t yet gained a large reader base, you want to make sure you can refer and link to these articles later on, so they can be of-use and benefit both for you and your readers. This post is beyond using plugins and editing code, it’s about adjusting the way you write.
When you take blogging so seriously, suddenly you start relating it to almost any other aspect in life. It’s funny (and scary at some moments).
That’s what happened to me when I was listening to Green Day’s song called “Time of Your Life”. One of the sentences that I immediately related to blogging was the last line in the first verse:
“Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why
It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time”
Cheesy I know, but true, so very true. Actually, if you isolate this line from the song context and relate it to success in blogging, Green Day have just given you the best answer to the most common question bloggers ask - “How do I succeed in blogging?”
It’s midnight here and I was just going to log off and call it a night, but then I noticed Mallory’s comment, and since I know she has been coming to AlleNation for a while, I decided to do a quick brainstorm and give her (and all of you) some advice, now where in the blogosphere do you get a treatment like that? I know, now go tell your friends.
Mallory wrote:
“I would say the biggest resource I am currently lacking is time. What with working two different part-time jobs (usually 6 days a week lately), writing my own blog, plus my other business, not to mention trying to squeeze in volunteering and a social life, I don’t exactly have tons of free time lately.
I spend a majority of my “free time” working on my blog though, and I’m very dedicated to growing it. Now if I could just monetize to the point of being able to quit one of those jobs and devote more time to my own businesses…”
First off let me tell you something about business: Unlike your workplace, a business isn’t supposed to pay you first so you can have time to manage it, it’s actually the other way round - it’s when you dedicate enough time to your business that it enables you to monetize and live a boss-less life.
Now of course I’m not advising you to quit your job and rooting yourself to tweaking your online business, I’m still a student and in my most important year, often facing this problem myself, but without further ado, here are 5 things that help me beat it:
After publishing my motivational post about striving for perfection I realized I have overlooked one major obstacle that would prevent readers from actually getting motivated by it.
This obstacle is one of the biggest myths in the blogosphere and is believed to be true by most new and many mainstream bloggers. It’s the myth that not only prevents us from feeling motivated after reading a post or story, but will actually foil any chance that we will ever be motivated to do something notable with our blogs.