Internet Babel

Please note, these are in no particular order of consequence. I think it’s hard to say that this way is better than that way for everyone because monetization can vary from site to site, service to service and blog to blog.

1. Direct Ad Sales

Even though I did say these aren’t in order… I think, if any, this can generally be considered the number 1 way to monetize not just a blog but any site with good traffic. If you have a lot of quality traffic coming from all sorts of relevant places on the web with perfectly targeted spectators; you can demand a lot of money for private advertising.

It’s this independence that makes private advertising so lucrative, giving you the following advantages:

• No middlemen.
• No rules or restrictions on your part. You place ads, wherever, whenever and however you want.
• Quality control. You decide who advertises, not someone else.

No middlemen of course means you get all the profit. You don’t have to give Google or anyone else a cut at your expense. You also get to pinpoint the advertising as if you have a lot of demand from advertisers then you really can pick and choose. It’s a luxury compared to contextual advertising which can sometimes lead to irrelevant or what you deem inappropriate ads.

2. Paid Reviews

I like the idea of reviewing a product or site for cash. You don’t really have to compromise any quality at all. You can pick and choose from your offers and do the reviews you wish to do. Tell your readers about new, quality, unknown products; sites or online services on the rise and get payed for it.

Doing paid reviews can also improve your writing style and perspective too I think. If you’re in the make money online niche and review what you consider a crappy eBook; not only do you get to flex your ability to write from your own opinion and viewpoint as apposed to copying others, you can also improve your perception of your own projects. When you review somebody Else’s site, product or service, you’re generally much more brutal as it’s not yours. As simple as that.

You don’t mind finding something wrong and blatantly pointing it out when it’s someone else.. Yet when you take a look at your own project, even if others have maybe told you that it’s rubbish, you tend to kid yourself to a degree. Which is sort of OK sometimes as believing in yourself is key to success but don’t confuse arrogance with confidence. They’re very different. I think when you constantly practice ripping other people’s stuff apart with good intent to prompt improvement, you really can start to do this more naturally with your own stuff.

A good paid review is pretty much win win.

3. Affiliate Sales

I think this method of monetization on blogs depends a lot on the niche / target audience. I think, if you’re in the make money online niche and target your content at intermediate Internet marketers then it’s a lot harder to make regular affiliate commissions because Internet marketers do what you do. Therefore, they can distinguish what’s an ad and what’s not but more importantly what’s an affiliate and what not.

Some will even go as far as to liking a product you’ve talked about and wanting to buy it but purposely avoid your link or banner and go find it directly. I know because I’ve done it and I know I can’t be the only one! It’s silly but It’s hard not to do.

If however, you’re in a more popular niche, a niche more in the public consciousness on the web, then it becomes easier because the awareness of the marketing is not raised. It becomes easier when you’re not actually writing about what you’re doing and still trying to pull it off.

Which is why the MMO niche is so hard because if you’re writing on how to make more cash from affiliates with placement and relevance and what not and are simultaneously trying to make money from the affiliates on your blog by getting the same people reading this stuff to click and buy, it’s tough. It’s almost slightly insulting lmao. In fairness though, in this niche, I think the most money is made from dead air as apposed to regular traffic. I think newbies flicking between blogs looking for products tend to get sucked in by attractive banners with attractive proposals and wild earning figures.

Monetization depends a lot on your traffic’s perception of it. But in generic terms I think these 3 methods are generally best for most blogs.

I remember hearing about Twitter when it very first came out, like when nobody was using it and just thinking… that sounds completely pointless. It just seemed bizarre to me, I mean… why not just use MSN for quick messages and chats or if you actually need to send someone a message… Email.

I ignored it forever and it’s only recently I could start to see why some people like it I suppose. It’s very quick and you don’t need 100 chat boxes open, just quick, limited updates in which you can keep to a handful of people if you like. It’s nippy. So I just decided, before I wrote this post, to sign up.

I’m not overwhealmed by it to be honest and can’t really understand why some are supposedly obsessed with it. But I’m going to use it for a little while to give it a chance, I can see the potential for marketing though. Social marketing can be lucrative but I think inevitabely gets crushed by people over-adding friends etc. then not bothering to really keep up with anyone in particular.

Anyway, check me out on Twitter here

Joel Comm, supposed, self-proclaimed AdSense guru recently released the 4th edition of his AdSense Secrets eBook series.

With this release he made a big mistake and slightly tricked people into paying for more than they had originally thought they were going to. He is selling the eBook at an impressingly cheap price of $9.95. Did you think there was no catch at that price though? Joel used a negative opt-out marketing technique which automatically had a box ticked for you to subscribe to his monthly newsletter for $29.95 a month.

Supposedly, and I haven’t seen it – the original format / layout made it very hard to spot this option given the 90’s like, vintage, super-long sales letter page with a small option you had to UNTICK to NOT subscribe to this service.

This is pretty sly marketing. Although, no doubt I’m sure Joel made a killing using this old fashioned technique which although not illegal, is very sneaky. The average user usually scrolls down fast to look for the buy it now button, if they’re convinced already that it’s worth buying. In credit to him, this is an option, not a requirement. So, as long a potential buyer did read everything carefully, they would / should of spotted it… it’s just not in most people’s nature to do so. And I’m pretty sure he knew that.

He’s now made a public apology for this ‘mistake’ and accepted it was a bad move on his part. As well as this he’s corrected the issue by clearly setting apart the two options at the bottom of the sales page. I don’t really take the apology as much though as he knew what he was doing and given how rich he is I think it was pretty sleazy to sort of trick people into paying for more than advertised.

To be honest, I’ve always thought his marketing looked sleazy. In the sense that it looks outdated and very 90’s like. Obviously his techniques, or rather, the techniques in which he employs work very well, this doesn’t justify a sleazy marketing move like this. He could of just been totally genuine and used the more modern, preferred method of an opt-in option for an EXTRA service. It shouldn’t of been ticked by default. The technique of having the box ticked by default has been used to negative effect before. Most notably by BearShare when they had the option to set their Google homepage as your default homepage ticked automatically. They had a bad reaction from it, just like anybody who has done it.

I think Joel should of anticipated people would obviously notice and it would invenvitably lead to a backlash. I’m nowhere near as experienced in this game as Joel Comm but even I wouldn’t use this outdated technique. Come on Joel, you’re better than this. I hope. I’m not going to even insult you as my readers by putting an affiliate link to his eBook in this post, buy something else

This post is really just an admiration post. A shout out to SOSFactory for their awesome designs.

I’ve known about em’ a little while and might order some stuff soon. Their design really is flawlessly stunning. Fantastic artwork with skillful Photoshop precision and coloring.

They’ve designed for some top bloggers. Most notably John Cow and Tyler Cruz.

Here’s one of my favorites:

Check out their full portfolio here and have a good browse of awe as you look at these pure class designs!

I’m actually quite a good drawer, as I was a bit obsessed with it as a kid. Like… young kid, maybe 8 – 13. I’m really good at drawing things I can see. Like, I could probably duplicate that Drunken Monkey thing above very nicely.

I just cannot draw off the top of my head. It’s like my preconception of objects, animals and people is irradiated when I actually go to draw them. I can obviously draw basic things but it just seems so hard without something in front of you to actually draw. So I really admire people like this who can just draw crazy over the top art with such accuracy in terms of scale and realism of features. Off the top. Really nice.

I can sort of design with Photoshop. I mean… not really lol, I’m very lazy with it. I can create logo text I suppose but I’ve never attempted scanning an image in, digitalizing it and then coloring it.

That’s gonna be one of my new goals for 2008 actually. To become a good sketch to Photoshop designer. It can really benefit you cost wise if you can design all your own logos. It’s just time that it takes up. But you get nice feeling of satisfaction when you create a good piece of art.

There’s some great tutorials on SOS’s site as well by the way. Although, not in the best of English, looks like the text has been freely translated. But they’re pretty clear for even a complete newbie. Check out the tutorial page here.

I know this kind of looks like a review, but it’s not lol. I was just browsing their site and felt like doing this post. So I did.

What’s Pingo?

Pingo is a service of iBasis, one of the world’s leading international long-distance carriers. The iBasis network is your assurance of superior quality and reliability—in addition to the most competitive rates out there.

Personally, I’ve never used calling cards, have no real familiarity with them or the core need for them. Other than to save a few pennies… meh, call charges aren’t something on my super high priority list. But passing that, let’s take a look at Pingo.com as a service, site and online based business as apposed to something I wouldn’t use.

Design and Feel

Pingo.com has an exceedingly fresh and simplistic stylistic feel to it. Much like Google or any big players online when you think about it. White background, well designed logo, standard links, a bit of graphic touch-up and a slogan. Gets pretty much top marks for me in terms of structure, design and feel. Captures that new-age, web 2.0 feel nicely, as well as looking and feeling up to date.

Ease of Sign up

No messing about here. In terms of sign up, Pingo has done well to keep it short and concise by getting your main info at the start. Gaining you as a user, then explaining the bulk when your inside.

I think this is just how you should have people sign up with a service site. You don’t want big paragraphs and tons of mandatory fields on a sign up page. Just enough to get by.

After you fill out the sign up form, you’ll get an email explaining how to login and use your account. Then, you can go login and start saving on calls. You also get a free $5 of call credit when you sign up. Incase you hadn’t noticed on the above picture

Ease of Use

You can get all Pingo’d up in a mere 4 steps. They’re as follows…

Key Points

• You can pre-program your phone so that there is no PIN codes
• You can speed dial up to 25 people internationally
• It cost you nothing to sign up!
• You get a free $5 credit

There are some nice little handy benefits you get from this service. But not too many.

Affiliate Program

Every Internet marketer loves a good affiliate program. Well, lets not be generic and use cliche phrases. But we can say, with assumed confidence that; a large amount of GOOD Internet marketers certainly love a good affiliate program. So, is there a super-affiliates dream built into Pingo? To be honest, I’ve never really been much of an affiliate marketer. But I have used a few.

Pingo say they’ll pay you up to $15 when you send them a customer. Now as far as I can see, there’s no minimum payment here. So theoretically up to $15 sounds good because you see $15. But will it usually be $15? Who knows. I don’t because I haven’t used the program yet! I had to bang this stomping review out for the guys over at Pingo though as I really was taking way too long, due to other stuff… you know. So I haven’t had a chance to properly use the program yet.

On the outset it all seems nice but the affiliate program is through LinkShare. Not saying there’s anything particularly wrong with that but I much prefer, if I’m going to use an in-site affiliate program at all. For the affiliate program to be… in-site, as apposed to external. It’s nice and convenient to have the program built in, all compact within the site’s well structured design and I think it’s a bit of a shame Pingo haven’t done it.

I think a lot of companies tend to go with the option of separating their affiliate program a little bit and send their affiliates off to new window land to explore the depths of a site which looks nothing like theirs, maybe just to take the load of their server in terms of displaying, potentially shed loads of stats a day. Maybe so they can save on costs and focus on the actual driving force of the company. Which is understandable.

All I know is, I won’t be using this affiliate program. Not just because it’s external but also because I don’t believe the service is appealing enough to draw tons of customers via an affiliate link.

Overview

Looking at the site. The company. The service and the product as a whole. I can’t really fault Pingo – they do a top job and seem to genuinely enjoy their service as much as their many customers do.

But it’s definitely not for me. On the business side of things, these guys are pros and they know how to present in a manor that draws customers. But in all honesty their service just does nothing for me. It’s one of those products that makes me think… ”I wouldn’t mind having that” but then again I don’t particular want it either.

Now with the use of the affiliate program, I think there’s quite a limited market for this product in the realm of social online marketing. On a mass scale of course the market for these guys is incredible and it’s a very social friendly product. But online, I would follow the intuitive gut feeling that this type of product/service makes most people subconsciously turn a blind eye because it just doesn’t offer that much.

It’s not that it’s bad or that the site is bad, it’s just that… the benefits of this service don’t seem great enough to want to make most lazy web users click on the advertisements.

Anyway, as I’ve clearly made clear as a clear crystal ball on crystal ball celeberation day, this service isn’t for me. The business and site aspects of Pingo are spot on though, so if you fancy giving their service a go – Click this link!

I was randomly browsing the most subscribed to YouTube channels last night and just thought how much cash they could make. I know a lot of them do, especially Smosh.

Well, I’m assuming Smosh do anyway. Considering the fact that their channel has had over 12 MILLION views and has a nice banner right at the top of the page linked to their site, which has AdSense on it and a dedicated store full of novelty / brand t-shirts.

Smosh have done extremely well. Especially considering, in my opinion that they’re not really very funny lol. But their new videos are very well made, I’ve only seen a couple but they originally shot to YouTube fame with the infamous Pokemon Theme Tune video (original has been taken down).

I don’t think that all the YouTube ‘celebrities’ maximize the advantages of their YouTube fame for business purposes like Smosh have though. A lot of these guys / gals could really launch some interesting stuff right off the bat, link and talk about it in a new video and receive Instant awareness.

There’s also endless possibilities for branding and novelty items galore. And you may think ‘I wouldn’t buy any of it’ just as I do. But there are plenty of people that are bizarre enough to want it. These guys could make some serious cash

If you haven’t even attempted at probing the YouTube fame factor yet. I’d advise you to give it a go. You don’t have to act like an idiot or an obsessive to be a YouTube celeb or more respectively, have a channel with a lot of subscribers. You can of course build up a huge channel based upon countless TV shows or music videos etc. but I wouldn’t advise this for business purposes as it’s only a matter of time before the copyright holders make a claim against you to get the videos taken down.

On that subject though, of the copyright claims issue. I actually had a large company recently allow me to keep videos up that I’ve uploaded. The videos are all songs from a certain, big music artist and the copyright holders made a claim but gave permission for me to keep the videos up providing that they could advertise on the video pages. All the videos have the URL of my related site in them. So I thought it was pretty cool of the company to let that fly.

I think this is much more sensible on their part as well. As apposed to taking the stand some copyright holders do which is to demand it all be taken down. Which I think is the equivalent of trying to fight a bear with a pillow. They’re absolutely and postively outnumbered on a mass scale. As soon as they take something down, someone else puts it back up. So I’m glad some monster companies are seeing that they pretty much can’t win and the smart thing to do is just to try and make revenue from it by allowing it.

I can understand copyright holders being annoyed about people ripping their content though. I would be annoyed. But, realistically, big, big shows and music artists etc. just need to accept that it’s going to happen and there’s not much they can do about it. Period. As soon as they think of a way to stop it, there’s already been 10 new ways to get it.

Back to the original discussion point. I think you should really have a go at using YouTube to your advantage. They supposedly reckon by 2010 that ‘the Internet will break’ given the excessive bandwidth use of things like YouTube and BBC’s iPlayer straining networks that can’t keep up. Apparently YouTube used as much bandwidth in 2007 as the entire Internet did in 2000! that’s pretty crazy. Plus, like Internet marketing, becoming big on YouTube is getting harder.

Unless you make a complete circus show video and fluke a few million views, it takes a lot of effort. Unless you’re extremely talented at something of course.

I’m not doing too bad with my magic channel. I was doing card magic before Internet marketing, I started at about 11. I have so far only done 17 half ass videos but still managed to get 622 subscribers so far. Note, I haven’t uploaded a video in over 6 months yet the subscribers keep coming.

Just shows if you’re good at something, you will naturally gain exposure. And I’m not being big headed lol but I know I’m good at card magic, a lot better naturally than I am at Internet marketing anyway.

You can check out my mentioned YouTube channel here.

Honestly, the best way to get a lot of subscribers that will keep coming back for more, is to upload something unique. Obviously. But when I say unique, I don’t mean you doing stupid faces, I mean like a talent. If you can sing… sing.

As it happens I can do a lot of card magic so I experimented with that. And found the subscribers to be very instant and I really should get back to growing that, as I’ve just let it dry up and never really put much effort into it. Which is silly as it’s the one thing I’m actually talented at and can challenge a lot in the field of yet I have done little with it.

Anyway, once you get the subscribers and are getting nice instant views when you upload new videos. You can even start placing AdSense ads next to your video. If you have an AdSense account you can now submit videos for consideration in your account, once/if approved, relevant AdSense ads will then be displayed. Pretty nice considering the height of statistical viewing power you can reach overtime.

There really is a lot of cash to be made on and in the name of YouTube. Exploit it’s social awareness, broad age and nationality range and do your best to use it for business advantages… it’s such a lucrative marketing tool if used in the right way.

• You can read Part 1 of How to Run a Good Competition here.

Although planning can be an important stepping stone for a good competition, nothing is more important than the execution of the competition. Obviously.

You need to make sure that you absolutely know how the competition will pan out from day 1. Otherwise, it will turn into a mess. Trust me.

You can always add prizes and twists but ultimately, know your goal and know how to get there.

Prize Value

Prizes are obviously the backbone of most competitions, whilst some competitions can run very successfully on interactive measure with communal spirit and fun becoming more interesting than the prize(s) included… very little can do that.

Big prizes usually draw big attention.

However, a good prize doesn’t have to be big in the financial sense. A lot of great prizes aren’t worth that much but are received well because they’re creative and/or useful to the people hoping to win.

An example of this is my logo competition. I gave away 3 free logos from LogoSamurai.com summing up a total value of $111. Which, relatively speaking, isn’t a big total prize amount value. Especially considering it was 3 winners therefore the value to each winner was only $37.

Despite the small financial value of the prizes, this competition still generated a lot of interest. Now, I did buy a John Cow review for this so it had good exposure but a competition still needs to be good enough to stand by itself once the buzz of any exposure has worn off. This competition did that and gathered a lot of interest and backlinks. It has been by far the biggest subscriber increase of this blog so far.

Now, another competition that I did in which I gave away 5 years of free hostingtotaling $514.25, which is over 5 times as much financial wise… didn’t generate as much natural buzz or withold the exposure given as well. I did give this competition more exposure yet the interest was slow and small in comparison to the logo competition.

The reason of course is because a brand new logo is an exciting prize. Even if the logo isn’t worth that much as long as it’s well designed… that’s a nice thing to win but free hosting… meh. I can see the mistake on my part looking back as hosting is quite a boring prize and despite the much bigger financial value, I can see why it wasn’t as successful as the logo giveaway.

So, the moral of the story is – give away exciting prizes. No matter how much the prize is worth, make sure it’s worth something to the entrants in terms of excitement. Give away prizes that you would like to win, not prizes you think will draw the big guns because they’re worth a lot. Of course if you can combine the both and give away a super exciting prize that’s also worth a lot… that’s win win and is really what you should aim for. But not everybody has the funds to splash out on big prizes, this is where sponsors come into play.

Getting Sponsors

When it comes to getting good sponsors, some bloggers / Internet marketers seem to assume it’s only the big boys with big contacts that can achieve it. Don’t be under any illusions, there’s no big secret to getting sponsors. If they don’t come to you, go to them. That’s the only rule you need to remember.

Now I know you may think that sponsors will only sponsor big traffic blogs that give huge exposure as only then isit worth it to them to give away something big for free. Not true. A lot of sponsors will sponsor small to medium size blogs as well purely for more brand awareness within a niche.

Even if you ‘only’ have 100 – 300 subscribers, don’t be scared to reach for the sky when it comes to trying to get sponsors. All you can do is ask and all they can do is say no. That’s the very very worst that can happen, so what’s the reasoning for NOT trying?

Of course the reason most don’t get sponsored is because they don’t ask. People like Shoemoney will obviously get floods loads of sponsors contacting him when he announces a competition as he has… 15,000 + subscribers and can give a lot of exposure in return for a prize. If however your not as big as Shoemoney or even close then you’ll most likely need to go after the sponsors as apposed to them coming to you.

Many people approach sponsors, some get them and some don’t. It’s all down to the way you approach asking a company to sponsor you. I find the best way is to keep in mind that it needs to be win win. Don’t just outline that you’re running a competition and you need prizes, put yourself in their position. Would you sponsor a competition if it offered you nothing in return? Try to reason and give them as many reasons to WANT to sponsor you as possible. Giving a company money would obviously defeat the point of them sponsoring you as you could buy their product(s) yourself anyway. You can often convince companies that the only incentive they need is to help you out and in return they will get free exposure and more brand awareness.

Approach big companies, ironically, in my opinion; they’re more likely to offer you something as they have huge advertising budgets anyway so any free exposure they can get they’re happy with, even if it is relatively small. You could also argue small companies would have more incentive as they need more exposure all the time to reach a certain level so surely they would want it more. Either way; go after big and small companies, just make sure you give them good reason to want to sponsor you and get to the point. Don’t tip toe around asking. Just ask. Straight up.

Gaining Exposure

So, you’ve planned everything out. You know how it’s all going to go down, you’ve managed to get some sponsors… now what.

Running the competition and how you promote it is very important.

First, inform your readers. In anyway possible, about your competition. Don’t be afraid to email them, if they’re subscribed. But don’t be annoying, some people don’t like emails about things like this, I know it annoys me. But most will happily read and participate.

Promotion is a very important thing. Get it right and your competition could explode, get it a little bit wrong and it could die on it’s ass. That’s not set in stone mind you, you can ‘mess up’ the promotion and still have a successful competition. Given that it’s easy to enter and you have good prizes, most people will happily jump at the opportunity just to not miss out.

So how do you promote. What methods of advertising are best. Well, I’ve found niche related reviews are by far the best option when it comes to promoting a competition. Still do all the boring free promotion such as; mentioning it in forums, telling MSN buddies, social networking shout outs and so on. All these methods can certainly help but not on a huge scale.

When it comes to paid exposure though, I would definitely recommend buying a review for your comp. There are plenty of blogs out there and you should pick the right one according to the theme and prize content. For example; I have previously given away a copy of Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and for this I bought a review on an SEO blog. It’s just more likely to get good interest since it’s absolutely related. In terms of general Internet marketing blogs though – I would 100% recommend buying a review from TylerCruz.com. Tyler’s reviews are by far the best value at the moment, at least in the medium-big sized blog arena. Alternatively or additionally you could go all out with a John Chow review. His reviews are infamous for creating buzz and you will definitely get what you pay for, but it will set you back $500.

As well as reviews you should also leverage the potential exposure on your own blog. Even place an advertisement specifically for the competition somewhere on your blog.

To sum up the exposure / advertising section, here’s an entire list of methods you can employ and the best options in my opinion for getting exposure for your contest…

Forums

• Mention your contest on related forums, don’t overkill it but maybe make a small post if the forum will allow it.
• Put the contest link in your forum signature and make tons of helpful and insightful posts on big, related forums.
• Mention your contest on forums specifically dedicated to talking about contests etc.

Your Own Blog

• Obviously make a post about the competition on your own blog.
• Place specific advertisements about the competition around the place.
• Mention the competition whenever possible.
• Post regular updates about the competition when appropriate, don’t overdue it. Keep regular quality posts going to keep new subscribers hooked but whenever you need to, make big competition update posts.

Social networking and Chat

• Send a message to all your friends on MySpace, Facebook etc.
• Tell all your Internet marketing buddies on MSN, Yahoo and so on.

Paid Exposure / Advertising

• Buy paid review(s) within your niche, either buy 1 or a few reviews on massive blogs or experiment by spreading a budget across some number of smaller blogs.
• Purchase a few cheap advertising spots. Possibly a few 125 x 125 spots for some added awareness.
• If you’re feeling flexible, try testing a PR release on PRWeb.com

I’m sure there are plenty more ways to expose your competition to the masses, just be creative.

Well, that sums up part 2. Stay tuned for part 3 soon

This is actually quite an interesting little review.

We all love useful plugins and this plugin actually is useful.

What isit and What Does it do?

This plugin does what the name suggests. It allows you to lookup domains, as in – it allows you to search all the main domain name registrars for a domain name whilst simultaneously surfing.

Now, you may think, why is that so amazing since you could just go to the registrars site and search. Well, frankly speaking, the plugin saves you time. You could literally be on a webpage and spot some text that you think would make a good domain name. Now, all you have to do is highlight that text and hit the keyboard shortcut which is (CTRL + SHIFT + D by default). Alternatively, you can right click for the contextual menu and hit “Domain Lookup for…”.

As you can see by the following ‘How to’ video made by the plugins’ creator Richard Kershaw, it’s extremely easy to use:

You can download the plugin here as well as reading a self-written detailed write up of what the plugin does. But, you really don’t need to know much more! It’s that simple, I’ve just explained what it is and why it’s good. Now download it!

I think we could use more coders making handy little plugins like this one. They’re especially good for FF lovers who love the little gadgety type plugins.

If you don’t give your readers unique content, you should quit right now. No one needs to read your rehashed crap.

Sorry for the blunt introduction. Anyways, I’m Jason Pereira – I blog at The University Kid (subscribe to my feed! ) and also am starting up Blog Premiere as a blogging forum for all. Make sure you join if you haven’t

Anyways, Nick is busy today so he asked me to fill in.

This has probably been repeated thousands of times, but ironically it’s the very same advice I’m giving you now – if you are not unique in your ways, and you are running a blog, give up now.

Seriously. There are enough John Chow clones around… we don’t need another one. I’ve noticed the standard of blog posts in the blogosphere decreasing steadily over the last few weeks – in fact, I used to do a “Best Posts Of The Week” section on my blog but stopped because, well… I couldn’t find enough posts.

It is time for blogging to go back to what it was when it started out… a way for people to express themselves personally over the Internet. Your thoughts, your views, your experiences – not anyone else’s. Your opinion. In blogging, you are allowed to be selfish – remember, it is your blog, and if people don’t like it, all they have to do is not come back. Obviously if you want to build a following and earn some revenue, you will be considerate towards your readers, but remember – no one else should dictate your actions. Yes, they may influence it, but in the end it is you that will make the decisions.

There is nothing wrong with taking the last post that John Chow, Shoemoney, Problogger etc wrote about, and talking about it on your blog – especially if the post was a good one. However, you have to add your opinion, otherwise your blog moves from being a personal journal online to becoming a regurgitation of others posts. Although you may not like to hear this, should you follow the above and not add your own opinion, you are no different from the thousands of scummy spam blogs out there with scraped content – the only difference is that you’re taking the time to rewrite the post before publishing it.

This post is mainly talking about blogging, but it relates to Internet marketing in general – if you have an idea, take it and run with it. No matter how crazy it may seem… you will never know until you try, and if you put off trying for too long, it may be too late. Honestly – some of the biggest projects I have run have been ideas that I had not idea whether they would work or not, as I was an unheard of person in the industry… I preferred to go ahead with them, just for the fun of it and they have turned out rather well (like my blog, for instance). My latest project, for example the blogging magazine – others would have said that there is no way in hell that a sixteen year old with little experience of running an online business will be able to pull it off – I’m delusional enough to think that it just might work.

Ultimately, no matter how insane a project may sound, as long as you don’t spend thousands on it, all it’s costing you is time… and I have a lot of it. Working on projects can also give you experience that you can use in other areas, for example I spent a day working on a “One Dollar eBook” that I wanted to sell a million copies off, to become a millionaire – a couple days later, I realised that it was a silly idea, however I now had a product I could give away for contests, get people to sign-up to my list, promote my own websites… waste of time? I think not.

Nick is the same, as you’ll see with a new project he’ll be launching – there is tonnes of competition, but if you have the belief (and I know he does) you can pull it off. I’m not sure if he’s spoken about it on here but I presume he will when it launches, so stay tuned

Anyways, thanks for letting me guest post here, and check out the links at the top – my blog, the blogging magazine forum and make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed. Laters!