May 17, 2012

Finding your own voice

In the spirit of the new year, I thought I would start off the year with a series post. This will be several part series on finding your own blog voice and how the A-List bloggers can teach you to find it without even knowing they are showing you. I had originally only planned on making this a single post, but as I got into it I realized in a single post this is going to be way too long.

I’ve been spending a lot of time browsing various blogs around the web. As a member of Entrecard just as a side benefit you find yourself on a lot of blogs with a lot of different types of content. These niches range from making money to personal blogs to humorous blogs as well as quite a few others. At first I considered this a waste of my time, but the longer I spend with this system the more similarities I see, but also I see a lot of differences. The main differences do not come from the content as a lot of it is good, but in the technical expertise of the various bloggers. Some bloggers are quite astute when it comes to the technical side of things such as SEO, web design, traffic generation( well sort ) and some don’t have a clue about the technical side but are very good writers. Some think they have a clue even when they don’t and this goes for both sides of the equation.

But neither of these items are the similarity I’m referring too. I’m referring to the raising of hands screaming at the A-List bloggers saying hey look at me. Some of these blogs do this so much that its hard to figure out what the blog is actually about. Some of these are quite amusing such as Not John Chow’s John Chow is Dead post I’ve been guilty of linking to some of John Chow’s or Darren Rowse’s posts in the past and I will again, but not for the point of begging either of them for attention. Did do it for the trackback link :-)

I read both these bloggers almost every day because sometimes there are some decent tips to gain knowledge about blogging. A lot of these tips come from the Guest Bloggers and not the actually author of the blog. But still you have everyone saying hey John look at me, I’m so special if you would just look and give me a link then I’ll be great just like you. One thing is certain if you want his attention then pay him $400 bucks for a review and then he will pay you some attention. You can determine this for yourself if you look at the number of paid reviews posted in the past month. The one thing I find missing from John’s blog is actual good information you can use to build your own blog. Some people say the same thing about Darren and Problogger. Of Course John does not beat around the bush in this area. After all the title of his blog is I make money by telling other people how much money I make. He never says he is going to help to teach you to make money like he makes. Sure there are tips on the blog, but not actually how he does it. John says he made 27K in November. Whether you believe him or not is up to you.

Lets look at that number a little bit. The top four money makers follows:

  • Private Ad Sales: $12,854.84
  • Affiliate Commissions: $6,579.67
  • ReviewMe: $4,400.00
  • Text Link Ads: $2,012.66If you add this up you will get $25,847.17 or the majority of his money. With the most coming from Private Ad sales, but I’ve never seen anywhere on his site information on how to attract advertisers, well not directly. The second best earner is from Affiliate commissions. I would guess a lot of the commissions come in the form of commissions from other bloggers who have signed up under John in some tiered structured payout program such as WidgetBucks or Bidvertisor. John does post Affiliate links in posts so part of this probably also comes from those links.Now I have no doubt that John is very successful at what he does and how he does it, but is it more important to act just like John or find another way to gain attention. You don’t need John’s attention you need the attention of your readers. After all if I was going to pick someone to emulate then I would copy ReadWriteWeb, I bet if John would tell you who he wanted to be like then that may be one of the sites he wished he could become like.

    Well tune in tomorrow for the next installment. You may want to subscribe so you don’t forget and miss it. Where we analyze Darren Rowse and maybe even get closer to the point of finding your own voice for your blog. For now take a look at both of the Year in Review posts from John Chow and ProBlogger. As they will help set the tone for the rest of this series. While you are at Problogger you may want to check out some of the posts about what was done to improve your blog in 2007. These are all posts from other people and there are some really great tips. My favorite is how to Improve your blog with networking but in all the entries are some great food for thought.

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    2008 Web Predictions

    ReadWrite Web has published their list of predictions for 2008. They actually did pretty good on their predictions for this year so it may make sense for anyone publishing blogs and website to pay attention. While not all their predictions came true, Google did not release a Google Operating system, but they where correct with how much RSS has grown and there have been quite a few new rich web based applications released this year. While Google did not create and release their own operating system, they did continue their move into the Rich Application arena with improvements to Gmail, and their office type apps with Google Docs.

    One thing that is predicted to happen is that Google will start to feel more pressure from other companies in the area of Search. I personally would like to see this happen as Google is becoming to much of a monopoly. Hopefully Live will be able to take some ground in search and force Google to stop beating up on the little guy as they have done lately. Microsoft has deep pockets and I fully expect them to start pushing pressure on Google in several areas. As Vista reaches more of any adoption in businesses this year, I’m sure this will help Microsoft take back some ground from Google in several areas. Microsoft has built quite a few features into the platform that while it does not force users to choose the live products, it is a lot easier to utilize the MS products than it is with products from third party companies.

    We should also start to see an increase in the number of advertisers offering contextual advertising programs. This will be really good for the small publishers as it will provide more avenues to earn revenue for your sites. Adsense is still a good choice for a lot of sites, I still use it on other of my sites, but it is not earning the same amount as it as a year ago with increased traffic. Perhaps more competition in this area will force Google to start paying a little better to its publishers. Regardless any competition in this area will help both Advertisers and publishers in their contextual advertising efforts.

    It will be very interesting to see how many of their predictions come true.

    Link Building Strategy and Blog Goals

    Linking building should be an important part of any website. Not only do links provide multiple avenues for people to find your site, they also are one of the most important factors search engines use when ranking your pages within their search engines. I’ve always worked at building links as I can but I’ve been thinking lately it would be useful to develop a strategy for building links.

    I’m a fanatical reader of DailyBlogTips and this post on Blog Goals for 2008 is what has gotten me to thinking about where I would like to see this blog go over the next year. I’m too late to win the theme that was being given away in that contest, but I already own a developer license of the theme being given away anyway so that is not a big deal. But setting goals is really a good activity for any blogger

    One area where I’m really weak in is the amount of backlinks that Google reports for this blog. Google never reports the actual number of links, but it should be showing more than I currently have showing. Yahoo is actually a better resource for determining the number of links you have to a particular site. SO one of my goals for this year is to create and follow a link building strategy. I currently submit links every chance I get in the form of Comment posts and on other sites that accept link submissions. I also utilize the social sites to help drive traffic and create backlinks. While this is effective, I’m sure I can do a better job in this area. I’ve been using Google Docs a good bit lately and this platform works out nicely to help monitor my link building. I will set up a spreadsheet and list any websites where I can obtain links. I also need to do a better job of contacting other webmaster in similar niches and request link trades. If I monitor my progress and make good choices then I should be able to build up a significant number of new avenues into this blog over the coming year.

    Another of my goals is to increase my subscriber count into the 4 digits. I’m sure this is an obtainable goal. The first step to obtaining more subscribers is to write frequent content. As long as I keep posting regularly then I’ve noticed my count continues to rise.

    Contests are also an excellent method to increase the number of subscribers to your blog. Winning the Web has an excellent post on how a contest can help your subscriber count. I will be watching the progress of this site over the coming months as he has some really good ideas on how to effectively market a blog. Another method that is effective in building of subscriber counts is to submit your feed to RSS directories people will locate your feed and some will subscribe. This practice also has the added benefit of building additional links to your content.

    My third goal is to increase my page view counts. We currently run about 50K page views per month, but I’m sure I can do better than that. I would like to see that number doubled at least in the coming year. I’m sure if I accomplish goal number 1 and 2 then this goal will take care of itself.

    I neglected this blog a little this past year as I was working on other money sites and just did not spend enough time on this site as a result my numbers for this site did not grow. I’m now changing my focus as many of my other sites are now on auto-pilot and won’t require as much care to continue to bring in traffic and revenue. This gives me more time to work on this blog which is what I will be doing. I will post at minimum of three times a week on this blog with cornerstone articles which should really help to bring in more SE traffic and to gain more subscribers.