Full Time Blogger - Looking to make a living online!

Anybody that follows what I’ve been upto recently will be familiar with David Allen’s Book - Getting Things Done.

I’ve been a bit lapse recently but seem to be getting somewhere with it now. I need to put a bit more of a concerned effort in. I think I’ve motivated my other half to give David Allen’s technique a go as well having watched David Allen’s Google Techtalk:

Interestingly one of the things David says really early on is that the older you are the more likely you are to want to use the whole system, the younger you are the more like you are to just the tips and tricks… Either way it’s a system I’m going to do my damnedest to adopt in one form or another!!!Some further reading on this:

• I quite enjoyed 96iantSteps 10 minute GTD Crash Course, this almost borders on the crash course I gave my wife on the subject last month!
• If like me your ToDo lists have really only referred to the here and now, with things that are current and need addressing at least in the next week or so you’ll really benefit from doing this kind of “collection” or “RAM” Dump.
• Inbox Zero was how I found out about GTD, after introducing a colleague to Inbox Zero he trundled off to find David Allen and couldn’t recommend the book more highly. You can actually see how much less stressed he is!
  • Read how Chris Brogan tamed his inbox.
  • You may find (if you use Gmail and Firefox) the GTDInbox extension useful.
• If you find yourself struggling to adapt to a failing GTD system which you’ve implemented, you may want to Reboot Your GTD System. The problem may not actually be the system it may be it’s owner! (that’s you!)
• Not so much the GTD System, more a case of what can you use to get things done: Michael Gray delves into the tools that he uses.

My question to you - how do you get things done - if you had to give somebody one top tip to get through days and their work life easier - what would it be?

Knowing your Readers, is so, so important…. As I said in my last post you should consider all of your website readers/subscribers to be clients of yours. If clients don’t get what they want they go elsewhere!

I recently made a guest post for Easy Wordpress along similar lines where I said:

Of course you know who reads your blog - it’s:

• 22 people in Google Reader,
• 32 people using Firefox Live Bookmarks,
• 90 people on Technorati,
• and another 30 get it delivered on Feedburner email…

I’ll ask the question again… Do you know WHO reads your blog?
The answer is probably no, unless they comment regularly.

I genuinely believe this, most people won’t know who is reading their site - they’ll just be a bunch of statistics - but are they the right statistics?

Do you know if they keep coming back because they enjoy what you write, or because they’ve accidently set your blog as their homepage?

But getting them to talk and interact is a whole different ball game, as I said in my post - you need to make it easy for them to comment and make it worthwhile as well!

Misti @ Pureblogging recognises this as well, and gives some excellent methods for getting to know your readers. Starting with just asking them!!

A worthwhile read about getting to know your readers!

I’ve been out of the blogging loop for while, with moving house, decorating and the like. The only blogging I’ve really done in recent weeks is for one of my niche blogs that has a seasonal feel to it for most of the year.

So I’m back and I thought I’d have a dig through my Google Reader, I have 640 starred items (and 1000+ unread items) in there, dating back as far as May 2007! I’m currently debating whether I should just share an RSS feed of things that I star or share - whether I should just unstar the lot, or whether I should start to have some themed posts around some of them.

What would you do? Unless anyone gives me a better idea expect to see some really “linky” posts in the near future across all of my blogs!!!

If you follow my personal blog, you’ll be aware that I’ve been keen to get a plugin that will allow me to insert Flickr photo’s to my blog posts, this all started when I read Skellie’s guide to using Incredible Flickr Images using images licensed under the Creative Commons license.

photo credit: NUCO

I wasn’t the only one and there were some half solutions around in the form of:

• J @ The Glass is Too Big’s prototype.
• EmoRate’s Photo Comment Tool.

Then Michael posted about Photo Dropper, it’s a fantastic tool that does exactly what I need.

For example, let’s have a look for elephants:

photo credit: exfordy

And a fox using a computer:

photo credit: Rob Lee

See, it’s great - that all took 2 - 3 seconds.

But Wait!

ProPhotographer posted a comment on Anne’s blog (where we’ve been discussing the plugin), about how this plugin could spell a whole host of trouble for Wordpress publishers who are less aware!

If you are using this plugin, you should make yourself aware of a few things in ProPhotographer’s post, because you’ll have no comeback on the plugin if you get into any copyright trouble - their disclaimer covers them.

I’d do a couple of things: Check the box that says you’re going to use the images commercially, because I agree with ProPhotographer - if you’ve got any ads on your site - that’s possibly commercial! ProPhotographer doesn’t say it explicitly but avoid: Street photography where the models will not have signed release forms. Trademarks and Logo’s. Pictures of People.

photo credit: laihiu

Is your blog commercial?

If it’s running adverts it could probably be described as commercial in my opinion at least, but ProPhotogapher does point out that:

That said, magazines are classed in the stock world as “Editiorial use” and you don’t need releases for editorial (supporting articles) use. Most blog images just illustrate the concept or message behind the post (like the ones I have inserted) so even though I have ads running - the posts are actually editorial comment.

The problem will come on those blogs specifically designed to sell something. A lot of webmasters are using Wordpress nowadays as its easier to get to grips with, and get a site up and running, than learning HTML from scratch. On these sites the choice of image will be crucial. Like I suggested; a site selling ringtomnes and featuring an unreleased image of a recognisable teenager on a phone would be hard pressed to say the image is not endorsing their product.

The big bottom line is:

If you use an image in a commercial context featuring a person, or a piece of property that needs a release for commercial use and you don’t have one then you’re a law-suit waiting to happen.

Remember that people!!

Why you should think about Affiliate Marketing!

I personally have always believed in affiliate marketing and one of the market leaders Yaro was the reason I started this blog. It’s been a quiet launch - soft if you like, and you’ll have noticed down the side (at the moment at least - if you’re reading this in a couple of months time the theme may have changed!), we’ve got a bit of Adsense. However a post by Sugarrae (The Lazy SEO Vs. The Lazy Monetizer) made me think about this some more…….

Sugarrae classifies some sites as being on “website welfare” where:

Google will give you a handout for sitting on your ass and not working to monetize the site yourself.

Photo: luismi1985

I run several types of site, I’ve tried to classify them here:

1. Company
   One site is a fully fledged company in its own right. I wouldn’t let Adsense near it - which probably tells you that I agree with a lot of what Sugarrae says!
2. Affiliate Sites
   I’ve got one or two of these - one of them is particularly “seasonal” it’s quiet at the minute, but when in season it’s ridiculously busy. These are the properly monetized sites that Sugarrae is talking about!
3. Newsy Niche Adsense
   A couple of the others are “newsy”, I’m not sure what I could promote in the way of affiliate marketing on those - so they’re kind of Adsense based for a reason, what’s on them changes on a daily basis and they don’t have particularly associated products - the odd DVD or book maybe? They’re not in my opinion “website welfare”, because I have to work on them to get the context sensitive ads in.
4. “Made for Adsense” / “Website Welfare”
   In the early days I built a couple of “made for Adsense” sites, some of them are really atrocious and I just renew the domain names. But I do get Sugarrae’s point - I will change them in the near future, they’re just not a priority at the moment - these are definite “Webmaster Welfare”.

Can “Made for Adsense” / “Website Welfare” Site Make Money?

Of course they can!

The scary part of the above is that one of the “Made for Adsense” sites is bad - really, really bad. You want to know how bad? I didn’t even bother to change the logo - so instead of a logo at the top it still says “Upload your logo here” - now that is really bad! What’s scary about it? It makes money - and regularly makes this money!!

But they don’t make a lot, and they require regular traffic, and lots of it!

You’ll often find that a client (any visitor to your site should really be considered a client!), clicks an Adsense link, goes away to the site they really want (which is being advertised) and never returns to your site - hence you require a continuous stream of new clients. Compare this to the Newsy Adsense sites, they have regular readers who login every day to see if there’s more news, or even subscribe to the feed so they always know what’s been added to the site! Keep the content good and hold their interest they’ll become clients for life, add to you clients daily and soon you’ll have a large group of clients, get them to interact and suddenly you’ve got yourself a little community around your chosen subject!

So why don’t I make more “Made for Adsense” sites, if they make money?

This is a tough call, I could have an army of 300 sites like this, all bringing in 20 pence per day in Adsense, or a monetized site like my seasonal one which can comfortably make a couple of hundred pounds per month “in-season”. Wouldn’t that be nice? There’s kind of a moral ethic too, I take a bit of pride in making the net a better place (that probably sounds a bit flimsy here, but what I mean is I want people to enjoy the sites I put up and get something out of it!).

The halfway house is the “Newsy Niche Adsense” sites, they are about areas that are genuinely of interest to me - so I’m reading the news about them, know about the products and can talk confidently about them for hours. Writing for them is easy, however - you can’t have many of them, it can really eat into your time - and you could easily lose your passion!

Is this how everyone feels?

Mark @ MeAndMyDrum has been pondering between a few affiliate networks and the contextual-style ads of Google Adsense recently. Luckily one of the leading Internet Marketers - Garry Conn, dropped him a few notes on the subject in the comments section of the post - these are definitely worth a read! Garry’s sites I believe are much like my newsy sites, I don’t believe he auto-generates them (he may tell me different!) - he says:

By default, Adsense is the easiest way for me to make money online. It doesn’t require me to apply any kind of sales tactics, it doesn’t require me to do anything special. I just write what I write and because Google Adsense is so full of advertisers, 9 out of 10 times, I’ll have ads that match my content perfectly.

With that being said, Adsense doesn’t make a lot. It takes traffic. Traffic is a huge challenge for anyone.

He goes on to discuss a few affiliate networks and what success he’s had with them!

Steve @ PureBlogging has been discussing something similar recently - how some bloggers are in it for the Long Term and others the Short Term, building a site quickly - stuffing it with advertising and then selling it because those ads made lots of money in a single month - this certainly isn’t my idea of growing a site. But he does provide a good example of possible income from collaborative blogging. I’ll be contacting Steve to discuss this.

Do you have any views on this? What sort of sites do you prefer to see on the net, and to write yourself?

This is something I’ve done on occasion, but won’t be doing anymore after reading Michael Martine’s comments on it.. I completely see the point on his change to ban keywords in names for comments - I will be adopting this on all of my blogs and incorporating this into the comment policy in the next few days!

Why?
Mainly after getting a comment from “Teeth Whitener recently and not being sure whether to address them as Teeth, or Mr/Ms Whitener!

Do I need to say any more?

We’ve talked about Feedburner and Feedsmith before, but I had a site recently that I wanted to move it’s feed over to FeedBurner and was concerned that I might lose all the sites current subscribers.

It appears reading a few blogs that the redirect functionality of the plugin means that won’t happen at all! and Feedsmith, has been adopted by Feedburner itself!

Here’s what it does in the developers own words:

Using some WordPress plugin magic, and user-agent detection, this plugin simply forwards all your feed traffic to FeedBurner. The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well.

There are a few issues with letting Feedburner run your feed, one being you can’t have separate feeds for separate categories (not without creating a separate Feedburner Feed for each one), this isn’t something I think I need - most of my sites are sufficiently different in content.

Converting from one to the other has taken just seven minute - it actually took longer to write this post! So what are you waiting for, do it today and take advantage of Feedburner’s features!

I’ve got a couple of 1,000 unread posts in my Google Reader and I need to wade through at least a few of them - I’ve got Gears so I can read them offline - but most days - it just ain’t happening. So here’s a brief look at what I starred over the last few days!

Should You Try Affiliate Marketing?
I really liked this post (and not just because Chris was motivated by Yaro - where this blog all started). I know for a fact I make more out of my affiliate income during the seasons for my particular niche’s than I do out of Adsense - so why do I keep Adsense up? It’s a daily dribble of cash, but sometimes I really wonder if it’s worth it.
Chris & Yaro - thanks for motivating me to look at this again!

Do You Lead or Follow?
Yep, it’s that Chris Garrett again, I’m just really enjoying some of what Chris has been writing recently! I probably don’t generate a hell of a lot of new and outlandish ideas here, I do that in real life all day! What I try to achieve here is the learning curve I’m on to get to somewhere where my blog is making a whole lot more cash!
If you’re on a similar journey - why not become a guest blogger like Damien Riley

Booking People by the Hour?
Not like that!! We’ve seen and used rentacoder, elance etc. (both with mixed experiences). But this site feels a little bit different, within minutes of browsing peopleperhour.com I was looking at virtual assistants in my area that could pick up some of my workload, and had find a number of projects I wouldn’t mind embarking on myself - this could prove dangerous really with me offloading work one way and taking more on in the other direction! Thanks to Enterprise Nation for pointing this one out!

Becoming a Blogger
The way of dreams a fortunes? Not quite but it can work for you! AdesBlog, pointed me in the direction of a project by our old friend Yaro! Where he takes you through the very basics of setting up a Wordpress blog all for free - the only thing it would appear Yaro gets from it is more traffic, and subscribers to his work!

If you think I’m missing something big, then why not let me know about your feed in the comments - you never know you may make it with these guys soon!?

I’ve heard more SEO advice than I can shake a very large stick at over the years, tonnes and tonnes of it. The only people who really know how it all works are the guys that code it, and they stay fairly tight-lipped. Even Matt Cutts can’t let on everything he knows (although he does have a video about SEO Myths here)!

So anyway, Gobala over at Easy Wordpress, recently reviewed Jon Leger’s “Search Engine Myths Exposed“. I’ve read quite a bit by Jon over the years, it’s not somebody I just toss into the “read someday/never” pile - so I thought I’d take a look.

You’re obviously signing up to be on Jon’s mailing list, and he does try to sell you the 3 way links idea - not something I’m desperately interested in at the moment I don’t think. Only once I’ve signed up do I find Jon has an affiliate program which means he’s paying you for getting people to download a free report - hey you’ve got nothing to lose really have you?

Jon focuses on 7 major myths of SEO:

• Myth #1: Google Knows All and Sees All
• Myth #2: Google Will Not Rank Duplicate Content
• Myth #3: You Must Get Links From Related Subject Sites to Rank
• Myth #4: Your Site Must Focus On One Subject To Rank
• Myth #5: High PageRank Means Good Rankings
• Myth #6: To Maintain Good Rankings, You Must Add New Content
• MYTH #7: THE BIGGEST MYTH: Ranking In Google Is Hard!

You can see the Video below where Jon explains what he’s up to in this report!

I was a bit surprised at the download size, it’s zipped, but the PDF alone is over 2MB (that’s mostly down to the images I think as it weighs in at 49 pages).

Within the report Jon shows evidence to reveal the truth behind all 7 myths, although one does partially contradict the Matt Cutts video in my eyes - can you spot it - let me know?

All in all a worthwhile read whether your new to Search Engines or a Web Guru!

Looks like there’s a real competition on the cards for a decent Wordpress Theme, thanks to Anuj @ Online Presence for pointing this out!

The competition is being run by Brian Gardner and R. Bhavesh, now these guys aren’t designing two-bit themes that look like they fell off the back of the TemplateMonster bus! These are the guys that brought you:

• Wordpress Revolution
• Wordpress Remix

If I win (I’ve entered just by writing this), I’ll probably go for the Remix theme, torn as I am between that and the Wordpress Revolution Tech theme! Guys if I win, can I choose then - I just can’t make up my mind?!?!

Both are clean themes and look really good in my mind….

Enter Here! (Actually don’t enter - I want to win!!)