Watch Which Blog Experts You Follow…
I’m a blog pusher by trade. As such, it’s expected that I would know how to do basic things like correctly formatting my posts and setting up my RSS feed so it works. If you saw I couldn’t do that on my blogs, you’d have GREAT reason to suspect that I’m not who I claim to be.
I’m in the middle of developing a course called “The 8 Week Blog Power Launch“. To be honest, I’m developing the course as a way to relieve some of the “customer service” I’m providing to my blog clients. When it’s finished, I’ll be sharing it with others just because it’s been almost as much work as supporting all of my combined blogging clients, which is a lot like herding cats!
Anyhow, one thing I encourage course participants to do is to subscribe to the RSS feeds of other blogs. (I subscribe to a lot more than I list in my post The Best Making Money Blogging Advice.)
My iGoogle page is full to overflowing, so I began visiting each blog listed there to see if the blog was still worthy of a place on my page. To my HORROR I found one blog by a self professed blogging consultant that was obviously composed in Word and then copied and pasted directly into the post… Word coding and all! (Ordered and unordered lists do NOT make the jump from Word to Wordpress well AT ALL!)
Now the question…Should I out him here? He’s pretty wicked with his wit and I’m sure outing him would provoke an attack. His blog has more readers than this one… but not more than my Virtual Impax blog according to Alexa. Should I try to make a mortal enemy to boost traffic here?
I’ll be honest, if I had my The 8 Week Blog Power Launch product ready to sell, I’d out him. But I don’t and my time should be spent in compiling the feedback which continues to flood in from beta testers. (The most recent, “Don’t assume we know how to do anything!”… GOT IT!)
On to the next blog on my list. (I really should be working on the power launch stuff… I know! I’m calling this “research” to justify my procrastination.) This one is a competitor of sorts - well, he claims to be a blog expert as well. I noticed his RSS feed hasn’t updated since I subscribed. I click on the site. Oh, he’s been very busy creating content for his blog… just none of it is appearing on his RSS feed. Oh, he wants to sell you his services of setting up your blog for maximum performance though and will charge you handsomely to do so.
Again, I could out him. I’ve found that people who claim to have expertise they don’t possess get VERY touchy when their rookie mistakes are posted for the world to see. Another mortal enemy to engage in verbal battle… it would be a GREAT excuse to ignore the additional content I need to create to bring my course participants up to speed….
By the way, blogs whose RSS feeds I’m still subscribed to include (in addition to the four I listed in the post above) include:
- Court’s Internet Marketing School because it really is a blog which serves as a school for internet marketing!
- The Writer’s Manifesto by Monika Mundell because, she’s the greatest.
- Andy Beard because he IS the original blog guru!
- Itty Biz because Naomi always makes me at least smile if not laugh.
- Liz Strauss at Successful Blog because she makes me think.
- Catherine Lawson because she tells it like it is.
- Daily Blog Tips because Daniel knows his stuff!
These are the blogs whose RSS feeds will remain featured at the top of my iGoogle page. These are each blog experts WORTH following. I’ve launched over 100 blogs and I STILL learn something new at least weekly from each blog listed above!
The Best Make Money Blogging Advice
When you say “blogging” to most web savvy users, the first thing that comes to mind is MMO (Make Money Online). So how do you make money blogging?
This post was inspired by a post at a blog who I won’t give the benefit of a link. On this blog, for the past 18 months, the author has claimed to offer insight into how to make money blogging. I only found the blog recently, but the blog owner made recommendations such as using affiliate links for AllPosters.com (not an affiliate link) as images on your blog posts.
It sounds plausible, but recently it was revealed that the only way this particular blogger made money was to sell the blog. With only 346 RSS subscribers, I doubt the sale price of the blog would make any of the blog’s readers drool.
So where do you go for excellent advice on making money blogging?
Maki at Dosh Dosh shares significant insight on what has worked and what hasn’t for him in Publishing for Profit and Influence. In this recent post, he shares how important your passion on a subject is to your success in Niche Blogging. A few years ago, he shared How to Make Money Blogging: 7 Strategies to Help you Get Started Immediately, but read the recent entry before you read the second.
Of course, when it comes to the topic of making money by blogging, you have to talk about Darren Rowse of Problogger. net. Darren not only shares his “secrets”… (and since he shares them with so many readers… they can hardly be called “secrets”) of how he makes money blogging, he even show you exactly how he does it! He keeps a running feature on his blog to show how much each income stream contributes in “How I Make Money Blogging - Top Income Streams Update.” Darren makes no bones about the secret to making money blogging… it’s multiple streams of income.
Caroline Middlebrook is another straight shooter when it comes to the topic of making money online. In her post, Can You Make Money Online, Without Teaching About Making Money Online? she writes:
There are plenty of people who make a fortune in niches that have nothing to do with Internet Marketing but the reason we don’t know about these people is because they have no reason to tell their story! For example, a common and simple method of making money online is via niche blogging using monetized blogs. We know some of the prominent people who make money in this way, for example Darren Rowse. But we only know about Darren because of his ProBlogger blog where he shares his story.
How many other people out there who are busy working away in their niches but don’t have a blog where they document their journey, and don’t have an ebook or course that teaches others how to copy their system? These are the people you don’t see, that you never heard about. But just because you don’t see them does not mean they do not exist!
An ex of mine has been involved in Internet Marketing for many years. He is the creator of a popular Facebook application that was bringing in $200k a month until recently but he doesn’t teach other people how he did that! Nobody knows who he is. If I told you his name you would never have heard of him. He doesn’t have a blog like this one, he just works at his work privately and rakes in his money without anybody knowing about it.
Excellent advice.
Even more excellent advice, go to Rick Butts Worst Internet Marketing Advice I’ve Ever Heard. Rick is another “straight shooter” when it comes making money online.
Rick’s advice… pick three or four people and follow them. From what I’ve seen, these four bloggers are DEFINITELY worth a your time and attention.
Effectively Using Outrageous Acts of FUD to Promote Your Blog
In the online world, Amazon is to retail book sales as Google is to search. Sure, Barnes and Nobles has a significant “off line” presence… but when it comes to selling books online… no one does it better than Amazon. While Google is the 900 lb gorrilla of search, Amazon is truly the 900 lb gorrilla when it comes to online book sales.
Several years ago, Amazon quietly bought a small POD publisher called Booksurge. Recently, Amazon has decided to throw their massive weight behind this acquistion. The WSJ reports:
Amazon.com Inc., flexing its muscles as a major book retailer, notified publishers who print books on demand that they will have to use its on-demand printing facilities if they want their books directly sold on Amazon’s Web site.
The move signals that Amazon is intent on using its position as the premier online bookseller to strengthen its presence in other phases of book selling and manufacturing. Amazon is one of the biggest booksellers in the U.S., with a market share publishing experts estimate to be about 15%.
While Amazon appears to be doing all it can to keep this “off the record”…. they have been “caught” using the tried and true method exploiting FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) to boost their POD sales. Despite the fact that the “threats” have been made over the phone, small POD publishers are standing up and crying “Foul!” As a result, the blogosphere is responding in force.
I posted a list less than 24 hours ago that contained the first 62 responses to this story on my Beyond Niche Marketing blog in the post Amazon’s Blatant Disrespect of Their Best Customers. In 24 hours, that list has increased 100%. Here’s a link to the new list on Easy Author Web Sites.
Now, as an FYI for my readers of this blog…. the reason I’m not posting the 105 blogs reporting on this story is because most of the “uproar” over this situation is happening in the author/publisher arena. (I also didn’t “trackback” the link above so this post won’t appear in the comments section there.)
That’s one of thing most blogger’s don’t understand about link building. Google wants to see your site “referenced” by other SIMILAR sites. Since the main “topic” of this blog is marketing (thus the domain name… EZ Marketing Tool)… incoming links from other marketing blogs and web sites will “help” this blog. However, incoming links from author and publishing blogs might actually hurt… seeing as though this blog is relatively “young” and hasn’t established its “character” with the search engines.
Now, I did post this story on my Beyond Niche Marketing blog and my Virtual Impax blogs as a way to take the message outside the author arena. However, incoming links from author and publisher web sites will give little if any boost to those blog’s Page Rank. The link storm makes for a nice Monday morning greeting in the “incoming links” message delivered by Wordpress… but in the long run, in the search engine’s eyes… the incoming links to that post will have little affect on either blog’s stature.
Jumping on the bandwagon against acts of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) committed by corporate giants every now and again is GREAT exercise for your blog. It builds incoming links and helps to establish relationships with other bloggers. By taking a little time and compiling a comprehensive list which other bloggers can easily copy and paste into their own blogs, I’ve taken a major step towards establishing the credibility of a blog that is less than 6 weeks old. Admittedly, it took an investment of time to compile the list but so far, the results have been WELL worth that investment.
Oh, I should also point out that I don’t expect to “net” a single product sale from the visitors who come to the blog via this “activism” post. Those people already HAVE blogs which they are using. Definitely not my audience. This is solely a “link building” exercise which is necessary to develop respect from the search engines. These incoming links will help in the long run… as my blog matures and gains a Page Rank.
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