Archive for the ‘Ramblings’ Category

Hey guys, I was just thinking about this, and I decided to write something up about it.

In this world, people are lazy. Including me. Everyone grumbles that they can’t make any money, they can’t run a successful website, blah blah blah. But most everyone’s problem is not trying hard enough, or not trying at all!

I know this is more make money online related than blogging, but it really does apply in anything.

I personally have been in this boat. This, “I can’t make money online” boat. But you know what?

I tried. I actually just worked! I found an idea that sounded promising, and I said to myself, “Why not just give it a try? What’s the harm?” And it worked. I made over $500 in 3 days, doing not much work but the start up, and it made me realize that I just haven’t really been trying. Been putting myself out there, been taking a chance. And that’s been my problem. Fear. Fear of failure, losing money, doing something stupid. But when I just tried what I had already been told worked, it worked even better than I could have imagined.

Set Goals

When your trying to achieve something, be it a new computer, a solid paycheck, or just some spending cash, you really need to set goals. You can’t say to yourself, “I need a $2,000 computer and in 2 weeks, I will have the money.” But instead, set baby step goals. Try and make $100 in a month, then $100 a week, and then maybe even $100 a day! But don’t set huge goals without intermittent goals, otherwise, you’ll be discouraged when you can’t reach your goal quickly, or at all!

Don’t Let Failure Bring you down

You will fail. I know it’s mean to say, but at some point in your career, online or offline, your going to mess up, make a mistake, do something wrong. But if you don’t continue on, and persevere, you’ll never get anywhere.

Just DO IT

Enough is enough. Just get out there, and try something. Try your hand at affiliate marketing, outsourcing, whatever! Just try. Because in the long run, you’ll be glad you did. I sure as heck am.

Now, I know I didn’t post yesterday, my apologies, but you know, with my therapy, shoulder, and other things, it’s tough! But rest assured, I’m here. Also, I think for the time being, while my shoulder finishes healing, I’ll be posting every other day, just until I’m back up to 100%. So bear with me.

Now, onto our topic for today.

Should I bribe my readers?

When I say this I mean, do you need to give incentives for every little thing just to get some action on your blog? Do you need to offer a prize to the comment king every month? Do you need to run a contest 6 times a year?

Now, don’t get me wrong, contests and prizes are great, and they do increase activity on blogs, which is always a good thing. But what I’m driving at is this: If you stop bribing your readers, will you have any readers?

A lot of blogs are big and popular only because the people who run them are rich and invest 1000’s a month just promoting it and giving out prizes. This is false readership, in my opinion. Why? Because try and see how many readers stay for the content, which is supposed to be the most important thing. If you run contests constantly, and award readers for everything, chances are things are going to fall apart without those “bribes”, if you will.

So that’s my challenge to you. Yes, I’m talking to all you contest crazy bloggers. Try and take one, maybe two months, and focus on producing the best contests and incentives you can. Then let three months go by with non of that, and see what happens. Then, take one month and produce the best possible content that you could write, or that money can buy, and then take three months normal with non of the fluff or contest, and see how your readership benefits much much more from  the content, than the prizes.

Now, do not take this the wrong way, I love contests, and will run one here soon. But just don’t make it a habit that the only thing you do to keep readers is run contests.

Hey all, this is not Mark, but this is Nathaniel from green-flamingo.com. I am filling in for Mark, for as you should know he was injured. I said I would write a guest post about a week ago, but I forgot what I was going to talk about. Now I will tell you how to blog like a monkey and stand out.

Collect bananas - Well, monkeys are associated with bananas right? You have to collect them and then you can eat them. To collect bananas you must stay focused and on the job. Maybe you could have a few of your fellow banana collectors help you out, or you can join programs to help you monkeys get bananas.

In a way you can understand - Making money online is associated with blogging right? You have to make the money and then you can spend it. You have to stay focused, seeing ahead and making sure you are doing things right. You may consider visiting some of these friends which will help you to make the best of your blogging. You might have a few fellow bloggers help you out, and that would help. You can also join affiliate programs to increase and most likely start (unless you have a product or services to sell) you making money online. Some good affiliate programs:

-Google Adsense-

Google Adsense is well known by most, and well recommended. If you want to get the most out of adsense, visit robinhaney.com, maximizing your adsense earnings part one, part two, and recently part three.

-PepperJam-

I myself to not know much about pepperjam, but I hear it is good, and according to the site, they have been ranked one of the top 10 SEO firms in the United States. They are also honored to be recognized as one of the fastest growing privately held business in the US.

-OIO Publisher-

Here you find the tree with millions of bananas, too bad it is not free. You can get discounts though, which is good. OIO publisher is regarded very highly and it would be a good program to join, but make sure you want it before you buy it. What it really does is automate your monetization so you can do what really needs to be done: writing content!

Those are only a very few of some worthwhile affiliate programs, just browse around those trees and you will find many more.

Sell your banana collectors - Now it is time to promote and sell your products. Market well, but don’t be too spammy otherwise people won’t go for it. Carl Ocab can sometimes be a spam seller and spam promoter, which is really annoying. So find the right way to promote and sell your product and done!

Write like a monkey - Stand out, be creative, swing from vines, and from that writing get some bananas. Go ahead and be your fuzzy or fat self. Just be you in your blogging. Write not just in an ordinary way, but write with character and use of the force you must.

After you have those bananas, keep going for more until you have dominated the monkey world. Just to blog like a monkey, work hard, stay focused, be creative and be yourself.

This post was written by Paul Piotrowski over at InspiredMoneyMaker.com which is a Blog that focuses on teaching people how to make money doing what they love. I really want to thank him for the support, guest posting for me. If you are interested in guest posting on MonkeyBlogger, email it to mark[at]monkeyblogger[dot]com

As Mark has written about on a few occasions, the Blogging community is full of “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” Bloggers. New Blogs pop up every day, only to disappear into witness protection tomorrow.

I believe that one of the biggest reasons for that is that Blogging by nature is a medium of expression based on giving, not getting. A successful Blogger is a Blogger who gives first and gives often, without really expecting anything in return. Bloggers who have followed that formula have grown rather quickly as their readers have felt that energy from the first time they stumbled across their Blogs.

The rest of the herd who read an income report by a professional Blogger and begin drooling over the idea of “getting paid for nothing”, run out and start a Blog with the misconception that there’s a big prize waiting for them once they sign up for a free Wordpress account and they publish a couple of senseless articles. Professional Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. If that’s what you’re seeking, you might want to look elsewhere.

For the rest of us who genuinely want to help people in our specific area of expertise there is a lot of potential in Blogging, but we must embrace the concept of Giving to accelerate our results.

Take this article, for example. When I heard Mark broke his clavicle, I jumped at the opportunity to help the guy out even though I don’t really know him. I stopped by his Blog one day and I liked his Mascot design and I found it quite impressive for him to be getting into this line of business at such a young age so I subscribed to his RSS feed.

If you really study Professional Bloggers, and meet some of them, you will very quickly learn that the REAL reason that they are so successful in what they do is because they are some of the most giving people you have ever met. People think that when Professional Bloggers run contests, it’s all just about drawing attention and publicity to our Blogs. It does have that effect, but in reality it’s not about that. It’s because we really do enjoy giving stuff away to people!

You want to be a successful Blogger? Try thinking from the point of view of “How can I give the most amount of value to my readers?” every day for 90 days and you’ll see how different the world looks like for you after that.

That, and also don’t forget to have fun in the process.

Heya guys – this is Jason of The University Kid and Blog Premiere. Thought I’d help Mark out a lil

I just finished reading Purple Cow by Seth Godin; if you haven’t, pick it up as it’s a cracking read and will help you in your internet marketing business.

If you’re a newbie, entering into the whole internet marketing game – especially in something as cutthroat competitive as blogging, you’re going to find it difficult. Why the hell should I read your blog when there are thousands of others, more established, more discussion, bigger valued prizes? That’s the problem a lot of newbie bloggers face – and this is where the Purple Cow comes into play.

The Purple Cow is basically something so brilliant, so remarkable that people have to stand up and take notice. It could be a killer custom drawn header (hehe) or an amazing blog theme that no one’s ever seen before… basically something that leaves people wanting to come back to your website.

Once you add the Purple Cow to your business, it doesn’t matter what others do – people will always visit you. No matter who the competition, no matter what they do; people will look at your blog in the hope that you will astound them with yet another Purple Cow… leaving them writhing in blogging ecstasy yet again.

I’m embracing the Purple Cow… and that’s in my list that talks about ideas never discussed before. Are you using the Purple Cow to further your blogging journey, and if so why not?

Remember, life is short and your blogging journey will be even shorter… so you want to make your mark, and make it big as soon as possible. Unheard of wealth awaits, and this is why you should differentiate yourself from the thousands of other losers out there… stand out above the rest and explode your blogging business.