Posts Tagged ‘blog’

With the multitudes of blogs, (especially in the “MMO” niche) there are too many blogs that look exactly the same, sound the same, and use the same re-hashed content.

Yeah, you can change a couple of things here and there on the John Cow theme, but it’s not really going to do much.

Yeah, you can re-write someone else’s articles, but eventually readers will be tired of the same old content. Everyone knows how to make $1000 a day with no work, or how to become a 100K a month affiliate marketer.

When your starting a blog branding is in my opinion, the most important thing. I’m not saying that content isn’t very important, but when your starting a blog, you need to make it stand out from the millions of others. Once your blog is unique enough, then worry about your content.

We’re going to go through three things that, to me at least, are uber essential when starting a blog, and trying to brand it.

Design

Everyone can download the newest Wordpress themes, or buy the John Cow theme, but does this set them apart? No. Don’t let yourself be fooled thinking it does. Now, I know that not everyone can afford a custom theme, but at least customize the theme you have. Change the colors on the John Cow, get a nice header done, change the fonts up a bit. Do something or your blog will get thrown in with the other 5000 using the John Cow theme or any other popular “blogging” Wordpress themes.

The best thing you can do is get a custom theme done. Now, other places charge $700, $900, heck, Unique Blog Designs charges like $1500. But for a limited time, (I know I’m plugging, please forgive me) I’m going to offer my readers discounted theme designs! I will design a fully custom wordpress theme for $300, and if you would like a full cartoon header, (like mine) It will be $500. I know that seems like a lot, but it’s much cheaper than the other guys, and for $500 your getting a kick butt header with full cartoon, like mine.

Another thing you can do to brand your blog is get a mascot of custom cartoon header, like I mentioned. I can create you a mascot for $150 and a full custom header for $250. (It’s cheaper if you get it with a theme like I mentioned above. )

But it’s essential to brand your blog and custom designs really help in doing that. My blog is using a custom theme I made as well as mascot/header. I think it really sets MonkeyBlogger apart.

Content Style

Now, I talked about this in full detail in my post Consistency People!, where I spoke about consistent blogging style, and also in my post Don’t Lose your Originality I spoke about keeping your posting style and content original.

This is really tough, but it’s essential. When you have the same content, but with a twist, or laid out in an original and interesting style, then people will read it. This is really important to do, and if you don’t, you will not be set apart from every other blog.

Be Unique

I know this seems super broad, but really, be unique! Do something no blogger has done. Hold a crazy contest! Give away something no one does, like an iPod. Really get yourself out there, and show everyone in the blogosphere that your not another blog that no one will care about in  6 months, but that you know what your talking about, and you will provide them with some great unique content or products. You could even give away an eBook.

One thing I’m going to do is make T-shirts, but more on that later.

These are just a few things you can do that will really brand your blog, and will set it apart, and can even make your blog promote itself!

This is really just an encouraging post more than anything.

To be perfectly honest, you cannot post every single day.

Yeah, ok, maybe Jason at The University Kid can pull it off, but he’s been using quite a few guest posters.

What my point is, is that Life Happens. Time and unforeseen occurrence befall us all. Even The Bible speaks of this.

You are always going to have that one day, or even those few days, where you 1) Cannot post or 2) Can’t even access your blog.

I had one of those days yesterday. I just had so much going on, but I did plan 1 hour to write up a post. But of course, what happened?

I got a call, and absolutely had to leave, and I had no internet or even computer access where I was.

Now, at first, this was really depressing, but I realized, “Hey, there was nothing I could have done.” I had no choice but to leave, and I had no way of posting where I was.

I know this post sounds like a quack so far, but my point is this.

As a blogger, you try and and post every day, in fact, you may even promise your bloggers a post every day, and if you miss a day, it can be very depressing. But, you can’t let this get you down! If you do, your blog will fail. Sure, it sucks when you can’t get a post out a certain day, but your readers will forgive you. (I hope so, at least ) But in all honesty, on all the blogs I’ve had, I always had those kinds of days, and as long as I apologized for it, (I think I’m doing that in this whole post ) my readers were usually very forgiving. If they aren’t then ban them they weren’t very loyal readers, and you probably would have lost them anyways.

So basically, if you can’t post for one day, don’t worry, because life happens, and you’ll always have these kinds of days.

So just keep on keepin’ on, and stay strong in your blogging, because that’s what will set you apart from other blogs. Determination.

Hey guys, I’m just going to do some updates today. We’ll have some more content tomorrow.

First off, we are very new, so our stats are not too great yet. But let’s see what we got. I’ll be doing this every Saturday, so we can see the progress of this blog.

Stats - As of May 10th, 2008

• Technorati: 790,971 (Link)
• Alexa - 635,288 (Link)
• Posts - 24
• Comments - 164
• Average Comments Per Post - 6.83

As you can see, we’re growing very nicely. From next week on, we’ll show the previous weeks in parentheses so we can show the progress.

I think that this blog is shaping up to be something great, and I’m going to be trying my best to provide some great content for you. We’ve got a lot of great things coming up soon, so stick around.

Also, the Mini Contest is coming to a close on May 14th, or this upcoming Wednesday, so stay tuned into MonkeyBlogger.com for that.

One more thing, I am going to be making t-shirts! These will be high quality with mascots on them. I’ll be giving them out free to start, so I think you guys are gonna like that too.

Well, that’s it, tomorrow we’ll have some better content, so be ready for that.

This is a paid review, but is by no means is my opinion altered by the fact that I was paid to write it.

Boy, did I come across a foolish website.

It even knows it’s foolish, it goes by the name of The Net Fool.

But in all seriousness, Jim asked me to review his Make Money Online blog, The Net Fool.

Now, I can hear you all screaming, “There’s too many stupid “MMO” blogs out there, and we sure as heck don’t need another one!”, but bear with me. This one actually doesn’t suck.

Jim has essentially created a blog that focuses mostly on making money but at the same time, it’s not the same rehashed content, with articles like, “Use Proxies to Make Money!” or “Flipping Websites” or even “Make money doing absolutely nothing”, (I hate those ones ).

He uses a lot of methods to make money, and he talks about them at his blog.

These can include GPT websites, or Get Paid To websites. What’s great about this is that he doesn’t just have scattered posts about it. He has a whole page for GPT Reviews, and another for Trusted GPT websites.

He also talks a lot about the stock market, and he seems to really know what he’s talking about. This is cool because I can’t think of any other real good MMO blogs that talk about this. That in itself makes him stand out.

Another great thing about his blog is that he has managed to create a unique look and feel to it. He used the John Cow theme, but modified it much. It has a different color scheme, much more toned down and not as bright. He also invested in custom header graphics with a great mascot, which I presume is of him.

Personally, (And I’ll be talking about this much more) I feel that custom mascots and themes and whatnot really brand a blog, and set it apart from the other 10,000 Make Money Online blogs from the get go. This is something I feel he has really achieved.

One more great thing about his blog is the unique writing style and unique layout of his posts. I personally love images, and I’ve been using them more in my posts, and this is a skill Jim has mastered. He always seems to have some great clip art that fits his posts perfectly, and that keeps me entertained while reading his content. Also, when is comes to his writing style, he’s casually, but not too casual, he doesn’t use slang or anything of that sort, and I really like that.

Now, although he’s got a great blog, and I could go on about the Pros, I do want to give some suggestions to him, that I think will help him even more.

One thing I think he could do better for this blog is clean up the navigation. If it were me, I’d put all the GPT stuff on one page, it would organize it better. I would also not have the archives page on the navigation, but have it be accessed via the sidebar. I think it would help clean up the navigation, and produce a better user experience.

Those are really the only things I can find that I’m not totally cool with on his blog, but overall, I think it’s a great one, and you should totally check it out.

Also right now, he has a great contest going on with over $4,500 in prizes called The Net Fool’s Outrageous Blog Contest! Prizes vary from Web Hosting to Wordpress themes and even cold hard cash! It’s a great one, and you should definitely check it out.

Well, that’s pretty much it for my review of this blog. I think it’s a great one, and is growing steadily, and I think it will soon become a foolish household name.

You guys are in for a treat today.

I’ve been able to get Michael Dunlop from Retireat21 to agree to let me interview him! This is great because as a 19 year old internet entrepreneur, Michael is setting the stage for all of us young bloggers, freelancers, and webmasters. So enough of my gibberish, let’s take a look at the interview we were able to get.

My name is Michael Dunlop and I am 19 Years Old. It all started when I was about 11 years old and was playing a computer game called Runescape, I played it on and off for a few years. When I was 14 it some how destroyed my parents computer and they banned me from every playing it on there PC. So I decided to go ahead and buy a computer, with the help of my parents. I then moved on to a computer game called Counter Strike and I met some people on there who where starting webdesign so I decided to download Dreamweaver and get in on the craze. I am now the only one left doing websites and making real money online.

My first website was called Just-Shout.com and was a graphics design forum. Soon after launching it we received a lot of sign ups and visitors. I then quickly moved everything to a new domain called ShoutGfx.com which received over 2000 sign ups in 6 months with around 100,000 forum posts. My competitors started to hack my site because of the quick growth and after a few hackings I decided to move onto my new project Webdesigndev.com

Main challenges I faced was Money, Skills and Maturity which I spoke about on my blog, 10 Reasons why being a young entrepreneur sucks! (http://www.retireat21.com/blog/10-reasons-why-being-a-young-entrepreneur-sucks/ )

Do it today, so many times people say they will start tomorrow and never do!

- Be unique, we don’t need another “How to make money with Adsense Blog”. I took the Make Money Online niche which was really busy but then I niche it further by making it just for young people.

- If you are going to pay to market your website, I recommend buying paid reviews, you get life time links and triple the traffic that a 125 x 125 in my experience.

What’s your favourite website on the net?

I have a lot of favourite websites, mainly http://problogger.net and http://zenhabits.com and http://dumblittleman.com

I don’t see why not, so many people (http://www.retireat21.com/blog/top-young-bloggers-under-21/ ) are young and making so much money online so why can’t you!