What is your main objective in blogging?

Begin with an end in mind - A cliche that's easier said than done?

This is the second post of what could be a series where I'll share my thoughts on "blogging for profits" (and why I think you should not do, as a newbie). If you've not read it, do check it out so there's some flow.

For almost a month since I started this blog, I've been spending almost all my "working hours" getting myself involved with Web 2.0 stuffs: Blogging, visiting blogs, social networking and trying out some related tools (ya, blogrush huh?).

Gosh, I must confess that it's sending me guilt. I feel really bad about neglecting my usual routine of identifying new affiliate programs, launching new PPC campaigns and related tasks. Otherwise, I would have created a few more profitable PPC income streams on auto-pilot.

So is all these time spent on blogging and such worth it? Seriously, the shear magnitude of "things" to do and learn while at it really do drain up one's attention. Learning curves...

After all, it's one thing to be on the sideline just keeping tab of what people are doing with blogs, and another to really get my hands dirty in it. It just dawn on me how overwhelming it could be for a newbie then! (I consider myself an intermediate to advance online marketer - depending on which business model)

Setting my blog objective

A couple of days ago, I ponder over the above cliche and question myself why I've started blogging. This is by far the only blog that I've contributed the most time, but why? I then decided to nail down my objective which I've just updated in my introduction text, on the side panel beside my picture.

Glancing through all the posts written so far, I think I'm still being congruent with the stated objective:

1. Done and will continue to do some SEO (search engine optimzation) stuffs, mainly to get a gauge on the amount of effort needed and will compare the effectiveness with paid advertising - for a newbie to get traffic.
   


2. Started to be quite active in my "web 2.0" stuffs (blogging. social networking, etc.), again to have a feel on its effectiveness in traffic generation and monetization.
   


3. Progressively, I'll also introduce more PPC specific posts, but to cover it objectively in comparison to the above. To address the myth around "why pay for traffic when you can get it free - from seo, social networks, etc. - especially if you're new.
   


4. I may also touch base on viral marketing - since I've my share of success with it too, having launched successfully one of the biggest buzz around phone call-back services in Singapore; so much so that the officials from our telecommunication authority call me up personally to "tame" down the campaign.

My end in mind?

Other than to create a "branding" for myself as an expert with paid advertising (for consulting opportunity maybe? *wink*), I like the idea of being a source of "enlightenment" for someone who's still wondering aabout the above means to get traffic (= money).

Oh, by the way, perhaps it may also help to mention that I can afford to persue this somewhat "evangelistic" vision because I've already attained my own financial goal and looking at something more than just the obvious ;)

Now, if you like to follow and see how this blog unfolds, remember to subscribe to it.

So have you ask yourself why you're also blogging?

BlogRush users CLICK HERE: Free Bonuses!

The length of this post title is exactly 40 character wide, and it sure looks like those attention-seeking and clicks-pulling headlines isn't it? I'll explain ;)

Well, if you've landed on this post via a BlogRush widget click, then one of my BlogRush "tips and tricks" works. I've a full documentation on this blogrush tip in how to implement a dedicated Blogrush blog.

Advertising in blogrush (getting good click-thru rate) is pretty much the same as advertising in Pay Per Click search engines. Part of it is about setting an attention grabing headline, just ilke this blog post.

I'll leave this topic for now, if you've been a Blogrush user, check this blogrush squidoo lens too.

BlogRush - Automatically Promote Your Posts On Related Blogs

This blog gets a fair share of traffic from the MyBlogLog community. Just under 3 weeks and I've gotten over a thousand unique visitors (since August 25th). That's FREE community traffic.

Now, I must admit that was a bit of hard work; I got the exposures mainly from visiting other people's blogs and profile. Doing that attract some return traffic probably from the blog owners or their visitors, when my picture was displayed on their MyBlogLog widget. Someone joke that I should be using a pretty lady's picture so I'll get more traffic. Haha... I'm sure it will, but what kind of visitors I'll be getting is another question.

Here's a new kid on the block which I'm testing - BlogRush.

As you can see on the panel to the right, I've added a new "widget" that displays 5 random posts from other blogs belonging to the "Marketing" category or topic. I've classified this PPC Marketing blog under "Marketing" when I sign up for the free BlogRush membership - as such the BlogRush Syndication Network will display 5 random posts from other "Marketing" blogs here.

The idea is that since it's all marketing related, any referral traffic from these blogs should be more "targeted" readers who are interested in that subject matter. Now, how would I benefit from sharing my visitor traffic with other bloggers via this panel too?

I've detailed quite a lot of goodies in a BlogRush Squidoo Lens. That should give you some idea why it's a good/bad ideas to start adding BlogRush to your blog NOW even though it's on Beta...

If you are totally new to all these, check out the instructinoal videos which I've made on the Squidoo Lens too (Ya, you get to hear my voice); e.g. specific instructions on how to add this widget on various Blogging platforms like Blogger.com.

Basically, it's as simple as adding some javascript code (just like Google Adsense) anywhere on your blog's template where you want the panel to be shown. With Blogger, you simply add a new "HTML/Text" widget containing your own unique BlogRush code.



Right, I'm promoting it actively now as I'm really interested to see how it compares to MyBlogLog in generating more community traffic to this blog. You should too ;)

If you're wondering why a PPC guy is promoting this thing so actively, have a read on my objective of this blog just below my picture on the side.

Note: Links here contain my referral code.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising - Risky?

I've gotten a message just the other day asking me "What is PPC?"...

Looks like I'm attracting all kinds of curious visitors to this blog by visiting blogs all over. Perhaps most came checking out my picture on mybloglog; I admit I do the same especially for those interesting ones ;)

Well, that's one way to generate visitor traffic isn't it? Again, that's what internet marketers like to classify under Web 2.0 or "community traffic". My only vibe about it is how "targeted" can these traffic be?

Obviously, I've should be hanging around blogs that talk about making money online since there's where my target reader gathers. Otherwise I'll be getting questions like the above. LOL

So here's a post to answer that question and something related.

First of all, in the online marketing world there is something call the "Search Marketing". It refers to the act of advertising to those people who do a "search" online via search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is one form of search marketing, further classified under "paid search marketing". With PPC, an advertiser will bid to have an advertisement listed in the search results, commonly known as "sponsored result". The advertiser pay for every click that a searcher do on that sponsored result, thus pay-per-click.

The good thing about PPC advertising is that the advertiser only get billed for that click if it's performed, and the goal then is to craft the advertisement (usually a few lines of text) to convey a message that will ONLY attract the right prospect - they don't want just any clicks.

Each click can cost anywhere between 1 cent to tens of dollars! It's a bidding (auction) system therefore depending on the advertiser's intention, they control how much they are willing to spend per click and set a budget for the day. Some big corporations uses PPC for branding purpose and simply send these traffic to their home page, but most of the time we find ourselves landing on some sales page of the advertiser.

So, is PPC risky?

I often see new online marketers shying away from PPC after trying it a while and having spent more than they profit from it. Then these "newbie" will jump on the "free traffic" bandwagon (like community traffic and doing SEO) thinking it can't be wrong since it's free...

Well, think of PPC as placing ads on the newspaper; if you're in business have you bought those $5 per line of classified ad space in the classified section of a newspaper? Imagine now you can track and measure the value of every reader who react to your ad (e.g. make a phone call to you).

If you discover that by spending $25 for those 5 lines of ad, you get X amount of phone calls, and Y% will buy from you over the phone thus giving you $Z in profit, will you keep running that ad on the same newspaper over and over again, perhaps testing with different ads to see if it "converts" better?

In fact, online PPC search marketing is so much more predictable than off-line advertisement campagins.

With the ability to track every single click and measure the conversion (into sales, for example) rate of your spent in PPC, the only possibility is to end up either dropping the campaign or tuning it for more profit.

We can get almost instant traffic via PPC adverstising, and more importantly, these traffic are targeted. This means that if I bid on keyword terms like "online marketing tips" or "internet marketing guides" or even "paid search consultant" ;) in the PPC search engines, I can present these visitors the relevant content page on my website since I can roughly tell what they are "searching" for.

Relating this to my first paragraph of this post; I then don't have to be concern about catering my website content to visitors of all shape and sizes, explaining "What is PPC" ;)

Here's another twist: If you're selling something online, bidding on the right keywords bring you so much further into the sales cycle. The trick is to identify those "buying keywords" so you won't waste money bidding on just any keywords that bring non-converting traffic. (and conclude that PPC is not for newbie)

With community traffic such as what I'm getting here with this blog, most visitors are not in the mood of buying anything so there'll be more "work" for me to do trying to get your credit card out. You're just on a different end of the sales cycle, if any. I've to gain your trust, build relationship, yada yada... Not bad at all, just that it's... different. (As such, most bloggers try to monetize their blogs with Adsense and get paid getting clicks from these type of visitors - Adsense is a whole new topic I may blog about later)

What about SEO traffic? Yes, these can be targeted and great (because it's free) IF you can get good ranking in the first few search result pages for the "buying keywords" you would otherwise bid for. The caveat is the big IF. Anyone every ask whether SEO is risky for the newbie?

Do the obvious, but do it differently.

(hehe... this last phrase has nothing to do with this post, I saw it on the cover of a magazine call "Expat" in my local shopping center just now)

Later, Hans.

Blogging for profits?

Chances are you found this blog by visiting my mybloglog profile as I've been very active visiting other people's (including yours ;) blog too. That's what they call "community traffic" which falls under the latest buzz around "Web 2.0". Hehe... never mind if these sound French to you.

What I discover is that majority of the visitors that came to my site are from the "online money making" group. Why am I not surprised!? Because this blog happens to be dedicated to that "market" and I've been visiting related blogs and websites from this community 8-} *slap*

Anyway, my point in relation to the title of this post "blogging for profits" is that majority of these blogs are in for the money. I see Google adsense ads, text link ads, banners, affiliate links, etc. So people are making money from blogs; there are even a few of these savvy bloggers putting up income statements and such, to proof that you can make a full-time living (and even get rich!) from blogging.

Wow. I must be living in a cocoon to have such revelation only now huh? LOL. Well, I'm impressed to say the least. Blogging is definitely one of the workable money generation system online. That's why I'm starting to blog right?

I know I'll be shot (not literally) in any attempt to argue against that FACT (blogging can make money) - especially as a what... Paid Search Consultant?! Hey, I've my own perspective which I like to....er... blog about here. Hint: They also teach us to be controversial in our voice so that may generate some "buzz". (Disclaimer: good or bad traffic is another thing altogether ;)

Anyway here's my take on blogging for profits - at least a "full-time" income:

• You need traffic
  
  If you're going for ads revenue, you need LOTS of traffic. Otherwise you need to have, or appear to have authority in your voice, such that the relatively fewer readership will buy things from you or via your affiliate link (these last 2 share the biggest slice of the profit pie, apparently more than selling ads).
  
  Usually having authority will attract the traffic and having tons of traffic will let you look authoritative. Need to get this spin going...
  
  
• You need to pick the "right" market
  
  Ideally one that has "passionate" followers, irrational buyers and hopefully a LARGE one too. Do you think ramblings about your own life in general (what they call "online diary") will get you the needed traffic? (Not unless you're a star offline, but then if you're one you already have authority). What about blogging about your hobby? It depends... but the gist of it is that the market you're going after need to satisfy the above ideals.
  
  Incidentally, all those blogs that I came across as significant money makers target at the "internet marketers" or more general "opportunity seekers". If you came across other case studies on money-generating blogs outside of the money maker group, please share your comments. (Criteria: Start with no authority)
  
  
• You need to expand outside of blogging
  
  For someone to be able to make a full-time income blogging, this thinking is obvious. Any folks that have the business acumen to attain that should already understand that blogging is very dependent on the author(s); stop blogging and your readership goes elsewhere. Challenges like:
  
  1. Can the income scale up easily? (What? Start new blogs & live online posting?)
  2. Outsource by getting more authors? (I even know gurus who does this by getting ghost writers to post as their own)
     
  3. There are more, having a writer's block now; can't think... (It's late for me)

I'll continue this post later, with further dissection on the bullets above and thinking aloud why it's not an easy feat trying to profit (make a living) by blogging, alone. Especially for newbie...

In summary, if you ever want to do this for a living, begin with an end in mind. Try to internalize first WHY do you choose blogging as the model for generating traffic and how do you think you can address all the point above. I know of many who think this is the CHEAPEST way to start an online business - that's the wrong mindset - or at least not a businessman mindset, IMHO.

Heck, what do I know about blogging for profits?! Check around and google for my name, I don't have any blogs to show for myself and the only one I started (with my real name) has been stale for months!

Well, could it because I know something else that work better, which most bloggers does not? Hehe... Ya, I know I'm blowing my own trumpet and no prize for guessing what it is. It's after all just one of the means to generate traffic - which is only the tip of the ice-burg for any businesses. At some point in the various business models, it all converge and share similar strategies.

More about all these in my posts going forward. Woah!! I found something to blog about passionately and for a cause! Join my community and subscribe to my feeds (see top right) to get all these juicy posts!

Zzzzz.... HAns