Benefitting from social media with little effort

Lately there has been lots of talk about different tribes and which one do you belong to. For a long while I was probably part of the blogging/social media crowd. I can’t remember though if it was even called social media until fairly recently?

The other “tribe” of course is into keyword research, SEO and affiliate/product sales. I swing from one to the other and can see both viewpoints have their strengths and weaknesses.

Promoting your website can work well for brands and community building. Of course not doing keyword research and SEO for your business could also cost you money in lost sales.

Google have also been experimenting with “real time search”. I was having a problem with a blog of mine and after I fixed it up, I did a keyword search for one of the main keywords and I was ranked number one.

There could be a few different explanations for this, but it seemed like it was because I had just updated the site. It’s not something that makes much money so, I didn’t bother looking into it further.

I also heard that in Google’s real time search experiments, they pulled data from twitter and ranked it based on factors like number of followers etc. I haven’t been much of a fan of twitter, but it made me realize, that if you have at least one niche that care about, you need to be on it.

I also installed a vbulletin mod yesterday on a forum I run, that automatically tweets every new post. I was doing something manually anyway, so it is going to be a real time saver.

Of course you can do the same thing for blogs. You can also create Facebook fan page and import your blog’s feed to it. Hubpages also allows you to add RSS feeds to a related Hub.

I am not saying you should do everything automatically, but if you can use a combination of real and automated messages, it can be a real time saver. You should also link your twitter account to bit.ly, because I have heard a number of times now that Google is also doing something(?) with those links. Bit.ly also provides some nice reports, like how many times your links have been clicked on.

Google came under a lot of criticism with their new Buzz application, which is linked to your gmail account. If you use gmail and have a problem with it, turn it off and create a new gmail account, just for Buzz. Create a nice avatar and start connecting to people in your niche.

While I don’t think people should spend all of their time trying to promote their sites on social media as it has been proven time and again that generally the traffic doesn’t convert well, I don’t think it is something that internet marketers can completely ignore.

Google dependency

My internet connection is not great in Bali. I think now my internet bill is higher than my monthly rent! Partly because I moved to a cheaper place and now paying to have it in our office.

From time to time, Google.com stops working. They seem to have some serious problems with their proxy. The thing is that I just realized how dependent I have become on the big G.

Bing works fine as an alternative search engine, but that is only one thing I use Google for. I use gmail for my mail, both personal and business. I also store quite a bit of stuff in my gmail account.

I have been using Google docs more and more, as it is great to have your documents available anywhere and is ideal for group collaboration. Adsense and analytics are also important services for my websites. I also started getting back into using the blogger service.

Fortunately, I still like Bloglines to read news and blogs, even though Google reader might be better. I don’t want to be 100 per cent dependent on Google, but it is becoming increasingly difficult.

Utilizing free blogging websites

Wow, it’s already February 2010 and this is my first blog post. I even missed making a new year’s resolution to post on my blog every day!

I am settling now into a new house in Bali and just trying to avoid the stress of starting a new business in a foreign country. I love living here, but sometimes no matter how great your surroundings are, you still have to deal with the usual problems that you face living anywhere in the world.

Anway I am now trying to get back into the swing of internet marketing and updating all of my websites. I want to get back into doing some article writing, blogging and want to write a new ebook.

My lists are going strong, but I don’t have much to sell to people and hoping to change that.

One thing I have been thinking about more recently is trying to utilize free blogging sites more. Before if I came up with a new idea for a niche website, I went out and bought a new domain. Often that is all I ended up doing with the website. My new idea is to set up a new blog on a site like blogger and just write some posts there.

I really wonder if people care that much about whether there is useful information on a blogger blog or whether it is hosted on their own domain. I suspect most people visiting the site don’t care too much at all, as long as it provides the information they are looking for.

I am not saying I am getting rid of any sites, just if I come up with new ideas for niche websites. This blog started its life on blogger and the service has come a long way since then. Adsense can be added with a click of a button and there are thousands of gadgets you can add to your site to give it more functionality.

If you are new to internet marketing or someone who is experienced and looking for a different strategy, I think you could do worse than creating a niche blog on blogger and get links to it using Hubpages and Infobarrel.

You can make money with Hubpages

I have been a member of Hubpages since 2007, how time flies! I never tried hard to use it to make money. I now have over 60 hubs of varying degrees of quality that are now making around $40-$50 a month just with Google Adsense.

I have mainly been using Hubpages to do some SEO experiments and try and get a couple of extra links to my websites. I did one product review type hub, where the products are around $450, but didn’t expect to make any sales.

I was checking my Amazon earnings and I found I had made a $450 sale, which I get about 5-6% of. The hub didn’t take long to write and I have zero knowledge of the actual products.

Although you might not see immediate results, doing keyword research, writing articles and knowing some basic SEO, like how to get links, can make you some decent money.

I suggest signing up with Hubpages and giving them a try.

Better late than never

I hate saying sorry for not updating my blog, but I honestly have been busy these past few weeks. My mum and auntie visited me here in Bali, so I didn’t have much time to get online. I also had to renew my visa for Bali in Malaysia the week before that.

I also now have a dog, who keeps demanding my attention. He is asleep now, so I can write this in peace! I am sure it would be the same if you have kids, except you can’t lock your kids outside if they are naughty!

I am starting a business in Bali. I have now rented a small shop and now in the process of registering a company. I will also then apply for a working visa, so everything will be legal and above board.

It is certainly challenging doing this in a foreign country, but everything is cheap here, so there is not a huge amount of risk if it doesn’t work out. I love working on the internet and the benefits that can bring, but it would also be nice to tell people here and at home I have my own business. Few people have any clue about the internet where I am living in Bali. When my neighbor saw me talking on Skype with a webcam, they just couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

I am trying now to get back into writing articles. I am pretty amazed how much Google loves Ezinearticles. An article I wrote to promote a website is now on page one, just below the site I was trying to promote.

I just started reading this fantastic blog and it just reinforces so much of what I am reading lately, on non-guru type blogs. Keyword research is everything, writing articles rocks and then it is just a matter of monetizing them and repeating the whole process.

Forget about leaving comments on blogs (except your favorite blogs) to get traffic and trying to get more twitter followers and concentrate on producing content. Eventually you will find what works for you.

Another reason why I haven’t been blogging, is that I am in the process of taking over some sites including a forum. The sale is still not complete which is bothering me a little and which is why I don’t want to talk about it too much.

Isn’t he cute?!

Should I create a website in a niche I am passionate about?

This is something I have been thinking about today. Most internet marketing blogs and teachers recommend people who are just starting out to blog or make a website on a topic they are interested in or are passionate about.

I suppose there are a few people who will get lucky and find a topic they are strongly interested in and it makes them a lot of money. Most people however will not be so lucky with their niches.

Some will make money with their niche and eventually their traffic and income will plateau. Or they will get bored with those sites.

Some people who don’t care whether they are passionate about the niche or not, just focus on keyword research, affiliate programs and SEO and they get their enjoyment from finding and profiting from these topics.

I don’t want to say either method is right or wrong. If you did start making sites on topics you were passionate about and your earnings have hit a plateau, it can be a good idea to get into niche blogs and websites to diversify your earnings.

I used to want to just focus on one profitable website, but now I realize it can be more fun and profitable by trying to run multiple sites. I also recently have been having fun writing articles on topics, that I didn’t think anyone would be interested in.

I am just rambling now, but I hope anyone reading this can realize that there is no single answer to making money online. If your site isn’t making much money, don’t give up on it. One solution might be to split your time between making websites on topics that you are passionate about, with sites that you don’t have much interest in, but have the potential to make a lot of money.

September goal recap

Wow, it is already the 3rd of October and I still haven’t managed to do a post recapping my goals from September.

Infobarrel goal – 50 articles – completed:50
Hubpages goal – 20 articles – completed: 1
Ezinearticles – 5 articles – completed: 1 (and it is still in review!)

As you can see, not a great result. I was concentrating mostly on Infobarrel this month. I started off really strong, doing more than one article in a day. I got a bit slack and then I thought I had written 50 articles, but it was actually only 40 and I have been trying to get to 50 over the past few days.

So how much money did I make from publishing 50 articles on Infobarrel? I made a total of $5 for September! It’s not going to make me rich obviously, but I did experience one of my best overall months with Adsense, so I have a feeling that it has helped lift my earnings. Also, I am writing on Infobarrel to get links to my own websites, so that has a positive effect also.

We sold a property through a website I recently set up, which is also going to make more money than Adsense. We are now planning on opening a shop to try and sell more properties and possibly do other business services.

I should try and get another 50 articles for October, but I think I will aim for 30 articles, which is just one a day and try to focus on my own websites and blogs.

Problogger launches paid membership forum

I don’t read Darren Rowse’s Problogger so much any more, but I just got an email notification that he is launching a new blogging forum on the .com version of his website.

I always wondered why Darren never launched a forum on his blogging website, as I was always sure that it would be successful, because of the popularity of his blog. Most of his posts get a lot of comments, which is a good way to see if a website can support a forum.

I joined the forum, but didn’t pay the fee (sorry Darren!) The introductory fee is $1.97 a month, so I can imagine this will likely rise when the forum is more publicly announced. I couldn’t see any of the posts, but there were around 170 people already on the forum.

I am sure he will get some criticism for charging people to join a forum, but I suppose that is a good way to keep spammers out. Personally I won’t be joining. Forums are good up to a certain extent for learning about making money online, but you can spend too much time on them, which has a negative effect on your ability to make money online.

I wonder if I could charge people for the forums I run? My feeling is that many people would just try to find another forum that they can use for free. I can imagine the forums will make a lot of money for Darren.

Perhaps he took Brian Clarke’s teaching sells course? I can see the email now when the next edition of Teaching Sells comes out, “Darren Rowse makes $1,000,000 from membership site launch”.

Do you plan on joining the forum?

New SEO challenge

I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to SEO. Of course I follow all of the basics and do whatever I can to build links, but I don’t go much beyond that.

I like setting new challenges, so I thought I would run a little experiment to see if I can get a new site to rank on page 1 for a two word key phrase.

I have registered the domain quite some time ago and could only get a .info. The top sites are wikipedia, which I don’t think I will be able to outrank, but it would be nice just to get on the front page.

The keyword phrase has a global search volume of 22,200 searches a month, but only 204,000 competing websites.

I am not a big fun of doing lots of scientific testing. I just want to see how much work I have to do to get this site ranked. I have added just one link from one of my own websites, so far. It is indexed and is getting a little traffic from Google.

The site just has a few pages of a few hundred words a page so far. I thought about revealing the site in the post, but on second thoughts, I don’t think it is a good idea.

I have now completed 47 articles on Infobarrel and just 3 articles away from my September goal of 50. I have lost a little interest in Hubpages and still stuck on 60 hubs. I also haven’t done any ezine articles yet.

I just came back from a short break, so I am feeling a little refreshed and hopefully will able to all of my articles done.

Sunday article marketing update

I have been pretty busy this week writing articles, mostly for Infobarrel. I am up to a total of 27 articles, which I think is a pretty good effort since one day I didn’t feel so well and I had some trouble with the internet here on one day.

Hubpages is going slower. I don’t know why, but I like Infobarrel more in some ways. One advantage I think you have with Infobarrel is that it isn’t so saturated with keywords like Hubpages. Google typically only returns one result for a URL for a keyword search. Since Infobarrel doesn’t have as many articles, you are going to have more chance at getting more competitive keywords to rank with Infobarrel than Hubpages. I haven’t done a lot of testing, but this theory seems to make sense to me.

Also, the fact that Infobarrel manually approves the first 10 articles, it is bound to stop people who can’t write so well and people who only want to promote their websites like Hubpages. Infobarrel also encourages people to write longer articles. If your article is longer than 450 words, it appears on the list of recently created articles. I am sure that if you write an interesting headline, it encourages people to click through to your article. Of course you really want your traffic to come from Google, but I had at least one article “tweeted” from a member at Infobarrel, which was nice to see.

Sometimes the more time I spend writing and researching an article, the less views it gets. If I am on a roll, I can write 450 words in 10-15 minutes. If I am struggling what to write, I can spend a whole morning on something. I have quite a few unfinished articles which need more work. I think it is better to stop working on something if it is taking too long and come back to it later.

I am changing my tack a little on finding topics to write about. I suppose I can’t help but judge the success of an article based on the number of views it has. I know I am also doing this to get links to my sites, but I think it is human nature to want to see lots of views and some feedback in the comments.

Anything to do with making money online, home based business and internet marketing seems to do well. Travel type articles don’t seem worth the time unless you are just doing it just for backlinks. I think this economic downturn has definitely seen an increase in people wanting to make money online and work from home. More people seem to be working in casual or contract jobs and they are turning to the internet to help make up the difference in their income.

This is great for established internet marketers. I am sure many people have actually made a lot of money from profiting from these trends. Of course I haven’t done any research on this, but it’s just the feeling I get from reading forums and blogs.

Some people have asked how much my hubs and articles are making me and honestly it is hardly anything. I set up a channel in Adsense and the figures would be very depressing to anyone who tried to calculate an hourly rate on how I am spending my time. But, I have seen an increase in my daily Adsense earnings since I started doing this, which is what encouraged me to set my September goal.

Sorry, if anyone is looking for any magic tips or secrets. One thing I do find that works for me is getting up early and knocking out a couple of articles before you do anything like start checking emails/forums/stats etc. By the evening, I can’t bothered writing much, but I do feel a bit more creative and get ideas from randomly surfing the internet and watching television. Even if I don’t write any complete articles at night, I make notes on ideas I have and how I might be able to make money with them.

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