If You Can’t Get Your Family And Friends To Subscribe…
Posted by Mitch on Nov 17, 2009
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine regarding people not subscribing to my blog. Actually, the conversation was more along the lines of why she didn’t subscribe to any of my blogs. She will read a post if I send her a particular post link, but otherwise, it just doesn’t happen.
She wrote back saying she was a terrible friend, but I wasn’t having any of that. See, the thing is that I’ve often wondered how any of us really believe we can sell and market to others, as well as get people to subscribe to things we do, if we can’t even get our friends and families to participate in the process. After all, these are the people who supposedly know us best, and at least are supposed to like us in some fashion, yet when it comes down to it you’re not writing anything of interest to get them to participate.
Not counting my internet friends, I have four friends of mine who are subscribed to this blog in some fashion; that’s it. I have a few more subscribed to my business blog. I’m not sure any of my friends are subscribed to my finance blog, but I wouldn’t expect them to be since it’s kind of, well, out of their realm of caring.
One truth of mine is that I’m subscribed to every one of my friend’s blogs. Only two of them write fairly regularly, and every once in awhile I comment, but I see everything. I’ve always felt it was the thing to do, but at the same time, I’m really interested in what people have to say, when they decide to say it. Just seeing them express themselves, no matter what it is, thrills me to no end. Yet, it’s not reciprocal.
Of course there is a difference. I’m really hoping to grow my blog, whereas most of them are just looking to say something and move on. Most of them probably have way fewer people following them than I do, but that’s not really the point. I guess my point, or question, is if my thinking that if I can’t even convince my friends or family to read things I write, let alone comment, then am I kidding myself in thinking that other people should be interested in it?
I know I’m not alone on this one, so please tell me your thoughts; I’d really like to know. Not that I’d stop, but I’m just trying to get my mind around it all. Thanks; enjoy your day.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Who Are The Affiliate Programs On Your Blog For?
Posted by Mitch on Jul 29, 2009
Yesterday I stated in my post on who is your blog for, I stated that there was going to be a second part to that post; this is it.
And you see what the question is; who are the affiliate programs on your blog for? It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately, as I’ve discussed marketing and advertising and blogging.
I think it’s a fascinating topic because I’ve talked about the ads I put on this blog often enough, even as I go through and change them from time to time. I’ve said enough times that I don’t expect to make money from this blog. And yet, there I go, having ads on the blog because I’m really the eternal optimist, hoping that something will strike a cord in someone’s head sometimes and have them say “hey, I need to check that out,”, or “that looks like an interesting product; maybe I’ll buy that.”
So, I did some thinking about this blog and who the visitors are. It kind of ties in with the purpose of this blog. If you remember, I did this post where I reviewed my visitors, and posted that 64% of the people that come to this blog are totally brand new visitors. Based on Analytics, most people are coming here for the book writing tips, which is pretty neat since it’s the term I rank best for with this blog. Yet, when they get here, they tend to like reading the more personal stuff, the stuff that has nothing to do with anything except me, or my thoughts on things here and there.
I find that interesting. In a way, it’s what my original purpose was with this blog, so I’ve actually achieved what I initially set out to do. So then what about the affiliate programs on this blog? Who are they actually geared for? It seems that they’re geared towards those new visitors, the ones who come for one thing and then switch to the other things. Those are the folks I’m hoping will find something intriguing in some fashion, and might decide to check it out. Those folks aren’t coming here to purchase hosting packages or domain names or most of the computer stuff I have on this blog. They’re here for personal reasons, and I like that.
Doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to change the ads I have on the sides all that much, if at all. But I may change them up in some fashion. But the things I add at the bottom of these posts,… well, that’s already kind of changed a bit. I’m still going to have affiliate links from time to time, especially since some of the affiliates I promote here don’t have specific products I can list individually. And I’m going to start looking for product links that I can add as text links within my posts here and there, as it seems some of the top internet marketers, such as Lynn Terry (who mentioned it on her live webinar Tuesday) says they seem to work best for her, and we’ll see where that goes. Matter of fact, I just tried it the other day for the first time; takes a little longer to post if I do that too often. But if it has the potential to possibly make sales on the back end,… well, who am I to argue with successful people?
So, there’s the question above; what say you?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Chitika
Posted by Mitch on Nov 22, 2008
After months of my friend Sire beating me up about it, I’ve finally decided to sign up with Chitika. Chitika is another PPC (pay-per-click) advertising company along the lines of Adsense and Widget Bucks, but there’s a difference, which I’ll get to in a couple of minutes.
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Signing up is fairly easy to do. You put in all of your demographic information, along with a preferred username and password, and make the determination of how you want to get paid. Then you hit the button, and you’ll get an email where you click the link to activate your account.
The next step is to pick the type of ad you want to display, and select the colors. Oddly enough, you’ll have two options, which I thought was odd until I read it a little bit better. I’ll start with option two, which gives you the opportunity to select an alternate link or product to advertise instead of their offering. They do that because of option one, which states that if you select it, the only people who will see the ad are people who come to your site via a search engine. Yup, that means if you’re a regular reader and therefore visit the site any other way, you’ll never see the regular Chitika ads, but anyone who might find you via a search engine will. The idea is that people who come to you via a search engine represents targeted traffic, and their advertisers will pay a higher rate for targeted traffic. At the same time, your normal visitors won’t have to be subjected to the ads. One other odd thing is that, as long as I’m considered as logged into my account, I’ll never see any of those ads either; weird, right?
Of course, that doesn’t mean one can’t represent them with affiliate tags, which I’ve done over there to the left. I didn’t read how much I could get if anyone signs up after clicking on the button; truthfully, I haven’t really paid much attention to any of the affiliate ads as far as how much I could get paid, which I now have to admit is a little strange for someone who’s usually as anal as I can be about these types of things. I guess I figure if any of them make money, I’ve done fairly wel.
So, we’ll see how it goes on the blog. Sire states that Chitika brings in more money on his blog than Adsense; I guess another test will tell the tale, but, since this blog brings in almost no Adsense money, it might not be a fair fight.
How Do You Write
Posted by Mitch on Nov 6, 2008
How do you write? I find it an interesting question, especially for blogs, because, for most of the time, I tend to write pretty quickly about pretty much anything.
I know that some people take a lot of time to think about what they want to write about, then write it over the course of a few days. I remember Steve Pavlina saying some time ago that he likes to take two or three days putting his posts together, but he tends to write posts between 5,000 and 7,500 words. Of course, he’s not doing that right now, as he’s doing some test with some kind of drink and talking about his results on a daily basis. Darren Rowse of Problogger fame said he likes to write at least one post a day on all of his blogs, and these days it’s much easier for him since he’s pretty much turned himself into a corporation, so that when he’s on the road someone else steps in to write posts for him. However, if you look back into his archives (which I did, of course), you’ll find that he used to write multiple posts a day, very short posts where he’d state a topic, write something relatively short, then have a link to the person where he got the idea from in the first place.
By the way, I find it oddly comforting that it took him about as long to start getting visitors and readers to his blog as it’s taken for me, and he also had many posts at the time that got either very little or no activity, just as I sometimes do now (although I am pimping this post of mine again because it was pretty personal, and I’m thinking someone should have commented on it for some reason).
Even when I’ve researched something first, I tend to write pretty quickly afterwards. But you have seen some of my really long posts, and every once in awhile I’ll put up something that’s pretty short, just to communicate something. For instance, the day I posted the quick little blurb about the end of BlogRush, which I got to post as kind of a breaking news story (posted after immediately being written by John Reese himself) was one of the shortest posts I’ve ever written, and it still got a lot of comments.
That proved a couple of things. One, current news counts a lot if you can be one of the first to help break the story. Two, sometimes you can spend a lot of time on something, or put your heart into it, and it won’t merit nary a comment; WordPress doesn’t tell me how many page views, so to speak, a post gets (but Google Analytics does, and that’s a shame; y’all go back and read that post!). I wonder if there’s a plugin for that, and if it would separate how many times I saw it myself. And three, sharing information that someone else comes up with can be greatly appreciated, which is why I’m going to share this page that has a lot of information on page rank, something that a lot of you have been talking about a whole lot lately, which means it’s not only something you seem to care a lot about, but also says y’all need to find a new topic (check this one also). 
Enough of this for now. So, how do you write? How do you decide what to write about? How often do you write? Share with us; who knows, maybe there will be a car as a prize for the most creative post,… nah!
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