Filed Under: Blogging with 0 Comments
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There’s more than one way to launch a blog, and quite often there is so much to do and consider at launch time that we a) get confused or b) cut corners because there’s not enough time.
Here are a few top resources to help you along the way:
1. The all-in-one
For a one-stop guide to launching a blog, read Chris G’s (if not Performancing’s) most important article:
How To: Launch a new blog the easy way
Chris walks you through the entire process of planning to executing a blog launch. Or if you’re in a hurry, read these 7 steps to launching a great blog.
2. Strictly planning
Some thoughts on planning for blogs:
27 tips for building a kick-ass blog
Planning a new blog? Get started already!
3. If you’re blogging for money…
10 business models for bloggers
10 Step Plan to a Profitable Blog
4. For bloggers:
20 types of pages that every blogger should consider
10 articles all bloggers should read at least once
21 ways to build a better blogger
I’ll be adding more to this list in the future - if there’s anything specific that you want to read more about, let me know.
Filed Under: Making Money Online with 0 Comments
A few ideas I jotted down earlier this month - I’ll be adding to this list in the future (feel free to leave your additions in the comments):
Filed Under: Making Money Online with 0 Comments
To paraphrase a famous author:
Consider any businessman at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his profits.
Making more money starts with intelligent financial management - and in this article you’ll read 5 steps for your business to make more money:
Filed Under: Making Money Online with 2 Comments
Many people have criticised AdSense for encouraging lazy monetization (at best) and splogs (at worst). I respect these people, I just don’t respect this opinion that much.
Taking any monetization method to its extremes will produce a lopsided business that is overly dependent on one form of conversions. AdSense = niche search traffic. Now you can get that traffic all on one site, or you could be smart and spread the load across several sites and niches. When this is taken too far in the direction of “increasing your options”, it turns your work into below-par cow dung. If you rely too much on AdSense, you become lazy and don’t maximise your revenues / your site’s value in case you want to sell it later on. If you focus too much on AdSense monetization, you put yourself at the risk of depending solely on search traffic. Lose that, and everything else is lost.
Over-dependence on any one thing is stupid. Why blame the tool when the TOOL who’s using it isn’t making the right choices?
Filed Under: Making Money Online with 1 Comment
Self-respect is a good thing. A positive sense of self-esteem gives you the confidence to handle difficult moments in life, and also acts as an attracting force in bringing you closer to others and to your personal goals.
There are times though, when believing in yourself turns into rigidity and a blanket refusal to change your way of thinking despite mounting evidence to the contrary right in front of you.
We’ve been right before, so why can’t we be right this time?
Change is the only constant, and as the environment changes around you, you need to adapt ahead of time to take advantage of it.
I attribute this stubbornness to excess self-importance, or in other words, an ego that’s out of control.
A few mistakes I’ve made that can be blamed on this:
Filed Under: Help Yourself with 3 Comments
What value do you place on your time?
You will find different methods to reach this value but ultimately the only valuation that matters is the absolute minimum you are willing to accept and perhaps more importantly, how you live up to this valuation 24 hours a day (and not just when you are getting paid for working).
Filed Under: Branding with 4 Comments
Point of Difference (POD): The reason why people should visit your site over every other.
Every successful site has a hook to it - something that differentiates them from the competition. Something that elicits the following reaction (quoting Rae Hoffman from her Performancing interview):
“Oh, yeah, widgetworld.com - you guys are the ones who have the [insert something others in that niche aren’t doing here]”
A POD is different from the core basics any site should have - quality content, good usability, community value, etc. And here’s where many webmasters trip themselves up - they consider these basics (quality content, community value and personal opinion are the most common) as being a point of difference in themselves.
Filed Under: Pakistan with 7 Comments
Update: The offending video has since been removed and Youtube has now been unblocked. Good work all around.
Youtube.com is inaccessible from several ISPs here in Pakistan and there are reports that all ISPs have been directed by the Pakistani government to block www.youtube.com for containing blasphemous web content.
This ban has reportedly been placed because of this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3s8jtvvg00 - and no matter what you want to say about censorship and the freedom of speech, this video is downright abusive and hateful. I managed to load the video through Anonymizer, but stopped after the first few seconds - not out of any respect for Islam, but because the video goes far beyond what you would consider satire and is essentially hate speech.
Filed Under: Work with 0 Comments
When I tell people how much it costs to have their blog rebooted, they often react as if I’ve grabbed their wallet and made a run for it.
The truth is, no one who really needs this advice has any idea of how much its worth - for most people, spending $500-$1k to get a 2000-3000 word document telling you what to do is ridiculous. And I agree - why should you pay even $300 if you can do this yourself, right?
So let’s look at what it really takes to do a blog reboot:
Filed Under: Thinking Out Loud with 0 Comments
An idea that I’ve been trying to drill into the minds of my friends and acquaintances is what Seth Godin calls ‘sheepwalking‘.
Sheepwalking:
“The outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line.”
It’s not so much that this term and its meaning rings so true, it’s that sheepwalking is an evolutionary survival trait, and is so ingrained in our systems through social indoctrination and by our parents that it is a rare person who can break free from these bonds and actually think for themselves.
Many people have criticised AdSense for encouraging lazy monetization (at best) and splogs (at worst). I respect these people, I just don’t respect this opinion that much.
Taking any monetization method to its extremes will produce a lopsided business that is overly dependent on one form of conversions. AdSense = niche search traffic. Now you can […]
Self-respect is a good thing. A positive sense of self-esteem gives you the confidence to handle difficult moments in life, and also acts as an attracting force in bringing you closer to others and to your personal goals.
There are times though, when believing in yourself turns into rigidity and a blanket refusal to change your […]
What value do you place on your time?
You will find different methods to reach this value but ultimately the only valuation that matters is the absolute minimum you are willing to accept and perhaps more importantly, how you live up to this valuation 24 hours a day (and not just when you are getting […]