What a long way we’ve come!

In 2003, I first participated in an event called the Blogathon. It was early days for blogging, and many of today’s ‘gurus’ weren’t even aware what a blog was.

And most bloggers were totally ignorant of the profit potential inherent in blogging. In fact, the participants at the fundraising 24-hour blogging event were shocked that I could even be hinting at using blogs to profit!

In fact, I got roasted by fellow bloggers for suggesting it – and my application to be a part of Blogathon 2004 was REJECTED… because my activities were deemed to be too ‘commercial’.

My conviction however ran deep. I wrote a little ebook called “Blog Profit Ideas Exposed” in which I shared 33 different ways you could profit from blogging. It was a runaway hit – and has sold over EIGHT HUNDRED copies since then.

Today, I was reading a report from problogger Yaro Starak – and was thrilled to hear that he’s making $30,000 a MONTH from blogging! (Wonder what the Blogathon folks might make of that, eh?!)

What makes Yaro’s success so worth talking about is that, in addition to being a great, nice guy, Yaro TEACHES others how to make money from blogging. He got together with Gideon Shalwick (co-author of this report) and shot a series of FREE videos on “How To Become a Blogger” – which received over 60,000 views shortly after it went public.

Excited at the response and flooded by demand for more information, these two guys created a whole new ‘Roadmap to Blogging Success’ and are offering this premium course to anyone who is interested.

But what I’d like to share with you is the impact reading their FREE report could have on your blogging success. Because as I browsed through the 67 pages, it became clear early on that this isn’t quite the usual ’sales pitchy’ freebie – but a content-rich document worth going over.

I found their concept of ‘new school blogs’ and the mysterious ‘X factor’ interesting. And their 5 blogging benchmarks make commonsense milestones for any blogger, beginner or advanced.

You could look on blogging like a bike tour or trekking adventure. You’d start off with a roadmap or guidebook, and then take heart when you reach every milestone that’s marked on it, knowing you’re on the right path to your destination.

And when it’s so easy to go off-track, having a roadmap drawn for you by an experienced traveler is priceless – unless you enjoy meandering around and wasting time, effort or both.

Each section of this short report, called “Roadmap to Become a Blogger”, ends with an ‘Action Plan’ so that you can put the lessons to work in your blogging instantly. You can read the report, work through the simple steps, and experience results from this information almost immediately.

Now, at the half-way mark, you’ll probably be wondering “What’s NEW?” – and that’s the question Yaro and Gideon address next… they call it “X Factor”

If you’re an experienced blogger, you probably WON’T find the 2 components a surprise – but it’s still interesting to see how a very successful blogger weaves them together for massive profit.

After reading the report, you’ll notice something missing from THIS blog – and it will be one of the 2 components of ‘X Factor’. Will I change that soon? Maybe. Yaro is certainly convincing!

The last portion of the FREE report shares techniques to apply the ‘X Factor’ to each of the 5 milestones – once again, breaking down the concepts into directly applicable action steps you can take today and boost your blog’s success.

What’s NOT to like about the report?

Well, if you’re into gripping prose, exciting story-telling, and power-copywriting, then this report will leave you disappointed – even bored. Because it’s not ‘entertaining’ – it is EDUCATIONAL.

If you are a blogger, seeking direction on taking your blog to the ‘next level’, and wondering what more you can do to make things more effective with your blogging, download and devour this report right away.

It’s free. You’ll pay for it only with your time, attention – and your email address! Don’t believe me? Click here and see for yourself.

Become a Blogger… and I hope you make a fortune!

BlogRush died.

John Reese just announced on his blog that he’s shutting it down.

I predicted it wouldn’t work – and explained why, while saying I hoped I would be wrong… even suggesting another way it could be re-positioned with a better chance of working well for members.

Anyway, that’s history.

John’s wrong about one thing, though. He says: “…many BlogRush critics… (will) relish in saying, “I told you so”…”.

Only ‘losers’ and ‘failures’ would “relish” someone else’s failure. Out of every 20 ideas I try out, 19 fail. One succeeds. And even then, only the rare one succeeds wildly.

Anyone who has enjoyed the sweet taste of meaningful success will only sympathize with John, share some sadness, and proudly acknowledge the attempt of an innovative entrepreneur to create something of value.

If you’ve used Twitter, the micro-blogging platform that radically altered the way a lot of online communication takes place today, you’ll know that right at the top of the page, you get asked the question:

What are you doing?

Well, with the frequent downtime that Twitter has been plagued by, it seems more apt to be asking TWITTER the same question!

The service has over 1 million users. They recently raised funds with savvy folks like Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos investing in it. They’ve had a LOT of time to get things fixed.

Yet the ‘blue whale’ still keeps popping up often. (Twitter uses a once-cute image of a blue whale coming up for breath to indicate down-time. But, once too often makes it much less ‘cute’!)

Where you ‘tweet’ on Twitter, you ‘dent’ on Identi.ca – and in many ways, it is quite similar to Twitter… with one difference. Portability. If you have the tech smarts to do it, you can ‘take’ your network with you when you move to another service (at least, that’s how I understand it).

Right now, Identi.ca only has ‘early adopters’ – which means most of the conversation I’ve been listening to is ‘geek speak’ that floats over my head.

But if it scales nicely, and with an open-source platform that’s available to many minds to adapt and tweak that is quite likely, then possibly Identi.ca will become my preferred alternative to Twitter.

Of course, that’s only likely if Twitter doesn’t get its act together.

So, Twitter… What Are YOU Doing?

Over dinner, I had a flash of insight.

I understood what my ‘problem’ was.

And so, I don’t profit from trends I notice and explore far ahead of a crowd.

I first started blogging in 2001. By 2003, I was convinced this trend was catching fire. At that time, I wrote a ‘blog book’ (”a book on blogs that’s itself a blog”) called Blog Profit Ideas Exposed.

That was one of the very first ebooks about profiting from blogs – and I still remember the flack I caught from ‘hard core’ bloggers during Blogathon 2003 for daring to suggest it was ok to make money from blogs!

It has sold a little over 800 copies until now. And 1 BILLION blogs later, there are still some of the 33 blog profit ideas that NO ONE is using effectively or leveraging maximally.

Surely that’s FAR ahead of the curve?

But before blogging got popular, I was off studying the new fad on the block – RSS feeds.

Again, I wrote some of the earlier ebooks and reports on RSS marketing. And remember discussing exciting uses of RSS with people who were already experts, like Rok Hrastnik and Pakii Pierce (this was in 2004).

By the time blogging and RSS was gaining traction in the marketplace, I was already involved in another huge trend I caught on the upswing… niche marketing, and monetizing niche minisites with Google Adsense.

Some of my best-selling products in 2004 and 2005 were packages of ready-made niche minisites which people could plug-in their Adsense codes and start promoting.

But by the time thousands of people were ready to buy these instant minisites, I was already up and away following the next trend – unique content. PLR article memberships. Article modification systems. And outsourced solutions for people wanting them.

This lasted a year – and just as PLR became the popular trend, my interest had already shifted to social bookmarking, and another 6 months later, to social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter (which I was a relatively ‘late’ adopter of, getting on only in July 2007).

And guess what?

Now when FB and Twitter are catching the attention of many people in my niche, I’ve lost that edge of excitement in teaching about it!

(In fact, thinking about John Reese’s email today titled “Twitter Marketing” is what sparked off this line of thinking. In it he says: “I think Twitter is going to really evolve into a must use marketing tool.” That’s a conclusion I reached 9 months ago!)

That’s my problem!

I cannot get excited about teaching something that I consider ‘old hat’ or a rather established technology or system.

I cannot justify charging $97 or $297 or (as I see many people doing) even higher prices to teach what is essentially basic utilization of these technologies… or worse, sheer theory and imagination masquerading as ‘tested and proven’ results.

Yet there are many people on my list who still wonder what a blog is, why blogging is so widely recommended, and how to set up their blog.

In moments of introspection and reflection, I wonder how things might have been if I had stuck with teaching about blogging and RSS marketing since 2003.

Even if I had moved on to niche marketing and content creation, then sticking with them for the last 4 years could have given me pre-eminent positioning in those areas.

Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites are becoming more visible as avenues of traffic, sales and relationship building. Even now, if I could stay excited about them, I’d profit wildly.

But that’s just not ME. (See my ‘problem’?)

I could have been the ‘blogging guru’.

Or the ‘RSS guru’.

Or the ‘niche marketing guru’.

Or the ‘content guru’.

Or the ’social marketing guru’.

But I’m not.

If I were to choose a label, this one would fit best…

Cricket is a sport that drives people in my city crazy.

In the 1970s, our home stadium had a unique feature – the pitch would crumble on day #4. This means a ball bowled in the right direction could hit one of those worn out patches and veer grossly off-track, leaving the hapless batsman with little or any chance of doing anything with it.

Why talk about cricket while discussing content?

Because there’s a debate on a popular forum about quality content that has gone so wildly off-track, a reader has just as little chance as that batsman of making sense of it… and is highly likely to completely miss the point.

Kurt Melvin is a GENIUS. One of the best guys I’ve studied SEO (search engine optimization) from. And he has a refreshingly unique perspective about many things related to online content and traffic.

His “Big Page of SEO” is an amazing guide where I first heard the concept of ‘people rank’.

A few days back, Kurt penned an insightful post about what makes ‘Good Content‘. Read it to hear about categories he calls ’spewers’, ‘parrots’, ‘reporters’ and ‘creators’.

It is an elegant and pretty accurate description of the types of content producers that populate the online space.

As a closing comment, Kurt says:

“If you truly want to make it “big” as a content provider, you must be A Creator. You can do fine with being a Reporter or even a Parrot…But to truly be big you must be a Creator.”

Nice information until this point.

Then, the ‘pitch’ crumbled!

This discussion got going – “Kurt’s Parrot Being Parroted” – and the ‘ball’ spun away in many different directions. (Don’t read it all unless you have 30 minutes to waste, it isn’t necessary!)

In a nutshell, hot debate began on the role of a ‘parrot’ and the ethics of ’stealing ideas’. Missing, or skirting around, Kurt’s point that to be a ‘thought leader’ you need to create original and compelling content.

Not everyone can be (or wants to be) a ‘thought leader’!

Many years ago, I created a tool called “Make Content Unique“. I could have called it ‘Make Content EXCELLENT’ or ‘Make Content GOOD’ – but I didn’t, because all this tool did was to tweak written content to turn it into ‘unique content’ by search engine standards.

Even then, while compiling my research on the subject, I concluded that there was NO STANDARD for SE definitions of ‘uniqueness’… see this mini-report, “What is Duplicate Content?”

And that means it will always be POSSIBLE to beat a search engine algorithm for ‘duplicate content’ – which therefore, by extension, means that people WILL try to exploit that potential… by being spewers, parrots, and maybe even some form of superficial reporters.

Kurt’s discussion touches (as in the SEO guide) on the more important ‘factor’ in judging the value of content… PEOPLE. Readers, viewers and listeners.

He makes some very valid observations about the categories he recognizes from the perspective of his ‘human’ audience. Not surprisingly, spewers catch his ire – as they do mine, with one exception… when their ends justify their means.

I’ve engaged in this debate before.

If you have a cure or prevention for a deadly illness, and find the top pages in Search Engine results dominated by scammers who use ‘black hat’ SEO techniques to keep others out… then using powerful tactics that work to get YOUR page into the results where thousands will see your content and benefit from it are JUSTIFIED – even if that involves ’spewing’ rehashed junk for that specific purpose. (It’s called ‘teleological ethics’ and I discuss it here)

‘Parrots’ make a lot of us tired, for sure. And because Kurt is absolutely fair, he does point out the one exception – newbies (’noobs’). If a parroted article is the first time a person is exposed to a particular idea or concept, it still has an impact. But more seasoned readers find it a waste of time.

And therein lies the value in charging for your information!

There are many people who loudly proclaim that they will never consider paying for information, because anything of value is available on the Internet for FREE.

True, but a LOT of it is ‘parroted’ information, that you will pay for in time and effort to weed through to get to the gold beneath.

When you start out as a newbie, you’ll learn from everything. But after a while, you need to either find (or be shown) the more ‘original’ content created by ‘thought leaders’. Or else you could get mired for weeks, even months or years, reading re-cycled ‘ideas’ echoed by the prolific parrots who aim to beat SE algorithms to get the ‘click’ – not to attain MIND-SHARE which is the more effective metric of an advanced specialist.

The other two categories do not often generate debate, because they are pretty much well-defined, both in terms of what they do, and what they seek to achieve.

Reporters aggregate data into easily consumed information. Think of them as the ‘annotated footnotes’ you find in any textbook, where you get a compiled summary of the information presented in bite-sized chunks, with references listed in case you want to delve deeper.

Creators are the real ORIGINALS. Folks with the ability to not just hold many thoughts, but to seek correlations, patterns, synergies, connections, associations and relationships between them, and furthermore, carry out extrapolations and predictions based on them that might have value and implications for the audiences they are trying to reach.

If they do a good job of it, they become ‘leaders’ and others ‘follow’ what they say. When they don’t, they become little better than ‘parrots’ or ‘reporters’.

But here’s the bit where the ‘crumbly pitch’ spun the discussion way out of balance and perspective…

Every Type of Content Provider Has a Role!

True, one kind is higher up the greasy pole than the other. But each has a part to play. And an audience to reach. And an impact to make.

Deriding one or revering another is little more than a function of human nature that loves to praise or scorn. To the content publisher, both are arrows that pass (or should) harmlessly by in the dark.

Each kind can take solace in the thought that they are serving a purpose.

In their own way.

After I posted about my regular style of ‘direct response blogging’
a few people emailed me to ask what exactly that meant.

Well, actually, it’s just a blog that evokes a response. Could be
clicking on a link. Or filling up a form. Or ordering a product.

An example might help. Here’s one of my recent projects. And as
the buzz is about to explode across the blogosphere, I don’t risk
much by letting you see how I’ve set it up to slipstream on to it.

Jeff Walker is about to release the next edition of his best-selling
PRODUCT LAUNCH FORMULA 2.0

I didn’t order the first version, but intend to buy the new one.
And because it is a high-ticket product, I will do some research.

This process was created to leverage that work I’m anyway going to
do for myself – which will be useful to anyone else who is thinking
about buying it.

I registered a few domain names. One of them is

http://www.Product-Launch-Formula2.com

On it, I mentioned what I’m going to do, and put up an opt-in form.

I then created a blog. On it, I will post snippets of information
related to Product Launch Formula. Each post will link back to
that opt-in form. Take a look:

Product Launch Formula 2.0 blog

Then, I took it a step further – by throwing in a mini-network of
Squidoo lenses on the topic of ‘Product Launch Formula 2.0′

The Squidoo lenses in turn point back to the
http://www.Product-Launch-Formula2.com page
with the opt-in form!

Landing Page -> Blog -> Squidoo -> Back to Landing Page

So wherever visitors enter this loop and click, they will get to the opt-in form where they can join my updates list – which is the ‘response’ I’m aiming at with this network.

What’s a Squidoo network?

This is:

• Product Launch Formula 2.0 lens
• Product Launch Formula 2 lens
• Product Launch Formula 2 Reviews lens
• Product Launch Formula Review lens
• Product Launch Formula Reviews
• PLF Review lens
• PLF2 Review
• PLF 2.0 Review
• PLF 2
• PLF lens
• PLF2 lens

I explain it further in my ‘Advanced Squidoo Profits’ report -
you can order a copy here (and get my ‘Squidoo Marketing Secrets’
report as a bonus for FREE!)

In early December, I drew up a plan for this blog.

It was a bold departure from the style of blogging I had practiced until now – the style I’ll call ‘direct response blogging’. It’s like direct response marketing… the blog had a clear, specific purpose which could be measured and tracked.

The new ‘experiment’ was to try a different kind of blogging – without a very definite focus, to write on a general theme, and with a plan to try out ideas including lengthy content-rich posts, link-bait posts, lists, controversy, and stream of consciousness rambles.

I had charted out end-points for the experiment – to be reviewed at the end of February. These were the targets:

RSS feed subscribers: 1,000 (I actually got 192)

Email opt-ins: 300 (I only got 82)

Unique visits per day: 1,000 (My stats show barely 100)

Establish contact with A-list bloggers: 15 (I guess this one worked)

Post guest posts on blogs: 10 (I only managed 2 on Problogger)

Over the 2 month period, I posted to the blog ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY ONE times! Whew!

All this wouldn’t matter as much as the shocking figure I pulled out from my various earnings sources.

Through the 3 month trial period, my monthly income has dropped sharply to 52% of my regular monthly average!

That shocked me really badly. I shouldn’t be surprised, because the time to blog came out of other profitable activities.

But I was.

So, to make up for this steep decline in earnings, I must regretfully call off this experiment – and go back to my regular style of ‘direct response blogging’.

It was fun trying something new. Now, to get back to doing what works!

Already I’m swinging into action – with a Leap Day Firesale – check it out, it’s cool!

I’m amazed at how many authors still don’t have blogs. And when they do, how rarely they interact with their audience.

To the layperson, it’s a huge kick to be able to communicate with a well-known author, even one who has written a best-seller.

To the author, it is a never before available opportunity to engage in a dialog with the grassroots reader of his work, to get insight and ideas and feedback that can only help in structuring future work.

There are a few best-selling authors I am able to communicate with reliably. Among them are Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and Tim Ferriss. But even in these cases, not through their blog.

And that’s strange – because a blog is such an easy and convenient way of asynchronous two-way communication, one that lets an author connect with his/her audience in a one-to-many style through blog posts, and then extend the conversation one-to-one via comments, or even off-blog.

In my free short report, “How To Write a Book the Smart Way”, I even outlined a plan where an author can use a blog to release a new book in installments.  All along the way, you could be growing an eager reader base who will not only buy the finished book but also become one of a increasing crowd of evangelists who help spread the word.

Mark Joyner recently authored a new ebook. It’s called “The Rise of the Author”. It is available for free download… here.

The ebook reveals some interesting concepts that make you think. And there are some parts where you feel it would be nice to ask the author for more clarification.

What’s nice is that you can – through his blog.

Over the last week, Mark has been personally responding to EVERY comment left by readers of ROTA (Rise of the Author) – and the comments are quite interesting too. Take a look here, and then decide if you want to read the ebook itself (I recommend you try it out).

So, if you’re already an author, why aren’t you using your blog in a similar fashion?

Or if you are, please share how it’s working for you.

And if you aren’t yet an author, but have a blog (or want to) – well, what are you waiting for. As Mark Joyner says in ROTA, the window of opportunity for authors is wide open right now.

But who knows for how long it will stay open?

John Reese just released another blog related program called Traffic Jam, an extension of the infamous BlogRush.

And apart from the hype (“Here’s Why You Should Definitely Visit TrafficJam.com, Bookmark It, And Visit Often…”) and hoopla (already the blogosphere is buzzing – like here, here, here, here, here and here) there’s little known about what it is, what it could be, and what it will become.

• Will it be a research tool?
• Or a traffic driving widget?
• Or a speed-reader for relevant blogs?

Who knows – yet?

There’s supposed to be some cool technology driving it. From the Income.com blog:

“It uses some unique technology to analyze millions of blog post title impressions, average click-rates, session times, and more to come up with its live ‘ranking’ system.”

From early looks, it seems this will become another tool for the already popular, powerful and heavy-traffic blogs to get even more visitors to flock to them – but I’ll be delighted if the smaller blogs get leverage from being on it.

This post could have been titled: “Twitter Influence”

But I thought it looked more ‘interesting’ with this instead:

The story is as fascinating as the heading suggests. It’s a blogger’s dream. Imagine typing a few words into a box, clicking a button – and as a result, having access to 82,000 readers.Well, that’s what happened.

The first part was in late December 2007. I had just noticed Darren ‘Problogger’ Rowse had joined Twitter, the micro-blogging service that’s oh-so-much more. And ‘followed’ him.

We had a few exchanges of messages on Twitter – and not really hoping for much, I showed him a short draft I had written about ‘The Influence of Death’. He liked it, and asked if I could modify it a bit to fit the theme of his blog. The result was:

It was a thrill being featured on the busy Problogger blog’s homepage for close to a week, and getting 45 comments from the thousands of readers who saw the post.

And again, this week, I had a ‘repeat performance’ – almost identical to the first one.

I wrote a short list of “10 Reasons For Bloggers To Get Involved With a Non-Profit” – and showed it to Darren through a Twitter ‘direct message’. As you well know, Twitter limits each message to 140 characters (my message was even shorter!)

This time, Darren liked it and asked if I was happy to have him publish it ‘as is’.

I was. And yesterday the post was on Problogger’s homepage!

10 Reasons For Bloggers To Get Involved With a Non-Profit

Again, instant exposure to Problogger’s 41,000+ readers!

Better still, the context of the message is PERFECT to mention my own upcoming non-profit awareness building event, A DAY FOR HEARTS – Congenital Heart Defects Awareness Day!

Why blog about this?

Because anyone can do what I did – without much work or stress. And not just with Problogger – there are many more bloggers, with busy blogs followed by thousands of readers, who will gladly post your guest content – if it is relevant, useful and fits the theme of their blogs.

How to do it?

* Get on Twitter.

* Type 140 characters into a box.

* Click on the UPDATE button.

And if the planets are in the right alignment, you too may get instant exposure to 82,000 readers – or more!

That’s Twitter Influence – and still many people will miss this opportunity and go:

“Oh, Twitter!“