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Category: Mindset

Building an online business like most challenges has a lot to do with your mindset. Getting your motivation, frames of reference and expectations right will have more of an impact on your success than simply following perfect SEO "rules".
Mindset

How To Build a Website for One Dollar Guaranteed to Get Traffic and Why It Is a Bad Idea

Like most other internet marketers/online entrepreneurs I struggle with the curse of always thinking up new ideas even though I know I should be focusing on my primary business plan.

Well what I have today is a simple way to build a website “guaranteed” to get traffic for $1…along with an example of how I did it and why it is a bad idea!

What Was I Thinking – This plan was dreamt up and post created on a Saturday night after my baby boy and wife had fallen asleep. I was deep diving into my analytics enjoying a couple beer after my day having started with a teething baby/dirty diaper at 4:30am. So I am not surprised it was not my best idea! But I still find it interesting and hope you do to!  

I have come back and made some edits inputted the results but for the most part this is a pretty raw dump of me thinking through a potential online project and geeking out with Excel… (more…)

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Jon September 16, 2013 36 Comments
Mindset

Who moved my blogging cheese?

There is only one thing you can count on when building an internet based business, you can count on: Change.

If You Do Not Change, You Can Become Extinct – Spencer Johnson

Reflecting back on the 7 years that I’ve been blogging, I’d would absolutely agree that things change constantly.  The blogging world has changed immensely since I started:

  • Engagement has moved from blog comments to social media
  • Blogging is now more about the blogger than the blog itself
  • Blogging is more formal and professional – People expect high quality content, and not just a rant or a summary of what you had for dinner
  • Google has become the single search engine of focus and they control the internet.

I see change almost daily as I read social media updates and read new articles from other bloggers.  All of this change reminded me of a book I read way back in the early 90s: Who Moved My Cheese?
Who moved my blogging cheese?

Who moved my cheese?

If you haven’t read the book, the story is about two people and two mice in a maze.   They stumble upon a large amount of cheese and live happily until one day the cheese is gone.  The two mice quickly move on, expecting that the cheese wouldn’t last.  The mice also quickly find a newer and even bigger cheese.

The two humans remain where the old cheese was, going from shock to anger to fear.  They keep waiting for the old cheese to return, and not eating.  One of them eventually decides to move on to look for new cheese, while the other still struggles.  Finally they do, and find an even bigger cheese where the mice are.  But note, the mice had been eating it much longer.  One of the humans shares some important lessons about change through some writing left on a wall (The writing on the wall):

Change Happens – They Keep Moving The Cheese

Anticipate Change – Get Ready For The Cheese To Move

Monitor Change – Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old

Adapt To Change Quickly – The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese

Change – Move With The Cheese

Enjoy Change! – Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!

Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again- They Keep Moving The Cheese.

I’m sure you see the metaphor here.  The maze represents life, the cheese happiness and prosperity, and the mice and two people represent different individuals and how they deal with change.

If you’ve not read it, it really is a good and quick read.   The story always serves as a great reminder of how to handle things when they change or when things don’t work out the way you had planned.  The book is sitting right next to me in my book shelf as I write this, along side a number of other great reads.

Alright….Who moved my blogging cheese?

Perhaps you might be wondering how in the heck cheese applies to blogging (other than making for a great snack with crackers while writing).   I love a good metaphor…The maze represents the internet, the cheese traffic and income, and the mice and two people are various bloggers or web masters.  But I’ll bet most of you figured that out already.

Have you ever asked yourself who moved my blogging cheese?  Of course I don’t mean that question word for word, but a similar type question?   This type of question often occurs as the result of one of the following:

  • When Google makes an algorithm change and they suddenly see a huge drop in traffic and or revenue.
  • When an advertising network goes out of business or gets shutdown by a new owner
  • When high earning affiliate program gets shutdown or restricted
  • When social media makes changes that have large negative impacts to traffic – Facebook comes to mind…
  • Your favorite RSS reader gets cancelled…

There are, of course, many many others.

When some type of change negatively impacts a blog or website, many bloggers sit around asking: “Who the heck moved my blogging cheese?” or “Why did they do this?”.  The change literally freezes them and keeps them from moving forward.

Big mistake.

See, while those same bloggers are sitting around lamenting about the change, many others are moving forward.  The longer you lament, the more your competition will get ahead.

Let’s reflect back on the “Writings on the wall”, and apply them to blogging:

Accept that Change Happens

Face it, things on the internet change, and often at a very rapid pace.  Some times these changes can have large negative impacts to our blogs.  Never fail to remind yourself that change happens.  The blogging cheese will constantly move.  Knowing and accepting this allows you to anticipate it and plan for it.

Google is fairly open about their algorithm changes, at least at a high level.  Pay attention to those changes, consider the impact, and be ready for the change when it occurs.  Social media is a great way to anticipate and understand change, especially if you follow Google staff, SEO experts, and other bloggers.

Also ask yourself: Are you doing the same old things or branching out and trying new things?

Are you monitoring changes?  Are you seeing new things appear on the blogging horizon?   Are you  learning about them and then trying them out early?  Have you tried video?  Are you on Google+ and Pinterest?  Have you looked at the new MySpace?  Have you done a Slideshare presentation? Tried Vine or Instagram videos?

You should be.

Quickly adapt to change

Not that this has ever happened to anyone…

But let’s say you wake up one morning, and head over the Google Analytics to check out your blog stats.   To your shock, you see that your traffic is down 25%.  A little more digging shows that a main keyword you ranked in the top 10 for, you now rank below 30 for.  You see that four other sites are now suddenly in the top 10, all spammy low quality sites.

What do you do?  Sure you research the issue a bit and see if perhaps something is wrong with your blog or some algorithm change went live that would negatively impact you.  By the way, the best way to see if something is wrong with your blog is to head over to Google Webmaster tools.  But be prepared, you might not even find the answer there.  Outside of that, there really isn’t anything you can do.  The change is out of your scope of control.

I have a site that was de-ranked for it’s primary traffic keyword about a year ago.  I suddenly went from #4 to not ranked at all by Google, almost over night and for no apparent reason.  I spent  months trying to figure out what happened.  Nothing in Webmaster tools, no emails form Google, nothing.

My lesson: Research it, try to see if something is wrong, but don’t spend months on it.  Let it go, and find new cheese.  I actually ended up hurting myself more by not letting it go.

When your blogging cheese is gone, move along.  Not standing around waiting for your cheese to suddenly return is incredibly important and will save you wasted time.

Using my example, I should have just changed to another primary keyword – but I didn’t.  I literally kept waiting for it to be restored, and all the while getting mad at Google for screwing me.

Enjoy the Change

Here’s the best part of moving on and changing: In most all cases the change is better!

Not only is the process of changing fun and exciting, once you make the change you’ll discover that things are often better than they were before.  I’ve seen this trend recently on my older niche sites.  The approach that I was using worked great 3-4 years go, but in today’s world resulted in a slow decline in traffic and conversions.  So I changed my approach, using Google’s recommended strategies.  My traffic and conversions are on the rise.

Update 4/21/2013 – Seems the Google tides changed once again, and that same site was pretty much completely de-ranked.  That coupled with a drop in search volume just didn’t make the site worth maintaining anymore, and thus I shut it down.

I also find that by changing my approach, I get to learn new things and learn new perspectives.  Change in the short term can be painful, but change in the long term is fun, and often very profitable.

Remember, the cheese will keep moving

You changed your approach, embraced the change and now you’re enjoying all that new traffic, engagement, and earnings.  Sit back and count your money right?

Wrong.  

Don’t forget, you may wake up tomorrow morning, and cheese is once again gone.  Sure, it may not be gone tomorrow, or the next day, or even the next month, but one day, it will be gone.

Always keep that in mind – the cheese will keep moving.  Expect it, watch for it, plan for it, and embrace it when it does.  Don’t sit around looking for it.

Photo by: loveisabeautifulthing

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Jon July 8, 2013 6 Comments
Mindset

Don’t ever forget your blogging roots

One of the small things in life that I take great pleasure in is heading out to the store or running an errand and bringing a few of my kids along with me.   Riding in the car somewhere is a great opportunity to spend some “quality” time with your kids and can provide some great teaching moments.

While riding in the car over the weekend, one of my boys started asking questions about where our family was from, which started a fairly long conversation that he really enjoyed, including a few interesting and amusing stories.

Don't forget your blogging roots

My family, on my father’s side, is from West Virginia.  While for many, this conjures mental images of “Deliverance”, it’s a heritage I’m very proud of.  West Virginia is full of honest and hard working people, that while certainly “country”, they are also people that never forgot you and always put family and people first.  Making sure I never forgot my roots is important to my Dad, and now as a father, it has become important to me as well.

How does all of this relate the blogging?  Surprisingly, remembering your blogging roots is pretty important, or at least to me it is.  Here’s why …

Your blogging roots

I clearly remember the first few months after starting Side Income Blogging.  I remember checking Google Analytics daily to watch for visitors and looked forward to receiving those very first few comment notification emails.  I also clearly remember starting my very first blog on personal finance in 2006, and how exited I was as I started to receive comments and interaction from readers.  I remember many of their names to this day.

As you start your blog and it begins to grow, you’ll meet people that will have a profound influence on your blog.  These people include:

  • Every single one of your readers.  They are the foundation of your blog.
  • Other bloggers that help you, write for you, support you, and link out to you.
  • Your family who will support you and give you incredible ideas if you listen (this article is a perfect example).

Not only will you meet incredible people, your blog will have incredible moments that occur that will help it become more visible and help it grow.   These are moments like:

  • Getting linked from a large blog inside or outside of your niche
  • Being mentioned by a major news outlet
  • Going viral on social media
  • Ranking #1 for some high traffic keyword, even if only for a few days
  • Earning your first few cents

All of these people and moments, I refer to as “blogging roots”.  Someday, when your blog is big and influential, these are the people and momenets you absolutely do not want to forget.  Without these people and events, your blog would not be where it is.

Bloggers are forgetting their roots

Amy Andrews, from Blogging with Amy and I were chatting a bit about a recent change in direction she is making on her blog.  In that conversion, she said something pretty profound that has really made me think:

“Back in the day, we used to follow blogs. Now we follow people.“

When I first read that, I wasn’t sure I agreed with her.  But the more I thought about, the more I realized that she was right.  Gone are the days of anonymous/code name bloggers.  Relationships, especially those we have with our readers and our audience, are becoming more and more important.  Social media has really become the icing on the cake in this trend, almost requiring people to be “real”.  Readers want to know who you are, they want to see your face.

There is a disturbing trend though that I’m seeing in the blogging world: Over the past few months, I’ve emailed and tried to correspond with a number of “A-list” bloggers for various reasons, and unfortunately received very few replies.  A-list bloggers are the top blogging tier, they are the bloggers and blogs that come to mind when you think of high traffic blogs, large income earning blogs, and those blogs that really influence the internet.

The trend I refer to is one where these blogs and bloggers start out like any other.  They have people and events that spur their growth over time and help them become the big success they are.  The problem is that I see these bloggers frequently forgetting where they came from and turning their backs on the people that helped get them where they are today.  These bloggers are also forgetting who is keeping them where they are as well – their readers.  

Sure, I get that large blogs get lots of email and comments, but at the same time keeping up with email and comments has to be a priority.  Unfortunately for many, it doesn’t seem to be.  Sadly, making money seems to be the priority.  The irony here is that it’s the blog’s readers than generate the income.

Don’t believe me?  Think I’m over exaggerating?

Try this: Send an email to 5 really big name bloggers and ask them a thoughtful question.  Send them something on social media.  If more than one of them replies, I’d be surprised.  If you do decide to do this, please leave a comment below and let me know your results.  Feel free to call out the name of the blogger’s that did reply, because I think they need to be recognized.

Here are the top mistakes I see big name, A-List bloggers making::

  • Not responding to comments
  • Not responding to email
  • Not responding to questions
  • Not responding and engaging on social media
  • Only engaging within their cliques and frankly even being part of cliques

Since blogging is now more about the blogger than the blog itself, maintaining two-way and beneficial relationships is critical to your blog’s success. The two fastest ways to make me unfollow you and your blog are:

  1. Not replying or recognizing a comment I added to your post.  Recognizing can be “liking” or giving a “plus one”.
  2. Not engaging on a post I publish on my blog or create on social media.

When was the last time you saw an “a-list” blogger share something on social media and there were lots of comments and none of them from the blogger ?  Or even worse, they respond to comments, but only from comments made by other “a-list” bloggers in their clique?  I had this very thing happen a few weeks ago on Google+.  I responded to the blogger’s post and even asked a question.  There were other comments from “a-list” bloggers than received replies, but my reply was completely ignored by all of them.  I felt like I wasn’t even part of the conversation.

I’ve seen all of these scenarios far too often lately and I’ve stopped following most of these bloggers too.  Not just due to one instance, but due to repeated instances.  This will probably hurt me some, but I refuse to support “elitest” bloggers.

When was the last time an A-List blogger responded to one of your social media posts?  Oh, and responding due to you sharing one of their articles doesn’t really count.

My grandmother used to refer to all of this as “Getting too big for their britches“.  Many A-List bloggers have definitely gotten “too big for their britches.”

Never forget your roots

Don’t turn your back on the people that helped you grow and become successful.  Don’t ever forget the people that read your blog each day and take the time out of their schedules to add a thoughtful comment on your blog and your social shares.

When one of your readers takes the time out of their life to write you, respond.  Those people are writing you because they respect you and nothing says “I don’t care about you” more than not responding or not giving them a little of your time.

I’m not one to call out people often, but there are two bloggers that immediately come to mind as text book examples of putting readers first:

  • Sean Ogle of Location 180 – Sean has replied to every email I’ve sent him, and also engaged me on social media.  He even proactively sent me an email!  Sean is very approachable and clearly appreciates how important his readers are.  
  • Darren Rouse of ProBlogger – Darren is a name that would probably make it on the top 5 successful blogger lists of most anyone.  His blogs are incredibly popular and I can’t even begin to imagine how many comments and emails he gets everyday, yet me manages to reply.  I’ve exchanged a number of emails with him over the years and when I’ve mentioned him on social media, he almost always finds the time to reply.

Sea and Darren are two shining examples of bloggers that haven’t forgotten their roots and understand the importance of putting their readers first.

I sincerely hope that all of you reading Side Income Blogging and working to grow your blogs become huge successes.  Just make sure once you’re there, that you don’t forget the people that helped you get there and the people that help you stay there.  You have my word, I’ll never forget.

Always put your readers first

Photo by: stephen bowler

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Jon June 10, 2013 11 Comments
Mindset

Treat your blog like a business, because it is

One of the big mistakes I see new bloggers making is they fail to treat their blog like a business.  If you’ve started a money making blog, than you should be running your blog as if it were an online business.  Why?  Because it is.  Many new bloggers start a blog on the promise of earning money.  They make the mistake of thinking they can start a blog, publish a few articles and suddently begin earning hundreds of dollars a month.  Unfortunately, this mindset is far from the truth.  Growing a blog to the point where you can earn hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month takes a tremendous amount of hard work and, as I’ll discuss in detail, a business focused mindset.  To be successful, you must treat your blog like a business.

Treating your blog as a business

Treating your blog as a business involves:

  • Providing high quality and varied content
  • Having a vision and plan
  • Tracking your income and expenses
  • Doing marketing and promotion
  • Hiring and managing staff
  • Making constant day to day adjustments

Remember, you are the owner and CEO of your blog and in order to make it successful you must do all of these things and do them well.  How often and how well you do each of these is directly proportional to how quickly your blog will grow.

I put “providing high quality and varied content” first for a reason:

You can do everything else perfectly, but without high quality and varied content, your blog won’t grow. http://bit.ly/XO548K – @larryecm – Click to Tweet

Just like any normal business, if you don’t provide a service or product that your customers will consume, nobody will visit your business.  On the other hand, and also just like a real business, you can have the best content on the web for your niche but if you fail to do the other items above nobody will know about your content or if they do, their experience when they arrive at your site may not be good.  Doing all of the above, with a primary focus on providing great content is the optimal combination.

A few examples

Here are just a few examples of some common mistakes I see new bloggers that fail to think of their blog as a business seem to make:

  • Posting great on-topic content for the first week or two, then sharing a story about their visit to the park with their kids that has nothing to do with their blog. Don’t get me wrong, sharing a personal story on your blog can be great, BUT only if it’s tied into the topic of your blog.  Even worse?  I’ve seen a few bloggers post these huge rants about their friends or neighbors that was completely off-topic.  Doing this a few times won’t kill you, but do it too much and you’ll lose readers, quickly.
  • Failing to realize that all of that income you’re getting is taxable.  Embarrassingly, this particular example was me.  The first year my blog earned income, I was so excited.  The more I earned, the more I optimized my income and added additional income streams.  I literally made close to $3000.00 my first year.  What I failed to consider was that the income was taxable and I would have to report it on my taxes.  Reporting income was no problem, I had W-2s, but I wanted to reduce that taxable income, so I spent almost a week pulling together numbers for all of my expenses for deductions.  The next year, I tracked it to the utmost detail to make it much easier.
  • Over the past 5 years, I’ve seen many blogs come and go.  I’m not sure exactly why, but if I were to guess it’s one of two things: Lack of vision and planning, and misunderstanding how much work blogging really entails.  The internet is a constantly moving and changing place, and those that lack vision and planning for their blogs will be caught off guard and ultimately fail.  This has been particularly evident with the recent Google Panda search engine changes.  Many of us saw significant decreases in search engine traffic  For those of use that had a plan, and multiple streams of income, we fussed, fumed, complained and moved on.  Those that didn’t have a plan, quit.

Of course these are just a few small examples of the many I’ve seen and unfortunately personally experienced.  Regardless of how much you plan, and how much experience you have, you’ll develop your own list over time as you blog and strive to earn an income.

I’ll be publishing more detailed articles on each of the items related to treating your blog as a business over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out.

Photo by: tinou bao

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Jon October 19, 2012 2 Comments
Mindset

4 Internet Marketing Cornerstone Beliefs

With the amount of crap on the internet and my plan to build multiple websites to earn money I didn’t want to be part of the problem. So a couple years ago I started with 1 belief “Always Add Value” I believed that whatever I did online as long as I added value I would be helping to make the internet a more awesome place. (more…)

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Jon September 4, 2012 12 Comments
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