What Would Google Look Like If It Was Optimized For Google?

So true, so true…

Do You Disclose Affiliate Links?

To be honest I am SHOCKED at the number of people who say they redirect their links and such. Personally I think anyone who tries to hide the fact they are getting paid is scum, absolute scum. I think it is also bit foolish to not disclose the links (unless it is obvious, like an ad), but I don’t mind that as much as purposely hiding them. Money changes everything - including people’s opinions about products.

The Virtues Of Posting Less Often

Mohsin has pretty much convinced me posting less often is better - and I want to try my best to do it. Problem is now I am doing weekly blog reviews in addition to the regular content here, so I’ll probably still be posting daily.

A Secret to Profitable Blogging - Trending Up Over the Long Haul

Darren talks about treating blogging as a long term thing and to not expect huge, immediate results. It takes a long time to go from nothing to something.

PC Magazine Top 100 Favorite Blogs

Nusuni Dot Com didn’t make it on there, oh well. Maybe next year?

Being Stupid And Litigious Is No Way To Go Through Life

A classic case of copyright misconception and how NOT to handle legal issues. Extortion, anyone?

Judge to Porn-Peddling Spammers: You’ve Got Jail

Some spammers have finally been sentenced to jail for five years for sending spam mail. Two down, 5000 more to go.

To finish the Back To The Basics series with a bang I’ve decided to do something a bit different and discuss some slightly off-topic (but related) topics all on this single post. So, here we go:

Blogging Is Cheaper Than Starbucks

Whoever says blogging is an expensive hobby has no clue what they are talking about. Here’s a breakdown of my bills for the past year of blogging:

Web Hosting (aff-link) - $119.4
Domain - $10
Advertising- $20 (I experimented with this mostly)
——————————————
Total - $149.4

Now if a poor starving 18 year old developer can afford that surely everyone else can (oh and by the way, please donate! I really am broke). I can see how some single mother raising a family of 3 on minimum wage might not be able to afford it, but for everyone else there’s no reason to call it an expensive hobby.

Stop buying that $4 coffee at Starbucks and you’ll have no problem getting an extra $10/month.

And if you really don’t have an extra $100/year, then you can always use a free blog hosting service like Blogger.

Be Ethical With Your Blog’s Monetization

A thing I tried repeating over and over in this series is this - be ethical. Don’t hide affiliate links, don’t lie about getting paid to say something, let your readers know what is going on! It is incredibly scummy to go around hiding links behind redirects, and it is scummy to claim you are not getting paid for a review when you are.

You Don’t Have To Be A Good Writer

I don’t consider myself a good writer at all. Back in school I barely passed grammar and English class by one or two points. Simply put - I suck at writing. Despite that this blog is always getting more and more popular. You don’t have to be a good writer to become a popular blogger.

MySpace bloggers - or as I like to call them: the “HAHA LOLZARS SHEZ HOTZ BOOYA” crowd - are a perfect example of that. Even the popular MySpace users write like 2 year olds.

Respond To As Many People As You Can

If someone replies to one of your posts or comments, take a second and reply to them. It lets them know you care, and believe me it’ll make you feel better as well (and it does help to improve growth quite a bit). Of course if you get to the point of getting 5k hits a day and 50 comments/day this advice is pretty useless (and if you get to that point, don’t forget to link here ).

Be Careful What You Say

Defamation lawsuits are very real and are becoming more common due to the explosion of user-generated content online. Be careful what you say.

Defamation occurs when you say a serious lie about someone else. Saying something like “He’s a stupid fool” isn’t defamation, but “He’s a lying raping crack-head” is (unless the person actually is, in which case get them some help, pronto!). Just be careful, alright?

Make Your Blog Personal

Even if you are running a corporate blog, your blog should be personal. Blogs that are nothing more than “do this and this and you’ll get money” are quite boring and have low readership rates because of that. Ever read any of Google’s blogs? Each blogger has their own writing style, so they don’t sound like robots in every post.

Relax

And perhaps my final chunk of advice would be relax. I had to learn to become patient to blog - you may have to as well. It isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme - it is something that takes months and years to get good at.

There is still one more post left in the series. Remember to come back tomorrow!

Jonathan Bailey over at PlagiarismToday posted his thoughts on the RIAA’s $222,000 win. His post inspired me to write post on it as well.

Lawyers Win

First and foremost - the lawyers are the ONLY people who win major civil lawsuits. They walk away from these things with tens of thousands of dollars of cash in their pocket. Meanwhile the plaintiff looks like a robber and the defendant looks like a criminal.

Spend Money Wisely

Why do the RIAA (the MPAA) refuse to evolve. Are they so pathetic they can’t accept modern society wants free stuff? Why not spend their millions of dollars developing ways to make money online instead of suing for it?

Here I’ll give them a business plan.

• Put their content on websites and offer both free and paid (membership) areas.
• Put up a stat counter.
• Figure out how much traffic they get and get sponsors.
• Get a swimming pool filled with hundred dollar bills.

It isn’t hard at all. If an 18 year old kid can see that surely a bunch of overpaid lawyers can?

Real Life Examples

Look at pro bloggers, Revision3, Digg, Google, Linux developers, etc. They give away stuff for free and they get quite a bit of money as a result.

I’m Entitled To Free Stuff!

While I agree no one is entitled to free stuff, I do think it is a better way of running a content-based business online. People love free content - so give them it!

So Is P2P Sharing Good?

Just so no one thinks I support copyright infringement - I don’t. I think anyone who go around downloading crap illegally should get some sort of punishment, but $222,000 for 12 songs? I’d call that cruel and unusual punishment.

There’s a few reasons behind my decision to not yet aggressively monetize Nusuni Dot Com.

Adsense - I used to run Adsense on here but got fairly lackluster results. It is a webmaster-oriented blog, so I wasn’t expecting miracles anyway. I doubt other similar programs would be any different.

Direct Ad Sales - Traffic and subscription levels aren’t yet high enough to really do direct ad sales. The most I could get now would only be maybe $5-$15 a month per ad. I am hoping to start doing this fairly soon though.

Paid Reviews - I signed up with PayPerPost a while back but hardly any of the products/services are relevant to this blog. I have also signed up for ReviewMe, so we’ll see if I get lucky and get approved (I doubt traffic and subscription levels are high enough to get this blog approved).

Inline Advertising - No amount of money would be enough to get me to use that stuff - I hate those types of ads.

So basically the two biggest things holding me back are traffic and subscription levels. Although, I suppose that is what social media is for.

This guest post was written by Mohsin. Mohsin is a blogger who writes tips, tricks, and articles on creating successful blogs over at Blogging Bits. He has also been a webmaster for three years and earns part-time income online. Check him out at Blogging Bits.

We can always learn good lessons from others’ bad practices. Especially, when it comes to internet marketing and selling products online, it’s essential to learn from the success and failures of others.

If you have researched about affiliate marketing, get rich quick schemes, or selling any kind of information product, chances are that you have come across those loud and annoying sites that try their mightiest to sell their marketing product to you (usually an ebook, a disc, or some kind of software).

After looking at many of such pages, I have made a list of tactics such tricksters employ that you should avoid when selling products online.

How Not To Sell Your Product

No jokes, this is exactly how I react when I bump into one of those pages.

DON’T SHOUT AT ME!

The first thing I notice upon entering such pages is that they have put up a huge ALL CAPS headline at the top of the page that is supposed to get my attention and convert me into a customer right away. No, thank you. I think you should learn some basic manners of greeting a guest before thinking of turning me into a customer.

Don’t Be Overzealous

Go easy on the bold, italics, underline, and font size tags. It’s all right, you got my attention, I am all ears, but please don’t tick me off by your enthusiasm about something that you have created. It’s not like you have uncovered a secret that no one on the planet earth has ever known. Please be polite.

Argh! My Eyes!

What’s with the bright yellow, green, and red colors all over the page? It’s like entering a house and being greeted by someone who is wearing fluorescent bulbs as clothes. Just so you know, jazzy colors don’t amuse me, they put me off.

Don’t Shove Everything In My Face

It’s understandable that you have gathered a lot of information and you are eager to impart it to me, but how about you give it to me one bit at a time instead of cramming everything into one long page?

I don’t know why they have abandoned the rule that information on the web is best served in little chunks, and a proper navigation structure in place to browse around different sections of related information makes that task easier, but they seem to believe that a potential buyer will leave without buying if they don’t pounce upon him right away.

This is a mistaken notion. If I have come to your page to buy something, I am committed enough to take the time to browse around and explore your product. But, If I am overwhelmed and confused by the sheer amount of information that is presented to me all at once, I’ll likely go shop elsewhere.

But That’s A Bad Thing To Do, Isn’t It?

What gets me most is that some of them proudly promote bad practices and pride themselves on being lazy achievers. The majority of us aren’t criminal-minded and the majority of us also want to do something we can be proud of (laziness is certainly not one of those things). So, stop promoting bad practices and tell me how to do it without killing my conscientiousness.

You Are Supposed To Be A Millionaire, Right?

How many millionaires have we all seen promoting their get-rich-quick ebooks on cheap looking web pages? They call themselves millionaire and can’t hire a web designer or a web usability expert to help them design a decent looking web page. How ironic!

How Big Is Your Book? What? 27 Pages?

It’s funny that some of the product pages are lengthier than the ebook they are supposed to promote. Looks like their authors spend more time on writing the ad copy than on writing the ebook itself.

To cap it all, such web pages are almost identical in their design, their style, and their lousy selling tactics, and they show the incompetence of their creators.

How To Sell Your Product

Here are some products that I want to buy because of the way they are presented to me.

SEO Book By Aaron Wall

Aaron has built a community around his product, he has got a blog that he updates regularly, he doesn’t shove everything in my face, he proves his competence and his knowledge of SEO, and slowly converts me into a buyer.

Seth Godin’s Blog And His Books

Seth Godin also promotes his books through his blog. He gives away free ideas, and even free ebooks. When you go to Seth’s blog, you aren’t greeted with big claims, photoshopped product boxes, and annoying marketing speak. He comes across as a normal guy who is also a marketing guru. You can also find links to his books placed very unobtrusively in the sidebar.

Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Self-Help Products

Self-help guru Wayne Dyer has a very minimalistic products page where you get to see all his product titles that lead to individual product pages. Moreover, with the help of the navigation bar, you can know more about Wayne Dyer, his activities, and everything else he has to offer.

Lessons To Learn

If you want to sell an information product or any other product online, and want to be successful with it, be normal. Interact with your potential buyers, create a community to build trust for yourself, give away free information, and present your product with grace when the time comes.

Have you ever sold anything online? What was your experience with it?

Stay tuned for even more Back To The Basics posts!