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Never been my strong suit, apologising. When I was a kid, I read a speech in school, which I learnt by heart, from an article in Reader's Digest. The gist of the speech was that you should mean it - That is, you're really sorry, and the apology should be accompanied by a token of your sincerity.
There was no need for me to go about ranting on someone else's blog. neither was there call for me to be mean and totally pig-headed. For these things and any hurt, percieved or otherwise, I caused to any and all Orble members, I apologise from the bottom of my heart.
The people whom I have hurt may never see this post. I do not plan to be active on Orble unless things change a lot or something happens which makes me decide to post here again. And that is the token of sincerity which I offer. I have nothing to gain from this post, yet I apologise to you.
Well, not exactly, but you might be able to make enough to buy a beer or two. The secret of internet marketing is to reach a targeted audience. It's called eyeballs in web traffic terminology. You really don't have to worry about presentation or design or copywriting or anything along those lines. You get a 100 eyeballs, 10 of them click.Ten of them click, one of them gets converted into a penny. Ramp up the traffic to a 1000 eyeballs, meaning a 100 clicks and 10 pennies. Then you ramp it up to 10,000 eyeballs....
"I have yet to be in a startup that was successful doing what it set out to do. An executive too focused on the original business plan generally misses the bigger opportunity." - Robert Young.
( First quoted in Wired, said quote having subsequently been kidnapped by ThoughtsOnBusiness and now kidnapped by Yours truly... )
Right. Let's go get the eyeballs. Huh? You can't exactly pluck them outta the trees. You need to build traffic. How does one go about building traffic? There's a couple of ways:
1. You do some SEO, you exchange links, you write superb web content and generally speaking drive yourself crazy for 6 months before you begin to see any results, and then in a slow trickle.
2.0 You get yourself a website, sign up with Google Adsense, Clickbank, Commission Junction and sundry sponsors who pay per click. Insert the ads into your website template. If you don't know how to use a template, just get yourself a blog on blogger or any free and popular blog host. Then you come back here.
2. 1 Now you need to compile a list of forums, message boards and user groups related to the topic of your website. Two of the best places to start this is the Open directory project ( www.dmoz.org ) and About.com ( www.about.com ). Why these two? because the sites listed in these two directories have a lot of traffic and can afford to send you a couple of visitors a day, at least.
Ideally speaking, you should have a list of at least 500 sites to start with. Sounds easy? Believe me, it ain't easy. Just to compile a list of 500 forums and user groups on a topic can take you the better part of a week. And that's just the beginning.
2.2 The difficult part is to make each of the 500 sites send you a minimum of 1-2 visitors everyday. I'll pontificate on this in some more detail later on. For now, I'll just focus on what benefits this has. The main benefit is that you get the eyeballs ( 800-1000 of them everyday ) and the added benefit is that this is highly targeted traffic - Visitors who are interested in the subject matter of your site and thus, more likely to click.
All you have to do is target 20 forums a day. So a week to prepare the site and compile the list. Then 25 days to target 500 sites. In one month you can get a 1000 visitors per day. Part II of this post will focus on how you sign up with forums, and what's the posting etiquette and how to manage and keep your link active on 500 forums. Plus, it will also include additional ( both intended and unintended ) benefits of forum and user group posting.
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to be an internet marketing wizard. This is just my personal experience.
I've been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of planning, in addition to blogging and doing my freelancing. The jobs and my, um, thoughts I can't post in this blog cause I'm posting them elsewhere where it's easier for me to get a few more eyballs and a few more clicks. What I will be doing on this blog is posting other ways you can make money online.
I still love you, Adele. And even before I saw the "Why don't you comment and rate other blogs" post which seems to have hit a nerve on the Orble front page, I had been thinking about the wisdom of reaching out to other blogs inside orble. Specially wanted to comment on the Limericks post in Adele's blog. I scrapped the idea of commenting there, because I couldn't wring out a Limerick, and as for the other posts on her blog, I'm not much of a Lost fan. in fact, I don't know squat about it. Sorry...
Anyway, what I was doing, in essence, was cross-posting my posts on both my blogs. I'm not going to be doing that any more. My loss? Orble's loss? I don't know yet if it's going to be my loss. And since I'm an insignificant little speck of dust in the Orblesphere, I very much doubt if it'll be Orble's loss.
I tried for a few days to write seperate posts for both my blogs, but I just could not give it the time necessary. So after this short hiatus, and after thinking long and hard, I have decided to change the scope and focus of this blog to reflect the domain name. I reserve the right to eat crow or do a volte-face or stuff my hat into my mouth. Because I know there's a distinct possibilty that I could be wrong. Truth is, blogging is a new gig for me, and I'm simply following the money. I do feel a bit guilty, but there's no easy solutions here, as George Bush has learned to his peril.
I'm still working on the topics which I should be posting on here but roughly speaking it's got to do with earning pennies, a lot of them.
Update: Forgot one thing. New home page format looks fantastic. Don't change it.
Just wanted to say hello to all you people. I came here looking for some additional cash, but..... Anyway, got some great writers and nice people here.
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Comment by Peeling
on Orble Pays Bloggers $40 per week...
I read it, and it said $40 for the first 2 months, then you share revenue. After I sign up and start writing, I find that's not the way it works - It's a "scolarship", which you're not entitled to - Take it or leave it. And since you're writing, same as any other blog network, you might as well continue.