Build Great Content First

November 1, 2010 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been blogging for a few years and when I work on a blog the goal of  creating income is with long term in view. I’m not looking to make an ‘overnight success’  (unless it’s Atwood’s definition). Why? Because making money from my blogs is never the main purpose. It’s secondary to my other goals which includes sharing useful and practical content with a tight community of readers.

There are a lot of ways you can take shortcuts to build traffic (and income with your blog) and many sites are created to give that advice to you.

It doesn’t mean you have to follow all the advice. Depending on your goals some of tips and tricks can benefit you up right now, but hurt your site in the long run.

Look at the long term consequences when considering how to monetize your sites. Sometimes bloggers can be in a rush to cash in with what little equity they have.

What’s Your Purpose?

You have to ask yourself, what are you building? If you’re making an income generating site, then shortcuts can help you achieve your goal quicker. If you want to build a community, it’ll take some time.

Writing quality posts, creating useful videos, or making great audio shows aren’t instantly made. You have to plan it out. Some people are gifted and can blog off the cuff, but for most people we have to write and rewrite to get something good published.

Good content, though, is not the only thing that creates value. Talking with others to hear their thoughts, getting feedback on improving content ,and  improving blog design to help readers navigate allow you to grow your site’s value.

Once you found your rhythm and voice on the blog and have built a community, then you can worry about money. In fact,some of your readers may be bloggers and could help you with improving income flow.

Enjoy what you do and keep improving on your skills to lay a solid foundation. Build  a community from that foundation. Money will usually come a lot easier.

Thoughts on Building Blogs That Generate Income

What has been your experience?  Who’s career do you admire?

Filed Under: Blog Tips Tagged With:

Content, THEN Promotion

October 19, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Building Your Reputation

Many of us know that reputation is important in the real world, what some don’t understand is that it’s absolutely vital online for long term success. The currency of the web is links and if you’re looking to build quality links that give you traffic AND help you build relationships with fellow bloggers and readers, you have to focus on what’s important.

The popular online with gaining traffic is “Content is king, but Promotion is queen.” That saying adequately describes how you should prioritize your site, your brand, and yourself. Don’t promote until you have the best content you can offer.

High Quality Content is Your Focus

When writing a post, don’t look for perfection, it’ll only cause you to have difficulty getting your message across, focus on value and effort.
How do you define great content? Here are some standards to measure against:

  • Solution – Does my article/post offer a solution to a common problem my readers have?
  • Resource – Do I have information that my readers should bookmark for later or share with friends?
  • Thought Provoking – Am I offering readers a unique perspective? Will my post start conversations?
  • Encouragement - Can my post inspire someone to do things in a better fashion?

You can’t always hit a home run, but you can always strive to do better. Look at the past 10 posts you’ve written and see if they offer a solution, can be consider a resource, give some food for thought, or inspire others. If not, then just aim to do better your next 10 posts.

Promoting Through Accessibility

You can preparing, research, and publish quality content over time, but without promotion, you’ll have a hard time building a community. The best advice I can offer on promotion is focus on value adding relationships. We have social media tools that we can broadcast our latest posts, but that doesn’t really cut it. With so much noise going on the web, you have to start by giving attention to how accessible you are to your early readers and potential audience.

Twitter and Facebook can be great assists for finding the right people, but you have to interact with them to build a community. Chat with them on Facebook, for example, and then send a thank you note afterwards for having a great conversation. Be more than just that blogger over at some site. Let them know you and you’ll be amazed at how people respond. Some of your best promotion comes from people genuinely enjoying your content and you.

Photo Credit: spaceamoeba
Filed Under: Online Communities Tagged With: , ,

Busy Couple of Months with Blogs

July 26, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Getting the Word Out on My Blog

I’ve been working to promote Green Panda Treehouse’s brand. I want to grow Green Panda Treehouse into a better site and have a bigger audience. My weekly articles at Five Cent Nickel is a big step in that direction. I’m also working with a sponsor to increase visibitilty by offering products very useful and needed.

I’ll post the information up as soon as the contest goes live.

Five Cent Nickel Weekly Posts

In case you’re curious and want to see what I’ve written about on the site, here’s the entire series so far.

What are you doing to get the word out on your blog?

Filed Under: Vega Baja Productions

Budget Pulse Interview

June 1, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I’m doing two part interviews with bloggers on two of my personal sites. I’m excited to have Craig from Budget Pulse answer a few of my questions on this new project. The first part is here at  Vega Baja Productions . The second part is on Green Panda Treehouse. If you’re a blogger and wouldn’t mind being interviewed, please feel free to contact me.

How long have you been blogging? 

I have been blogging for about 8 months now although I manage the blog more with what other writers contribute.  I enjoy writing simple pieces geared towards those in a similar age bracket and situation as me.  Talking about ways to enjoy being active but also being frugal are topics I enjoy blogging about and discussing with others about new ways to go about having fun without spending an arm and a leg.

Who is your target audience on the site?

Our target audience for the BudgetPulse software is anyone who is looking for a simple software to help them with their budgeting needs.  We pride ourselves on having a simple tool that the everyday person can use with ease but has the necessary functionality to help people get to the nitty gritty of budgeting.  For the blog we treat it as the same way and know that our audience varies in age and knowledge and keep more informative and light hearted and fun posts that they can relate to.

With the Rudder situation, how does BudgetPulse compare?

It was a tough hit for the whole online budgeting software companies when the Rudder news broke.  I have personally met the owners and they are good guys and I feel for them in their situation.  But it is an isolated event and hopefully users can not look down on the industry as a whole. 

Our situation is different because we do not and will never sync with banks.  Identity theft is very serious and something we do not want to risk for ourselves, and do not want to put our users at risk either.  Their situation was also based off the fact that there was issues with the email system something that we currently do not do.  Especially with a start-up it is hard to develop trust from users, and we are taking all security measures to prove we are trustworthy to our users, and that is one of the main reasons we do not sync with banks.

 

What do you hope to accomplish in the next year with BudgetPulse?

We have worked extremely hard over the past few months to develop a completely brand new revamped site for BudgetPulse that will be released in mid June for everyone.  The site will be visually enhanced, easier to navigate, will have improved content and functionality, and even video tutorials.  For the fun of it as well we are working on some humorous videos for everyone to sit back and enjoy for a quick minute. 

Once the new release is out in June, we will get right back to working on our next release which will bring a group fund functionality, working on an iphone app, more extensive charts, and in the future will look to have the site in multiple languages for all our international users.  This is just a small list of items we will be working on.

Please subscribe to Budget Pulse’s blog and chat with Craig on Twitter.

Filed Under: Personal Entrepreneur Tagged With:

Google Chat Conversation on Work

March 24, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I had an interesting chat with a friend about  our side businesses, projects,and how passion and work mix. Here are some snipets of our conversation:

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9:19 AM me: working now?
 J: I got a late shift,   starting at one…So, what is Vega Bajas productions all about?
9:21 AM me: It’ to handle my freelance writing and blogs I own. I also work with some abandoned sites and build them up.
 J: ah like yourstupidpetcostume.com,   lol
 me: you’re abandoning it?
  
9:23 AM J: It’s been abandoned,  regretfully so………….
  
9:24 AM me: oh, sorry…..  Do you want to do a joint venture
 J: hmm a joint venture,   don’t know ,the site still haunts me saying “Finish me!” at times
…….
 J: I know ironically the so called “simple life” is alot harder to pull off.
………
9:33 AM J: I like what you’re doing though
 me:   Thanks. I’m finding my passion
  ……
 J: Passion?   I thought you had it
9:34 AM me: Focused passion,  I like a lot of things and projects but you can’t start a successful business until it’s focused
9:35 AM J: I totally understand
Filed Under: Side Business Tagged With:
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