Websites

WeBuildYourBlog.com, GreatManagement.org

Best Business Purchase?

My whiteboard. I list everything I need to do on it and it focuses me to take action.

Best Advice I Got?

No matter how demanding, grumpy, indecisive your customers are…treat them as if they are your only one.

Biggest Inspiration?

Not a blogger or internet entrepreneur. It’s someone called Lou Tice – he doesn’t know it but 15 years ago he changed my life with his teachings.

Favourite Business Website?

Alltop! Because that gives me quick access to loads of other sites!

Hours Spent Blogging?

Depends upon how you define blogging. Just blogging? i.e. publishing posts – 3 hours a week. If you are talking about running my complete on-line business including all the client work I get, then it’s  50 – 70 hours a week.

Top 3 Traffic Sources?

Google, Twitter, Facebook.

How I Got Into Blogging

In the first 30 years of my career I worked for large corporate companies. I made it to senior management level earning an excellent salary along with company car, pension, healthcare, bonuses, and shares. I was earning a lot of money. My job enabled me to work around the world and on large scale projects…and I loved it.

But every few months the companies were downsizing and I survived numerous ‘layoffs’. But I knew I wasn’t indispensable. I knew my time would come…so I started my own plan ‘B’. So when the company said ‘bye-bye’ to me…I had something lined up.

I turned to the internet and was shocked how easy it was to make money on-line. Well that’s what the different products being sold told me. You know the sort of thing, “Do this and make $10k a month within weeks”. I believed them…unfortunately.

I imagined sitting on the beach with a cold beer within weeks.

At this stage I knew nothing about the internet…well very little.

I got myself a mentor – I wanted to progress fast. I wanted the beach life style.

I build a website, I created a free e-guide, I built up my list and produced my first product to sell. All within a few months. The beach was calling me.

Of course…I was nowhere near living the beach lifestyle. I realised this was a long term thing and I was happy to keep working until it paid off.

I invested a lot of money learning. I always paid for a mentor. I always purchased the best courses by the likes of Jeff Johnson, John Carlton and John Reese.

After 3 years of working full-time for the corporate world and part-time on building my own on-line business, I was in the position to leave. I was selling numerous products and I had a huge amount of knowledge as I had learnt and built everything myself.

When I Realised I Had “Made It”

My products were bringing in some passive income…not much…but they were selling. Then I got my first one-to-one client who was willing to pay me for my knowledge and services. That told me I could do it. Hence I made the leap from corporate world to running my own on-line business…full-time.

What I Have Accomplished So Far

My site is 2.5 years old. 552 blog posts, 11k+ comments, 120k backlinks, Google page/spot one for my targeted keywords,  51K Twitter followers, 89 personal clients, 4 products, 1 ‘build your own on-line business’ membership site, 1 WordPress plugin.

What Made Me Successful So Quickly

Paying for and having a mentor. That’s the quickest way to be successful. Find a mentor who has a reputation for being excellent and ‘suck them dry’ of all their info and knowledge. When you have done that find a better mentor and do the same thing. I’ve had 5 different mentors so far!

And outsource. To run a successful online business you have to have so many skills and you cannot possibly be good at all of them. So if you struggle with the technical side…outsource it. If you struggle with writing…outsource it.

I’d rather pay an expert than struggle for hours and hours trying to do something myself. I could use my own strengths to do something worthwhile during those wasted hours.

I Wish I Had Known This Earlier

Stick to what you know. I started building blogs in areas that I knew nothing about…just because I thought they would make me money. Creating blog posts each week was hard work – I hated it. And they made me no money!

I always tell my clients, “You need to be able to have enough knowledge to blog about your chosen subject 3 times a week for the next 2 years”

If I Were A Newbie…

I would get a mentor (I know I keep repeating myself but it is the quickest way to succeed).

I would invest in myself (like buy my ‘build an on-line business course’ – can I say that?)

I would pick one subject matter that I love, that I know a huge amount about and could blog about it for years!

A Typical Day In My Life

I get up at 6am every day.

• Monday to Friday I go to the gym and am home by 8am.

• Saturday and Sunday – I check emails and do some work….normally until 9am.

Back to Monday – Friday.

•  Check emails, Twitter, Facebook. Respond to clients.

• Then it depends upon how much client work I have to do. The rest of the day is made up of client work, marketing, blogging, creating products.

• I have breakfast, lunch and dinner with my wife every day.

• In the evenings, it could be some TV or my wife and I go to our dancing lessons or meeting friends or simply read a book.

Andrew is a full-time Internet Marketing Specialist and blogger from the UK. At his blog he shares all his knowledge and experience on how to make a blog

Hope You learnt some very important things about Building a better blog with this post. Please leave your comments (or questions) in the comments section below.

Andrew Rondeau Image

Have A Lovely Day!

Best Business Purchase?

The Thesis Theme

Biggest Inspiration?

Steve Jobs

Favourite Business Website?

Mashable.com

Hours Spent Blogging?

Anywhere between 18 – 20 hours a week

Top 3 Traffic Sources?

Google, Google, Google it’s the best source of traffic that will make you money

How I Got Into Blogging

I was at a public library in Toronto and I chanced upon a magazine named Entrepreneur, an article featured John Chow and how he made money blogging. The next 2 – 3 weeks I researched on what blogging was and how I could start a blog and make money with it. I never made a single cent for about 6 months, since I started blogging. I blogged tirelessly for about 4 hours a day putting up great content and building a blog , then one day I got a mail from an advertiser wanting to advertise on my blog. That was my first $20 from the blog, it’s been about 3 years since then and today I make a decent living blogging.

What I Have Accomplished So Far

Well I have a lot to achieve but in the last three years the blog has grown by more than a hundred times, I had about 10 visitors to my blog in the initial three months that I started the blog. Today the same blog makes me a decent living. So, you see every blog starts somewhere, and there is no right time to start blogging, the right time is now.

What Made Me Successful So Quickly

Success is hard work; I had to slog for 6 month before I made my first dollar from the blog. I never had quick success from blogging, blog for passion , blog to share your views, blog to impart your knowledge and success will follow.

I Wish I Had Known This Earlier

I wish I had start blogging about 10 years ago

If I Were A Newbie…

• I would spend time in studying other blogs in my niche
• Look to gain knowledge in my domain
• Never miss a chance to listen to a successful entrepreneur

A Typical Day In My Life

• 10 am : I wake up
• 10.30 : check mails, write a blog, share posts, interact and engage with users on my blog and social media, work on  other online projects
• 1 pm : Lunch
• 2 pm : back to blogging
• 3.30 pm take a nap for an hour
• 5 pm : back to blogging
• 6.30 pm : go for a jog
• 8.30 pm back to blogging
• 9.30 pm dinner
• 11.00 bed time

1.      Sell Handmade Items

You can sell handmade items both offline and online. This is quite a unique way to make money. You can make candles, perfumes, toys, decorative items, cakes, cookies, and even dresses and sell those to make money. There are various such websites that let you sell handmade items and register for free.

2.      Inventing New Games

You can make money by investing new games. Te internet games and games of all other types are in vogue. So, if you are interested in games yourself and if you think that you have the ability to create new games, you can do so and sell those to make money.

3.      Selling Celebrity Magnets

You can make money by selling celebrity magnets. In order to make thee, you won’t even require cashing out much money. You can simply cut out pictures from magazines of the celebrities and paste it to magnet and sell those.

In addition to this, you will also have to find more time to make money and save it and pay off debts. However, while paying off debts, you will have to keep some things in mind. You need to have written agreements and proof of the payments against the debts. In order to keep proof of payments, in order to totally complete the financial transaction, for this, you can use the sample credit and debt letters that are available online. There are various such letters that are available and these are the likes of the debt settlement letter, debt consolidation letter, debt re-payment letter, cease and desist letter and so on. All of these letters can help you in maintaining proof of your payments against the debts. View some sample letters on debt below.

Sample Letters on Debt and Credit

There are companies and there are “The Companies”… Companies are not born equal, some make modest money, some cool money but there is a very small percentage that makes “real money.” That tiny percentage is our focus in this post.

One of the first things that would come to mind is the fact that 6 out of the top 10 on the list are in the oil and gas industry, you might wonder how possible it is for you to build one such company from scratch. My encouragement to you is that the first company on the list, WalMart was built from scratch.

I would also recommend you check out these books that have helped us here at Income Scene for more inspiration. My favourites are Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity & Business Stripped Bare and Sam Walton’s (of Walmart) Made In America.

There’s hope for anyone who has the desire, but to fulfil all legal righteousness I would have to put something straight here, “I never said you would make the same amount of money as these” so don’t sue me if you don’t! Thanks. Here’s the list (The revenue listed here is in $ Billions).

N.B: These figures are subject to change.

Have A Blessed Year!

Emmanuel Olonade

Website(s)

ITSColumn, Facebook, Twitter

Best Business Purchase?

My best purchase so far is Genesis Framework of Studiopress. I started most of my blogging stuff from free and I invest based on the earnings I got.

Best Advice I Got?

“The best traffic source is organic traffic”. That is what most people talk about when they started a topic about traffic.

Biggest Inspiration?

Two person who inspired me the most, Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak. I don’t buy their products but I follow their blog on how they turn blogging into a money making business.

Favourite Business Website?

Not too sure about what business website you mean but in my early blogging days, I spent a lot of time reading problogger.net and entrepreneurs-journey.com to learn how to blog to success.

Hours Spent Blogging?

I spent 2-3 hours a day and 5-6 hours on Sunday. Saturday is off day for me.

Top 3 Traffic Sources?

My top traffic is Google. I cannot imagine how my blog’s traffic will look like if one day Google is down. My second and third top traffic source is either facebook/twitter.

How I Got Into Blogging

I am a regular software engineer working in a security firm. I stumbled into blogging when one day my friends talk to me about Google Adsense. I start a blog with Blogger where I begin talking about myself and only myself. I put adsense code up there and I got 0 income for almost 2 months. I then go into Google and start looking for some Adsense tips and stumbled into Darren Rowse’s Google Adsense series. I begin to change the way I blog from there by starting a niche, getting a domain, web hosting and some proper schedule for my blogging time. As I begin to generate 100 visitors a day, i begin to have some adsense earnings. For me to start generating a consistent 100 visitors a day, it took me 2 months and that is the time I begin to make some money from blogging. First 3 months of blogging is tough where I spent extra time to design the site, learn how to SEO, learn how to write Content, and learn how to optimize Adsense. I didn’t really spend 2 – 3 hours a day at that time. I spent more than 4 hours a day to learn all these things.

When I Realised I Had “Made It”

I haven’t really made it yet. I remember Darren Rowse once slapped a 15k Adsense Cheque and I’m going to make that my target. So, there isn’t any successful story from me for now

What I Have Accomplished So Far

I’m generating more than 10k visitors a month now. I had quite a good relationship with several affiliate managers. I begin to understand how business works and find it something totally different from my world of coding and debugging. It is interesting and I do not regret until today in starting a blogging business.

I’m getting close to go under100k in Alexa Rank and being one of the sub categories for Technorati top 100 blogs.  These are all my smaller objectives towards my ultimate goal. The only disappointment is my Google PR seems to be extremely poor.

What Made Me Successful So Quickly

Well, I am not successful yet but what made me today is my persistent in believing that Google is the best source for traffic. I put efforts to learn up SEO, researching keywords and how to rank well. SEO is very important and it is even more important to keep up to date with the latest SEO trend. My advice is don’t try to learn SEO from a site who teaches SEO two years ago and not updating today.

My site is also getting better with me replying to all my comments so that my readers who drop comments will not think that it is just another place to build links. I want them to know that I care for their opinion. It is also important to understand your reader so that one day, you can write a content that they are actually looking for.

I Wish I Had Known This Earlier

My first ever mistake is to start my site on Blogger. It is a little messy to migrate over to wordpress especially when you have 30 posts and above. Although there are plugins to make it work, but it does not work as perfect as you think.

I also made a mistake in choosing a bad domain name. Until today, I still hope that I can change my domain but it doesn’t seem possible now. I will have to live with this domain until the day my blog ended.

My last mistake was trying too hard to promote an affiliate product. I come to realize when I read on other people’s blog where they had done as well the same mistake as mine. I would never buy product from them and so I come to the conclusion where people will not buy anything from me. I change my direction and begin to write about the good and bad. I also learn that my intention is supposed to help, not sell.

If I Were A Newbie…

1. I will spend more time on keyword research. I will select a smaller niche instead of a bigger one.

2. I will choose a meaningful domain name and get a reliable hosting.

3. I will not use free theme and will invest into good WordPress framework such as Genesis and Thesis.

A Typical Day In My Life

I spent most of my time working as a software engineer. My blogging life is after working hours where I usually blog at night. I don’t post everyday because I believe I need to spend my time on other thing as well apart from posting. These are what I will do in a week.

Monday night: Write blog post

Tuesday night: Write article for article directories/guest blog

Wednesday night: Write blog post

Thursday night: Write article for article directories/guest blog

Friday night: Write blog post.

Saturday: Rest

Sunday: Write a product review / craft a newsletter.

Sometimes, when I have guest posts from other guest bloggers, I will sneak those times to rest more instead of writing a post.

Have A Lovely Day!

Emmanuel Olonade

Quick Facts About James

Websites?

Windows Talk, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube.

Awards?

Microsoft MVP Awardee

Best Business Purchase?

[James] A professional theme; whether it is for a static site, or for a WordPress site. Best money I ever spent, aside from web hosting.

Best Advice I Got?

[James] Just reading over blogging tips type of sites, web forums and such. You can pick up a lot of free information that you can gradually implement on your own site.

Biggest Inspiration?

 [James] There are a couple I have met over the past few years, Paul Salmon of Technically Easy technicallyeasy.net and Lisa Irby of 2createawebsite.com

Favourite Business Website?

[James] Financialpost.com

Hours Spent Blogging?

 [James] Daily: about an hour on average; perhaps two on my days off. Most of this is publishing, commenting and removing spam comments.

Top 3 Traffic Sources?

[James] Over the past 3 months, according to Google Analytics:

1) TechTalk at Pc Pitstop,

2) geeks4share.com,

3) Google

How I Got Into Blogging

 [James] Before blogging, WindowsTalk was a static Front Page site, but I wanted to continually add content to keep it fresh, and the best way to do this (and the easiest) is blogging. First, I started with Blogger and this is a great way for folks to test the waters of blogging. However, the general feeling towards Blogger by professional/experienced bloggers is to get your domain name and web hosting set up so the site is YOURS and not subject to any rules aside from those of your web hosting company.

When I Realised I Had “Made It”

 [James] Well, I have never made ‘big money’ from WindowsTalk, and it is not my reason for blogging in the first place, but I realized that WindowsTalk was reaching people when I started getting offers to advertise on my site as well as getting guest posting offers by the score. A few have become regular contributors to WindowsTalk. Then, software companies started to contact me directly to host giveaways, do reviews, and contribute to their site, such as TechTalk at PC Pitstop.

AdSense revenue is consistent, as are affiliate sales, so this is a measure of success too, I suppose.

What I Have Accomplished So Far

 [James] I am at the point where I am more or less ‘maintaining’ my site; guest posts and regular contributors are providing the content, which takes a big load off of me. I write when I can, but I do not as pressured to do so as I did in the early days of my site.

What Made Me Successful So Quickly

 [James] “Quickly” is a relative term, and I don’t think things happened quickly for me, but I wasn’t out there to pursue the dollars either. My motives are altruistic, but  if I can make a few dollars by recommending products that I use and like, that is all the better, really.

I Wish I Had Known This Earlier

 [James] Get a professional theme! Unless you know HTML, CSS and whatever else, get a theme that is highly customizable and a good fit for your niche.

If I Were A Newbie…

 [James] 1) Focus: what is your area of expertise or interest?

2) Blogger or paid web hosting? Get paid web hosting and your own domain name if you are serious about your pursuit.

3) Read other blogs, get blogging tips and use what you can on your own site.

4) Be patient! “Rome was not built in a day” really applies to starting up a website.

5) Connect socially: Facebook, Twitter, etc.

A Typical Day In My Life

 [James] I work fulltime as a medical radiation technologist, so my site has to fit around that schedule. On my days off and evenings are when I devote time to blogging. I will comment, edit new articles and schedule articles to be published when I am working, so that my readers are not inundated by excessive content on just one or two days of the week. Also, my site’s visits tend to dip over the weekend, so I save new content for Mondays and other days early in the week.

 Have A Lovely Day!

Emmanuel Olonade