Fiction writers are encouraged to read extensivley outside their genre of choice, painters are encouraged to study other forms of art… bloggers also need to study other bloggers, not just the ones writing about similar topics, but also those targeting a completely different audience - this is where you’ll find some great ideas that’ll give you an edge when competing for your audience.

There has been two events lately that pushed me in a different direction - I bought an iPod Touch and I’ve been spending way too much time playing World of Warcraft… what does that have to do with Blogging? Let’s take a look.

One of the things I like about my iPod is that I can listen to nearly anything while I’m working… I have some music on there, but mostly I listen to podcasts or non-fiction audio books and boring stuff like that. It wasn’t long therefore that I started tracking down World of Warcraft podcasts… not only did I find some, there were literally hundreds.

When every blog has their own podcast…

There are lots of World of Warcraft podcasts, nearly every popular blog has one and it seems like every second person in the WoW community is involved in some way. Some of these podcasts are very professionally done and they (rightfully so) attract a large audience.

If you were starting a WoW blog, would you start a podcast too? I’d have to say probably not, there’s too much competition there already, but that doesn’t mean you’d neglect that market. Same thing goes for just about any topic you’re blogging on… how can you leverage off podcasts?

Creating your own podcast sounds like too much hard work to me - you need to keep the releases fairly regular, you’ve got to make sure it adds value and in my opinion you need at least two or three good people involved to keep the conversatoin moving in interesting directions… and then you’ve still got to build an audience, much like you’re doing with your blog, but that’s not your only option.

If there are a couple of successful podcasts around in your niche (chances are good), you may be able to leverage off their success by contributing a regular segment to their product. Think of it as writing a guest post on another blog, but this time you’d prepare a short (5 minute max) audio clip about a specific topic within your niche - they’ll be happy with the extra value you’re adding to their podcast, and you’ll get exposed to their (already established) audience (win-win)… not only that, but you don’t need to devote a lot of time to production and you can do the clip all by yourself - no need to work conversations into a five minute piece.

I hope that gives you a few ideas - get out there and see what podcasts are already available in your niche, give them a listen and think about how you can make their show better by offering them a little free audio content.

Image by dan taylor.

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In case you haven’t noticed… we’re in a recession / depression / hold onto your cash and lock your door phase at the moment and most parts of the world will likely remain there for the next year or two at least. Hopefully you haven’t been affected too harshly and can ride out the storm safely, but many industries are facing some very troubled times and significant layoff’s are well under way. The IT Industry is definitely feeling some pain and this will no doubt have implications for the blogsphere.

On a positive note, there should be an explosion of new blogs starting up… it has never been easier to start a blog and as the unemployment queues get longer, some very passionate people with a lot on their minds will turn to blogging (at least in some way) to either vent their frustrations or try to make a new start. While this will generate a ton of blogs that don’t last more than a month or two, there will also be a number of gems that rise to the surface… more choice for the reader is always a good thing, so long as you can find your way to the ones that matter.

But troubled economic times usually trigger a downturn in advertising revenue as businesses cut back on everything they can. Even though marketing campaigns have the goal of making money, the reality is that consumers are spending less and margins are lower. Extravagant branding campaigns that might pay off over time are a lot riskier to undertake and those direct marketers who track every sale made and penny spent will find it hard to generate the returns they’re used to. Given that most high profile blogs rely heavily on advertising dollars, that could cause a few problems, especially with some of the smaller blog networks that work on a revenue share model with their bloggers or pay regular employment costs.

The additional competition, along with reduced advertising revenues will hit some blogs particularly hard - and I’ve got no doubt we’ll see a few ripples go through sites that have paid bloggers on their staff. Fortunately, the costs involved with blogging are extremely low. If you’re blogging for fun and not profit, then you’ll hardly notice any difference - you’ll still get visitors, they’ll still comment on your posts and you’ll still have all the time you need to blog… but if making money is your aim, be prepared for some lean times ahead, especially if your new to blogging.

Concentrate on building your traffic, increase the quality of your posts and build a strong community with your readers… the best blogs will not only survive, but they’ll be the ones to thrive when the economy picks up again.

(Photo by stuartpilbrow)

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I’m working in a pretty rigid corporate environment - that means all Internet activity is tracked, logged and sifted for anything *fun* that probably shouldn’t be there… I’m paid to do a job, and they expect me to do it (go figure, huh?)… that doesn’t leave much space for Twittering, managing my EntreCard ads or connecting with other bloggers - I’m effectively cut off from a large chunk of the Internet and it’s really quite disconcerting when it comes time to actually blog about something.

Now I guess I could change my strategy somewhat and just blog about what’s happening to me directly, or ramble on about some topic as if I were living in a bubble (which I kind of am), but I’m not sure that’s what I want… for me, blogging is all about being a part of the conversation and connecting with others - I can’t do either of those effectively at the moment. What do you think is the best way to meet those goals when you only have a limited amount of time each day… can I find and track some off-line conversations that have relevance (and more importantly continuance) in the on-line space?

What do you do? do you have any ideas for me? Leave them in the comments.

(photo by J_O_I_D)

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I’ve taken on a new job - it’s consuming a lot of my time right now, leaving little time for blogging (let alone anything else), but professionally, it’s a big move forward and I really can’t knock the pay or the conditions… my first week on-site has been great and I’m really looking forward to digging my teeth into this more.

I’m working for Oakton - quite a large IT Consultancy group (over 1000 employees) with several offices in Australia and India, in a QA/Test Co-ordinator role for a large project in the education sector… basically I’m helping to set the Test plan, make sure everything gets documented and tracked and from all that analyse the results and make recommendations on the outcomes.

It’s been a few years since I was last in the corporate sector, so I’ve got to bring myself back to the world of rigorous processes and procedures and endless amounts of documentation, but I have over eight years experience in QA/Testing roles and quite frankly, I find the corporate way of doing things reassuring and secure (sounds crazy, I’m sure!)… I’m glad to be back, and after fumbling my way around for the first couple of days, my confidence has really grown over this first week (I’m sure my wife is happy to get me out of the house too, lol).

So what does this mean for Marketing-SEO.com and my other blogs?

Basically I won’t have much time to blog, certainly not as much as I would like to anyway… my days are pretty much blocked out from 7am - 8pm each day… I have about 1hr travel to work each-way, home by about 6:30pm which only leaves about an hour or so each night to be with my kids (having worked from home for the majority of the last 18 months and able to see them practically all day, this is the toughest change by a long way)… I’ll still write posts here when I can, I just won’t be forcing myself to stick to any sort of schedule.

It’s also going to be a lot harder to maintain my blogs and spend time twittering, dropping entrecards etc. as I’m essentially locked out from all this during the day - another part of being in the corporate world is that all computer use while at work is tracked (they want you to actually be working for some reason), and that goes even further when working on a clients site (as I’m doing now)… it’s not exactly extending a professional image for a consultant if the client walks in and sees you playing solitaire while they are paying massive amounts of money for you to be there - not that I would have time to do that anyway, I’m kept pretty busy and actually having a good time getting through the work too (sssshhh, don’t tell anyone, they’ll think I’m weird).

So that’s the state of play… I’m around, but only briefly each day, and I’ve had to ramp up my focus on the QA/Testing side of things rather than marketing and development which has taken some of my focus over the last few years. The good news though is that I’ll still need a release of sorts for the blogger and Internet marketer inside me… I can’t really write too much about anything that might come close to resembling my duties at work (unless I clear it with Oakton or maybe do something semi-official through them), but that’s cool… my blogging will essentially take the role of a hobby and there’s nothing wrong with that!

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I’m not sure who should be credited with originally saying that (if you know, leave me a comment!), but it’s without doubt, the best definition of blogging that I’ve seen. Blogging is a conversation, as a blogger, we carefully craft our posts each day to express our thoughts and interact with our readers… and as a reader, interaction gets you involved, and we all love those warm fuzzy feelings that go along with being a part of something. Commenting lets you interact with both the blogger and the other readers, it lets you become an important part of a conversation, and that’s good!

As a blogger, you also have a few other reasons why you should want to comment on other blogs, and they are key parts in helping to promote your own. Here are some benefits:

• You’ll get a chance to develop a relationship with that blogger - building a network of bloggers in your niche will help you all stimulate conversations… as a few people start to comment on your posts, more of your readers will gradually join in - this is a key growth indicator for any blog. You also may find opportunities to collaborate with some of these other bloggers down the track.
• You’ll get to interact with other readers of those blogs - if your comments add quality to the conversation, the readers of that blog may want to interact with you… some will click through to your blog - at the very least, they get exposed to your brand/name.

Set a strategy for your comments

To get the most out of commenting, you should settle on a few goals and establish a strategy to achieve them… here are a couple of things that I think you should keep in mind.

• If your goal is to get noticed by the blogger and develop a relationship, then your easiest targets will be those blogging on similar topics to you, and with blogs about the same level of popularity of yours (or less)… chasing prominent bloggers, or ones with little interest in what you’re blogging about will take a lot more convincing that you’re someone they should be interacting with.
• If your goal is to promote your brand and get some visitors to your blog, then make sure the readers of the blog you’re commenting on will also be interested in what you’re blogging about. You’ll also want to direct a lot of your discussion towards other comments that have already been made… don’t get lost in the crowd of ‘love this post’ comments, develop the conversation and add your opinions.

As a general rule, the more popular a blogger (or the blog) is, the more effort you’ll need to put into commenting to achieve your goals. Getting the attention of a new blogger who rarely gets any comments on his posts should be pretty easy (it may just take the one comment), but if every blog post gets many comments, then you’ll need to stand above the crowd in both quality and quantity.

I suggest you concentrate on blogs in batches - identify some likely candidates and make a commitment to comment on as many of their posts as possible over a period of say two weeks (adjust up or down depending on the popularity of the blog). Try to make sure that you are adding to the conversation, quality is more important than quantity, and if possible try to stimulate the conversation by asking other questions or giving honest opinions.

Commenting on other blogs is a powerful tool as it opens so many opportunities. Consider making it part of your daily routine and set yourself some targets - identify the blogs you want to interact with and join the conversation.

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I spend way too much time looking at themes, I’ve got at least 50 setup on my laptop with a local test copy of Wordpress, and if I see something that looks interesting it’s not much hassle to download it and put it through some paces.

The Evolution theme for Wordpress is one that I stumbled on a couple of days ago and it is very quickly becoming my favourite Wordpress theme… and yes, it’s completely free, despite being much better than a lot of premium themes that I’ve seen.

It’s got classy web 2.0 looks with 3 different colour themes to choose from, has native support for widgets, prominent spots for RSS/email subscription sign-ups… it’s one of the most elegantly coded Wordpress themes I have seen and customising it is a breeze. If you like two column themes, then this one is right up near the top of the pile when it comes to quality.

If you would like to see a demo of this Wordpress theme in action, Blogging Tips have put up an Evolution Theme demo page for you check out.

I’ve already started to customise this theme to work on some of my sites… in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it shows up here on Marketing-SEO.com in the near future too. If you’re looking to spruce up your blog a little, the Evolution theme for Wordpress is one that you should definitely check out.

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So… given all that, I’m going to up the stakes - I’m going to give 500 free EntreCard credits to the first 10 people who blog about Gamblz.com or Affiliate.Gamblz.com and leave a comment on here letting me know you’ve posted.

The first 10 people to blog and leave a comment here, that have their posts approved by me will get 500 EC’s and a bit of Twitter lovin’… simple as that.

The Affiliate Networking website focuses heaviliy on tips for blogging, social networking and affiliate marketing - so it’s relevant content for a lot of you, for more information, read yesterday’s post.

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The blog is called Gamblz.com and it aims to connect online poker and casino players with social networking and blogging… it’s an area that the online gambling industry has so far been slow to adopt. I have also setup Affiliate.Gamblz.com which covers blogging tips, how to make money via Affiliate Programs etc. Content on that site isn’t necessarily focused on Online Gambling and should appeal to most readers of Marketing-SEO.com.

There are two great opportunities here for you, and you can get started with them right now.

200 Free EntreCard Credits are Yours

I’m giving away 200 EntreCard credits to each and every one of you who blogs about my new sites… all you need to do is write a post on your blog letting your readers know that Gamblz has launched, link to either Gamblz.com or Affiliate.Gamblz.com… feel free to mention either the free EntreCard credits you’ll be getting, or about the next opportunity below…

I know 200 EC’s may not sound like much, but keep in mind there’s no random draw - you blog, you win… as simple as that. There are also a couple of other perks that go along with it - I’ll be linking to most of the posts (either here or on Affiliate.Gamblz.com) and I’ll also broadcast a big thankyou (and a link) over Twitter… depending on how many people blog about this, I may even award a bonus prize(s) at some point for those posts that are exceptionally good.

Once you’ve written your blog post, send me a message via the Gamblz contact page and I’ll transfer the credits to you as soon as I can.

Blog @ Gamblz and Make Some Real Money

One of the key concepts behind Gamblz.com is that everyone has a voice and we all need to hear it! I’ve set things up so that anyone can easily submit content to either Gamblz.com or Affiliate.Gamblz.com - not everything will be published (but most of it will) and in each article you get to add a short bio that links back to your blog, and, within the content, include your own affiliate tracking tags where relevant. You also get to add another affiliate tagged link at the bottom of your article which lets everyone know what your favourite casino or poker room is right now.

If you haven’t had any experience with online gambling affiliate programs before this will be a great way to get started - I’ve been dealing with them for over six years and I can conclusively say that you will earn significantly more money from these, than any other affiliate program online.  Most of these affiliate programs operate on a revenue share basis, usually 25% of all revenues to the casino or poker room from players you refer for the entire time the player continues to play there… these are lifetime commissions, and we all know how profitable casinos are (the Las Vegas skyline is testament to that).

I’ve seen affiliates regularly rake in over $20,000 per month from one affiliate program (they usually promote quite a few at once), and even small publishers can experience some nice paydays if they strike it lucky and refer a big whale… a couple of years ago I earned over $1,000 in one month just from one active player at a casino, what other affiliate programs out there offer you a chance like that?

By submitting content to Gamblz.com you get the chance to market yourself via our traffic and even though I’m just (officially) launching the site now, I’m expecting quite a few eyeballs to start hitting the page over the next few days… apart from EntreCard, I’ve got email advertising set to go out, deals happening with casinos and poker rooms and hopefully some nice competitions coming up in the next few weeks. Now is your chance to get in early and produce some killer content that will stand the test of time and promote both your blog and your affiliate tags to Gamblz readers for a long time to come.

You can find out more about submitting to Gamblz here and a little more info about the free EntreCard credits on Gamblz.

Be Social, Join the Conversation

Gamblz is all about being social and being part of the conversation… so don’t forget to jump right in and get involved… there couldn’t be a better time, this is your chance to be one of the original members and to become a ‘thought influencer’ in the community. There are a few ways you can get started.

• Comment on everything - You can start with this post here! Make sure you join the conversation over at Gamblz and comment on any article that takes your interest… I make sure I try to respond to every comment and usually look at the commenters blog to see if there is anything I’m interested in on commenting on there.
• Follow on Twitter - are you using Twitter yet? if you aren’t then you should be - a great tool for any blogger, such a versatile little time waster conversation tool. You can follow me @martyj or @gamblz
• Follow on FriendFeed - centralise all your online data into the one lifestream. No need to follow an insane amount of social media sites, FriendFeed gives you everything in the one place. You can follow MartyJ or Gamblz there too.
• Talk about ’stuff’ in the Gamblz FriendFeed Rooms. You can Join the Online Gambling room, or the WSOP (World Series of Poker) room (seriously, join them - we desperately need some action in there!)

As always, I’m here to help in anyway possible - I’m available via Twitter, FriendFeed, or email, I’ll be posting feverishly to the Gamblz websites (and here) about affiliate marketing and promoting your blog… I want you to make money, I want you to network and I want you to succeed… and that means helping you to blog on your own too, not just on Gamblz - come on, join the ride.

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Challenges

Every blogger faces a challenge - quite a few challenges in fact - they are depressingly hard to avoid… so what does the pessimistic blogger have to say about challenges?

For those of you who are graphically challenged - the above image reads “Challenges - I expected times like this, but I never thought they would be so bad, so long and so frequent.”

You do expect there to be challenges right… I don’t think total ignorance is an issue, but are you prepared for the amount, length and severity of these challenges? Here is a shot list of the many, many challenges that bloggers face in their quest to become popular:

• I know I’ve got to write every day… so why can’t I be bothered writing now?
• Ok, I’m keen to write now, let’s go… um… what can I write about?
• Why do they make setting up a blog so technical anyway?
• Why won’t that #$@#!%$ element position itself correctly in my theme?
• How do I get other bloggers to notice me?
• Now that I’ve got a blogger to notice me… how do I get them to like me?
• How do I get readers to notice me?
• Now that I’ve got some readers… how do I get them to like me?
• Why won’t feedburner give me the right stats? Surely I’ve got at least double that amount of subscribers…
• What? Twitter is down again?

…I could go on all day - in fact every day seems to throw up a new challenge (or repeats of ones I had the previous day), that’s just the way the world turns, it’s not restricted to blogging.

Want some real examples from fellow bloggers? I asked “What’s your biggest challenge as a blogger” in the problogger room on FriendFeed, within minutes I got these responses…

Sarah Parker from Going Bananas Blog writes

Networking is fun and rewarding, but is so overwhelming and a time sucker. It’s a catch 22 as I do believe it is key to my blog’s continued growth. I find that my traffic goes down if I slow down on networking for a few days, but I don’t want to be a computer addict either. :)

Andrew Garrett from Life Sans writes

Finding time and energy to post properly. My earlier pro-blogger attempts were mostly link posts, which failed miserably. Now, I’m vastly better at original content creation, but with a fairly full-on day job, I find it hard to find time and energy to create well

Trisha from This Pale Blue Dot writes

Getting more readers for the blog and trying balance that with actually having time to write posts for the blog

Andy Roberts from Distributed Action Research writes

Finding ways to be comfortable blogging about several totally unrelated topics all on one blog. Trying to write for different audiences without impinging on each other.

and Nancy Nally from Scrapbook Update writes

It’s hard to stay organized reviewing the incoming information that I need to stay apprised of to get the news and information I need to write my posts. There’s feeds to read, news sites to browse, social networks to keep up with… I’m sure it takes me longer to do than it probably should.

All bloggers have things that challenge them… lots of things, new challenges arise every day - yours too will be significant, frequent and long lasting.

The Optimistic View

Enough of the negativity. Yes there are challenges - we all face them - but the optimist in me won’t let them bring me down. Here’s one of my all-time favourite quotes, it was made by one of the NFL’s greatest Coaches Vince Lombardi: “It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever — the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.”

You don’t need to focus on big challenges, but you do need to focus on ones that are important to you… the ones stopping you from achieving your goals. I find that writing them down makes it so much easier to acknowlege and focus on my challenges, the fist step to beating them.

Sometimes the solution might need a bit of lateral thinking. Here is one last response to my question on FriendFeed, it was written by Igor the Troll

Does it mater where you post? Unless you trying to become rich from selling Adsense on your blog you should be able to garnish interest and followers even if you only post on social media networks. So do not be a “Blogger” only person but post were it is relevant. By having this kind of mentality you will have enough time for your off line activities. It is not the number of people who visit your blog, but how many people read what you write on the Internet as well as off the Internet.

Quite often, if the challenges you face seem huge, or your current strategy just isn’t working as well as you’d like, then a change of approach may just be what you need.

There aren’t too many successful people who just lay back, put up their feet and let luck take care of everything. Give yourself every chance, get into the habit of identifying the challenges and planning to overcome them - make sure that you are a ‘doer’ and an ‘achiever’.

What tips can you share about overcoming challenges as a blogger? Maybe you just have a story you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments.

The above image - and many more - can be found on despair.com… you can even get it printed on a coffee mug if you like.

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They’ve just released a new one about Social Media and Social Networking - as a blogger you probably understand these concepts already - if you’ve used sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, FaceBook, MySpace etc. then you’ve got first hand experience.

If you can’t understand what all the buzz is about, or never really considered the concepts behind those sites, then this video is for you, but be warned! This video goes on and on and on about ice-cream… if you’re watching your waistline and can’t resist a good triple-choc, then you may want to wait until there’s no chance of temptation… although if the corner store is only a couple of minutes away, I guess you might have some problems.

Once you’ve watched it and you’re all keen to enhance your social media skills, make sure you follow me on Twitter and subscribe to me on FriendFeed… let me know who you are in the comments and not only will I follow you back, but others reading those comments will probably follow you to.

Here’s the video - any questions, ask away in the comments.

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