The Truth about Profit Blogging

You might be wondering where I left off since my last post if you look at the date. All of a sudden there are no more posts since then. What happened for the last 3 years? To be honest I was demotivated and rather discouraged about the true facts on profit blogging. I readily know that it might take years before I can actually see any results so to speak.

I have been trying many things and possible ways to earn something for a living and profit blogging is just one of them and it’s a new field that I kept on trying.

Traffic

I couldn’t agree more about traffic. I think it’s THE most important aspect of anything in the realm of money making on the Internet. It is as simple as to regard traffic as customers who walk pass your shop and to think of keywords as their interest to why they would enter your shop and purchase something. Not using the right keywords would mean to not care about what the customers want. Traffic is like viewers on YouTube. More views simply mean more traffic. More traffic does not necessarily mean more profit if you don’t have good products up for grab. Always have good contents to offer. At least that would keep the interested minds on board.

Time and Pressure

Ever since I watched The Shaytards on YouTube, I really love this quote from Shay Carl and if I may say, his mentor for success, Dave Ramsey. “Time and Pressure”. It’s simply a motivational figure of speech in which a person, me or you or anyone else must be patient (time) and keep doing whatever that we’re doing. Applying “pressure” is like to keep on pushing and never to give up or surrender for whatever objective that we’re attempting to reach. Coming back to that aforementioned 3 years in the first paragraph, I was purely way off this time and pressure concept, to the point of giving up and never to be blogging again.

I am not embarrassed to say that I am a result-driven person. I must see some results, some good signs to come, in order to be certain, to proceed and to go on with what I am currently doing.  My profit blogging journey started to show something, even from the low number of traffic that I am getting just by the year 2008. That was a clear sign that I should go on and keep doing what I was doing. To keep applying time and pressure indeed.

In short, the truth is you need to give it some time before you would actually see any results. I knew I read that somewhere, I am confirming to that notion now. That making some profit out of blogging was indeed true. Don’t be dreaming about making huge profit within the blink of an eye or overnight though. So, give in some time, keep on blogging and posting good stuff. With a bit of luck you’ll be on your way to reach greater success. Put it this way, always be positive.

Windows Live Writer - your offline blogging tool

Recently I tested this software and have a trial post to one of my blogs and as of now, I am very pleased with what this blogging tool has to offer. If you are looking for a tool that you can use to write your blog post offline and have them posted instantly or later then this Windows Live Writer is a "must have" for you.

I would like to thank Ruchir Chawdhry for posting up the 16 Essential PC Applications for Bloggers through Darren's Problogger site and Windows Live Writer is one application that I should be using since I started to have multiple blogs. In my opinion, I think this tool is great to enhance productivity because I don't have to go online and log in to my blog account to write as I can do so using this cool software. In fact, I am writing this post within Windows Live Writer itself. Once again, thanks to you guys. I am relatively new to blogging so this is a good discovery that is worth sharing with new bloggers.

I think it is best if you try out the tool yourself then decide of whether to stick with it or otherwise. For now, this tool is great to use as I find really easy to get the whole blogging thing up and running. I have quickly learned the shortcuts F12 to preview what this post would look like in my blog and F11 to return to the post text editing window. I could easily put a picture or even copy and paste YouTube's code for embedding video on any post.

The alignment feature work very well too. It is as simple as selecting all texts with CTRL + A and right-clicking and selecting align - justify to get the entire document presented in a justified format. Other features include inserting hyperlinks, pictures, tables, maps, tags and videos.

The only thing that I noticed missing is the thesaurus feature although the spell checker would help as well. Thesaurus works better if you're tired of using the same word over and over. It should help you to learn new vocabularies too. I hope future releases of this free to use tool would have a built-in thesaurus feature. Or maybe I should get those writing enhancement software from White Smoke or others that can be used almost anywhere - within your favorite text editor or a chat window.

Try the Windows Live Writer yourself. Maybe you will like it too. Get it from http://get.live.com/writer/overview

Making use of what's available for your post content

I often find it very interesting to include various media or items in a post such as graphics, still photos and videos other than lengthy texts. This is in fact, has already started probably many years ago since the existence of YouTube.

Attention span

Most blog visitors have very limited attention span when reading. It means that they are likely to leave especially if a particular content is of no interest, or in a way boring. Having various ways of presenting information (graphics, video etc) is good in the sense that it can cater to a wider audience of readers. Some really love reading while others love photos and most would go right to the point, looking for an answer or a specific information that they need.

Content is King

There's always a saying that "content is king" repeatedly echoed in the world of blogs, stressing how important it is to come up with great contents to encourage and build readership. This can be subjective, because not all content would be of interest to most readers. A post might be good for some and bad for others. You can only depend on comments to ignite a discussion and in turn, post your opinions that can be a content for your following posts.

Formatting your post

In terms of formatting your post, you can use headlines in bold to divide sections or paragraphs to indicate a point in your post just like this post. It is a good way for readers who want information fast to quickly scroll through the post and head right to the paragraph with a headline of interest.

Graphics and copyright

Using graphics, such as jokes or any interesting photos would grab readers attention and it is likely that they will be interested to read more about the post. Be careful of using graphics or photos that are copyrighted and restricted for use. Copyrighted materials are often indicated by the (c) symbol. If you are using any, do remove them if you are asked by the copyright owner to avoid legal issues.

Using video

Using video is also good especially for visitors who like watching rather than reading. Here's a video from YouTube that explains what a blog is plain English. I think it is very informative and would enlighten the mind for new bloggers. Thanks to the uploader leelefever.

Is a blog really a blog in its pure essence?

You have seen many blogs around since it ever started in the late nineties and maybe to realize that the culture of blogging seemed to have changed a lot along the way. In the early days blogs are like for teenagers to rant all they want on everything about their lives. It is like an online diary where the mind speaks for itself.

But today, blogging has evolved with a mixture of purposes other than rants. In fact, blogging can be used for any purposes – to educate, to share ideas, to tell a story, to promote a product and of course to make some money. It’s really in the power of the blogger. You can write whatever you want on your blog. Depending on where you live, freedom of speech might not be applicable to certain countries. Be safe and blog about things that won’t endanger you.

When I think about the true nature of blogging, something tells me that it is about a real-time approach to churn out words based on what you feel and think at that particular moment. It is supposed to be spontaneous and not as a planned effort. Well, you need to know on what you will blog about too so to speak.

Today, with the advancement of technology we can save what we write and continue editing or writing later. That is more like an article writing rather than actual blogging to me. I am not saying that this is wrong but it is just that blogging seems to be more of an informal thing to do. Blogging has no specific format as you can do what you want. What do you think on this?

Article writing is like having some formality of doing things. There should be some required word counts, some structure to follow with and specific rules to follow like having an introduction and a conclusion to name a few. But most blogs today are filled with contents that sometimes sounded too formal to us don’t they? Even what I write now look like formal to me in some way.

In my opinion, blogs today have different, not definition, but purposes from what they used to be when blogging first started. Instead of writing about daily rants, it is more worth it to write something that I could research about and share from my point of view. I could learn at the same time. It’s a bonus to me. Blog really is a blog, similar to comparing that a book is just a book. But contents make them to be viewed differently.