MDBP Discussion
How is the MDBP project going for you?
I have created this post expressly to help out fellow MDBPers by providing links back to their sites and latest articles right here.
More importantly it would be cool to gather opinion on what this project is doing for everybody – personally I’m not looking to make $1 million but to build traffic and reach a wider audience. Even better than that we’d like to find and build a community of like-minded individuals who want to enjoy life more for less.
Whether through this post or any other (or via other mechanisms) we will be looking to build that community, so if you have similar ideals, a similar site or want to learn more about ours, please feel free to say so.
Otherwise, just say ‘Hi’. What you will get is a link back to your site (assuming you have one) and also a link back to your latest article automatically upon leaving a comment (because we use the CommentLuv plugin). Free promotion.
There’s no more to it than that. No promises of reciprocity needed, no scoring/points, no circle of love, no tribal system you have to join… just leave a comment and you’ll benefit.
Hi – Just checking in over here to see what’s going on. I hadn’t checked into the MDBP in a while to see what was happening. Realized I needed to update some of my own profile info (clicky wasn’t pulling in for some reason and forgot I moved my accountability blog to a new url – oops).
Browsed through some of the various blogs and journals but didn’t find a whole lot. Seems like not much updating going on over there. Also saw a lot of entries for ugg something or other. Spam maybe? I know Corbett & team have been busy with their other blogs, but kind of surprised not to hear any overview updates on this project.
I just keep plugging along and making headway. Seems slow going, but try to remind myself that I’m accomplishing a lot for one person. My traffic on all sites continue to increase steadily so that’s a good sign I’m doing something right. Not a lot of subscribers yet and basically minimal to no $, but hoping those will fall into place eventually.
Anyway, just wanted to say hi and check in. Hope others are having some success.
Hey Sherri,
thanks very much for doing so. Yep, it looks like MDBP has de-prioritised for Corbett & Team.
Like you I have been continuing in any case and with this project seeming to have lost some steam, at least from the ThinkTraffic side of things, I have stopped reading their posts and just got on with my own things. The sense of community which was originally suggested turned into a closed shop for people who want to pay for webinars.
Not for me – I can do my own networking 😉
Please do continue to keep in touch and if there’s any way I can help, let me know. For what it’s worth, my theory is that consistency and quality will eventually pay off, for me the most important things are keeping an interest, genuine relationships, creating quality content and consistently publishing (i.e. every week) – that’s about it. Everything else I’m not too interested in. I thought I was interested in traffic which is why I joined the MDBP project in the first place (as opposed to for money) but even that I don’t care enough about huge numbers to chase down every tactic out there.
Like you, I’m getting steady growth and starting to have some genuine relationships – both of these make sense to me and I’m not in any particular rush 😉
What are your other sites then? How many have you got?
Hey Sherri,
this is just an idea but as neither of us are getting much from the MDBP project (at least not lately) I wonder if you would like to help each other out a little. I have a few ideas for how we could do this quite conveniently and which would be of mutual benefit. Anyways, if you’re interested, then rather than discussing it further here, please drop me an email alan [at] lifestoogood.net.
cheers,
Alan
p.s. ignore my question about how many sites (unless you have more) – you told me already!
How on earth do you maintain all of those sites?? I have a few too but only this one that I update and even that is a struggle sometimes…
Hey Alan – Thanks for setting this up – what a great idea. And I have an even bigger thanks to you for noticing that the comments on our website weren’t showing up! We figured it out fortunately, or at least have a temp fix. It was a conflict with one of the plug-ins. But I don’t know how long until I would’ve notice that the comments weren’t visible. So thank you, thank you! Now I just need to get more comments… :o) It’s amazing the number of things to sort out with the blog and a little overwhelming at times, but for now I’m loving it.
Our goal with our blog is to develop a location independent lifestyle. We’re dying to spend more time traveling the world, but want to set up something economically sustainable first so that we can continue to explore as long as we want!
Good luck to everyone – it’s been really interesting to see everyone’s ideas and have a peer group to help motivate each other.
Hey Shani, no problem at all and I’m really glad I could be of some help.
That’s the weird thing with the comments system of wordpress and all the various plugins and configurations possible to set up – I have had similar concerns myself – it’s the kind of thing you could be blissfully unaware wasn’t working and in the meantime you’re missing out on a level of social engagement without even knowing about it. Quite important for the stage we’re at as we are trying to grow.
I too am loving it but have a long list of things to learn (which I’m going to describe here so others can hopefully benefit – I’m literally spending so much time learning this stuff – the frustrating thing is I spend soooo long learning stuff because until I’ve gone through it I don’t actually know if it’s valuable or not – if you know what I mean. I think I’m starting to get a bit more efficient now in my learning though. If there’s anything I can help you with let me know (if you’re having a problem with something, I may have just learned about that thing myself).
Your blog is really cool. I think it is very much in line with our philosophy too, if a little more travel related (we are a little more tied to our location because of the kids but in theory we could travel the world if we really wanted to – but we love our current lifestyle… I digress) – perhaps we can help collaborate or help each other out in some way (I’d be haoppy to guest post on your site for example if that’s something you’re looking for).
Anyways, many many thanks for stopping by, it’s great to connect and share this experience with like minded people and I remember hoping you would when I first visited your blog (because I really liked it and your story),
take care,
Alan
Hi Alan-
Thanks for the compliments – flattery will get you everywhere! I do agree that we seem to share a similar philosophy. The intention for ours is to be a bit more broad and cover similar topics to what you have on your site. However, the posts I seem to enjoy writing the most are about travel! Our goal is to expand a bit more, so the idea of having you guest post is fantastic. Give me a bit of time to add a few more diverse items and get a bit more traffic, so it is worth your while as well. I’ve really enjoyed all of the articles that I’ve read so far on your site, so I think it would be a great fit.
I do have a quick question for you. What plug in are you using that when you reply to someone’s comment, it emails them. I love it and have been wanting something like that.
Just a quick note that I’m not sure if you were aware of, but I’m not sure if it is because I’m using Firefox or not, but with my comment here I can’t move the cursor with the mouse and the arrows only allow me to move on this line and the very first line of my comment. Very interesting!
Have a great weekend, Shani
Hey Shani,
no probs and thanks for the compliments. Don’t worry about the traffic – if you have something you’d like me to write for your site I’d be glad to do so, though I appreciate the sentiment, just let me know, I’m not going anywhere 😉
The plugin is called ReplyMe & yep, I think it’s a pretty good one to have. I try and use as few as possible and keep things as simple as possible (could you tell?) but this is a plugin I think is really worth having.
Sorry but i have no idea about the issue with the cursor or what is causing it (though I tink I have experienced similar things when commenting elsewhere now you mention it) – is it a real hassle?
take care,
Alan
Hi Shani,
I am thinking of trying to ‘change-up’ some of my content – I have recently added a few videos (they’re awful but it’s a start – check out the getmoreforless channel on YouTube if you want proof of how bad they are) and now I want to add audio.
I want to talk about my blog but thought it would be better to have someone interview me rather than do it on my own. Then I thought to come back to this page and perhaps ask someone who has been in this particular discussion as it may be a worthwhile experience.
No worries if you’re not interested but would you like to hear more about the idea (it would take a little of your time but perhaps give you some exposure and perhaps after sharing the experience you may want to try something similar on your blog).
Just a thought… 😉
Hey Alan-
Thanks for the “invite”. I am definitely game for trying it out. I haven’t had a chance to check out your videos as I have been swamped, but hopefully will have a chance today. The idea of doing an interview is something that I have had on my list since we started up the blog, so this will be great exposure for me. Technically I don’t know anything about it – yet! So let me know where it would be helpful for me to focus my learning on so that we’re not doubling up!
~ Shani
Hey Shani,
that’s great news, I’m glad you’re interested. I’m actually in the Alps at the moment skiing and with limited time to check mails etc. SO I’ll give you a better reply when I’m back – in the meantime not much to do/research.
I assume you have skype?
cheers.
Alan
Hey Shani,
I’m so so so so sorry for taking so long to get back to you. Are you still game? If so I’ll drop you an email (assuming that’s OK) with the details and we can take it from there. This is very new for me too!
let me know,
Alan
Hi All –
Thanks for the invite Alan and nice to connect with others working on their blogs. A great concept and effort by Corbett and am grateful I can participate.
For me, the blog is both about doing something I enjoy and find fulfilling while giving me flexibility and freedom, as well as a comfortable income along with it. Lofty goal!
Think my biggest challenge at the moment is connecting the dots with numerous sites/blogs and working on traffic and monetization for each. Definitely feeling spead thin and trying to keep the doubt voices out of my head. I think I’m on the right track and have made so much progress over the past couple months, but still need to put all the pieces together. Much of the recent work has been more structural and behind the scene house keeping (like removing adsense) so need to really focus now on content and building traffic.
Good luck & happy holidays to everyone.
Hey Sherri,
Happy Holidays to you too!! I’m in the UK so we have a few weeks to go yet, though the kids are all excited already (we celebrate XMas day on 25th Dec & don’t have a thanksgiving day).
Thanks for stopping by and joining this discussion, i love the idea of connecting with anybody else who wants to help each other and learn together – for me that’s kind of the point of this project and in doing so we help ourselves more too. ThinkTraffic will win no matter what the way this is set up.
I’m really struck by the sheer amount there is to learn. I’ve actually hit a bit of a lull in the last week or so just because managing the amount of interruptions (facebook, email, twitter – I don’t even really use the others like Stumbleupon, LinkedIn (though I used to and still have lots of connections there), Digg etc. …) I definitely need some kind of system for managing this lot. I definitely ned some kind of system for this lot. It’s gonna be basically that I only do any internet stuff Tues & Fri … but that doesn’t really work for comments. I believe for comments you kind of need to respond straight away or at least the same day ideally. I don’t get too many comments ( 🙁 )so it’s not a big problem for now – but if I handle all teh other interruptions I’d happily have the problem of too many comments…
Oh you removed adsense as well! That wasn’t inspired by me was it? (well, who knows, it could have been!) – good move anyway. I did that too. I think it was the right thing to do. As I get few comments it’s difficult to judge the readers reaction to this but I think it makes for a better reader experience – in any case I haven’t lost a lot of money taking adsense off.
I have a couple of other websites which to be honest are really stagnating (www.storytweller.com & http://www.ltgcoaching.co.uk) these are embarrassingly neglected enough & I actually have 3 more that I’m not telling you about because they are even more neglected!! I understand the theory behind having multiple blogs, niche sites etc but I’m already struggling to find the time to do what I want with this one without it taking over my life.
How do you manage with multiple blogs? How many do you have? Presumably just one is on MDBP? Are the others making money?
Anyways, great to connect & share, let me know if I can help you in any way & thanks again for stopping by,
this reply may be a little long and a bit ranty but I am enjoying learning loads I just wish I had more time!!
take care,
Alan
Yes – the learning is never ending! Kind of overwhelming really.
I agree – managing all the social media platforms and finding the right combination of tools for that has definitely been a challenge for me. I’m still working on it. I know what I need to do, but connecting all the tools and carving out enough time to do it (especially for 3 blogs) is another story.
I have my marketing site http://www.interactivesavvy.com. This is my “real” job, love it and know what I need to do for my projects, but I spend so much time on my clients (gotta keep that paycheck coming) that I don’t spend the time I should on my own blog and marketing. This site is fairly new and although I have a great amount of affiliate framework, I haven’t spent the time to develop the traffic for it to be profitable. I do make money for actual freelance, but not at the level I’d like to be.
Obviously http://www.glutenfreecritique.com is the one I signed up for on MDBP. This is also a new site and has not been profitable to date. I do have some affiliate programs set up on this site and am still thinking about other ways I can make this site profitable. Expert Enough’s Cafe Press (Manifesto) strategy got the wheels turning a little. Pondering what I might be able to do along those lines on this site.
I had read a few places that adsense can be a turn off to visitors if you don’t have a good amount of visitors to begin with and I hadn’t made any money off it so just took them down.
Still along the gluten free line, I just launched http://www.SoletVita.com (Sol et Vita – Sun and Life in Latin) selling gluten free & organic lip balm and handmade soaps. I had initially thought I’d add any gluten free monetization strategies to the glutenfreecritique site, but the more I got into this one, the more it seemed to make sense to make it a stand alone brand. So – now I have 3 blogs to manage. Yikes!! Not sure what I got myself into. This one is also off to a slow start. I have Facebook and Google ads running, and am getting some traffic, but not much in sales so far.
I have cross promoted Sol et Vita and Gluten Free Critique via social media and want to place an ad on gfcritique for Sol et Vita. Just have SO much to do and no idea how to get it all done. Really need a virtual assistant to help me, but of course need the money to hire someone and need the work to have the money. Vicious circle! I just keep plowing forward and making progress. Hopefully all the pieces will fall into place soon.
I’d love to have feedback on any of the sites so if anyone has time and wants to provide some constructive criticism, that would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Hey Sherri,
I definitely think that taking adsense off (particulalry if you’re not making mcu money from it) is a good move. I took it off my site a while back. To be honest I couldn’t really tell you what difference it has made in terms of either traffic numbers or feedback from people visiting my site (as honestly I don’t get a great deal of feedback on things like aesthetics at the moment, rather on the content itself and the traffic is changing but I’m making lots of changes so couldn’t isolate it to the adsense change). However I do feel better about the way the site feels since taking it off. As I’ve said earlier in this discussion, my personal view is that people are sick of adsense and like buttons (disclaimer – having said that I did put the like button back with the sharebar plugin on the left but I am thinking of taking it off again – I put it back because I was asked to so I was just listening to reader’s feedback).
See how it goes. The good thing about WP blogs is that you can change them at any moment yourself without paying for a developer. You can always put adsense back when you have a bigger audience. I have to admit I was actually quite impressed with how easy it was to set up and how well it worked. I made $60 from mine in about 6 months which I think is quite an encouraging start but having said that I still think it was a good move removing it – and I don’t think I will ever put it back even when I do have more visitors because I think there are better ways of making money and having more of me in the process (e.g. with my own products or at least with products I’m more intimately involved with rather than those picked by google with an algorithm).
OK Sherri, I’ll try and find some time to have a look at your sites and give you some feedback on them. I would appreciate the same by the way if you have any thoughts on mine 😉
Interesting move by the way to create a third site which has an overlap with the 2nd. I was thinking of doing something similar as my site’s subject area is (deliberately) quite broad – so I was thinking of creating a niche version of one of the topics I cover wiith lifestoogood.net – just haven’t gotten round to it yet and probably haven’t really fully decided whether I want to do that yet for various reasons near the top being the effort that might be required.
take care,
Alan
Alan – yep, we have been emailing back and forth and I must say, he has exceeded my expectations. Danny pointed me towards a couple of his posts that would be useful for me, and man were they!
The conversation continues…
To answer your question – I didn’t receive a choice of blogs to link to…
Razwana
Cooooool Razwana, well done for asking in the first place. Getting free advice and a good contact – way to go.
Any great advice you wanna share here? 😉 Just asking.
You could be our Danny. I thiunk your blog is already pretty cool anyway. As you can see, I like the ‘clean’ look. I’m learning more about the CommentLuv thing now I think you only get the choice after 3 comments – still pretty cool though as a plugin in the first place,
take care,
Alan
I don’t think I am anywhere near being anyone’s Danny ! (I would have to grow facial hair … not a good look for me).
He did point me in the direction of one of his posts that I found immensley useful around understanding where you are in blog growth and how to excel at each of them. In a nutshell it’s:
Step 1 – Start with Great Content
Step 2 – Tell Everyone you Know
Step 3 – Start Building a Community
Step 4 – Promote Your Blog
Step 5 – Get Viral
Step 6 – Monetize!
The post covers what you should do at each stage before progressing to the next. Very informative. Check it out here:
http://www.firepolemarketing.com/blog/2011/03/27/why-guru-strategies-for-blog-growth-don%E2%80%99t-work%E2%80%A6-and-what-does/
Sound advice & thanks for sharing! I think that’s pretty key and the penny just dropped recently with me on that very same point. I have mentioned here before that I just removed adsense off my site – i.e. what’s the point in potentially putting people off a little with ads whilst I’m just starting out and trying to grow traffic – particularly if those ads are only bringing me pennies anyway (well, OK, £60 so far in my case but that’s still pennies in the grand scheme of things). It is kind of cool how easily adsense works and I remember being all excited when I got my first few pounds but I am very pleased with the decision to take these off and I think Danny’s list kind of validates that too – i.e. Monetization is #6 on his list.
Interesting stuff. The list makes it sound really easy so what are we waiting for?
Of all of these personally I think #1 is the most important by FAR. There are so many people out there looking for as many tricky ways as they can to ‘get viral’ that it’s kind of crazy, isn’t it?
Good content with good catchy headers and honest marketing through all the right channels has got to be where it’s at for me. Danny also recently wrote quite an interesting post about round-up posts no longer working because now everyone’s doing them – he’s got a good point, Disclaimer – that being said we will be doing a round up post but we’ve been pplanning to for ages and it’s for genuine reasons, not just a gimmicky traffic thing.
It also reminds me of a post I saw on a very popular blog where the guy just wrote a post called ‘Take Action’ or something like that and wrote this is the shortest post you’ll ever read and I’m going to… and then it stopped. It was something like that anyway. The point was he’d stopped writing and taken action – the post got over 400 comments, people thought he was awesome etc etc. I just thought, “yes, but that’s because you’re ALREADY very popular” – if I wrote that with my regular 17 subscribers and a couple of hundred passing through and saying nothing, I’d be lucky to get a single comment”.
So it is obviously important to know where we’re at and what size our boots are 😉
Anyways, thanks again for sharing this Razwana, interesting stuff!
Make that 18 subscribers 🙂
Oh Wow – thanks!
My next ‘hurdle’ is to try and entice more subscribers with a killer free ebook – it annoys me slightly that the only way I can do this is using an autoresponder – so mail chimp or aweber.
I think the main content I have to offer is on my site so why should I create a separate email list? But SO many people say ‘the money is in the list’ – not that I’m really in it for the money (honest) but from that expression I also read for my own purposes the interest & attention is in the list – i.e. having a list means people aren’t transient but are reminded of your content and much more likely to come back. They are your loyal readers – so a community, hopefully, which is everything I wish for.
BUT I don’t see why I can’t just do this with an RSS based email subscription – obviously I can’t if I want to offer a free ebook (unless I just put it on my website and let anyone who wants it grab a copy without me knowing anything about it at all).
What do you think? Am I the only one who’s struggling with this RSS vs RSS email vs autoresponder email concept?
Anyways, many thanks for subscribing – I hope we live up to your expectations…
I wanted to subscribe to your RSS feed but couldn’t find a way to do that – do you know the URL for your RSS feed?
I believe it is http://yourworkisyourlife.com/feed/# (I should know this, right?).
Definitely the email list is where the targetted marketing can be done. I use A Weber for mine – very easy to use – especially when you start split testing messages. That’s the exciting part!
– Raz
hmm that didn’t seem to work. Could be me, I’m no genius with this stuff either but I’ll try a few variations and let you know. When I click on the link you just sent I just get a page full of text all garbled together.
I’m not so worried about targetted marketing really but I get the point, and think for anyone whose primary motive is making money then the email list could well be more important than the blog itself – i.e. worst case scenario if your blog disapears then you can always take your list with you.
How much do you pay for Aweber then? You reckon it’s worth it, right?
I think I’m going to be a cheapskate and go with Mailchimp.
lol – I just clicked the link you sent me again and read some of the text, in the middle it says something like ‘Waffle Waffle blah blah blah now let’s get to it!’ – really cool! I like it – do you remember writing that?
Sorry it was me being a thicko!
I pasted it into the browser bar expecting it to take me to a screen asking me what reader I wanted to view your RSS feed with.
HOWEVER I just went to Google Reader, pasted it in there under ‘Subscribe and it worked just fine – so you’re right, that is your RSS feed URL,
… and I’m now subscribed!
take care!
Alan
Ha ha yes, the ‘waffle,waffle’ is deliberate. Sometimes it is just best to get to the point!
Oh, and thank you for subscribing – welcome aboard.
AWeber is worth it if you are in it to monetise. It’s about $19/month so not breaking the bank. I am not sure how it compares to Mailchimp, however. It could be worth the investment for the quality?
Mailchimp is free. I plan to set it up soon so I will let you know.
I’m not really so bothered about monetizing as much as getting an audience. Maybe at some stage in the future I will do so but it would most likely only be with my own products, not ads etc.
I do know anyone who’s anyone on the net seems to use aweber so you probably made the right choice in your case.
p.s. did you notice by any chance that I completely changed the way my site looks? What do you think (be honest)?
take care,
Alan
Hi Alan,
What a wonderful idea. Thanks for inviting me to join your discussion, and for stopping by Tidal Life. I’m impressed you waded through all my snarky stuff to find one of my Life is Good entries.
I agree, focusing on making a million is not enough for me to keep blogging. In fact I have difficulty making my blog into a business at all. So many of those involved with MDBP are working on a business, or business related topic, I’m not. My subject is the waterfront, the coast and living well along the water without damaging the environment. I’m afraid that stance puts me at odds with huge swaths of the business community – development, real estate, shipping, manufacturing, tourism, architecture and Martha Stewart.
So I’m not sure how this will pan out for me, but I’m enjoying working on my re-launch and learning a lot from Corbett and Caleb and those taking part in the project. I’ve added you to that list!
Thanks again and I hope life continues too good,
Nancy
Hey Nancy,
thanks and thank you so much for stopping by.
I like your blog because it is both niche and very personal to you, you put a lot of your own character into it, it’s for a great cause and really lends itself to building a strong community. All of these are big pluses in my view. I also have a similar problem with the line between ‘business’ and free/community. I come from a business background so the line for me is to try and help people from my experience but the main point of our website is supposed to be the community/free aspect and helping people as much as we can. People won’t get that if I make it too business-like (at least that’s my theory).
I am glad I joined in the MDBP thing probably for similar reasons to you – primarily the learning and networking aspect, though, like you though I love meeting people and networking (with anyone) I might just end up not doing so with some people on the MDBP project because our paths are so different.
Life really is too good – which I think a lot of people abuse or forget, but don’t get me started… 😉
let me know any time if there;s anything I can help you with,
take care,
Alan
Sorry one more thing.
I just stopped by your blog again (is it just me or have you written a LOT more?) and wanted to see if I could find your twitter ID and follow you on twitter too – do you have one?
best wishes,
Alan
Yes, I do have a Twitter – I’m @tidallife
Just looked at my front page and wow – it’s not there. I’ll fix that asap. The theme I’m using started out quite beautiful but I’ve made changes over the years and the wear and tear is beginning to show. That’s one of the reasons I’m relaunching.
Following @LTGmonkey
Nancy
I know what you mean Nancy, I’ve just changed my front page again it’s people’s first impression so I guess it counts. The question is whether you hit them with lots of stuff to show them all the great things you have or you keep it simple to make it easy for them (but risk not showing them something) – as you can see, I;m experimenting with the latter.
In your case because you have such a unique subject it probably makes sense to have your latest posts do the talking for you and have these as the main feature on the front page, making sure that you use good, attractive images in these posts (which I think you already do) – this will be what captures the readers attention (in my case that wouldn’t work as I have 4 quite different areas of my site – e.g. someone interested in saving money may not be interested in being more efficcient at work (as they might not have a job!!))
Anyways, I like your site but let me know if there’s anything I can help you with,
cheers,
Alan
Dear Alan,
Thank you for inviting me to join your community! It would be my honour and pleasure.
As you already know, I am running a blog about creative thinking. My main objective is to show people that everybody can be creative and to teach and motivate my readers to use creative thinking in their everyday life (and also to earn $1m, lol)
Taking part in MDBP has helped me learn new things, compare myself with other fellow bloggers, find motivation to go on (it’s a lot easier when you know that other bloggers have the same problems that you have) and get to know interesting people like yourself.
The greatest problem that I am facing at the moment is low conversion rate and low average time per visit. I hope that with good content and better targeting I shall be able to remedy it : )
Hope to stay in touch and maybe share some articles with you and other fellow IMDB bloggers. Keep me posted about your new ideas.
Best,
Pedja
Hey Pedja,
thank you so much for stopping by – I was really hoping you would I enjoy your site, your enthusiasm and really appreciate the first comments you left here.
If you’ll permit me I’ll give you my take on what you just wrote. I am learning too so I’m not exactly an authority but I do have an opinion 😉
I have recently taken all money making thoughts out of my mind and also taken adsense off my site completely. The reason for this is I don’t want to put people off. I have convinced myself that it makes sense to build an audience first (just by giving value) without any ‘strings’ attached. My primary goal with this site was never the money anyway (and still isn’t) but I would like it to go somewhere and think we have a genuine and powerful message to share. Anyways, back to the point, whether your goal is to make money or not, the one thing we both want is a bigger audience. I think people are put off by seeing adsense ads, pop-ups and like buttons everywhere (it’s just a hypothesis for now) – having said that I literally just added a like button to my site but only because somebody asked me to.
My advice would be if you can afford to, forget about conversion for a while and build interest (and your site is certainly interesting enough).
Wait a minute – I’m assuming by conversion you mean getting visitors to eventually convert to money. If you just meant converting them from passing traffic to being on an email list, then forget the money bit but I still think a focus on good content and value to the customer has to be the thing to focus on. What do you think?
Also – I think some decent gimmicks could work – i.e. to distinguish you from the competition in your particular niche. You being the creative one you’ve probably got some going spare, haven’t you?
thanks for joining the discussion!!
Alan
Thanks for the encouraging words Alan.
I actually have two blogs I am working on. This leadership blog which is taking a little but of time and more work to get going, and then I also have http://www.livingwitharthritistoday.com. That blog has begun to take off and because of it, I was asked by healthcentral.com to be a regular contributor to there site. I can write for them and then link back to my site.
So yes, been looking at the Guest blogging strategy. Would consider guest blogging or having a guest blogger on either site.
I actually had a very strange episode of arthritis happen to me which caused me to research a lot on the subject. Basically my whole body locked up – when admitted to hospital I was told quite simply that it’s either temporary (i.e my body reacting to some sort of infection) or chronic. I was seen by lots of doctors (the whole thing was really surreal and quite amazing for our NHS) and told lots of scary things (the scariest of which was that I couldn’t play golf again). The whole thing lasted for about 2 months then gradually just went away. Sometimes I think it was just something I dreamed that it happened at all. I am so much better now but the last time I spoke to a specialist they told me that I definitely had a chronic condition but it could be dormant. He basically said don’t be fooled if you’re feeling better – a time will come when your vision goes blurry and that’s when to call me again. Anyways I didn’t believe him and despite them insisting it wasn’t it must have been an infection and something temporary. What I did realise is that it’s scary how the body can just take over, arthritis is REALLY scary and takes many forms and much as we’d like them to and even project on to them that they do, doctors and specialists don’t always know what they’re talking about. So I’m going to take a look at your arthritis site too & congrats on getting the other writing gig.
Wow I probably wrote more than I shoulda there.
On the guest blogging I’m definitely up for that either way too. Let me know if you have something or what time is good for you and I will do the same. I personally haven’t really thought about guest posting elsewhere so far, probably quite naiively just concentrating on developing good quality content for my own site, but I think it is something that obviously makes sense and I’d now be keen to do (on the right sites of course). Let me know if you have something you’d like me to write about for your site or if you have something you’d like to post here (I can also give you ideas),
best wishes,
Alan
Hey Chad,
Quick Q – did you have to create 2 separate profiles to have both blogs in MDBP?
I’m guessing yes but it would be nice to log in once and se both. I am thinking of creating another one myself just to explore an idea I had,
cheers,
Alan
MDBP for me isn’t about making a million bucks either. Although wouldn’t that be nice!? 🙂 It’s more about holding myself accountable and learning new tactics and strategies to better my blog. I actually have two blogs. Business and personal. But the personal one is the one I linked with MDBP. Which I suppose is backwards thinking lol. But it’s the one I’m currently interested in exploring so that’s the way I did it. It’s the one that speaks to my soul.
Hey Lindsay,
thanks so much for stopping by. No I’d hate having a million bucks. I don’t have a shoe box big enough to hold all that money and I don’t trust the banks. So I’d probably spend it on tea and I have about enough tea right now (though I am tempted to argue you can never have enough tea so I just contradicted myself there). Anyways, I’m probably alright as I am.
there are certainly lots of tactics out there to learn. My current theory is that a lot of these are just hot air and a complete waste of time but you don’t know until you’ve been through the learning process and that takes up a lot of time (or maybe I’m looking in the wrong places). So for me it’s about learning to distil the information and avoid being swamped by all of the hoardes of people who are trying to keep you on their list so they can sell to you somewhere down the line in the meantime tempting you with ‘free’ information on things like SEO and traffic.
I’m trying to pick the ‘good’ free information from the bad.
I think overall the MDBP thing definitely falls into the good side of things and as you say, probably the main point is actually holding yourself accountable (whether that’s via MDBP or not, but via MDBP is as good a place as any). As Cristina says below though, perhaps people could share and learn from each other a little more.
It’s probably a good move using your personal blog for this journey – you can always apply what you learn to the business one anyway (i.e. the ‘good’ bits).
take care & best wishes,
Alan
OMG I definitely have a tea obsession too. I just keep buying it and buying it so it is safe to assume that probably half of my million would be spent on tea! 🙂
You’re definitely spot on with learning to distill info being a good trait to focus on in the beginning. I’m also a graphic designer and what I’ve learned from that is art (insert writing and blogging here too) is super subjective. Everyone has an opinion on it and while valid opinions, may not work for your specific experience.
I definitely like the idea of it being more of a forum for people to learn from each other. Except for you and one other person, I haven’t actually held a conversation with anyone from MDBP. It seems like it’s just me holding myself accountable anyway and no where to go if you’re struggling with something.
Anyway, nothing new to add really. Just agreements with what you said 🙂
Lindsay
Hey Lindsay,
I hear you. Well, if you are struggling with something just drop a comment here and whatever it is I will try my best to help you. It may be something I have learned and you haven’t gotten round to yet. I am putting an awful lot of energy and effort into learning this stuff because I;m enjoying it but also just that fact that I won’t satisfy myself that something really is a waste of my time and it’s not just that I didn’t get it until I’ve given it my all and fully understood it – if you see what I mean.
The latest thing I’m struggling with is MailChimp. Easy enough to use it in a default way but not to get it to behave the way I want it to… and I don’t think I really want to pay for AWeber.
Anyways, that was my intention with this page. I don’t know how to create a forum or discussion page but thought the comments facility should be OK to use for that purpose anyway. Maybe not the most elegant solution but with my little CommentLuv plugin you get the added bonus of exposure to your articles and a new backlink each time too 😉 so should be win-win-win (sorry the consultant in me nearly came out there).
By the way – in case you didn’t know (I think I mentioned it before in case you read the other comments) try and select a different article if you can for the commentluv link then you will get more backlinks.
I am now thinking I should probably have just created a site about tea… or tea addiction.
Can you get the one other person to join in here? Feel free to (no I am not trying to get more links – honestly I think this benefits you at least as much as or more than it benefits me – particularly if you let me help you with anything)
it would just be cool to get a 3-way conversation going. Just a thought. Am I being too pushy? OK I’ll stop now.
Sorry, I couldn’t finish my comment. I’m having problems with your comment box (and the CommentLuv plugin doesn’t work properly)
Hey Cristina,
worth putting the second comment in because it looks like the CommentLuv thing didn’t work on your first one.
but the good news is it did work this time! So anyone reading this please click on that link, and scoot over to Cristina’s blog – because it’s awesome!
Sorry I have no idea why you had problems with the CommentLuv plugin most posts I’ve seen it seems to come through OK.
Anyways, don’t go spreading rumours like that or no-one will comment here! That’s my whole marketing strategy blown to pieces!!
take care,
Alan
Hi Alan,
I’m very happy to participate in this discussion. Thanks for the chance.
Like you, my goal is not the 1 million dollar but interacting with other bloggers. The public accountability journal is being really helpful. It’s pushing me to do tasks that otherwise I would delay.
I’ve also met great people, fellow bloggers.
I’m very grateful but at the same time I have to admit that I’m a little bit disappointed. We are supposed to learn from each other but the few sites that are already monetizing don’t share much information about how they do it. Which in the end doesn’t help much.
Hi Cristina,
i have similar feelings – having said that I’m not posting a monthly income report – mainly because my income is nothing to write home about. In fact it has stopped. I was making some money from adsense but just took the adsense ads off my site because I think it makes for a better reader experience. I’ve reported making £95 (which shows on the leaderboard as $95 but I put £95 in the Edit profile field) so far on our site and it breaks down exactly as follows:
£60 Adsense revenue
£30 sales of 6 copies of our book
Even though the adsense thing clearly works and for quite specific pages the context sensitive ads that are displayed (with some tweaking and configuration of the adsense settings) are pretty good ads, I’ve got a theory that for the amount of return it brings it’s still not worth it. so I’m going to try for a while having no ads and see what happens (I just noticed there are still ads on the main MDBP page but I think that’s the only one and I’m going to take them off now 😉
I can’t help being relatively cynical of some of the interactions I see online (e.g. people who talk about sharing but they’re only really giving to receive then you never hear from them again) and people not building community particularly as there are some very interesting people and ideas partaking in this project who could really benefit from each others help – but don’t get me started 😉
Anyways, it’s a very steep learning curve for me so even though it is a teeny bit off topic for our site, as our site is all about sharing and getting more for less I thought I’d share everything I learned via my own accountability journal rather than just a monthly income report (because I’m learning a lot).
If there’s anything at all you want to discuss or that we can collaborate on or I can help you with along the way, I’m definitely happy to do that,
take care & thanks for stopping by,
Alan
Hey Alan – thank you for your lovely comments.
My biggest challenge is getting traffic to my site also – working a full time job doesn’t leave much time for writing AND promoting. I guess MDBP has the objective of traffic focus in mind. We shall watch and learn !
– Razwana
No problem Razwana,
I also don’t have a great deal of time to do this every day (I basically do one day a week on my site).
Quality will always win out over quantity though.
p.s. I can’t see because I’m not you but didn’t you get a choice of your latest posts for successive comments from my commentluv plugin?
if you did and you can you should choose a different post each time you comment – then you get different backlinks back to your site!
Hey Razwana,
did you get the help/advice from Danny @ Firepole? I came across your comment because I was subscribed to comments from the same article (though I’m not sure I agree that the main drive of the article mathces the title and I don’t hink Danny liked it when I teased him about it…)
did you get some good advice?
Alan
Thanks Alan for doing this. It is working well for me. I like you am not looking to make 1 million dollars, but provide supplemental income for my family. Leadership is a passion and expertise of mine
http://www.personalleadershipdevelopment.net
Hey Chad,
no problem at all & thanks for stopping by.
Leadership is a passion of mine too, so I did find your article interesting (& good too!)
Having joined, how are you finding MDBP? Are you considering Guest Blogging as a strategy? (either guest blogging elsewhere or inviting guest blogging on your site)?
Hey Chris and Alan,
Not sure what happened to my original comment as I’m using my mobile phone – I may be writing this twice!
I’m very new to the world of blogging, as is my site. So I’m focussed on content now with the intention of monetising later. I too don’t know anyone in the same place so great to see a little communitu developing.
What are your biggest challenges right now?
– Razwana
Yep your first comment worked fine so you obviously have a really cool mobile phone 😉
Your site is new but it already has some great content. I don’t think anyone needs to tell you how to write good content and come up with catchy titles – anyone reading this should scoot over to Razwana’s blog right now to see what I mean!
My biggest challenge is traffic. Which is why I came across Think Traffic in the first place. I very nearly didn’t join because the million dollar label really put me off if I’m honest (in case you don’t know what I mean, just take a look at our philosophy and the pointy of our site), but I do want to reach a wider audience.
It’s not that I don’t want money, who doesn’t? – but the message we have to share is that people can live a better life with less money. Then you have something better than money – wealth. Anyways, don’t get me started 😉
So our challenge is traffic and how to get more – I have no concerns about our content, coming up with ideas (I know you don’t either on that one!), writing good quality content, having things to share etc. The part I need to learn is how to market and how to o so in line with my values and get the balance right between pushing the site enough (value!) but not too much (spam!),
so how about you Razwana, what’s your biggest challenge?
cheers,
Alan
Hey Chris and Alan,
MDBP is helping me a lot and I agree – lots of work to be done! I’ve only just started my blog so I’m focused on content than monetising right now. It’s around the corner though!
I wonder how many others are in the same position? Great idea to start a little community….
Razwana
Yep – the main problem I’m having with this stuff so far is actually just finding the time to absorb all the information and stuff I need to learn!!
Thanks for stopping by!!
You have left 2 comments so I’m going to respons to the other one because I think it might come out top 😉
Hi Alan, thanks for taking the time to visit my blog and leave a comment. I’m currently putting together a weight loss programme for perimenopausal and menopausal women and I’ve started the blog to serve as a platform to launch my product but also to give people good quality health & fitness information.
I’m hoping the MDBP will help keep me on track but also I’m very new to blogging so I need all the technical IT help I can get!
Regards
Sharon
Hi Sharon,
thanks for stopping by. I’m not going to pretend I know what perimenopausal means (I do know what menopausal means) but good luck with the course. From my limited experience I think creating your own product is probably the best and most genuine way to make money (I just took all the adsense ads off our site because I think it makes for a better reader experience if they’re not there (though I have been quite impressed with the context sensitive nature of these ads, I think perhaps some people are sick of seeing them all over the web – anyways, that’s the theory for now – we’ll see).
Your idea and your model is probably the best one in my view – i.e. using a blog to promote a product. Because it’s clear. Our case with this particular site is slightly different – because our main focus is not to make money (we do have a separate coaching business for that and we’re not particularly looking for many more clients than we have anyway).
I’m very new to blogging too so keep in touch and let’s help each other out!!
take care & best wishes,
Alan
Cool idea Alan. I’m a big fan of the MDBP, but I haven’t met too many other people doing it yet so this is great. I’ve got a loooong way to go, but the journey is teaching me lots and I’m in no rush right now.
Best of luck to you Chris! I love following the small-biz niche so I’ll be stopping by your blog too.
Thanks Deacon,
I love your site too. Particularly your cool URL. I have a very similar story in terms of having a looooong way to go (did you see? I put one more o than you :-)) but I’m enjoying how much I’m learning, if a little overwhelmed by just how much there is to learn!!
Chris’ blog is definitely worth a look & I do love the idea of helping each other out assuming we can and our content compliments each other (or even if it doesn’t by sharing experience via the MDBP journey). Let me know if I can help either of you out in any way 😉
& thanks for stopping by!!
very best wishes,
Alan
Hi Alan
Thanks for reaching out and helping build this MDBP community further. The aim of my site is to help small business owners utilise the power of the Internet to get themselves more clients and more freedom more often.
A worthy cause I reckon …
I’d also really like it if the site generated me $3000 a month in advertising and affiliate revenue. I’ll keep you posted on that!!
Thanks again Alan.
Hey Chris,
many thanks for stopping by and you’re certainly welcome.
Having visited your site I’d say you’ve certainly made a very good start (& please do keep me posted).
Also please do let me know if there’s any way I can help you going forwards,
take care & very best wishes,
Alan