Enkay Blog

5 Reasons For Blog Success…

The past month has been very eventful for me in terms of work and school. If I’m not at school, I’m at prior work engagements and have been busy with that. I am also taking grad level classes and even applied to grad school last week so I had to run around to get all that paperwork through.

The reason I’m blogging today is because I realize how long I have been blogging for. I started in May 2007 and I’m closing in on almost 2 years of blogging next month. It has been a wild ride and I’ve seen the highs and the lows of the blogging industry as well as I’ve seen blogs start up, earn money, sell and move on.

The interesting part about all of this has been that I’ve seen a lot of common traits in the blogs that have done well and the ones that havent. Today, I’ll be giving you 5 reasons for success in the blogosphere and see whether you agree with them or not.

1) User Interaction - One of the big blogs of user interaction has been John Chow. He usually gives away something or he has a contest or he asks people to write questions for him. The level of user interaction that you maintain with your readers can definitely help you reach a much larger audience and keep them hooked.

2) Humor – A big believer in this area has been John Cow who started up as a blog pretty much in front of everyone and slowly grew into a big money making machine. John Cow not only provided content and information but provided them with a side order of humor and that was great. People enjoyed it and it was something unique. If you include humor, make sure its tasteful and that its actually funny and you’ll be able to retain your readers.

3) Video – Video has been a big part of many blogs, I have done a few of them, John Chow does a lot of them but a big believer in this arena has been JK Swopes or ImWithJoe. He really transformed the money making niche that was dominated with content and text based posts to video content that got together humor and content, all with a little twist. Joe was able to move up the ranks so fast that some of us (yes, me too), didn’t have enough time to see him run past us.

4) Experience – A lot of bloggers have great experience but one that I can think of is Syed Balkhi. He has tremendous experience from a very young age regarding web design and web production and that can be clearly seen in his content. A lot of people have the experience and the knowledge yet arent able to pass it on with much ease and Syed has been able to do that with several short tutorials that help his readers with even the smaller problems that they face on their blogs.

5) Current Topics – There have been bloggers that have come into the blogosphere and maintained freshness. They’ve provided good information, just like some of the top bloggers but have blended that with current topics and even introcued their readers to upcoming and new programs to make money. One such blogger is TheNetFool who has always introduced new money making programs and even brought current topics into light whether it was current news or financial topics. Its always interesting to see such stories and people like to read information in blurbs rather than articles and he was able to provide that very effectively.

Honorable Mention #6
6) Age – CarlOCab has to be one of the youngest money making bloggers out there. His age has been an inspiration to people who enter the MMO field and are wanting to make money. For being as young as he is, he has been able to attract a large audience because of his accomplishments at his very young age. People are always intrigued by someone who is much younger than them, yet, still makes more money than them. This is an honorable mention because age is not really something you can acquire to be successful but its something that I think is still a reason for success.

So, thats the post for today and I hope you enjoyed it and I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. Hopefully you guys have something to add to it. I’ll be back soon with another great post!

Why You Should Brand Your Face

So before I start talking about this topic, let me tell you that this post was supposed to have a picture but since I dont have the processing power to use Photoshop, I’ll have to refrain from adding the picture since I havent been able to create it. Either way, please bear with me as I try to explain what I’m talking about.

So, as many as of you know, branding is an important part of blogging. You brand your blog to help it do the following things:
1) Makes your blog easier to recognize and set apart from the rest
2) Help your readers connect to not only you but also your blog
3) Helps you get noticed better with current readers and new readers

So now that you know what branding does, you should know that if you ever write an eBook or post comments on other blogs, you can always use your branded image as part of the eBook cover or as your MyAvatar or Gravatar so readers will instantly know who is commenting or who has written the eBook. Its really helpful so here today I want to talk about if its a good idea to use yourself as your brand. Yes, using your own face as a brand is a good idea and here are a few reasons why I think so:

1) Unique - The one thing most people consider when creating a brand for not only their blog but for anything that needs to be marketed, is that their brand is unique. Now, think about it, how unique is your face? Everyone looks different (unless you have an identical twin or you look slightly similar to a celebrity). Aside from those similarities, you are a unique individual and so if you use yourself as a brand, then it will automatically be unique.

2) Easy To Recognize – When you use yourself as a brand, because of the fact that its unique, it helps you accomplish the idea of setting your blog apart from the rest of the blogs. It makes you easier to recognize because when people see you, they instantly associate it to your blog. Thats called good branding. Consider this, you see the golden arches and you instantly think McDonalds. You see a Red circle with white writing and you think Coca Cola. Its all about being easy to recognize and using yourself as a brand helps you accomplish that very easily if its done right.

3) Everyone Else Is Doing It – So, I think Ive always used my face as a brand since I started the blog but consider the other people that you can instantly associate to their blogs. Balkhis, The Net Fool, Im With Joe (like seriously, its hard to not know who he is), John Chow, Tyler Cruz, ShoeMoney and ProBlogger. All these bloggers and many others are very easy to recognize and thats because they’ve branded their blog really well by using themselves as a brand.

The idea is that if you see some of the bloggers I’ve mentioned, walking around somewhere, you’ll instantly be able to recognize them and that’s when you know that they’ve branded themselves really well. The concept is that using yourself as a brand can be very good if you do it right. I might have to provide some tips later on how you should use yourself as a brand but I hope you understand why branding yourself is not only a good idea but can be really beneficial if its done right. I keep saying if its done right because that also makes a difference but that will be discussed in a separate post. So, I hope you guys liked this post and I’ll catch you tomorrow with the results from my contest. Have a great rest of the weekend!

Free Advertising Credits

I noticed that some of you were a little skeptical in wanting to enter the contest that I have running so I decided to give you a reason to experiment with affiliate marketing. Yesterday, I mentioned that in order to make money, you have to spend money and because I want to help you out, I’ve put together a list of a few ad networks that are offering free advertising credits for you to try them out.

I have tried out Adwords and Facebook but in this list I’ll also be including the MSN AdCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing as well. This post includes a total of $225 worth of Ad credits for all the major publishing networks out there. Here is a list:

Facebook – $100
To get your $100 Facebook credit, you have to follow a few steps and to help you out, I’ve created a small step-by-step list for you since this one will require you to be familiar with facebook a little. First off, you have to have a facebook account before you are able to do this but here are the steps:

1) Add the VISA Business Network application and complete their registration process
2) Once the registration process is complete, wait for an email
3) The email will include a code such as 1111-2222-3333-4444
4) In Facebook, at the bottom of any page it will say “Advertising”
5) Once you’ve set up your ads click on the Billing tab at the top
6) Then click on “Funding Sources” and select “Enter Coupon Code”
7) Your funds will be added to your account

Google Adwords – $50
Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter and Yahoo Search Marketing as not as complicated as Facebook in order to get your free credit however, Facebook does offer a lot more money to experiment with. Adwords is offering $50 and all you have to do is sign up by clicking on this link. You will be required to pay a $5 activation fee.

MSN AdCenter – $50
MSN AdCenter is also currently offering $50 and all you have to do to receive your free credit is click on this link and complete the sign up process in order to get started. You will be required to pay $5 as an activation charge which is quite common and click here to sign up.

Yahoo Search Marketing – $25
Yahoo offers a much smaller advertising credit compared to the others and I’m not really sure why considering that it does compete with the rest but based on my research, they started off at $200 of free credit and have slowly trickled down to $25. Either way, it is something and can help you get started and all you have to do is click here.

Conclusion
So hopefully this post can help you get started by providing you with quite a bit of free credit so that you don’t have to risk as much money. Be sure to know that some networks will ask you for daily spending limits instead of monthly spending limits so keep monitoring it in order to avoid spending too much of your own money without realizing it. Either way, its not that complicated and if I can do it, then anyone can! Hope you guys have a great weekend!

Making Money with Affiliate Marketing

Before I begin speaking about how you can make money with affiliate marketing I wanted to let you know about the contest. Ive gotten a few entries into the contest so Im going to try to put up a leader board every so often to keep you updated about the contest results. If you haven’t entered the contest yet, go here for more details.

Now lets talk about Affiliate Marketing. Here are a few tips to help you out

1) Finding The Right Marketing - There are many ways you can market the offers that you select to promote. You can use Facebook, Myspace, Google Adwords, etc. among many others. The idea is that some promotional methods may be better than others. You could have a really well established email list that you could use or choose between the advertising mediums I’ve mentioned. Its all about picking the right method.

2) Picking The Right Offers – Some people get caught up in CPA but instead pick the offers that you think will work the best or will sell the best based on the target demographic or your email list. You need to pick offers that will sell the best so, for example, if you are advertising on Facebook you have to realize that the biggest demographic is between ages 16-25 and so you would have to pick offers to sell to that demographic so you would pick offers like student loans over offers for better insurance.

3) Dont Be Skeptical/Afraid – The reason why most people dont really take to affiliate marketing that quickly is because theres a financial input required and some people are not ready to take on that risk. There will be a post tomorrow about how you can get some free credits to try out different publishing networks such as Facebook, Adwords, etc. For those of you who want to give it a try or are unsure of how it works and just want to get some hands on experience then experiment with a small amount of money just to get a feel of things. Its sort of like investing your money, you win some and you can lose some but one you know the formula then all you’ll be doing is winning, so dont be afraid to spend a little.

So hopefully this post gives you a little help regarding affiliate marketing. I’ll have a post tomorrow about different coupons for ad publishing networks so that you can get a head start on your affiliate marketing career. Anyway, hope you guys have a good weekend and I’ll post for you tomorrow!

Setting Your Advertising Prices

Advertising on my blog is getting more and more popular and as I browse around other blogs I try and see what ad pricing looks like and so far I’ve been impressed with some of the deals you can get but some blogs, I’m just not even sure how to describe it. The point is that, you cannot set your advertising prices at a level that is beyond what its worth. Same thing goes for any kind of commodity in your daily life. Example, if cereal was now $20 a box for something that originally cost $3-$5 a box, you’d either be really desperate to buy it or you’d stay away from it completely. Thats how advertising works. Maybe I can help you in setting your advertising prices:

1) Don’t Start Too Early – Sometimes, its not bad to advertise ads for 1 cent or $1 but you have to realize that it makes for a bad impression. Most advertisers may think that you perceive your ad to be worth nothing at all to be charging a dollar or less for it. Don’t start too early. Wait till the time is right.

2) Dont Start Too High – Problem is, that you don’t know what the right value is so you start off too high in the hopes that it might make advertisers believe that the benefit derived from buying adspace must be because of some great statistics. Don’t set your price at a certain level just because you think the ad is worth that much. Base it on actual statistics.

3) Look At Statistics - Look at what your statistics are and make sure that your statistics match the price. Think about whether the price is fair per subscriber or for your alexa and technorati ranks. I base it upon subscribers and unless I’m 250 and over, I won’t change the price of my ads. Even still they won’t increase by more than 20% if anything but even that is debatable. You want to entice your advertisers into realizing that the ad is a good value for the money.

4) Compare with Similar Blogs – Another idea is to see blogs that you believe are your competitors or are on the same level as you are. See their prices and compare them to what you had in mind. If your price is above average then you need to reconsider the pricing. If its below average then consider whether you want to sell it for that price or raise it to the average of other comparable blogs.

5) Would You Buy It? - The best way to see if your price is right is to decide (leaving your bias out) whether you’d be willing to pay that price for the ad. If you think that its a good deal then the price is right. If you think its over priced then its time to re-think the pricing. Its just that simple.

Is The Price Right For You?
So hopefully those of you, who don’t have your ads priced as yet or are re-thinking why advertisers are not sticking around, its time to re-evaluate your pricing based on my list. Have you seen overpriced ads? Do you think your advertising prices are worth it? Let me see!