Enkay Blog

Being A Famous Blogger Means…

So, I figured I’d take a twist on the generally serious posts and write a post on the lighter side. No, its not a b.s. post, its just a post that is a bit more comical than usual. When you meet me in person you’ll realize that I joke around quite a bit and make random comments. My friends say that the smile on my face never disappears and that I’m hilarious – it would seem like a good compliment only if they weren’t lying! Just kidding. But anyway, I wanted to check in with you about what being a famous blogger entails. I mean it can’t be easy not going to work and sitting in front of a computer (as you usually do on a Saturday night) and check emails and write posts and go for extravagant dinners. That job description sounds EXHAUSTING.

Either way, being a blogger is one thing and being a famous blogger is another thing. You’re recognizable, People look up to you and you’re invited to speak at conferences and have dinners and spread your wealth (of knowledge, not real cash since we all know how cheap bloggers are).

A famous bloggers life is definitely not as easy as it looks. Imagine sitting on your laptop or desktop and constantly responding to emails, addressing concerns, writing interesting posts, preparing powerpoints and speeches and presentations and actually presenting in front of hundreds of people? Its definitely not easy. People always tell me that “how hard can it be to sit on your butt all day and warm a chair?” Well, if you stop and think for a minute, it can be a lot of work depending on what you got on your plate.

Now I’ll have to say that the pay for being a famous blogger exceeds the pay that the average Joe (not Normal Joe.. Average Joe) makes. The idea of being a famous blogger sounds really great to a lot of people but theres work involved. Its not all about driving fast cars, owning a nice home and smoking a cigar all weekend long.

I’m a part-time blogger and my life is just as stressful (mainly because of school though) but what is your perception of famous bloggers? Do you think that its easier than it looks or harder than it looks? I always think that you can look at it either way but theres no doubt, quite a bit of work involved depending on how popular you are. For all those like myself who are on the quest to being famous, hopefully we can see ourselves at the top of the mountain one day.

How Many Posts Is Enough?

This topic is something I haven’t discussed before and I know that recently there are only a few blogs that have had to come to terms with the idea of how many posts a day or per week was enough. A lot of the top bloggers that blog full-time write a few posts every day but most of us who have our blogs as more of a part-time job or hobby only post once a day and some of us even 3-4 times a week.

The question that comes up is how many posts do I have to write per week? Well, there is no real answer but anybody will tell you that writing fewer and fewer posts every week won’t help you retain readers and you’ll soon disappear into the blogosphere dust.

Heres what happens if you write too many posts – If you’re the kind of person that puts out content more than once a day, you’re actually exhausting your content unless you’re a top blogger. The reason top bloggers are able to churn out more than one post a day is because they have a lot more time to do activities, have lunch and do things that would be interesting to read about or watch a video about.

If you’re not a top blogger then writing more than one or two posts a day could mean that you’re finishing up all your good ideas and resources way too quickly and that could lead to the demise of your blog much faster than you’d imagine.

Heres what happens if you blog too little – If you blog too little and you’re not a pro-blogger then you’re actually not able to retain your audience. Basically, if I began to blog once a week then my reading audience during the week itself would be very very low and you don’t want that as an aspiring top blogger.

On the other hand, if youre a popular blogger and you decide to slow down blogging for a SHORT PERIOD (notice, not forever, but for a short period) of time then you should do okay. You’ll still lose traffic but you’ll be able to regain it fast enough once you start back. The story is completely different for new and aspiring bloggers because you just won’t keep your readers engrossed enough.

What if you blog once daily? – This is the scenario that most of us “mid-bloggers” use. I consider myself a mid-blogger because I’m not like John Chow but I’m also not a new blogger. If you blog once daily, you’re able to keep your audience hooked with a new article or post every day and that means that your traffic is highly stable and you have lots of return visitors.

This has been the most favorable for me in order to maintain my blog. I’m sure that if I started to slowly climb the top blogger ladder that I would automatically raise the number of posts I did in a day from 1 to maybe 2-3 per day.

I realize that many of you blog 2-3 times a week or something in that range but this was mainly to focus on some of the more common ways that people go about blogging. I wonder what your thoughts are on this and whether you think blogging once a day is enough or does someone like me need to blog more? Let me know! Have a great weekend everyone. You’ll be seeing the contest results on video this weekend so Good Luck!

Is MMO A Good Niche?

For starters, MMO means Make Money Online as in the niche of blogs focused on making money through their blogs. I notice that every time I blink my eyes, another blog thats in the MMO niche pops up and its really starting to feel kind of crowded. Considering the fact that most MMO blogs don’t make money, it seems a bit weird that theres so many of them.

This blog started off as a blog filled with random posts and then converted to a MMO blog and after realizing how crowded it felt, I moved onto the general blogging niche. Today, I talk about blogging tips, affiliate marketing and money but I really don’t miss being part of the MMO niche mainly because I don’t have fingers pointing at me saying “well, you’re not really making a lot of money”. The point of this discussion, you ask? Well, let me discuss a few points with you to help you understand what I mean.

1) Its not about Money, Its about readers – The big issue is that bloggers in the MMO field think that they need to focus on the idea of making money to actually make money but its not true. You need readers and traffic in order to make money. The idea is that more readers leads to higher ad revenue and more clicks and therefore more money so its really not all about money.

2) You don’t have to be MMO to make money – Heres a big one. Theres lots of car and technology and other niche blogs that make a really nice amount of money. You don’t have to focus on the MMO field to actually make money. I know a lot of bloggers that talk about blogging tips and make six figures so you need to realize that just because your MMO doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make money. Find a niche you’re comfortable in and then leverage your skills and knowledge in that niche to help you get to your goal.

3) More Ads Doesn’t Mean More Money – The fact that you have all the shapes, sizes and colors of ads doesn’t really mean that you can fool visitors and readers into clicking it. Oh, and don’t even try to hide it in the middle of your post, thats not sneaky, its just WRONG. Don’t do it! Most of us only have a few 125×125 ads, maybe Adsense or in-text ads. You don’t need all different banners and ad boxes in order to make money. Keep it simple and as time goes on your revenue will go up. Don’t start off looking like spam because it will turn people away.

So hopefully these suggestions make sense. I wonder how many bloggers consider themselves MMO. Do you think you’re in the MMO niche? Let me know. I know some of you are in technology and even poetry so being unique always helps. Thanks for hanging around till I got my groove back and my health back in order to blog again. Time to start stalking my favorite blogs, leave me your comments!

Timestamping Is Your Friend

After reading the comments on yesterday’s post I realized that many of us are on a tight schedule whether its school, work or our online endeavors and come to think about it, if it wasn’t for the time stamp feature in Wordpress, I’d be completely lost. Let me talk a little about what timestamping can do for you.

When Do I Use Timestamps?
I usually use timestamps when I want a post released at a time when i think that the most readers will be able to see it. If you notice most of my posts are released between 10pm and 2am central time because I feel that the most people will have access to it during that time.

How Does It Work?
The way timestamping works, for those of you who dont know, is that you can actually pick a day, month, time and even year (for the extremely lazy) when you want to publish a post. This allows bloggers like myself to write a post and schedule it for a certain day and time. Most of the times though, the post you see is the one I’ve written early on in the day and not something from a few days ago. My material is FRESH but frozen until a certain time when its defrosted and served.

I wonder though, how many of you really use timestamp to schedule posts days ahead of time? I wonder if its really as effective, I mean if its a general post, it makes sense because your readers may not know but what if you write a “This Week In Blog” type post and you timestamp it, does it make a difference?

If you’re wondering what kinds of posts you can timestamp, then here is a little guide:

1) Timeless posts - This covers pretty much all types of posts that you may have whether its advice or tips but these don’t include posts such as case studies or anything of that sort which may not be as interesting if its timestamped for too long.

2) Reviews – A lot of us write reviews and I have a review being published in a week but a review can be timestamped if a certain date has been decided for it. If you haven’t picked a date as yet then you cannot timestamp it since the advertiser may want you to mention some things that have a time limit on it.

Posts you cannot time stamp:

1) Contest posts – you want to get these out as soon as possible. This is when you blog about someone else’s contest. Holding off until the last minute to post makes it a bit suspicious specially if youre a regular reader. If you’re a new reader then its okay but don’t timestamp your contest posts because it can make you look bad unless you post it quite a bit in advance of the contest ending.

2) Special Offers – Sometimes advertisers (paid reviews) or good deals come around that have a time limit such as the first 100 people to sign up or until a certain date and time stamping those posts until a later day could result in the deal expiring. This could make the advertiser very unhappy or your readers unhappy for not being timely in letting them know about a good deal. Make sure that your timestamp isn’t cutting it really close with these.

Theres lots of other types of posts that you can and cannot timestamp but going back to my question. Who really uses timestamp beyond one or two days? I wonder if that demographic is larger than I think. Let me know! Have a good weekend guys!

This Week In Blog

So, I’m finally back. Aside from all the things that have been going on lately there have been some positive things that have been happening. I may have some really interesting announcements to make soon but lets get to what I want to talk about today.

Before I get into my favorite links, I want to say a special welcome back to Nick from RomanDock who has always provided Enkay Blog with some great comments so its good to see him back. Also, my buddy Joe over at ImWithJoe mentioned me in his video and I really appreciate that. You should check him out.

1) Freddie Taylor – Freddie has some great Quotes of the week and in his most recent post he had a very inspirational quote that I think is important for every struggling or new blogger to understand. Its very inspirational and motivating to a certain extent so please check it out.

2) Linkers Blog – Danny has discussed an important topic which is whether Technorati is a good measure of popularity. We all know that to a certain extent we believe in Alexa and Technorati but he talks about whether or not, Technorati is a good measure of link popularity and its an interesting post.

3) Balkhis – Syed posted a nice tutorial about how you can get your feedburner subscriber count to show up as text instead of the little ticker. This could be useful if you want to integrate it more into your design and match the color scheme of your blog. Such posts really shows off his knowledge about the subject and is very appreciated by a lot of people

4) The Net Fool - The Net Fool posted his income report which I really like because its inspirational to many bloggers to have them try harder. I know exactly how he feels with juggling school and the blog and so I wanted to link back to him. Look at his numbers, you’ll be impressed!

5) Aff Boom – Wayne is a new reader to the blog but his most recent post about no cost affiliate tools really got my attention. I am new to affiliate marketing and so I think this can be helpful to those who are looking to learn a bit more without too much of an investment. I know many of us rather have no investment at all but still, this is a very informative post.

So, hopefully you guys are doing well. I plan on doing some link love in a good number of my posts from now on so if you’ve come across a post that you like, let me know, even if its your own! Hope you guys have a great rest of the week!