How To Choose A Blogger For Your Blog?

I am converting one of my niche sites into a blog. It’s getting consistent traffic and I thought it’ll grow a lot bigger if there’s consistent flow of new content. From the looks of it, there’s really good potential. What better way to do that than turning it into a blog?

But the topic of the website is not really my thing. When I started the site a few years ago, I discovered that it’s a topic that is easy for search engine ranking. So I decided to build a website on it. I searched the Internet and bought a book to learn more about the topic. Then I wrote my own articles. But it’s clear now that the website can’t grow past a certain point without fresh new content added on a consistent basis.

Heck, I am having troubles adding new content to THIS blog. Clearly, it’s a lot more difficult to add content for a blog on a topic that you are not very familiar with. Even more when writing is not really your thing. Yeah, I can write. But I make the silliest mistakes and typos. And I don’t recheck what I write.

So that is why I am looking for a blogger.

How to look for a blogger? In the interview I did with Paul Short in Blogging Big, Paul recommended looking for people who are already blogging. From your candidate’s blog, you know that s/he’s good or not. You look at the way he writes. Paul mentioned that you want to find someone with a personality. It doesn’t matter if he’s funny, controversial, grumpy, silly… What you don’t want is a blogger that simply just ‘reports’ things in a formal way, trying to please everyone. You want a blogger that is not afraid to speak her/his mind because that will later become an attraction.

You also look at how people comment on his blog. If he gets comments, that’s a good sign. That means he’s able to interact with his readers.

When you are going with that method, then you’d have to look for bloggers at Technorati or even do blog searches on Google. You can even look at what videos on YouTube and learn more about the people who submitted the videos.

It’s a good way to find bloggers. May take a bit of time and bloggers which are already successful may be a bit more expensive. But you can be more confident of your choices.

But anyway, here’s what I also did. I went to Digital Point forum and started a thread to look for a blogger. Digital Point is a popular hangout among webmasters and netpreneurs. And there’s a section where you can offer products and services for sale or wanted. So I created a thread there.

Some members at the forum has responded to my “ad” and sent me a private message. And now I have eight applicants to consider. Most of them sent me samples of their writings. And a few are really good. But here’s a problem that I am facing right now.

How can I verify that they really write those articles or posts? Anybody can just point to almost any writing on the Internet and claim that they wrote it.

I am thinking of making them write a new article for me to evaluate. And I am also thinking about whether I should pay them for that or not. I am may have a good blogger who is not desperate for the money and will just think to drop out if I am not paying them for that ONE trial article.

OK, I can do a one-month trial. In fact I am planning to. But I can’t afford to do a trial with 8 applicants or even two. I can only afford one blogger right now.

So any ideas on how I should evaluate all these applicants?

Rethinking Traffic Strategy for MiniSiteGallery.com

Well, there are many good traffic generation tactics out there. Some people are hardcore Adwords. Some people are hardcore on viral videos. Some are hardcore article writers and submitters. And the list goes on…

Well, I guess first it all depends on the type of website that you promote. But any website can always use another tactic or two, right?

Thinking about all these, I remember where Stephen Pierce talked about tactic vs. strategy in your online marketing. Doing all those specific things like Adwords, viral videos, articles, all those are tactics. But for massive growth, massive traffic, you’ve got to think about the overall strategy.

I looked around, looking at my site, looking at other people’s site, I believe that a good strategy starts with your unique offer. And this is before you start planning for traffic… Huh? Planning for traffic before planning for traffic?

Well, let me put it this way. Whatever website you are building, it’s best if it is built for traffic in the first place.

I am thinking and rethinking about all these because right now I am promoting my latest website, MiniSiteGallery.com. Unlike the other websites I’ve built, this is not a direct response website. That means, I am not selling a product or service upfront. So this is different, and it requires a different kind of strategy.

I am trying to come up with ideas on the things that I can do to get traffic to this new website. Of course, there are the normal tactics like PPC, articles, blogging, forum, press release, joint ventures – it will all be apart of the overall strategy. But at the same time, all these will be more effective if you have a unique offer.

Let me explain more… you can write a press release, but if it’s not interesting, who’d come? But if it is and if it’s newsworthy, you could even get media coverage, right? And that is HUGE. So that is what I mean by your unique offer.

I thought that it’ll be interesting to share the results of my efforts for MiniSiteGallery.com. So I will be reporting more on this from time to time. Because this is the post on MiniSiteGallery.com traffic report, I think I should at least tell you what I’ve done so far.

OK, I do have some ideas for MiniSiteGallery.com and I am implementing it one by one as an overall strategy. But let me first tell you the first part of my strategy with MiniSiteGallery.com. Unlike websites I’ve built in the past, MiniSiteGallery.com is going to be like a community website. Visitors can come and download free mini site templates. Designers can submit their mini site template designs to be showcased on the website. And they can also come for design inspirations.

With a community website, you can either go big or flop. But I am going to take the risk with this one. If the community takes off, you can expect to gain repeat traffic. And from the repeat traffic, you can expect that words will start to spread. Of course, this is the long term strategy. All the little things that I do now is geared towards this bigger goal.

I also have a blog on the side and I hoping to gather traffic from there too. I don’t feel like announcing the blog to the world yet because I only have three posts in there. But I am planning to write more quality articles and tutorials in the topic mini sites. Right now I am just pouring with article ideas. New articles will include things on ClickBank, traffic generation, niche marketing, and more.

With blogs, you’ve got to at least optimize it for the search engines. I am not fully done with this yet but one of my articles already ranked. Even though it’s on the fifth page of Google, I can expect things to get better from here. And also with blogs, you got to install some social media widget. I got one from AddThis.com which allows visitors to easily bookmark your site to their favorite bookmarking sites.

Apart from that, I am also having my press release written. I hope the writer will get back to me ASAP so I can distribute the press release. Press release is good for link building. But with a good angle or story, it can be newsworthy and attract the media.

I don’t know what angle to use for the press release, so the press release will be only be announcing the launch of the site for the target audience. But I do hope that it’ll create a stir at websites and forums relating to Internet marketing. One place that is a must to submit to when it comes to Internet marketing is IMNewsWatch.com. I don’t know what to expect really. So for now, I guess we wait.

By the way… I do have an idea on how to attract more designers to submit mini site templates… but perhaps I will tell you more about it later.

Introducing MiniSiteGallery.com

Welcome to MiniSiteGallery.com.

Actually I have been sitting on this for too long already. I registered this domain name sometime last month (December 07). At first I thought it was going to be an easy project. Something that will take no more than a week.

It turns out, it’s been weeks. In case you are wondering, yes, MiniSiteGallery.com is powered by Wordpress. And I got the template from Small Potato, Showcase. Actually, it’s meant to showcase websites, but I turned into a mini template download gallery.

Alright, let’s talk more about what MiniSiteGallery.com is.

Sometime last month, I started to have this idea where I wanted to gather and showcase the talents of our mini site designers. There are just so many good designers when it comes to mini sites and ebook covers. I thought that it’ll be a great idea to come to one place and see what these designers can do.

And I was also thinking that there are a number of free download galleries for Wordpress, for normal website templates, and the rest, but I have yet to see one that only does mini-sites.

It would be a great place, wouldn’t it?

For mini site designers, now there’s a place to showcase your talent and get exposure. I don’t know of a place where you can do that before. If you are a mini site designers, I know the type of clients that you are looking for. You can submit your designs to other types of gallery, but those galleries gather a different type of audience, which may not be suitable for your business model. No now you can submit your designs here at MiniSiteGallery.com.

And if you are a mini site marketer, somebody who creates and sell ebooks, perhaps you can start looking for your mini site design right here. I encourage designers to submit designs with the e-covers, complete with Photoshop PSD source file. That way, the marketers can just download a design and it will be ready with an ebook cover. All you have to do is just edit a few things and you are almost done.

Along the way, I am hoping to gather some useful marketing strategies for netrepeneurs like you and I. This could be about info product creation, copywriting, list building… what ever that applies.

This is an exciting journey for me. And I hope where ever this leads me, it will be an interesting ride for you too.

MiniSiteGallery.com

Viral List Building Series: Marketing in Your Notification Emails

When you talk about viral list building, people would only think about email marketing with their autoresponder emails and broadcast emails. There is one more type of email that you forget… Let me first clarify what autoresponder emails and broadcast emails are.

Autoresponder emails are emails that you have pre-written and loaded into your autoresponder software. With OptinDesign.com, I use GetResponse.com. And to get money coming in on autopilot, I have loaded a series of emails to be sent on first day, the seventh day, the 10th day and so on. Each of those emails promote something that I believe to be valuable resources to the subscribers. When I have set them up, I don’t need to write to my subscribers all the time because those emails will be sent out automatically.

Now, those are autoresponder emails…

What about broadcast emails? Well, when you have built a list of subscribers, you can start writing an email and send them out immediately. Let say it’s the New Year and I want to wish all of my subscribers Happy New Year. I can just write one, tell them how my previous year was and how I plan to make the new year better. I put it in my GetResponse.com and I just hit the Send button. And every subscriber will get my email within minutes (most of the times).

When you do something like that, it’s call email broadcasting.

Broadcast and autoresponder are great tools. Autoresponder creates ongoing, passive income. Broadcast creates a windfall of income on-demand. One thing that you forget is Notification emails.

With a viral list building system like Viral Sales Generator, emails will be sent out when something happens. Let’s take a look events that triggers notification emails. First when somebody subscribes, they will get an email will their login details. Then when they start to promote your viral list building website, they will start to get notification emails when somebody signs up to your site from their referrals. And another email is sent out when your members made a sale. They get that, “You’ve Made A Sale” email.

People under utilize these notification emails. They normally just write about what happened, and almost nothing is done to further promote your website.

Let’s take a look at one of my notification emails. This one is being sent after they have subscribed to the site…

Subject: [OptinDesign] Welcome. Your Login Details…

Hi $Member_name,

My name is Kidino. In this short message, I just would like
to welcome you to OptinDesign.com.

Here’s what you can do now:

[1] Pick up your free squeeze page templates from the
Member’s Download area:

URL: http://www.optindesign.com/vsg/members/
Username: $Member_username
Password: $Member_password

Download the squeeze page templates and start using them
right away. The manual PDF should get you started. If
you are facing any problems, just send your email this
way – support@optindesign.com

[2] Refer more members and earn 60% on every sale.

Here’s your unique referral link. Use this link to send
friend, readers & customers to OptinDesign.com. This
will that you will be credited for your referrals.

Link: http://www.optindesign.com/$Member_refid

In the Member’s Area, I have outlined a few promotion
strategies that you can use right away. Just a few success
stories, one member who referred just 40 subscribers made 4
sales. That’s a 10% conversion. That proves that you don’t
have to have a huge list to begin with.

Anyway, I don’t want to get your hopes up too high. In
general OptinDesign.com converts 4% to 6% new subscribers
into customers.

To start, you can choose from a number of banners in the
Banners section. And you can also download the Squeeze Page
Makeover report, rebrand them with your referral link and
give them away for free. The report is available in the
Download section.

I guess that’s all for now. You made a wise decision by
joining OptinDesign.com.

We’ll talk again in the future…

Iszuddin Ismail aka Kidino

http://www.OptinDesign.com

Other Sites

http://www.DIYMiniSite.com

http://www.BloggingBig.com

http://www.WOWPopUp.com

http://www.CBTrickVideos.com

http://www.MoneyClicking.net

You see, in this email I immediately tell them about what they can do after signing up. Maybe they already know but there’s no harm in reminding them about it.

And then I straight away tell them about the 60% commission that they can earn. This is how you get people to send more subscribers. This is where the viral effect takes place. Furthermore, I tell them how my website is converting and experience from other subscribers.

And I lastly, I list some other of my websites that I think the subscribers might be interested in.

I think you are starting to get what I mean here. If you use a good software like Viral Sales Generator, there are a series of email messages from the system that you can customize. These emails are being triggered when certain events like sign-ups, referrals and sales take place. Be sure that you change this emails and promote something to your advantage.

XSitePro Top Performer Mug

I have been meaning to write about this. Unfortunately I lost my PC cable for my digital camera. Now I am resorting to a new USB card reader to show off this photo.

Paul Smithson (founder of Intellimon Ltd, creator of XSitePro) sent me a mug, with an emblem which says, “XSitePro Top Performer Award”. And on the front, it says, “Thanks go to Kidino for making XSitePro version 1 such a huge success”. I got it sometime in December, before Christmas. I don’t celebrate Christmas, but sure is a nice New Year’s gift.

I don’t have the invoice anymore but I think the mug was priced at $12++ and the delivery to Malaysia was $21+.

By the way, do you know what this means? It means that the release of XSitePro Version 2 is coming really, really close. If you don’t have XSitePro yet, you may want to get it now. Because from what Paul have been telling me, there’s going to be a price increase in Version 2. But if you get Version 1 right now, you’ll get a Free Upgrade to Version 2 when it’s release.

Check out my XSitePro Review.

Thanks Paul, Mel… and the rest of the team.