Tag Archives: Blogging

Blogging, Blogging Resources, General, Social Networking, Web 2.0

Be You! It’s your own blog!

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I made this point very clear over at the online training program at WAHOL!
I made it clear on this blog many times before!
John Chow made it clear on the interview we did before (Watch it here)
In over 200 blogs that I get their RSS feeds on my Google reader, there is an average of 7 out of 10 bloggers that is pushing their business or affiliate programs or whatever they want to advertise!
7 out of 10!!
That is a lot.
As a web surfer and a blog reader, when I get the feeling of “You have to buy this product” on any blog, I automatically unsubscribe from it’s feeds and I may never go back to read it. Why? Because if I “NEED” something, I’ll just go to amazon.com or eBay.com or I’ll do my own mini research using search engines to find out what it is that other people are saying about this product or service. The people that actually bought it before and wrote a review about it (On the shopping site, not on their blogs), and I just naturally compare and decide to buy it or not.
In all of my seminars, I encourage everyone to get social, join facebook or twitter, to socialize, not to blast your business and product. My advice is normally this:
Be nice, become friends or re-connect with old friends, once in a while mention your service or products and the money will come later. It normally comes later (and lots of it) only by sending out good Karma.

What goes around, comes around!

That is very true, when looking at blogs or newsletters with literary tons of affiliate banners or “Pay Now” buttons, I just get sick and surf away immediately.

Check out this blog’s posts, only every once in a while I include any affiliate link to make commission or to sell something, instead, I concentrate on sharing knowledge and spreading the word about the good stuff that we can all share. Yet again, I am still making some cash to live on, (let me rephrase that), I am making great living from this blog thanks to other people and companies that ask me to advertise here (On the side!) without having to do anything more than what I love doing (Blogging).

Another example is the famous iJustine she started her online life casting just because she have a passion for it, now, YouTube pays her a share of their advertising revenue as a way of saying thank you for bringing more people to us, even on her blog at TastyBlogSnack.com she offers to connect with here on any of her online profiles “THEN” there is a small PayPal donation button “After” everything else, on her Twitter account she has her bio as: ” I am the Internet!” plain and simple.

I am not saying don’t promote your business, I am saying promote it in places where promotions belongs to, go write a feedback on amazon or write a review (or even a giude) on eBay, go to the company’s blog (like at Dell) and write about it and incude your affiliate link or go to another company blog (Like at ThinkGeek) and comment on posts there with what you honestly think of their products and again include your affiliate link in the comment.

But, when it comes to your own blog, do it to share your knowladge, I know that if we all do that, the world will become a much better place to be at.

Did anyone that follows me on Twitter take a look at my bio there? It’s says: “Bio: Be You, Be cool, Be nice” That is all I do 😉

There is a lot more I can ramble about about this topic, but that’s another story! Get the “FREE” RSS to keep updated 🙂

And before you go chopping your laptop because of all the advertising on it, just comment below and answer this question: Why do you “Really” blog?

Make Money Online, Reviews, Web 2.0

Elance: The Untapped Job Market!

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Simply put, it’s the eBay of jobs!
Being a computer geek/blogger I got many jobs from elance.com in my early days (not that early though).
Elance.com allows people worldwide to buy or sell their services and products, or even talents!

Here is how it works:

You subscribe to elance, a small monthly fee will be charged, you view jobs posted under your expertise, you bid a reasonable price for the job and the job’s poster might choose you based on experience (and of course your low bid), then you communicate with them, finish the job and get paid. That is it.
For example: I subscribed to elance in the beginning as a web developer, Then I was able to view and choose between 250-500 jobs posted at that time, choose a programming job that I thought fits my skills, the lowest bid was $150 for the entire job, I bid $145 and was awarded the job, talked to the job’s poster, she explained in more details what she needed, took me about 40 minutes to finish what she needed then submit it, she was happy with what I’ve done and paid me instantly using PayPal.
In this example, it took me less than an hour from start until I got paid, between searching, bidding and working on the job. Some jobs take a bit longer depending on the bidding ending date, or how big the job is.

As a freelance writer, I found it better for me to get a copyright (or ghost) writing jobs better than programming or web developing.
However, elance offers way much more variety of jobs, to name a few: Programming & web developing, Sales and marketing, graphic designing, writing and translation, finance and management, even legal advice is offered there as a job category.

At the time of writing this article here are some facts you may need to know:

  • In the last 30 days there were 20,180 jobs posted.
  • There are 134,658 experts on elance.
  • The amount paid and work done since 2005 is of a value of $139,020,239

That means, that no matter what you do, there is a job related to you that you might want to grab the extra cash from.

In time you will build your reputation and gain trust all over the site, and job posters will preffer hiring you even if your not bidding or ask for a higher prices on their posted jobs.

Is it worth to subscribe?

Simply: Yes. My own average jobs is worth $250 per article. average writing jobs today is 7000+ taking only 2 jobs a day will equal $500 (a day!), with a commitment to do it for 30 days (considering being lucky finding 2 jobs a day and being awarded the jobs) that would be $15000 per month, the subscription as of today is $30 a month. So, I think it is worth it.

Of course elance offers a lot of advice from bidding to accepting the jobs, and it’s all available for free as soon as you log in (The Elance University!).

Did I mention that basic posting of a job is for free!

Learn more about elance here.

Comment below with your thoughts and don’t forget to get the RSS or follow me on Twitter 🙂

Blogging, General, Social Marketing, Social Networking, Web 2.0

Create your own Social Network (Introducing Ning!)

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Ever dream of having a social network that’s about your own band or another social network just for your company and your co-workers?!
Ning.com allows you to do just that.
“Ning” is a Chinese word for “Peace”, co-founded by Mark Andereessen and Gina Bianchini, and launched in October of 2005.
Ning.com allows you to create a social network just like myspace or facebook including any feature that you can imagine from blogs to forums to sharing photos and videos.
Your own created network could be about your family members or about your company or even your school’s basketball team! There are no limits of what you can create a social network about.

At www.Wahol.com There will be at least 2 classes about setting up a Ning network and other services like Ning. So make sure to sign up soon, it’s free!

In late 2007 Ning added support for OpenSocial, a project started by Google that I think would be the future of social networking.

No matter what your specific interests and no matter if you have any technical skills, Ning’s unique feature of allowing anyone to create their custom network about a topic or need or just to interact with fans or even raise awareness, is just great to have and is simply Web 2.0 at it’s best.

You can create networks for free that will be ad supported by Ning or you can create and brand a social network without ads in exchange for a small monthly fee. (A study I did before shows that it’s around $50 a month per network on Ning) and we will go through details of how to have your own branded social network for free, or whether to choose Ning’s paid branded network for your business in a near future class at www.Wahol.com

Ning.com now hosts over half a million networks.

Of course you can join our own network of Guru Of Sales right here: http://guruofsales.ning.com/
Or join our Wahol.com network here: http://waholnetwork.ning.com/ just remember that they are both under research testing right now, so I might not be active on them for quite a while, but I will notify you on twitter, so if you’re not following me, do so, by going here: http://twitter.com/guruofsales

Create your network and comment below with a link to your network and I just might become your first member to join 🙂