08 August 2016
Okay, maybe it is cheating to use one post to cover several memes especially when the memes fall on different days of the week. I guess that is a little cheesy, too.
Well, for those of you who have missed any of these different memes, let me acclimate you to the different ones.
The first item up for bids, as Bob Barker used to say, is the August Happiness Challenge. Each day during the month of August, bloggers who choose to participate in this fun challenge are asked to share with their readers what makes them happy.
Today, I choose to tell you that reading a good book makes me happy. Anyone who has followed this blog at all knows by now that I am not a huge reader of fiction. However, my child-bride and I have taken on a personal challenge to read all the classics together. Right now we are fighting our way through Frankenstein. In the book, we see how misunderstood the creature is and what a wimp Dr. Frankenstein is for not manning up and doing right by the creature.
Okay, It’s Monday, What are you reading? This week Suzanne and I watched a recording of a webinar that was supposed to be helpful for bloggers wanting to make money from their blog. The book is called How To Make Money Blogging: How I Replaced My Day-Job With My Blog by Bob Lotich.
Good ol’ Bob, bless his little heart, tries to help us all make money from blogging by giving us some “common sense” advice and some real world examples from this blogging experience.
My first impression of this book was that it is like many other books that spend a great deal of the first part of the book selling you on the ideas they are going to tell you about later in the book. Sort of like we Southern Baptists call “Preaching to the choir”. Obviously, we are concerned about making money on our blogs or else we would not have started reading the book in the first place.
Speaking of advertisements and self-promoting, if you would like to read Kindle books, there are a whole passel of them you can get free. You can read these books on your Kindle reading App.
You can get the app free for your phone, laptop, or other device by clicking on the banner ad in our sidebar. A little FTC required notice here: If you download the app using the link in the sidebar, we will receive a referral fee.
Okay, the third stop on our journey is Book Beginnings. In this great meme, blog authors are asked to tell you the first sentence or two, the first paragraph or two, or whatever, of the book they are currently reading.
When we open the book to the beginning, we read:
In early 2007 I was talking to a friend of mine about the idea of building websites full of free information to help people. After brainstorming a bit, I got a couple ideas of topics that I was passionate about: Proverbs and Personal Finance.
Good ol’ Bob, our author, is a Christian who thought about creating a blog about Proverbs, a very noble idea, indeed. And, of course, personal finance is one of my favorite subjects so, I like the idea he had.
Now, we go to Friday 56. In Friday 56, we open up the book we are reading to page 56 and quote whatever catches our eye. If we are reading on an e-reader, we can just open up the app and go to 56% of the book. Since I am reading it on my laptop using the free Kindle reader I told you about, here is what it says at 56%.
One of the absolute best ways for new blogs to get traffic is just to comment on other blogs. Commenting with a thoughtful and provocative response will often send a few visitors your way.
The blogging community is generally a very social community and those who are active in the community often reap the rewards of it. But even more important than the few visitors you will pick from it is the relationships that you can develop with the bloggers.
As I am sure all you bloggers will agree, good ol’ Bob has some good, common sense advice for his readers. Later, Bob talks about using our analytics to test to see which ad placements earn us the most money. He even tells us how to set up an A/B test.
In reality, if you are new to blogging, this will be helpful. If this ain’t your first rodeo, it might help remind you of the things you know you should be doing, but for some reason just plain forgot.
And, thankfully, this isn’t another of those books about how to make money blogging that simply tells you “follow the tutorials.”
Well, happy reading. If you have any helpful hints you would like to share with newbie blog writers like this ol’ redneck boy, please do so in the comment box below. Thank you.
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You know, I've been blogging for more than 5 years now and haven't made a penny. I guess I like to think of it as a hobby, not a job. Come see my week here. Happy reading!
ReplyDeleteWe have been participating in the Amazon Associates program since it first started out. We have made a little money with it, never more than $50 in one check so far. I watch the numbers and try to determine what will work best for us.
DeleteSo far, our blogs would count as just a hobby as well. We have read countless books on the subject, follow all the things we read about on the Amazon site, and we still don't have more than just token payments. We blog because we enjoy it. If we could make money out of it, that would be better, but it is not important. When it stops being fun, we will stop doing it.
We put the Amazon native ads on the blog so what people see is what Amazon has determined is the best ad for them.
I always combine hops in my posts, I think people prefer to read on big post than to have several in the same day. I am not a fiction fan either, I save that for movies. And I agree that you will get more blog traffic by commenting on other blogs, but there has to be some other trick out there too. I read about 150 blogs a day and comment on most of them, yet I am lucky to get 30 comments a day which I am thankful of, but I can't figure out how to get more people reading my blog.
ReplyDeleteI know part of it is the niche you happen to be in. Some blogs get lots of viewership and no comments or followers. Other blogs get lots of comments, but not so much in the way of followers, etc.
DeleteFor us, the niche we appear to be in is an audience of other bloggers. That is not bad, just the way it is. I have noticed that most active bloggers that visit my blogs do not watch my videos. Those who watch my videos do not seem to visit the blog. This should tell me something. I just don't know what yet. I know, based on my video stats, I need to concentrate more on the MBA education videos and less on the funny stuff.
I have been in love with books since I was Old enough to hold one, they have taken me I'm wonderful adventures and given me the ability to see how other people navigate their lives. If you manage to find a self-help book that is truly helpful and present something new and useful, you're lucky indeed!
ReplyDeleteI really agree with that about finding one that is truly helpful. I have been reading all I can get my hands on about credit repair, personal finance, and frugal living, since we started working to make our course. It will be available free, by-the-way. Most of what we have found looks like it was written by people with a poor grasp of the English language. I have worked in the Finance/Credit industry for many years and what I see written in many of these books is often bad advice.
DeleteI love the 56! It is so true. You get what you give, especially in the blogging world. If you comment, people will comment back. :-) Happy Sunday!
ReplyDeleteThank you for stopping by. Many people will comment on other blogs, some won't. I suppose it is a numbers game.
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