I am thinking of doing a blog, how many times a week do you think I should post?

I think you are an AMAZING person. I’ve know about you for less that 24 hours and I already feel inspired by you. I was moved to tears by your blog about whether you really just work two hours a day. I forwarded that blog to key people in my life urging them to read it. You give really sound advice. You are incredibly wise at such a young age.

I wish you all the success your heart can stand.

–Tee Jenkins

Thanks for that, nice short comments are usually the best because you know what they are saying.

Interesting that people keep slotting my blog into the SEO niche though…hmmm.

John

This is what I love about blogging – everyone has an opinion on everything and they’re not afraid to leave a comment saying so.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone – and don’t worry, I won’t be neglecting this blog.

So, its a good system Yaro, blogging, and especially your blog, and you already threw your hat into the ring. So, don’t stall at the ‘crossroads of indecision’, accelerate!

Obviously I recommned you go full gusto for the blog and advertise more. Also, amp up the overall image of the site (hate to say it, but remove the self-pic, or update it if need be, you look like your heading to chemistry extra credit class )

I really hope you can get some good advice from the ‘made’ bloggers, those who are achieving financial independence from blogging.

Chris

Whichever direction you [Mr. Starak] choose, don’t end up neglecting your blog.

Thank you for your suggestions and links regarding monetization of this blog. I’ve thought of similar ideas as those sites use and no doubt I will come up with something eventually, although I’d prefer to keep all the content on this site free so most likely the advertising root is the way to go until I get a proper info product ready for sale.

Regarding BetterEdit, you have the same idea I had years ago and has been suggested a few times to me. I went as far as working with a software design company to get the thing built and it was in fact because of this experience that I realised that it was just not going to feasible.

Due to the type of client BetterEdit services (often with English as a second language background) ensuring there is as little resistance, keeping the purchasing steps as simple as possible, is important. I realised if I tried to automate the process it would just become too confusing no matter how simple the design.

I’m better off building the business up to the point where I can hire someone to process jobs. It only takes about 10 minutes to process a job manually and really that’s not the stressful part, it’s dealing with the poorly qualified clients that creates the most problems. The web system that has just been put in place should hopefully further help to make sure only the exact target market BetterEdit is selling to decides to buy.

RE: Podcast on webhosting – sure, at some point, but it’s not high on the agenda. Start surfing around this forum – http://www.webhostingtalk.com – and I’m sure you will find what you need.

Here’s a few things I thought of:

- Podcast lengths – you could offer two versions; the full length and one which you’ve editted that provides the main points in 10 or 15min. Although it’ll take a while to edit I guess.

-Monetising this blog/podcasts – although I would like to be able to access all your content for free, there are a couple of subscription like services I would be willing to pay if I had to in order to access your content.

From listening to quite a few podcasts from tech to entrepreneurship I’ve found a few sites that do the following: (not sure how well they work though)

> http://www.greatergoodradio.com – What they do is offer a free podcast segment where they talk with someone about their business etc, then what users can do is purchase an ‘after show’ which I assume basically just continues the conversation

> http://www.diggnation.com – They have a weekly vidcast and users can pay a monthly fee/subscription and this gives them access to their products and vidcasts early. They then release the vidcast to the public a few days after.

> The other options are to completely lock out users from accessing your content unless they pay a subscription; or offer some podcasts/articles freely and then create, as you mentioned, a members section where good quality articles are accessible.

I don’t think paying an amount per podcast would really work, but a cheap monthly, half-yearly or yearly subscription fee may work.

But I’m sure you can find many multiple income streams from this site without needing to resort to obvious affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is fine in moderation so long as it is very subtle (whilst still being transparent)… so perhaps mentioning the Google SEO product subtly in a post about SEO tips and techniques, rather than an entire article about the Google SEO product.

An idea I had about a possible podcast (in the future) was to offer podcasts released early to subscribers who would pay something really cheap like $4.95 or $9.95 a month… although I guess it all comes down to whether the content is good enough and wanted enough for users to pay to access it, and then just hope that someone else doesn’t offer equally as good content for free.

A few comments about BetterEdit processing procedures. From a few looks I’ve had at your site it seems that students send their work via email to you and then you forward this to your editors… which sounds like quite a lot of manual work that could be minimised and free up some of your time (and remove some stresses).

Here’s an idea you can use if you like:

1) Students signup for an account with their credit card and pay something like a $5 administration/setup fee. You can then process this straight away to determine if the credit card is legit.

2) After this the student creates their essay and *uploads* it to your site. This then goes to a central location on the BetterEdit site. An email message is then sent to one or all of your editors to let them know that a new essay is up for editting.

3) The editor goes online and can either edit the essay directly online, or they download, edit the essay and then re-upload it to the site.

4) Once the essay has been editted and uploaded to the site (perhaps in a specific location for that particular customer) the customer/student is then sent a notification email letting them know that their essay has been editted.

5) The student goes online, and can perhaps freely view a sample of their editted essay before agreeing to pay for the service. (or the customer could pay for the editting service before-hand). The customer’s details are already recorded in a database and so payment is simply a matter of logging in and clicking ‘Pay’.

6) After payment, the student then has access to their essay and can download it.

Voila! Saves time and energy and increases productivity and hopefully sales.

…although then there’s the issue of actually setting up such a system

Have fun!

cheers
Nathan Waters

btw Yaro, do you still have the podcast regarding webhost reselling planned?

Initially I preferred to listen to and create short 15-20 min podcasts and I assumed others would also prefer short to the point podcasts. But then I realised that a lot of listeners are taking podcasts on the commute, often a 30-45 minute travel journey. I myself listen to podcasts on my 40 minute walks and because of this I prefer the high quality longer shows on topics I am interested in, usually online marketing.

I once listened to a show by a fellow that created 5 minute podcasts with prominent marketing professionals. He had them talk for 5 minutes on one topic, usually offering one tip. I downloaded a couple of the podcasts because of the quality of the guests on the show but after listening to them I immediately oversubscribed. They were next to useless because in 5 minutes you can’t discuss a topic in depth. The content was so “light” I was completely turned off.

I think it’s best to focus on quality, if you can do quality in 15 minutes great, if it takes you 45 minutes that’s okay too. If it’s quality you will get an audience. You will turn away some people because of time preferences, but you can’t please everyone.

(*Update* – I figured it out, as you can no doubt tell.)

You know in a lot of ways I wish I could just blog to help everyone realise their dream of owning a profitable business or even just a popular website.

The satisfaction from helping others is a real boon from blogging and yes you do want to be financially rewarded for your work too, but the satisfaction of helping others is often of more value.

I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and can see that real care and attention is taken into keeping it updated, interesting, and informative. Over time this kind of continuity breeds a trust element for your visitors and being able to interact too (comments, emails, Skype etc) only enhances this. Patience and persistence prevails in the end.

I made the mistake with my website as I thought that if I dedicated a full time commitment to the project (1 year now which includes 5 months live) I’d jump ahead of those guys that were patiently allowing for organic growth as they built their projects slowly and thoughtfully on a part-time basis.

WRONG! What I didn’t anticipate was that websites take a while to build credibility. Sites come, and go all the time, so before any potential advertisers become interested in my site, my product, my service, or my name, etc it all has to become well known and credible, and that takes as long as it takes despite myself. I believe this is the case with every new unknown webmaster no matter how impressively their site looks and functions on launch day.

The most important thing for me is what you pointed out. I still love it, I still believe in it, and I’m going to continue to drive it no matter what! Educate, educate, educate!

I have never had a website of my own before but the idea just popped into my head one day after a disastrous hi street business failure here in Thailand. I did research and read as much as I could about what makes a website successful. I designed the format, layout, and functions for the new project on paper first and then got professional web developers to put it all together for me.

Like your BetterEdit project, I was aiming for perfection before the site was uploaded to the World Wide Web, but it looked like I was never going to get the dam thing on line as one thing after another kept delaying this (mainly my unhealthy obsession for perfection!) so I bit the bullet one day and just put it out there. That was 5 months ago and I’m still tweaking it. I’m so glad I went live as there has been quite a bit of user feedback that has guided me on many of the updates since.

Anyway, I won’t waffle on any more. I just wanted to thank you for this and other useful posts that have given me inspiration and guidance. I refuse to admit defeat on my struggling internet business and hope to report back in the not to distant future with some positive results based on tips and tricks found here and elsewhere.

Best regards

Aitch

PS Some of these longer posts would make a much easier read if your system allowed breaks between paragraphs. Just an observation mate.

Generally I don’t like podcasts – overall from the ones on most sites they ramble – anything over 20 minutes means there is too broad an approach. Tight, to the point ,value for time (and money). Not everyone has the luxury of commuting time (certainly not at home entreps like us!

That’s okay if I plan on simply blogging to indulge in a creative outlet, and to be honest if BetterEdit and other business projects grew to a point where I made reasonably significant revenues (about 10% of Darren’s income should do then I’d probably blog just to help and interact with others. In fact for the moment this is exactly what I am doing and seeing what doors open and where my motivation carries me.

Yes you are right about the niche markets we are looking to target are similar. I read your description of your niche marketing drill down and it just doesn’t appear refined enough to me.

If you said 30-45 year old work-at-home mums with families looking to make a few extra thousand dollars per month from the Internet selling home made crafts then I would be a believer.

Of course the proof is in the pudding and if you find your market and they buy from you then job done. I just don’t believe, at the moment, my niche is defined enough, and to be honest I don’t think HomeOfficeVoice is either. I realise you have other projects going AND of course I can’t test your audience, I’m merely making an unsubstantiated observation based on the kind of results I’ve had from my blog (I think our blogs are somewhat similar in focus).

I think the “Yaro” and “Martin” brands can carry us only so far. The solutions we sell must have a nice clear target consumer in focus and it’s up to us to clearly reinforce this with every article we write and every podcast we record. That’s if our main goal is to sell something.

Thank you for your comments and observations about me. I agree that I enjoy podcasting and certainly some form of audio recording will be in my future. As will be writing. I also appreciate your monetization strategies at the end of your post – I like them all , the question is what niche is the topic of all this content focusing on…

Time will bring answers, patience right Martin

I’ve seen this happen to so many blogs – at around the 6-mth or so period they get into a sort of blog depression, wondering we’re they’re going with it all, if it’s worth it etc.,

I see blogging in two ways – blogging as a pure business (ala Darren Rowse) or blogging as a marketing tool for your business – they’re both completetly different kinds of blogging.

About the niche thing, I’m like you – we’re both in a big and highly competitive market (lots of shonks around as well). I guess it all comes down to drilling down that niche so it’s so targeted that you can make a go of it.

Like myself: the drill down goes as this: Home Business Owners (Huge) > Running a Web Business (very big) > Internet Savvy genuine home-based web business, not get rich stuff (getting smaller) > Are serious about their business and want to learn and get advice … etc., you get the idea, hopefully

From what I know of you, I think you’d be suited to creating audio products, running online seminars and going the coaching route – especially by developing the “Yaro” brand. Write a great eBook, blog it’s development, get it out to the A-listers. These things take time, but beforte you know it it will have an snowball effect and you’ll have that name recognition.

Maybe blogging is not really for you, you love the massive posts which are great – maybe you should focus solely on podcasts.

I’d do one small podcast a week for free (get their emails of course) and every month or so do a big one that you can sell. Soon you’ll have a batch of great audio products that you can package together and sell … even turn it into a CD package, kit etc.,

Just my couple of cents …

Regarding getting payments off people. I’d say that as a small business you should tighten up on payments. Have a look at how much time you are spending on chasing payments and how much you have in bad debt and then compare that to how much you think you might lose if new customers had to pay upfront.

Generally you should ask for payment upfront unless the person or business has proven themselves as having good credit.

My $0.02

Focusing on the ones that work is the most important thig! Matt