Google+; one year after

So, I was all in ecstasy about the launch of Google+ last year. The social network of my dreams, and a potential Facebook-killer had arrived. Not that I disliked Facebook that much, I just felt like it was time for a change. So I jumped the G+ wagon, and started fiddling away with the new universe of social engagement.

That lasted a couple of months. The involvement in G+ vanished on my part. I am not sure why, but I guess I never gained what I expected to gain from my G+ presence. Same goes for this blog really - offline projects became priorities, and I cut my online-time dramatically.

Now it's been a year, and I logged into G+ again for the first time a couple of days ago. My stream was noisy - in fact it was so noisy, that I decided to cut the number of people I follow from almost a 1,000 and down to only around 300. I am not looking into everyone of them, to see if they are actually using G+, and surprisingly enough (?) a whole bunch of them haven't been logged in for 7-11 months.

That tells me that a lot of people did what I did. They signed up, they engaged themselves in this new community and after a short time they quit it. I am still wondering why that is, but I guess that with very few reallife friends in there still, you only gain something from G+ if you are able to use the service in a commercial and/or professional way. Most people are not, as the active users in there are mainly technerds and photo enthusiasts.

Nevertheless, I'm back. Both here and on G+, and I'm planning to stay. A bunch of new projects are coming up, and I'll pay special attention to this little blog, hoping to gain a few more readers within the next couple of months. The goal is 200 listeners via feedburner, at least 100 followers on Facebook and at least 100 followers on my G+ page for the blog, once i get that going. I'll keep you posted as to how that works out.

Monetization of this blog is not yet a priority. I am thinking about completely removing the adsense ads on the blog, and will probably do so within the next couple of days. Iwas also considering moving the blog to another domain (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com) but as the whole idea in the first place was to prove that you can be succesful in blogging using free tools only, that wasn't really an option after all.

In the coming weeks I'll post a few interesting articles for you to read, and hopefully share and comment on. It's been a long time, and I look forward to start bloggin' away once again!

Paypal as only payment option - is that an option?

Indeed it is! Paypal is widely recognized as a secure way of payment, and with the possibility to pay for goods using the Paypal-gateway, without actually having a Paypal account, the service just got even more useful.

I live in Denmark, and here we have a local payment-card called "Dankort". It's similar to Visa's in it's function, but it was the first card to market in Denmark, and back in the 80s and 90s everybody had one. Hence the "Dankort"-sign is highly respected and has a lot of credibility within the Danish market. Local cards, such as the Dankort, are NOT supported by Paypal (at least not yet), and that can prove to be a serious shortcoming if you operate in a market where these cards are widely used.

If you sell to an International audience, most payments to your shop will probably be done via Visa or Mastercard, and Paypal supports both. In many markets, including the US, Paypal is just as trusted as any other provider of payment gateways - even eBay uses Paypal to handle it's payments between users.

Is it secure? I believe so! Sure, you can hack a Paypal account, but it's not a whole lot harder to hack your bank account. All payouts are checked by the Paypal staff, and in order to change your creditcard information etc. there are some really rough procedures to go through. I.e. Paypal withdraws one dollar from your bank account, and adds a X-digit note as payment reference. You then have to go back to the Paypal website and enter that code to verify your card. Pretty neat. The one dollar will be refunded, by the way!

To sum it all up:
If you target a Worldwide market, or if you operate in markets where Visa and Mastercard are the most common payment methods when shopping online, Paypal will be just fine. The number one benefit from starting out with Paypal is that it costs nothing. There are no monthly fees, no sign-up fees. They only charge you a little bit everytime you actually sell something. As a startup business you'll find that interesting.

Let me know what's your experience using Paypal for handling payments to your blog or webshop!

How to Keep Blogging: Make a List

Now, you've created a blog and have started blogging. People are starting to notice you, and your daily visitor count is going up. Not much, but still - it's growing.

When you first started your blog your head was spinning. It was full of ideas of things you'd like to share with the World, and your first 5-10-15 articles came straight from the top of your head without you even having to think. Now it's different. It's maybe been a month (or even less!), and you are completely empty. You can't find that topic to write about, or that new twist to an old story that makes it interesting enough for you to publish it. So what do you do?

You make a list!

Create a list of things that could be worth writing about, within your topic. Stick to the overall topic of your blog to keep focused. Building a niche-blog is far easier than building a blog with a wider perspective. Now, go visit all these websites out there similar to your own, search for news (and comment on the stories while you do so - you can just as well aggregate a bit of linkjuice while you're at it!) and take note of things of interest.

I did myself the favor of installing the Evernote web-app in my browser. That means that whenever I come across something interesting that I might want to write about later I just click the little icon in Chrome next to the address line, and *boom", it's all copied to Evernote. Not just the link, the whole thing.

That's my way of doing it, but you can probably think of other/better ways to handle your notes. Maybe the notepad on your iPhone would suit you the best, or the good, old fashioned bookmark tool in your browser could be just right for you.

The bottomline is, that when your head is empty you need to fill it up. Read, read, read and read the writings of others. If you can't come up with something new, then at least you could write an article about your opinion on a specific topic. Perhaps one of your colleagues in the blogbusiness has written a review of a free, online product- well, then try it and write your own.

The most important thing, now that you've got started, is to keep writing. Write every day. Every single day! The path to growth runs through regular updates and posts - that's a fact.


Link to Evernote: http://www.evernote.com/
Link to the Google Chrome Browser: https://www.google.com/chrome

Getting Started on Affiliate Marketing - Part #1

OK, here we go! Yesterday I wrote a post about running multiple blogs to drive traffic towards your main domain. Today it's also about running multiple blogs, but the idea is to make money from each and every one of them.

I've set up a little experiment to see if it's actually doable to make money from blogging on a free platform like Blogger (blogspot.com), and have registered five new domains with them for a start. They are about very different topics - all of which are of some interest to me though. I figure that if I'm to spend hours and hours on doing articles for them, I'd better choose something interesting to write about.

I am NOT an affiliate marketeer, but I'll give it a go!

I'm starting off today, and I will keep you posted with the way things are going. I intend to run this experiment for three months and see where it's taken me by then. Let's see what happens - I'm eager to get something off my hands and get going.

Oh, and I've signed up for both AdSense and Amazon affiliates. Amazon maybe isn't a very good affiliate partner, but they have such a wide variety of products that I just had to team up with them. If you know of any affiliate networks that I should consider joining, please let me know in the comments!

What am I hoping to gain from this
Well, first of all I hope to end up having five blogs generating some sort of income. I'll do a bunch of articles for each of them, and that will hopefully drive some traffic from Google - after I start on my linkbuilding.

Secondly I hope to learn a lot more about the game. I'm not very experienced when it comes to affiliate marketing, and I will most certainly do many (or most!) things wrong. The good thing though is that I'll be able to do it all again afterwards and have those things right, right from the start.

Last, but not least, I hope to receive some sort of feedback. I intend to share everything from earnings to visitors, and hope to get back some pieces of advice. I will definitely hand out all the advice I can once I start learning from this experience! :-)

How Multiple Blogs Can Boost Your Traffic (And Ranking!)

Have you created yourself a blog? Good! Now you need traffic, and whether you like it or not, the best way to drive traffic to your blog is... creating more blogs!

This blog you're reading is build on the free-to-use blogspot.com platform. I found a name that sounded cool, and started blogging. That was easy. The hard part is to make people find it, start commenting and engage in my blog.

Golden piece of advice: 

Build multiple blogs with quality content and link them with your main blog! 

(that's juicy!)

I've now created numerous other blogs based on the blogspot.com platform. You can actually create up to 100 blogs if you like, but I guess I wont need that many. The main idea is to create blogs with names that are more catchy than my current, put in a few articles for Google to index them, and then link back to this blog from them.

Example:
You have created sussies-hair-laundry-accessories.blogspot.com to tell people about your amazing hair products. Now, that's not a name a whole lot of people would search for looking for cool har laundry accessories, and thus you may not attract very much traffic from Googles organic searches. What you could do was register cool-hair-laundry.blogspot.com as well, put in a few articles praising your product and maybe even give away some pieces of advice, and then link the posts back to your main blog.

What it does
You gain two (major) benefits from this model. First of all you now have another chance of being found on Google. As the algorithm behind Google somewhat takes your domain name into consideration when indexing, a more precise/describing name for your #2 blog could be handy. Think "search terms" when you register your blog. What would you search for if you were to find "Product X for doing Y" on Google? If unsure, ask your friends and learn from their opinions.

Secondly you get "linkjuice". Linkjuices is a common name for the "credit" Google gives you for every link back to your own site. Another blog with good links back to your site gives you good linkjuice, even if you created them yourself! Sounds odd? Well, it is, but that's the way it works these days!

Will it harm me?
Probably not. No, really - it most probably wont harm you. Chance is that the visitors referred to your blog from your number two, three or four blogs are not even aware that they were created by yourself. It's more likely that it'll boost your sites credebility, as people will notice how many beautiful blogs out there that are praising your product (well, kind of).

What's your experience?
I have not had very many experiences with this, but I'm currently building an army of blogs to support my main blogs. I'll post a case study once I'm able to extract some sort of statistics from them and see the results.

New to bloggin'? You may want to read "Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-figure Income". I only just read it, and it was definitely worth every penny!

You Need To Follow Your Customers' Social Habits

Running a business AND building a social presence for it is not easy. Perhaps it was never meant to be. A year ago there was only one place to position your site in the social media madness, and loads of webshops and bloggers alike jumped the Facebook-wagon - created a site, and started spamming their "fans" with competitions, coupon offers and news about everything.

Nowadays it's different. The number of social sites that you have to take seriously is steadily growing. It seems that the internet had room for more than one after all.

Golden piece of advice:

The internet is an everchanging space!

(no shit, Sherlock!)

Twitter and Google+ are amongst the ones you should notice, and both are sources of business whether you sell yourself, your blog or a physical product. If you're not there be square! But why is it important? You already build yourself a solid Facebook fanbase, uploaded that nifty little logo in the top-left corner, and you even regularly update the place.. sort of. Why do you need MORE of that social sphere surrounding your business?

You have to be there. HAVE TO! As you have preferences as to what social media site you tend to visit most often, so does your customers. As new opportunities pop up they might switch platform. I, for one, is spending more time on Google+ than on Facebook these days. Needless to say that wasn't the case a year ago (as G+ didn't exist by then). Twitter is growing rapidly as well, epsecially in the US. In Europe it's still kinda geeky to be tweeting, but I suspect that is about to change.

Bottomline: If you want to reach your customers, you have to continously position yourself in their point of view. Once they discover a new platform you have to discover it as well. I'm not saying that you need to post special offers to every and all social websites out there, but you definitely have to pay attention to at least the top two or three most popular.

Golden piece of advice:

If your customers are moving to G+ you can't stick to your Facebook-page only
(that's perhaps logic, but I point it out anyway to sound smart)

If you're not already present go get yourself a page on Google+ as well as Facebook and create a Twitter-profile for your business. In the long run you will benefit from it, and there are smart systemt out there that allow you to post an update in only one of them and have it automatically shared on the others.

Ad Alert!
You may want to read this brilliant book on creating a social media presence to get yourself started building your brand, and driving customers to your business using the social media platforms! I did, and I learned a thing or two that helped my wifes webshop sell ten times as much to their Facebook-followers as they did before.

Go, go, go! Socialize like your customers!

Five Tips To Become A Top Notch Blogger

Are you building a blog? Are you eager to get success? Then read on! I do not hold the sacred recipe to wealth and glory through blogging, but I've been thinking a lot of thoughts recently, and want to share some of them with you. (Please, keep in mind that quite a few of my own blogs didn't make it big!)

If you're new to blogging, there are a few things that you have to take into account if you want to be a professional blogger, and make money from what you do. First you have to decide on HOW you intend to monetize your blog:

A) I want to make money from ads on my blog!

B) I want to attract customers to my business through my blogging!

Whether you decide on A or B, some criteria for success seem to be the same. First of all your content has to be top notch. Take the time needed to work out brilliant posts, instead of posting numerous posts that only slightly touches their subject. I, myself, tend to forget this piece of advice sometimes. The way to blog, choosing A or B, differ at some points, but in this post we'll only look at the similarities. Let's call them the "Universal Rules of Blogging" - URBs. I think that sounds good!

Whether A or B, I have five "URBs" for you to remember. Let's dig deep:

1) Create quality content, whether it's video, audio or text.

As mentioned above producing quality content is the number one thing to keep in mind when you start blogging. Many of you are not aware how time consuming it is to create content that matters, and you should try and sit down and write a few articles offline about your subject to get an idea. So, you spend half an hour, where did that get you? Did you end up with a result worth reading? Does it add to the knowledge of your readers? All right, fine. Some of you will find it hard to produce quality content in a short time, and most of you that feel that way will stop blogging very quickly ("Being lazy is not a crime", she shouted).

Building a blog takes time. Attracting traffic takes time. Attracting huge amounts of traffic takes forever, and engaging people to make them comment takes even longer. You may spend several hours a week blogging, and feel like you get nothing in return. And that's right: You get nothing in return at first. See all your blog posts as investments in the future. IF you produce quality content for your blog, it's out there forever. Once your blog starts growing and people start visiting it all the quality blog posts you posted a year ago is still there, adding value to their experience when visiting your blog. Also, Google love quality, and well written blog posts can help you attract visitors from organic Google searches even years from now!

Golden piece of advice:

You're NOT a Rockstar. You have to make yourself known.

(if you are actually a rockstar i apologize)

2) Make your readers feel they get something from visiting your blog.

Don't copy other peoples quality content. First of all it's probably illegal and second it hurts you in the long run. Google punishes you for what they call "duplicate content", and your visitors will punish you as well for not being original.

Re-writing of other peoples articles is a common thing in cyberspace, and also in the blogosphere. I recommend you don't do that. Be genuine, take the time needed and write your own stuff. The idea of blogging is to share your thoughts with the world - not to share with the world what other people are thinking. They are probably capable of that temselves as you found their writings out there ;-)

Besides your brilliant blog posts think about offering your visitors something special. If you're a real expert you might want to write an e-book about your area of expertise. Consider giving it away for free to people who sign up for your newsletter, follow your blog or engage in your blogging in another way. Gifts are very popular; that's also a valid fact online.

One thing you should always remember is not to waste peoples time. If you don't have anything at heart, then don't blog. Wait till you got something important to share, and then share it. You don't have to blog everyday if you've got nothing to blog about. Blogging should not be a burden to you - if you feel so then blogging is probably not for you! (seriously, it isn't!)

Golden piece of advice:

Your visitors like to receive gifts!

(surpriiiiiiise!)

3) Update regularly; that is the key to keep people re-visiting your blog.

Regular updates are key. Once you got your blog up and running, naturally you want people to come back and visit you again. The motivation for people to check out your blog regularly is regular updates. I stop visiting blogs if they're not updated; even after a few days. Do you keep visiting websites that are not updated? Well maybe you do, but most people don't. Google doesn't either. The more often you post new things on your blog, the higher the frequency of visits from the Holy Google Bot (he who indexes the WWW).

There is a workaround though if you're limited to producing one or two posts a week, and that's social media. We get to that in a moment.

Golden piece of advice:

Google is your best friend, and your worst enemy!

(you can't fight him, so just please him)

4) Answer comments!

I hate it when bloggers don't respond to my comments! The least you can do if people take the time to comment on your writings is to answer them back. Even a "Thank you for your comment" could be enough. It's about people feeling that they too are being heard, and that you appreciate their engagement in what you do.

As we all strive to engage our readers one of the main things to remember is to treat them right. So many people visit your blog without you ever knowing who they are. Those few people that actually make themselves know through commenting should be nursed as were they the reborn Christ himself. Keep that in mind. Your readers are your potential customers; your commenters are those that are already buying.

Golden piece of advice:

When someone talks to you, answer them in a polite way.

(even if they think you're a jerk)

5) Go social! Promote your blog whereever, and whenever, you can!

As I said a moment ago you should consider go social whether or not you're a frequent blogger. Social networks like Facebook and Google are perfect showcases for your blog. Whenever you post something post a link to your social media connections as well.

Some people are holding back when it comes to sharing their writings on Facebook. I don't understand why. I reckon that it can be embarrassing for you to have your closest friends and family read your articles, but think of it this way: These people care about you, and will probably help you promote your blog in any way they can! They just have to know that it exists!

I'll talk about myself a little bit now...
I myself have signed up for Google+, Facebook and Twitter. These three are my main sources of traffic to my blogs. The blog you're reading right now is brand new, and the use of social media to attract attention to it is vital for me. Almost all my traffic these first few days come from social media sites.

Besides from social networds, other blogs are a source of visitors. Post comments that make sense on other peoples blog, and remember to leave a link back to your own. You are often given the possibility of adding a link when commenting on someones blog - take advantage of that! Search the web for blogs about the same topic you blog about and engage with them. It's worth it, and perhaps the best PR you can get out there.

And I almost forgot. Going social is of major importance if you do not update your blog that often. Creating a Facebook Page, i.e., will allow your readers to follow you there. Whenever you actually DO write something post an update on the page and your followers will know about it right away.

Keep in mind that building a large Facebook fanbase takes forever too. Most things does, patience is another keyword worth remembering and a skill worth having when you want to make in the world of blogging.

Happy blogging! Oh, and if you have a blog, post a comment.. I'd like to see it :-)

Blogging about everyday life

Is blogging about everyday life really the best way for Mr. or Mrs. Nobody to make it in the blogging industry? Browsing through a couple of hundred blogs this morning, the answer seems to be "Yes! It is!".

Blogs with substance. My oh my, what a rare thing to come across these days. There are tons of blogs written by people with nothing at heart, except what they had for dinner, their new haircut or their poppies sleeping on the couch. Interesting? Well, to most people within the blogosphere it seems to be. These blogs seem to attract crazy amounts of attention, and many of them have hundreds - even thousands - of regular readers.

On the other hand, substantial blogs about interesting topics seem to struggle. There are numerous blogs out there that dig deep in to a scientific or advanced topic, and receive almost no readers at all. I find it hard to understand, as these blogs are of much more value to me than "Ingolfs Blog About Everyday Life and The Fast Food I Consume", but I have to realize that I am not part of the vast majority of the active blogger-community.

Why is that? Why is it, that so many people share this urge to look into other peoples lifes? I've been asking myself that question today, and still haven't found the answer. What I have found though, is a peculiar similarity. The behaviour of the blogger-community is very similar to that of the major broadcasting companies!

If you turn on your TV, you'll find that a large percentage of the shows on display is about nothing, or close to nothing. Reality-shows is all around you, whether it's a cooking show, a show about buying property or whatever you can think of. The broadcasting companies desire to put "normal" people in front of these programs comes from somewhere: Demand.

The public demands these shows. They watch them, yet they demand them. Perhaps it's just part of human nature to be curious about how other people live their lifes, or perhaps we all search for shows that gives us people similar to us. The guy in Survivor? That could be you! Maybe we love the thought of that.

It seems to be a valid fact, whether we're talking TV or Internet, that people attention is drawn towards real people, with real stories, that could just as well be their own.

The question still remains, though, why that is. Do you have an idea?

Use Fiverr to save time, money and improve your business - Podcast #3

Well, I started using Fiverr.com a couple of months ago. I was suspicious at first as to the quality of the provided in there, but after my first few orders I began to realize, that the quality of the work from the Fiverr's was absolutely brilliant. Amazing value for money, delivery on time.

Since then I have been using Fiverr for various things. Intro for my podcast, animations for Youtube videos, logo design, a birthday song performed by Homer Simpson for a good friend. The opportunities seems endless.

Although my experiences have all been positive, do yourself a favor and check out the ratings of the gig you're about to buy. The people that promote their gigs with videos often give you a good idea of what you can expect from watching the video.

Here's the link for the Fiverr website: http://fiverr.com/

And here's a direct link to the guy that did my intro: http://fiverr.com/awwyeah/create-and-produce-an-audio-intro-for-podcast-radio-show-or-web-series (highly recommended!)

Outsourcing: Tyrone Shum, great inspirator! Podcast #2

I came across Tyrone Shum yesterday when surfing the Internet. He definitely got me started on investigating possibilities to outsource part of what I'm doing, and if you're considering outsourcing, he may have a few valuable tips you could make good use of as well.

Go check out his website, www.tyroneshum.com, to learn more about his work. Don't hesitate to sign-up for the newsletter - the video you get in return is absolutely worth it!

If you sell online, advertise online!

It's really as simple as that - watch me explain why (in very short - we'll get back to this at a later stage!).

Turning Your Blog Into A Business - podcast #1

Is it possible to turn your blog or vlog into a profitable business? Even if you live in a small country, and blog in your own, local language? Listen to this very first podcast to hear my opinion.

I am always interested in hearing your thoughts on any given topic, so please leave a comment if you have words on this one.

Considering Youtube

I was never in doubt which host to use for my upcoming video podcasts, but after surfing a few of my favorite blogs this evening, it seems to me that Vimeo is actually offering better streaming quality than Youtube.. could that be true?

Without exception, the picture is just clearer on the Vimeo-snippets I've been watching for the last hour than on the Youtube counterparties.

I am puzzled. What should I value the most? The benefits that goes with Youtube in terms of engagement with Google (and Blogspot), the massive amount of user Youtube has and the broad knowledge and acknowledgement of their brand, or should quality be my number one priority above all other things? I am not quite sure what I wanna do. I do want my videos to look the best, but on the other hand I would love to generate organic views and visits to my blog via the huge Youtube crowd.

I'll probably do a bit of testing. I could also upload my videos in both places, and embed the Vimeo-videos here on the blog. That might be a solution, although it prevents my guests on this blog from finding (and subscribing to) my upcoming Youtube channel.

What do you think? What do you do?

Upcoming topics

Hi guys,

As announced a moment ago, this is the OE Talkshow weblog. We are eager to get started, and have already had our jingle created via Fiverr.com. Magnificent place, fantastic people.

I will tell you a little about our upcoming podcasts, which this is all about.

We will start out by discussing whether or not you can build a business on top of a blog. It seems that some people can, but is it lasting businesses, or are they vulnerable to trends, technological evolution etc.?

Also, how much can you actually make from blogging, if you're not the one in a million that breaks 100k+ unique daily visitors in the American market? Is it possible for a swedish guy to set up a blog in his own language and suck enough money out of the 8 million population to make a living?

Last, but not least, we are talking about what makes a blog succesful in our very first podcast on monday morning.

Later next week you will meet us in pictures in our very first video podcast. This time to discuss the cons and pros of building a succesful webshop with a global reach. We are the experts, so please trust us.

Come the end of next week, we are discussing how you can (or can't) make money from buying, improving and passing on existing websites. Is that possible? Yes it is!

See you soon! Keep the faith!

Welcome to the Online Entrepreneur Talkshow

Providing you with tips, tricks and fascinating stories to boost your skills and your motivation to operate a successful business online, the OE Talkshow is your source for entertainment if you're on to online business.

Whether you're a seasoned online entrepreneur or you're a e-business rookie, The OE Talkshow will certainly have something to offer.

We launch next week, but tell your friends about us right now!

And YES! It is possible to build a high-traffic blog with quality content using only free blogspot-domains and Youtube; we're here to prove it! :-)