The 80/20 Rule... What Do You Think?

This post was actually inspired by a reader's comment on my last post. Thanks for planting the seed Rick :-)

Also known as The Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule basically states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes orin other words, 20% of your efforts create 80% of your results. An example of how this could apply in business could be that 80% of your income is generated from 20% of your customers, which I have found to be fairly accurate in my own business. An example in blogging could be that 80% of your comments come from 20% of your readers, if your lucky... lol

Rick Vaughn said...

"As an avid reader of everything business. I'm a firm believer of the 80/20 rule. Marketing should be 80 percent of your time with 20 percent devoted to content. What do you think?"

Now... Rick is obviously looking at this from a unique perspective which I find very cool. He's not talking about the 80% being an effect of the 20% cause, but rather a relationship between two causes (marketing and content) to create a desired effect (success, readers, money etc.)

So let's think about that for a minute...

It's certainly and unfortunately true that a crappy product with a brilliant marketing campaign will most likely be more successful than a brilliant product with a crappy marketing campaign; but with respect to blogging, does this really mean that you should focus the majority of your time on marketing rather than on content. I don't really think so, especially not in the early stages of your blog or in a highly competitive niche.

I'm a firm believer in creating quality content first and the rest will follow. I'm not saying forget about marketing because it is absolutely critical to success, however I believe that you're much better off focusing on making your content stand out from the rest before you over-publicize a "mediocre at best" blog which could totally backfire on you.

So... What's the perfect ratio?... In my humble opinion... I would shoot for 50/50... you can start with the 80/20 but with 80% of your time focused on content.

http://getrichquickreally.blogspot.com

Time Is Money!

"Time is money." It's a very simple and very old expression, and also very true. Being in business for myself, I have learned that in order to be successful, time management is absolutely critical. There are many different aspects to any business of which an appropriate amount of time must be spent on each in order for that business to grow and prosper. Being able to "multi-task" is certainly helpful for the "day-to-day routine activities" however focused, individualized attention must be spent in areas such as research & product development, advertising & marketing, customer relations etc.

The same is true for building a successful online business or a successful blog. With respect to blogging, we've all been told that quality content and regular posting is the key, but if no one knows it's there it's pretty damn useless. So then we start searching for ways to build traffic and get ourselves some readers. There are a million & one ways out there to do this and it can become a "total time sucker" causing you to slack off on creating quality content and posting regularly. This can cause a negative effect on your blog because the last thing you should want to do is attract new readers to a stale and boring blog.

So, here's my advice. Make a schedule and stick to it. Write it down, put it on your calender and most importantly, keep it realistic. Choose the days and times that you will devote to your blog, whether it be an hour or two a day or 10 hours every Sunday and then break that time up for all the different areas that you want to concentrate on, but remember; we all have a life outside of the blogging world, so don't forget about your family and friends or your real job :-)

http://getrichquickreally.blogspot.com

How Many MMO Blogs Really Make Money?

Let me start out by apologizing for not posting here in almost a month. I do run my own contracting company and with spring time finally upon us I have been extremely busy which is a very good thing especially considering how crappy the economy is and the real estate and new home construction markets have been in the toilet for quite some time now.

So back to MMO Blogs. How many really make money? My personal opinion is probably not very many. There are so many of them out there which makes it a very difficult niche to break into and actually make some coin in the process. Also; sooo much of the same old crap is rehashed on 42 million different blogs so therefore most have no real value and carry a certain stigma. I'm sure that if you've read more than a few, you've seen it for yourself. Unless you are extremely passionate about making money online and spend a lot of time actually doing it you will never have a successful MMO blog.

I'm relatively new to the blogging world and have already seen quite a few come and go. It seems that a great many new bloggers start blogging for the wrong reason, to make money, it doesn't start rolling in quick enough and next thing you know the blog is abandoned. If your going to be a successful blogger you should love to write and also love what you're writing about. Yeah, I know... we all love money, but that should be secondary and it will come. If your just in it for the money, people will smell ya from a mile away which is the biggest reason why the MMO blog is so difficult to be successful with just because of what it is...duh...a make money blog.

Honestly, my personal blog is much more successful than this one. I have more readers and much more active participation from those readers and because of that it makes more money. The funny thing is that both were started with basically the same intention, to tell a story. Both blogs are monetized but neither are designed for the sole purpose of making money. For this blog specifically, I'll continue to tell you what works for me and what doesn't. The programs that I recommend... they work and they make me money...the blog itself... not so much yet, but I'll definitely let you know if, when and how that changes.

http://getrichquickreally.blogspot.com

Increase Your Traffic With EntreCard!

I have just recently signed up for an account with EntreCard and I must say the increase in my traffic is phenomenal! Sign up is free and the increase in traffic is almost instant! It's quick, it's easy and it's fun!

I see it as a blog networking goup, very similar to a business networking group. You create a card that is sort of like an online business card for your blog. When you visit the blogs of other EntreCard members, you can "drop" your card for them, giving them the opportunity to view your blog and also earning you credits for a variety of things such as advertising on other members' blogs.

Other members will also request to advertise on your blog, which earns you even more credits! And; of course you have the right to approve or deny any and all "advert requests. As we all know the key to a successful blog is exposure and targeted traffic and EntreCard provides just that! Check it out for yourself!



http://getrichquickreally.blogspot.com

What's The Deal With Paid Links?

I did not write this article, however I feel that it has value and is well worth sharing, giving full credit to the author of course! Thanks Jason!

About the author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology.

Google Time Warp Edition

Here's a hard truth for the hardliners to swallow: Outlawing something sometimes has worse consequences than the thing outlawed. Or, as the mob tried to tell Congress once: Prohibition's a bitch.

Pardon my French. I'm descended from Appalachian bootleggers.

Google's recent and notorious hard line stance against paid links is resulting in something quite predictable: The disaffected are leveraging every back-alley strategy they can think up. At least it doesn't involve exploding trailers, tripwires, or bullets.

Andy Beard was a bit of a pioneer on the link-laundering front; his (complicated) strategy for masking paid links got some attention last month. But simpler tactics are emerging, some inspired by Google itself.

One of them, which is the digital-world equivalent of impersonating a police officer is destined for a crackdown. Dave Naylor points to (and thus becomes a bit of a narc) what appear to be Google ads but are really nicely done spoofs.

Now that's pretty sneaky.

John Andrews reports another method, which Google would have hard time targeting since the idea came from them to begin with. Instead of buying links, barter for them, which makes for a weird 21st Century currency time warp.

It's so dreamy, oh fantasy free me/ So you can't see me, no not at all/In another dimension…

It's just a jump to the left and then a step to the right to find Google rewarding volunteer participants at the Google blog with juice-filled back links. Andrews gets a little dramatic in his analogies (so do I, for that matter) comparing Google to a casino and SEOs to card-counters before suggesting Google is actively looking to destroy the entire SEO industry.

There is a nugget of reason within this paragraph, though. See if you can find it. (Hint: It's in bold type.)

The take-away is this, folks: Google is controlling you not for some benevolent reason, but in order to control the currency of the web. It took X amount of effort in those forums, dedicated for free by those posters, to earn a direct backlink from Google’s very popular webmaster blog. What was that worth? Google got to decide. Google thinks it is fine to barter in links without the nofollow… it just wants the price for such links to remain pitifully low, managed by Google. Can you see it now? Do we really need to wait a few more years until it is perfectly clear beyond any doubt that Google has all of the money and there is no room for us to share?

… But it's the pelvic thru-ust/ that really drives you insane-yay-yay-yay-yane.

Bob Massa carries on that idea in this extraordinarily long, but perhaps more reasonable, post, which you can read for lots of good industry insight, or you can rely on Aaron Wall to dig out a solid, actionable nugget. In a smaller nutshell, people will barter links in exchange because:

Either it makes them money, saves them time, provides added value to their visitors or they believe it makes them look good or smart or benevolent to their visitors, their peers, their friends, their relatives, to the search engines, award sites or just about anyone that can make them a buck or stroke their ego.

Or, as it's still known by the revenuers in Washington: You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

By Jason Lee Miller - Sat, 03/29/2008 - 12:26pm.

http://getrichquickreally.blogspot.com