There is always more powerful than us

Writter : Deny Eko Yuwono

The fact that what we have is not complete make us always seek to develop ourselves.
A webmaster sometimes have to do embarrassing things like: asking other webmasters.
Competition on the Internet is very hard, new things arise all the time, make new ideas become stale in a matter of hours. Thus we should not turn a blind eye to what is done by another webmaster. This is what makes consultation with their less embarrassing than just remain silent. Begging the information may still embarrassing, but it is not a taboo.

For me personally, which was still relatively new on the internet, nothing is taboo. He he he ..

The Power of Being Personal on Your Blog

Source : ProBlogger

The Day I Was Jumped On By a Reader

Last week while at Blog World Expo I was coming down off the stage after presenting on a panel when out of the corner of my eye I noticed someone moving towards me – fast.

Within a second of seeing the movement I was literally jumped upon and found myself in a tangle of arms, hair and tears – I was being hugged within an inch of my life.

I didn’t know what to do at first – I didn’t know who was hugging me but while a bit of a shock at first I could tell the person was genuine and so did the only thing I could think to do – I hugged back.

After a few seconds of hugging the person pulled away. I had expected it to be someone I knew but realised pretty quickly that this was a stranger (or at least she had been a moment or two before). She had tears in her eyes and was obviously emotional – I didn’t know why until she began to talk.

For the next 4-5 minutes my hugging assailant (a reader as it turns out) talked, almost without taking a breath. She told me about the first day she read my blog (she remembered the first post), she told me about how it had helped her, she told me about the ups and downs of her blogging, she told me about her family, she told me about my family, she told me that she’d bought my book, joined my community, bought my ebook, she just talked…..

She talked as if we’d known each other for years – I guess in a way we had…..

Gradually my new friend began to slow down (and breathe) she suddenly began to become a little more self conscious. She began to blush a little as she realised how what she’d just done. I assured her that it was totally fine and in her flustered state she said:

“It’s just that I feel like I know you.”

As we continued to speak I realised that here was someone who I had previously not known had existed (she’d never left a comment or said a word on my blog in over 3 years) who ‘knew’ me – at least to some degree.

Here was someone who’d not only read something that I’d written daily for years – but someone who had watched my videos, had noted when I’d become a Dad, had seen when I’d travelled, had observed my disappearances from the blog when I’d been unwell.

She didn’t know all this stuff because she was a crazy stalker (far from it) but because I’d allowed myself to blog in a way that was personal.

Not that ProBlogger is a ‘personal blog’ as such (not in the sense that I blog about the movies that I see, the things I eat or the everyday experiences that I have) – but I inject something of myself into this blog:

• I use my real name
• I share images of myself from time to time in posts and on key pages
• I share videos where people can see my face and hear my voice
• I include details of what’s happening in my life and family (usually in passing and by way of illustrating something)
• I try to use personal language (I blog in the first person most of the time)
• I write in a style that is similar to the way I would speak to a person face to face
• I tell stories about my experiences as they relate to my topic
• I use personal examples where I can to illustrate what I’m saying
• I’ve done live streaming question and answer sessions via video

By no means am I the most personal blogger going around. Everyday I see opportunities to be more personal in fact – but I’ve made a concerted effort over the years to inject something of myself into what I do – and it’s paid off.

It’s paid off not just in terms of being jumped on by strangers when overseas but also in creating the kind of site that people want to come back to, the kind of site that people recommend to others and also the kind of site that people want to spend their money on (remember my friend has bought everything I’ve released – she said she did so because they were ‘mine’).

I know being personal on a blog is not something that everyone feels comfortable with and that is in everyone’s style – but it is one thing that I’ve seen exhibited in many successful blogs.

How about you? Do you take a personal approach with your blog?

Blogging Tips : Don’t Give Up and Keep Cool

This is a guest post by Alexander Sandler. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

I want to share a story that had happened to me. Perhaps someone will find it useful in the future. If not, I hope that you will at least find it interesting.

I have a blog. I like writing, so I always had blogs, journals, web-sites, etc. My latest creation is a blog about programming and administrating Linux. Anyway it was all about writing something that someone else can find useful. This continued for about a year until one day I figured out that I can actually make some money from this hobby of mine.

I ran into some blogger who claimed to make 150$ a month from his blog. It sounded terrific considering the fact I spend 30$ a month and hours of my time, on the blog, without seeing a penny.

I read stories of people who made hundreds and even thousands of dollars a month from their web-sites, by simply writing and promoting their content. Internet is full such of stories. Albeit the hobby, there are things that I would love to have, but cannot afford from one reason or another. Earning them by doing something that I love to do, sounded like a dream becoming reality.

I began researching and found that monetizating your web-site is fairly easy. Opening AdSense account takes minutes. Finding right Wordpress plug-in and placing some ads with that plug-in takes some effort, but its not a big deal as well.

Obviously my early ads setup earned me just a few bucks a month. I began looking for ways to improve this status quo and found the answers I was looking for, with ease. Internet marketing is a very popular talk theme on the internet.

I found web-sites giving advice, free e-books and forums with live people that were ready to help. Amount of information available on the subject is truly overwhelming, but I managed to bring it down to just three things.

1. Find a niche that matches your interests the most and make a web-site on the subject. When writing, stick to your niche.
2. Think about your visitors. What do they want?
3. Experiment, experiment and experiment.

I thought to myself, what’s the best way to match these three bullets and eventually decided to do a couple of things. At a time, my web-site had more personal touch. I posted pictures I’ve made and talked about things that I myself care about. I decided to concentrate on main theme of my web-site and leave personal stuff aside.

I also changed the name of the web-site and added a new domain name. I changed the way visitors are navigating throughout the web-site and added links that allow navigation inside of large posts.

I did all that in one week. It didn’t take long time to see the results. Number of visitors to my web-site has dropped to nearly negative. It seemed like people are not visiting my web-site, but rather running away….

It took me over a month to fix the results of my experimenting frenzy. Apparently, everything I did, I did the wrong way. Adding domain name requires proper 301 redirect. I simply pointed new domain name to old web-site, making my entire web-site duplicate content. Apparently, Google can’t make a difference between bad guys and naive guys and immediately penalized my web-site.

At a time, I didn’t know how to use AdSense channels. So I removed the most effective ads. Changes in navigation didn’t come up very well neither. The idea was nice, but what I did was totally broken, and today, two months later I still find and fix navigation issues.

Obviously I fixed nearly everything. I fixed duplicate content issues and asked Google to reconsider my web-site. It takes them few weeks, but I waited patiently. I fixed navigation issues.

Monetization of the web-site is broken until this day and I am not in a rush to fix it. I’m learning my options and I hope I’ll make right choices when time comes. In the meantime, people are coming to see my web-site and I can live with just that for now.

I read somewhere that a crisis like this is a natural. You cannot build something good and solid without getting few bruises along the way. There are two very important lessons I’ve learned from this experience.

1. Don’t give up. Being strong and persistent is a fundamental part of succeeding in anything. This is especially true about web-sites, with their search engines issues, hackers and tough competition.

2. Keep your head cool. Don’t let others tell you what is the best for you. Think by yourself. Check things. Question everything. And never rush into trying new things without knowing and understanding all possible implications.

You can read more from Alexander on his blog, Alex on Linux - a blog about programming and administrating Linux.