If I asked you what the #1 problem is for you when it comes to your blog or internet business, what would you say?
Now, obviously everybody reading this will have their own answer. But, odds are, I can guess. 🙂 I’ve been helping bloggers online for 4 years now – was a tech blogger for 10 years before that – so I have a pretty good feeling that I can peg it for a good majority of you.
And that problem is…
Since when did internet business or internet marketing become a different kind of thing from what people have been doing for hundreds of years?
The Internet is a new medium, yes. But, on that medium, we conduct BUSINESS. And we conduct MARKETING.
Over the last few days, I’ve told you that I am making some changes to my company. I’m not yet going to divulge every detail of that, but I AM going to tell you why I’m doing it.
It is because the “make money blogging” space that I’m in is inherently BROKEN.
… and the “gurus” of this space have failed.
You put it out there and…. hardly anybody notices. It is kind of frustrating, too, because you poured your heart and soul into all that writing.
People should really read your stuff. What’s wrong here?
I was sitting there on the aft deck of the Carnival Paradise. We were in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Cruise with the wife – no kids, no Internet. Nothing but time to chill out.
I went into brainstorming mode and let the ideas happen. I sat there with a notebook and a pen… and just… brainstormed.
What came out of it were some changes to my company…
Sometimes, people like me can’t help but wonder why others read our advice and don’t actually apply it.
Case in point…
A recent survey I ran over the weekend shows that 56.4% of bloggers (at least in my audience) don’t engage in any kind of email marketing.
It has been said before in other circles:
You can’t control what you don’t measure.
This statement is true. It means that if you don’t track something and keep tabs on it, you are not in control of it.
Many people tend to think a statement like this is primarily relevant to executives and people who run a company. However, that is limited thinking. The truth is that this statement is relevant to everybody. To you.
And I’ll take it a step further…
I just recently finished recording about 20 video blog evaluations for people (a bonus offer I had put out there that I was following through on). All in all, it took me probably close to 5 hours to record all of these videos. And, after doing so, I noticed something.
I’m seeing a LOT of the same mistakes being made over and over again.
This isn’t to say that there is only a single way to do things. Surely, there are probably people who would look at this very blog and disagree with some things (and that’s fine). But, my experience in this business speaks for something. Simply put, if you want to build traffic, keep traffic, and make money with a blog – there are certain things you want to not do.
So, after all of these reviews, I want to lay out what I believe are the most common mistakes – in no particular order.
It seems to me that I’ve never seen a code of ethics for bloggers. Have you? I figured I’d write one.