The surgery went well - no pain or complication so far. I can see well enough to drive, though not at night. Lights at night give me trouble, as do bright lights in general. Everything’s a little hazy, though they say that will improve. A few weeks from now and all should be perfect. Life is good.
One last post before I sign off for the next few days. I finished up a project I’ve been working on for the past few days - a comprehensive Adsense guide. The guide is pretty complete, and gives a good picture into Adsense and where to begin. Let me know what you guys think.
I’m going to have LASIK surgery performed tomorrow ( September 14th ) , so I won’t be online for a few days. Although, I don’t post everyday, so many of you may not notice my absence. The doctors recommend to avoid a lot of reading or television for the days following the procedure, so I’m sure heavy computer use is out. I was hoping I would be able to catch up on my reading & writing, since I have a few days off, but no such luck. Anyway, I’m tired of the hassles involved with wearing glasses, and my prescription requires me to buy the fanciest kind around, which translates into $400-$500 every year for new glasses. The LASIK procedure will set me back about $3300, but it will pay for itself over time. For the curious out there, here’s a little overview of the procedure.
I’ll come in and be given Valium ( a sedative ) so I will mellow out and hopefully not interfere with the procedure. One at a time, the doctor will clamp my eyelids open, then shoot the first laser in and cut a flap in my outer cornea. Once the flap is cut, he’ll peel it back, and shine the second laser inside, and reshape my inner cornea ( the messed up part ) , which should fix my vision. Then he will close the flap, which apparently heals itself, and repeat on the other eye. Afterwards I’m supposed to go home and sleep for 3-4 hours. Supposedly the pain is minimal, though I’ll update you after I’m able to resume computer usage.
Anyway, I’m a little bit scared out of my mind. LASIK freaks me out, completely. I’m paying someone a lot of money to shoot lasers into my eyes - something I avoid at all costs even when I don’t have to pay. So, to my readers, I ask this - if you are religious folks, please keep me in my prayers. I don’t want to end up blind. If you’re not a religious type, then please think of me just the same.
Why haven’t you changed the world with your blogging? Why aren’t you pulling in 6 figures in your online venture? Why are you still working your day job and moonlighting as a blogger? There has to be something holding you back. There must be a reason why you haven’t yet had the success that you want. And there is. But it’s not what you think it is.
You probably think you haven’t been successful because you haven’t caught a big break. Or perhaps you’re still in the sandbox, so it’s really Google’s fault for not indexing you properly. Maybe you just can’t get people to link to your site.
If you’re thinking along these lines, you are thinking completely wrong. The only thing holding you back, is you. Nothing more than that. If you haven’t yet been successful, it’s because you don’t want it badly enough. If you truly want success, then you will do all the things that you know will make you successful. You’ll be subscribed to the best blogging tips blogs ( like this one - shameless plug, I know ) , you’ll writing fantastic content that gets links all by itself, you’ll participate in the blogging community to get your name out there. You will come up with some amazing viral marketing idea. If, and only if, you truly want to be successful, then do everything right. Follow the steps, follow the guidelines, and you will achieve your goals.
Do you want it enough to work for it?
Everywhere you look, more and more people are jumping aboard the video blogging bandwagon. Matt Cutts, Google’s own SEO expert, has done quite a few video blog posts lately. Just this morning, I read a post at Problogger about blogging tutorials - in video format, called Tubetorial. Some are saying that video blogging is the future of blogging, and that one day that will be the only way to read blogs.
I think that video blogging is more of a fad, or perhaps a niche market. Some people do enjoy the personalization that video blogging offers - so I’m fairly certain that video blogging is here to stay. However, I’m not convinced that there’s a big market for these types of blogs. You are probably wondering why I say this. Why would a person rather read paragraphs rather than watch an entertaining video? Don’t more people watch the news rather than read the newspaper?
Video blogging, by it’s very nature, isn’t a very friendly format. For example - I cannot watch video blog posts from my Treo smartphone - that’s a real problem. Often that’s how I access my RSS reader, or individual blogs. You Tube and Google Videos don’t yet work on many mobile devices, and certainly not efficiently. I also cannot view video blog posts at work. Let’s face it - many people spend some of their work day doing personal things - such as reading blogs. Video and sound do not lend themselves to inconspicuousness. ( I think that’s the biggest word I’ve ever used in a sentence. ) For those people not fortunate enough to have internet access at home, video blogs are not very appropriate for places like public libraries, and other public internet access areas.
In closing, video blogging is an interesting trend - but it’s not the future of blogging. Good old fashioned text is - because it works.
Niche blogging has been all the rage for about as long as I can remember. You pick a niche, and stay tightly focused within that area, your area of expertise. For many, this is an excellent strategy. It helps you stay focused, and blogs such as these tend to draw very targeted traffic. The problem with niche blogs is the volume of traffic. Since they are about a very specific topic, niche blogs tend to have less people looking for them, and less people interested. That translates into lower traffic numbers - less people will be reading your blog.
The problem then, becomes deciding what is and isn’t a good niche to choose. When deciding the theme of your blog, you want to make sure you don’t limit yourself too much. Writing about hamsters may be a good niche. A blog about albino hamsters may be too specific, and prevent you from reaching a very wide audience. A blog about albino hamsters with 3 legs is definitely too specific. There aren’t likely to be many people out there who are very interested in that topic.
There is no magic way to know what will be or what won’t be a successful niche. It’s all up to you, the blogger, and how much effort you put forth. Just do some research, use some common sense, and pick your niche carefully.
As promised, here is a makeshift piechart ( Thank you MS Paint! ) showing my blogging earnings from August, 2006. I’ve chosen not to display hard numbers for now, though that may change in the future. My plan for the time being is to show a piechart with each revenue stream present, to show how much of my income comes from each source. I’ll also add a progressive char to show increase / decrease percentage earnings from the month prior.
As you can see, the vast majority of my income comes from Google Adsense at this point. Text Link Ads is a small, but growing part of that income. I did not earn any money from Chitika this month, mainly because I redesigned my Smartphone Reviews blog and haven’t yet incorporated the Chitika ads. I probably will at some point, because although they have never been a great earner for me, I think they are a good addition to a product type blog nonetheless.
So, how about you - where does your online income come from?
Today was a good day for blogging income. I received a check from Google for my July 2006 Adsense earnings. If that wasn’t good enough for one day, I also received my payment for August from Text Link Ads. That’s probably my favorite thing about TLA - they’re amazingly prompt. There is no waiting period at all - you’re paid on the first of the month, for the month prior. That is fantastic service.
I’m going to attempt to borrow from Darren’s ( of Problogger fame ) playbook and post a piechart of my online earnings here. I plan on making this an ongoing effort, provided the interest is there. I won’t be posting hard numbers, but rather a breakdown of where my income is derived from, and percentage increases. I’ll make my best effort to post this today, however it may be tomorrow before it shows up.
Several of my blogs have been experiencing a horrific amount of downtime recently. Most have been down for several hours each day, for the last few weeks. My hosting company has had a string of bad luck recently, and it’s been very frustrating. However, they have fantastic support, and I believe everything should be back to normal now. Keep your fingers crossed.
This is an old adage that applies to blogging very powerfully. Less is more. What do I mean? Look around at the blogs you read on a daily basis. Many of them come full of all kind of goodies - calendars, social bookmarking icons ( sometimes they include ALL of them! ) , Digg buttons, blogrolls that go on forever, tons of pictures, RSS subscriptions buttons, advertising, and more. I can see you nodding your heads - you’ve seen it. I’d venture to guess that some of your own blogs have some clutter too. We’ll work on that later.
People decide very quickly once visiting your site whether they want to read it or not. Everyone has loaded up a page only to see dozens of icons and eyesores, only to click “back” as soon as possible. Do you want people to react that way when when visiting your site? Sit down, take a long, hard look at your site. What features could you do without? Do you need a blogroll with 67 entries? Is it absolutely necessary to have 12 RSS aggregator buttons on your sidebar? Think about what contributes to your site’s appeal, and remove the rest. Just take it off! Your site will load faster, you’ll use less bandwidth, and your readership will grow. Try it. Read more about minimalism on blogs at more minimal.
