That title came from a module which was part of a three week residential operations analyst course I went on back in the 1980s when I was working in IT for a UK Bank.

The course was, of course about becoming an Ops Analyst and entailed studying various analytical methodologies that applied to IT operations in those days. Part of that course was centred around a fictitious company that used IT to handle its day to day working and inventory. The widgets, grommets and thingamajigs were the fictitious products it produced and distributed and we were charged, in a role-playing situation and in teams, to work out how to make the company run more efficiently and economically.

That was before the idea came about that simply getting rid of three quarters of your loyal and hard working workforce would make your company a ton more economical…

What has any of this got to do with blogging in the twenty first century?

Well, as a blogger and internet marketer, I still use some of those old ideas to run my online business as economically as I possibly can. That’s out of necessity as well as being an interesting challenge, so it’s one I enjoy racking my brains over in the constant and perennial scramble to make this online business profitable – and some.

When you put your economy hat on, your mode of thinking alters drastically. You go into survival mode and begin looking for every trick, technique and means for making money out of nothing but your own guile!

And every free product, system or service you can get your hands on!

What actually inspired this article was in fact a widget. One widget in particular, actually. The one sitting in the sidebar furthest from the top of the page – yes, the WidgetBucks widget. The reason it inspired an article all to itself is not because I want to promote it – far from it, in fact. It is to put my own two penn’orth in here.

I installed this widget on several of my blogs about two months ago when it first hit the blogosphere and thought they’d make me a nice little sideline. All they made me was angry because they were irritatingly slow to load up and tended to clog up the smooth scrolling of my pages until they had completely loaded. After over a month on my higher traffic sites and zero money to show for their trouble, I started to remove them, one by one. Two or three still remain in place (only because I haven’t gotten around to removing them too), but I found they simply didn’t have the range of products that I could reasonably display on my sites and expect to get clicks from.

Maybe the product range has improved now, so I don’t want to put anyone off if you’re thinking of trying it out. It is *free* after all and I believe they have increased the load up speed (although I didn’t notice much of a change there).

The moral to this story I suppose is that of course you should try all the free stuff that comes your way because you might just hit upon a winner for your particular site or niche. But don’t expect miracles whatever the sales blurb might say.

Producers of products or services like this want you to use their free resource, of course, because if you can make some money out of it, then they will make a whole lot more!

Terry Didcott
Author and Begetter of Blogging Web 2.0

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Filed under: Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

There’s a new trend sweeping across the blogosphere right now. I’m sure you have already seen it, whether you realized it or not. It’s a new way to make money from your blog without putting in any extra work. I have recently started using it on my blog and you can even find it on this blog.

So what is this mysterious new money making method? It’s a way for people to pay you for a link on your website/blog. You can find it at www.scratchback.com or look over in the right column of this blog and you will see a box with links that say, “Are You in My Top Spots?” If you click one of those links you will find that you can pay to have your link featured there.

The amount varies from blog to blog because the owner gets to set the price. Do you see where I am going with this? You can put these boxes on your blog for free and people will pay you to have their link featured. The highest amount I have seen anyone charging so far was just $10 per link, so you won’t get rich using this method but it is a very quick and easy way to add another income stream to your blog.

These are also a very effective and extremely cheap way for you to advertise your blog or website. I’ve already bought a couple of them on high traffic blogs and one of my links is the 2nd most clicked link on that blog right now. And I only paid $2 for the spot. Talk about getting some bang for your buck!

Whether you are looking for another way to make money from your blog or another way to advertise your blog, I recommend taking advantage of scratchback.

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Free Money Making Advice

Filed under: Blogging | 9 Comments »

Unfortunately it had to resolve to this blog post. I had to switch off automatic guest blogging registration as we got hammered with spam sign ups. These have all been deleted and it isn’t possible to register automatically anymore.

However for those writers/bloggers who want to participate in this blog to gain exposure to themselves and having a chance at winning some cash can contact us to ask for a writing profile. This will hopefully get rid of all the spam idiots and allow honest users to become part of our growing community.

Also, please do make sure to read our guest blogger rules page to avoid disappointment.

We already have some top writers and bloggers on board and it is great to get different bloggers sharing their views on topics regarding Internet marketing.

Anyway, this is just a short update on what’s happening.

Monika Mundell

Owner and Author of Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: guest blogging , blogging , rules , guest blogging registration

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I have received quite a few emails of late where bloggers ask me about the quickest way to make money online. I have to say that this question is one that has the potential to do two things to me.

• It irates me
• It makes me really sad

Let me explain why; firstly, there is so much information already on the Internet regarding this subject. And yet, people seem too lazy to do a Google search on the topic to find answers. Or else they have read that there is no such way of making money fast legally but they choose to ignore this fact because they are either ignorant or so hungry for a fast dollar that they throw all caution and gut feeling into the wind.

So please, if you are new to the Internet and desperate to make money, understand that you will not become rich overnight. You need to practice self discipline and patience.

To do this you have to play the lottery and hope that you will be the lucky “one in a million” or whatever the stats are.

You need to become a master of self discipline and patience and yes, it does require practice. None of use is immune to the feeling of impatience, desperation, hopeless despair and being totally lost of what to do next. Believe me, it happens to all of us.

But the difference between those who stay and those who disappear is that the first lot manages their patience. They have come to learn that winning requires time and work and so that’s what they do.

Everyday!

Take one day at the time and do whatever you can for your dream, business, blog. You don’t need to compete for a medal with other bloggers. Concentrate on yourself and your aspirations.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What do I want to achieve?
2. What are my short term/medium term and long term goals?
3. What is the foremost important thing I must concentrate on to achieve my individual goals?
4. What can I do today to grow my business? What is my schedule?
5. Am I having fun?
6. Am I following my passion, or do I feel inclined to do this because…?
7. Did I do enough today to the best of my abilities, or can I improve tomorrow?
8. Which is the most important goal I need to achieve today/ this week/ this month?
9. Am I investing enough resources/ time into my business
10. Who could help me with my biggest issues?

See, I am not a very patient person myself. Actually I’m probably not even qualified to talk about patience here as I clearly don’t have much of it. At least when it comes to wanting things. - I always want them yesterday.

So naturally when I started online I had to retrain my patience and focus on one step at the time. I find that when I tend to look at the big picture it is often overwhelming so I always end up breaking it down into smaller segments.

I have to say that I’m learning. The one thing that keeps me going is that I have always understood that being successful in business takes time, money, effort, work and passion. I guess I do have an entrepreneurial mind set as nobody had to tell me this.

But then, there is always … patience.

Monika Mundell

Owner and Author of Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: patience , blogging

Filed under: Blogging | No Comments »

On her previous post Imagine Success Was Already Yours, Monika stated that we should “focus on the fact that we can all have success.” In fact, the whole article was built around this concept.

Do you agree with Monika?

Although that wasn’t the first motivational post I’ve read in my life (far from it), I confess I couldn’t stay indifferent to it. I just had to write this follow up.

Why?

Because I’ve had enough of articles warning me not to get into this or that market, for “it is crowded, saturated and you wouldn’t stand a chance against your competitors.” This is especially true when it comes to Internet marketing and meta-blogging: many authors will try to prove they are your “friends” by telling you to stay away from the topics that have made them successful.

I believe some of those advisers are sincere. They really think their niches are saturated and you’d better put your effort into something else.

But others seem to be much more worried about themselves. The message their articles convey sounds like this: “Read my stuff, click on my affiliate links, buy my products, but absolutely do not dare to compete against me!” Not to mention those boastful guys and girls who insinuate that “I am great; you are not and will never be.”

Now let’s get back to Monika’s sentence:

“Focus on the fact that we can all have success.”

How do you feel about it? Let me put it differently: how do you feel about the contrast between her encouraging words and the skeptical/cynical/greedy points of view cited above?

Join in this debate by leaving your comments.

Karen Zara

Filed under: Blogging, Guest Blogging, Internet Marketing | 12 Comments »

Since being online I noticed a common trend between all bloggers regardless of heritage or niche. Karen mentioned in her last guest post here that we shouldn’t feel guilty as bloggers if we fail to post daily. In fact this strategy has been endorsed by other heavyweights in recent times.

It is interesting to see that bloggers like Maki have changed their own approach to the frequency of blog posting in recent times. Whilst he was blogging about volume before, he has now resorted to posting every less frequent. And it seems to work for him. Maki says that by focusing on content and quality rather than on frequency we don’t need to push out content that is worthless. In his post about strategic blogging attempts he states that he has adapted a more relaxed approach to posting content because he chooses to adapt to a new idea.

It is never too late to change strategies as this clearly shows that even the most visited blogs do this from time to time. Blogging is a journey of growth and implementing what we have learned to better our own blogs in the process.

Quality is therefore more important than anything. It always has been and it always will. Just take all those crappy splogs that appear at every blogging corner right now. They won’t stand a chance and they won’t last.

These people are simply dumb and very lazy people who aren’t even deserving the name of blogger. They steal and hope to make money doing so.

Court has written an excellent blog post about what to do to drive visitors away from your blog. It is titled “the worst post in the universe” and justly so.

But regardless of this, Court wrote this to open up our eyes in terms of what we should never do as a blogger. Please do take the time and read it. I admit, it is annoying and does take time and you might even get a headache in the end. But it will be the best headache you ever had.

By focusing on quality rather than quantity we will have a better chance at gaining new and happy readers. I never realized this until I became serious about my blogging. That is when I started my Writers Manifesto blog. I don’t care if it takes me 1 year to build the blog to be something that is recognized amongst bloggers. But I do care to write informative and helpful content that helps others to avoid making the same dumb mistakes I did.

If you do the same, then I am confident that one day we will meet in person at a blogging convention because that is were I intend to go.

Hope to see you there.

Monika Mundell

Owner and Author of Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: quality of blog posts , blogging web 2.0 , blogging , quality vs quantity

Filed under: Blogging | 2 Comments »

Do you feel guilty when you don’t update your blog? Are you afraid your readers will forget about you and/or hate you for not offering them new articles? Do you believe a good blog is necessarily a daily updated one?

Stop right now.

For a long, long time, it was assumed that a blog should be updated every single day of the year. If you searched for blogging tips, you would find dozens of articles on this subject, and (almost) everyone seemed to agree that there was no other way to go about this. A day without an update would be seen as a lost day, a lost opportunity to retain your readers, get new ones and make more money. Many bloggers would write dramatic posts informing that they had seen a significant decrease in traffic because they hadn’t updated their blogs for two or three days in a row. At the end of such posts they would invariably promise to their readers — and to themselves — that they wouldn’t let that happen again.

I don’t mean that those bloggers lied when they stated they’d get less traffic whenever they failed to update everyday. I just want to draw your attention to their “dramatic” attitude about it. Was it really necessary?

There are some basic things you must understand if you don’t want to let your own blog become a burden to you. One of them is: traffic varies. There’s no such thing as having a fixed number of visitors every single day of the year. Another one: quantity may be good, but quality is even better. A third one: while you may try to have both quantity and quality, as time goes by it gets harder and harder. And a reminder: some things in life are out of our control (e. g. illnesses, family issues, blackouts, just to name a few). Most of your readers certainly are aware of this fact, as everyone is subject to such problems. Therefore, there will be times when you just won’t be able to do what you planned, no matter how much you want to.

Haven’t you noticed the increasing amount of articles recommending that you don’t update daily if you can’t maintain your posts’ quality? This seems to be a new trend in the blogosphere. Of course, this is a sort of controversial topic. Many bloggers still insist that it’s mandatory that you post fresh content as often as possible, otherwise you’ll risk losing readers and money.

But do you want a friendly piece of advice? If I were you, I’d take advantage of that recent blogging trend.

Don’t feel guilty. Learn to accept some things just as they are, and relax. You won’t be hated by your visitors if you aren’t able to post daily. Some may eventually forget about your blog, that’s right, but the Internet is vast and you can always try to win new readers. So, don’t panic.

Karen Zara

Filed under: Blogging, Guest Blogging | 8 Comments »