Blogging Full-time Now

Yep. I suppose you can call me a professional blogger now. And I couldn't be happier.

I've started blogging a little bit over a year ago. Though I may have already learned quite a bit about blogs and blogging since then, I still feel like I have much more to soak up on.

This one particular blog of mine- "Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!"- started it all for me. At first, it was a catch-all kind of blog that had a little bit of everything. Then it wasn't too long until I've decided to position them towards a certain niche. So now I got at least eight different blogs right now, each about a specific topic.

I was really just having fun sharing whatever I knew- at first it was just among friends, then friends of friends. Then I was being sent CDs and DVDs to check out, just so I could write about them.

I never considered it seriously at first, but then the money started trickling in. Not even through Adsense just yet, since I haven't even made a serious effort promoting any of my blogs. It was usually more of companies asking me to help them set up their blogs, or to write for them.
And it wasn't much- first a couple bucks here, a few more there. Then just within a few weeks, I've noticed that the rates were going up, and I was actually getting more writing jobs through my blogs.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd let go of my day job to take on a couple of contracts which were, needless to say, very much worth my while. How often does it happen that you do get a job offer that pays a lot more than your current job, for you to do exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life?

It doesn't happen that often to me.

So here I am, happily blogging from the comfort of my own home. Plus I have all the time to do whatever the hell I want- go to the gym, do more business, read a book, travel, blog some more or just laze around at home.

It's all very exciting, really.

Again, I know I'm not the best blogger there is out there, or one with the bb-ranking blog, or even someone with the best content, but I think I'm in a better position now to help other people do more with their blogs. Heck, it's the wave of the future.

To all my fellow bloggers and friends who have been blogging, and to everyone who's read any of my blogs- thanks for inspiring me to blog better. This bold new step forward could never be possible without you.

We keep blogging, and we'll help others keep blogging as well.

Cheers, everyone!

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Blogs Give You More Bang For Your Buck!

Here's an interesting read on Abe Olandres' Yugatech: a blog entry on how advertisers might actually be getting a better return-of-investment on their media buy with blog advertising.

In a recent presentation he made, Abe compared the performance of ads on his blog (YugaTech) to four other sites that carries the same advertising: two news sites (which he designates as sites A & B), a forum (site C), and a portal (site D).

With this mix of websites, he stacked them up against each other and compared the following five attributes:

• Total Traffic Contribution. Percentage traffic share (leading into the advertiser's landing page?) from each site, considering the total combined online traffic of all five.
  
• New Visitors. The percentage of unique visitors on a blog clicking an advertiser's ad.
  
• Page Views Per Visit.
  
• Average Time on Site.
• Bounce Rate. The percentage of people leaving the referred site right away.
  

Here's what Abe had to say about the Total Traffic Contribution:

Of the top 5 referring sites, my blog (YugaTech) was the 3rd highest referrer with 19.33% of the total traffic contributed by all five. The first two were the news sites that sent in 39.05% and 23.88%, the forum site sent only 11.56% and the portal 6.19%.
To think that one of the news sites had (at least) 192 times more number of monthly pageviews than this blog, placing 3rd in terms of referrals ain’t bad at all. Too bad, I couldn’t get any click-thru-rates.

According to the blog entry, what surprised Abe more were the results of the other metrics: New Visitors, Page Views per Visit, and Average Time on Site.

New Visitors

Site A - 80.5% new visitors
Site B - 69.5% new visitors
Site C - 64.5% new visitors
Site D - 78.0% new visitors
YugaTech - 45% new visitors

Depending on how you look at it, either this blog doesn’t refer more unique visitors or visitors keep clicking on the ads more than once (which is good right?).

Page Views per Visit

Site A - 2.17 pageviews
Site B - 2.06 pageviews
Site C - 1.78 pageviews
Site D - 2.64 pageviews
YugaTech - 6.12 pageviews

Average Time on Site

Site A - 2.24 minutes
Site B - 2:38 minutes
Site C - 1:35 minutes
Site D - 3:07 minutes
YugaTech - 10:17 minutes

It only means one thing — the blog drives more quality traffic because they actually use the referred site more. The figures above shows us 3 to 5 times more site usage by visitors coming from the blog.

Lastly, Abe shares a little more about Bounce Rates:

Site A - 60%
Site B - 60%
Site C - 75%
Site D - 56%
YugaTech - 34%

Bounce rates indicate the percentage of people leaving the referred site right away. So the lower the bounce rates, the better since it means visitors are sticking to the site. Here’s two words to describe that — targeted traffic.

Now that's interesting- more compelling reasons for just about any company to invest more in blogs- for quality content that hits your targeted market segment! Abe's final word on the subject matter (for now):

I do not know how much advertising money was spent on all the 5 sites (including this blog) but from the limited data I gathered, this blog only got around 2% of the total ad spendings (I’m pretty sure it’s lower).

If we just go by the raw number of visitors, spending 2% of your ad budget to get 19% of the traffic (and high quality traffic at that) is a great ROI.

The hard numbers above will show you that blog advertising has a much higher Return of Investment (ROI). So next time you’re thinking of doing online advertising, do consider blogs in your budget. =)

Thanks for that highly informative post, Abe. You can check out more on him on YugaTech.com, for more of Technology news and reviews in the Philippines.

Hope you all found that useful as much as I did. Cheers, everyone!

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Blogs Make For Great Business!

More than ever, companies are looking for more cost-effective ways to promote themselves. Traditional means of advertising are alright- but modern-day marketing practices say that there are so much more non-traditional ways to get that brand message across, and cut through all the ad clutter.

As somebody who does IMC for a living- what Jay Conrad Levinson preaches in his book, "Guerilla Marketing", is pretty much spot on: no single advertising medium works on its own, but marketing combinations work.

And here's something that can synergize very well with just about any promotional campaign you have on hand: blogs.

Blogs are the new magazines, newspapers and books; thanks to more easily accessible (read: free!) user-friendly publishing tools such as Blogspot (which hosts this particular blog), Wordpress, LiveJournal, and so many others, anyone with a PC, and internet connection, and a desire to share anything can now be author, publisher and editor.

Just like FM radio, it easily synergizes with just about anything- of course, one huge advantage is that New Media (blogs included) costs so much less than traditional media. Plus, blogs are paperless. And I'm for anything that uses less paper. Much less paper! Save the environment, everyone!

Which is why blog networks are all the rage these days- we've seen a number of them come up over the past couple years: b5Media, Weblogs, Inc., The DailyPixel Network, Know More Media, Creative Weblogging, Content Quake, and locally, here in the Philippines, The Bayanihan Blog Network.

In fact, now's a great time to start blogging- just check out all the job listings here on Problogger jobs, or you can go ahead and just Google it. You'll find lots of jobs out there if you're considering a career as a pro-blogger. Go ahead and pick some, why dont'cha?

The BlogBank is the Philippines' first blog advertising network- it's so new, they've just launched this week. If you check out their webpage, they have this to say:

The largest circulating newspaper in the Philippines produces 250,000 copies a day. Assuming a pass–on rate of 3 per copy, a newspaper ad gives you 750,000 impressions.

BlogBank gives you one million ad impressions.

This is great news for Advertisers- particularly those targeting the internet-friendly Philippine market. Also great news for publishers- those who blog- because it means that there's actually a market out there for quality content and quality blogs.

So keep on blogging! If you're someone who just started getting into the blogging lifestyle- it pays off (at least it can, eventually), as long as you're passionate about sharing your thoughts and your experiences, even more so if you write well, and write regularly.

If you're running a business, you now have something new to consider when developing your promotional campaigns for the next several months- now is also the time to maybe get into blogging yourself; start putting up your own corporate blog and attach it to your website, and see how much it can do for your business.

See you around in the blogosphere! Cheers, everyone!

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Preparation + Opportunity = Success

I remembered it hit me in the face when I saw it on an E! True Hollywood Story or something. It was a story about Keenen Ivory Wayans. You may know him as a successful and talented actor, comedian, director and producer- but for me, I will forever associate him with one of my most favorite sketch comedy shows of all time, "In Living Color".

Shout-out to my sister for getting me Season 1 on DVD, by the way. Great stuff.

Now from what I remember (I could be wrong, so bear with me), Keenen had always wanted to be a cast-member of Saturday Night Live- which has always been the benchmark for TV sketch comedy, even to this day. For some reason, he never made it into the show- but it didn't keep him from honing his craft, working on writing and directing and producing.

Read the rest of this entry here on my other blog, "Renzie on Blogging", a blog on blogs, bloggers and The Blogging Lifestyle.

Cheers, everyone!

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Building Your Online Authority Through Your Blogs.

Even as I write this blog on blogging, I know I'm hardly an authority on the topic, knowing that there are so many others who have come before me- bloggers, and various other blogs about building a better blog.

The beauty of blogging, however, is that everything you write about is all about you and your experiences. Who knows? Maybe in a few years, I might actually just turn out to be a blogging guru of sorts. Or some authority figure in some other way.

Read the rest of this article on my other blog, "Renzie on Blogging", right here.

Cheers, everyone!

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Tips For Bloggers.

I suppose it doesn't matter whether you've only just begun or if you've been at it for a while. There are some rather basic things we can all come back to from time to time. Here are a few tips to consider if you're seriously into blogging.

1. Write now. When you have the urge to hammer away at a keyboard and churn out some words- go right ahead- there's no better time than right now!

2. Write regularly. It's all about setting a rhythm- not only for your readers, but also for yourself!

3. Focus. Know what you want to write about and stick to it. If you want to write about something else, well you can always have another blog :)

4. Let your personality show. Your blog is all about you!

5. Write for your target audience. Can't please everybody. At least appeal to the kind of people you want to keep coming back.

6. Offer something fresh. This is where the effort comes in. Or sheer luck. You never know when an idea is going to be big, right? So keep those ideas comin'.

7. Offer something useful. It's great to come up with something interesting. But it's even better to come up with something useful.

8. Be neighborly. If you want others to read your blog, read others' blogs too. Drop a comment, interact and even cross-promote! All about the linkage, baby!

9. Instead of writing long, looongg paragraphs, stick to short ones. Makes it a lot easier to read, and it's easier on the eyes.

10. People love lists!

Read the full version of this article here on my other blog, "Renzie on Blogging".

Cheers, everyone!

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Blogs, Bloggers and Blogging.

Blogs (short for Web-Logs), are essentially online showcases of a person, usually posted for all the world to see.

Blogging is just like writing something on your journal, except that this journal is now online, and that (depending on how much you want to share) it is available for people to interact with.

When you do maintain a blog, you are in effect, a blogger. And there are thousands of bloggers out there all over the world, blogging on so many different things.

Read the rest of this article on my other blog, "Renzie on Blogging".

Cheers, everyone!

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Build Your Portfolio.

I was with a friend the other day, and just like me, she's just started blogging recently.

So we've been talking about how blogging can open so many doors for anyone: not only is it a great way to practice writing, and general English use, it's also a springboard for learning other cool stuff like internet marketing, SEO, programming, digital photography and graphics.

So after a while we started talking about what our plans were for blogging- basically, exactly how do we see ourselves as bloggers.

Right off the bat, she said she wanted to write for other companies- which really wasn't a bad idea. After all, one of the companies I worked with recently paid their copywriters quite the hefty sum as long as they churned out quality material. I'm down with that; writing for a company helps give you discipline and structure, and helps you build a body of work.

Read the rest of this article here on my other blog- a blog on blogs and blogging- "Renzie on Blogging".

Cheers, everyone!

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Blogging My Way To Work.

Currently, my everyday commute from home to work takes about an hour in a cab. I usually take the time to do my phonecalls, prepare my to-do list for the day, or scribble down a few notes.

As some of you may have already read, I have acquired for myself one of these sweet Asus Eee PCs. Which means I could actually take out this sexy little laptop and do some work on the way to work.

Or blog while I'm on my way to work.

I simply can't stress it enough: when you're a blogger, if and when the urge to write hits you- by Bob, you better get down to writing.

Thoughts are very volatile stuff. You could have a nice idea, or a well-worded insight, or some rant or rave you have working in your mind at the moment, but as you may have noticed- that can all evaporate just as quickly as it was formed in your head.

Thus, the urgency to blog as soon as you can. Can't get any fresher than that, right?

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Quelling the Self-Doubt Inside You.

When you're just starting out your very own blogging career- just like me- you can easily get overwhelmed jumping from one blog/site to another.

As blogs and blogging have steadily gained popularity, you'll find a wide variety of material out there- stuff you'd like to read, stuff you'd like to comment on, stuff you'd like to link to and share to your friends.

Take for example this great read on this year's most successful Pinoy probloggers. It was a brilliant post. The fact that I have actually been able to meet some of these guys was just, for me, awesome.

Then you realize- damn, my blog is nowhere near these other guys' blogs! So you suddenly get hit by a wave of self-doubt and get rattled by the realization of how puny you look next to a whole bunch of other blogs.

At least, that's how I feel.

Read the rest of this article here, on my other blog, "Renzie on Blogging".

Cheers, everyone!

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