Friday, May 25, 2007

Ten ways I use MyBlogLog

I've been using MyBlogLog for quite sometime now and there are so many reasons why I like it. For those who would like to find out how MyBlogLog can be of use to your website or blog, read on!
  1. Monitor your blog traffic. Its basic free package allows you to find out who visits your site, what pages they viewed, and where they end up going. If you are running advertisements in your website, this is one way of monitoring clicks!

  2. Find out who visits your website and vice versa. By clicking on their faces or names, you'll get to know them better such as their blog, friends, and community membership.

  3. Let your readers know what are the top links in your website. However, this is not working as often as it should.

  4. Create a community for every blog. Once you reach 10 members, your stats report will also indicate what sites have your members been clicking.

  5. It has a hot topic list that gives you a preview on what people have been interested in.

  6. You can also leave a message greeting a fellow member either in public or private. Although I have seen some who abusively left messages in all my blog community group trying to promote a blog. Good thing I can delete them. This is where I wish that the report spam feature will be enhanced.

  7. Shows the latest blog posts per blog. It is a good way to check your RSS if it is working.

  8. You can now also add tags in your home profile and at the blog level. This will allow you to see other blogs having the same tags too.

  9. Add co-authors to help you manage your community and keeping in touch with them.

  10. You can also add Twitter alerts and keep your readers posted on what you are reading.
Don't forget to add me as a friend at MyBlogLog!

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

How I Make Money from Blogs and Websites

I started with my online adventure as a freelance professional with my personal site - DigitalFilipino.com. The site will turn 8 years old this September 2007 and interesting to look back on its evolution. I often get asked how do I earn and sustain myself online. I freely share that information during talks but decided to make a post about it to inspire more bloggers, especially women, who are just beginning to blog or doing their online business.

Here's a ranking of my income sources. Note that this does not include my software process improvement related trainings, speaking engagements, consulting, website content management services, books, online workshops, reports, and research projects.
  1. Club membership. My website, club blog, job blog, and podcast focuses on getting readers/listeners to join the DigitalFilipino.com Club. It is an online community where members can download research reports, e-books, presentation materials, and participate in offline networking and training activities. For SME and corporate members, it also includes hands-on workshops, news dissemination, job postings, and free advertisement in DigitalFilipino.com. We currently have 108 members (as of end of April) where 31% are corporate and SME members. I'm gradually building a family of blogs as well for CMMI Philippines and Bead Club Philippines.
  2. Direct advertisement. We rolled this out on the last week of January. We started with 5 campaigns and gradually increasing. This gets place to some of our blogs and members of the ad network.
  3. Google AdSense. This gets place to blogs where there is no direct advertisement placed and was able to provide a regular income stream.
  4. Affiliate programs. No one has stand out so far but I am happy with ReviewMe and Implix (especially during Christmas season). Still experimenting with several others and will post them in the future.

For expenses, major ones include:

To get more inspiration, check out this compilation of blogger earnings.

I believe that the key to online sustainability is our willingness to challenge our ways of doing business and evolve in pursuit of market acceptance. This is especially true to those of us who develop new products and services that is not common in the market today in terms of packaging and approach.