I stumbled across a post about two Internet marketing blogs at IttyBiz regarding two bloggers who live at doshdosh, Maki and Entrepreneurs Journey, Yaro.
I’m not going into what the post said, merely pointing it out as the kick start to this post.
Two blogs, both quite different in style, some shared objectives and some different objectives. But both are successful. Yaro has a subscription-only-see-it-if-you-pay forum/blog where he teaches how to blog. Maki on the other hand has a few adverts to pay the bills and a few other sites dotted around the place.
The two blogs have excellent advice for someone wanting to make money out of blogging and wanting to market their blog on the internet. If someone asks me, “how do I make money blogging?”. I would say read both these blogs from start to finish, along with problogger.net and then come back and ask the same question.
But, personally I would say I am a Maki man, rather than a Yaro man. I find Maki raises more questions than he answers and I like that. There is a point where you want a little more than ABC, a more in depth look at what is going on without being sold one of those Online Marketing courses which contain 15,000 CD’s, with a book the length of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and has a sales letter with the “But wait, there’s more”.
And in the end I honestly don’t think such courses are what most people really need. Most people would get more benefit from being bashed about the head with a huge e-book than reading it.
I think marketing at the people who buy the 15,000 CD marketing courses will always make money because you are selling to a hungry crowd. I have even bought a few of these types of courses, and whilst I can say I learned, the lesson was not what they were teaching. The lesson was that the same amount of money could buy me a fantastic library from Amazon containing the wit and wisdom of the greatest minds in marketing ever.
Sure, these forest killing courses could teach you a few tips and mechanical aspects, but the real thing to learn is to change how you perceive things.
It is not what you know, it’s how you think.
And that’s why I like Maki’s blog more, it makes me think. Whilst Yaro simply gives me the ABC, which as I have said, is important but at some point in your blogging career you just don’t need it anymore.
It’s the same with Darren Rowse at problogger.net, I think I spent 2005 and 2006 reading everything he wrote, but there comes a point of graduation. When you no longer need the “Top Ten Tips to Write a Blog Post”.
I think it’s important to know that different blogs provide different things and at some point, you may no longer need to spend your time reading, rather, you need to be writing.
Again, I would recommend any of the bloggers mentioned.
This blog for instance, has a very tightly focussed audience, I really only aim for a few hundred readers a week and is a lead generator for linkbait clients. Although that is changing, but more of that later.