I rank for few keywords related to various online things related to Sri Lanka. So everyday I get few mails inquiring about various things. I don’t respond to most of the for various reasons. Since the number of emails are growing I decided to write this post to discuss why I will never reply to some of your mails and also to show how to write an email asking for help. Although this is mostly based on emails I receive, you can apply these things whenever you are mailing someone. Some of these things are so basic, it is very easy to rectify them. And following these steps will significantly increase your chances of getting a response from me. [Read more…]
Miscellaneous Archives...
Miscellaneous Ramblings
Internet Marketing Specialist, Try Explaining that to People
Last Monday I started working for Cinergix as an Internet marketing specialist. In a country like Sri Lanka where it is hard enough explaining what a software engineer does, it is very tricky to explain Internet marketing specialist designation. The first question is usually about the company and what they do. I explain they create online diagramming tools. Many have no idea what that means, and some get it after mentioning that it is similar to Microsoft Visio. The next question is what I do in the company. I mention search engine optimization, social media marketing, blogging etc and they mostly get a blank look in there faces. Very few even bother to ask and clarify what the words mean. In a country like Sri Lanka where the Internet penetration levels are just above 10%, its no wonder most people have trouble understanding these terms [Read more…]
The Dream of Blogging for Money
Today I stumbled upon a great picture that summarizes the dream of making money from your blog. Making money from blogging is possible but it isn’t easy or instant . Enjoy the cartoon 🙂 .
Dream of blogging and the reality ( click to enlarge )
Do let me know what you think about the cartoon in the comments section
I didn’t publish this post to discourage people from blogging. Blogging is a legitimate way to make money online and it’s fairly easy to scale to very high levels as well. Having said that I come across many bloggers who have started blogging for the sole purpose of making money from their blog.
In my post about making money online in Sri Lanka blogging is featured in the third place. Even the first one creating Squidoo or Hubs require some writing ability. Writing isn’t for everyone. To make money from blogging you need to be a good writer or very good at outsourcing your article writing. I have seen people outsource very well but they are very few indeed.
If you’re not sure about blogging then the best way to start is by creating some Squidoo lenses or hubs. They make it super easy to come up with media rich beautiful articles. You can easily add images, videos, polls, Amazon product links and the lot. If you cant come up with great articles using those two services then you have little chance of doing well with your own blog.
Another things to remember is that writing alone wont make you money. You need to learn to market your website. These marketing techniques range from search engine optimization to social media marketing. You wont learn these skill overnight but with time you’ll be able to master them. Once you do that you will start seeing a steady stream of traffic to you blog. And once you start getting traffic it’s a matter of monetizing that traffic.
I know it doesn’t sound complicated. And if you know what you’re doing it’s not that complicated. But as with any skill this also take time to master.
Get Your Facebook User Name Now
If you are logging into to Facebook everyday as I do you should have noticed that now you can set a Facebook user name to your account. I already got mine 🙂 you can check it out at Nishadha . Make sure to add me as a friend if you decide to visit the page. Other than your profile you can set a user name for your pages if that page has more than 1000 fans.Other than looking cool this feature has a lot of advantages. Already SEO experts are predicting that this will have a serious impact on search engine rankings. So if you have a Facebook page for your company , blog or product make sure to grab the relevant user name of your product.
Hub Challenge is Killing HubPages with Low Quality Articles
Although I had registered with HubPages a while ago I didn’t actively start using it until recently. The thing that got me interested in Hub pages again is the Hub challenge where you basically have to create 100 hubs in 30 days. With managing my blogs and office work I know I could never make 100 hubs. But I thought I will try to make at least 10-20 hubs so I can get some back links from them and of course make some money.
When I think of a hub or a Squidoo lens I always associate some quality with it and I have to say that some of the hubs created for the challenge are pretty pathetic. Maybe it’s just the ones I managed to find but all they had were some images and a video at the end :(. This made me wonder if this hub challenge is actually bad for HubPages?
Creating a hub about a celebrity takes about 5 minutes. Search Google for images of that celebrity and add them. Then search YouTube for videos of that celebrity and add them too. And within five minutes you have yourself a hub. It might take extra few minutes depending on how active and fast you are. The problem is you are producing a low-quality hub that doesn’t provide any value to anyone.
I have about 100 hubs in my account written for various reasons. Since I don’t promote them that much I don’t make much money from HubPages these days. Still, it’s one of the first sites I used to make money online and would hate it go die a slow death.
What’s Your Take On the Hub Challenge
Hopefully, the hub pages team can get rid of these kinds of useless hubs. Are you using HubPages? Then what do you think of the hub challenge? Is it lowering the quality of HubPages?