This week, I stepped away from the computer for a moment and headed to the local Borders. You know, the book store? Although the majority of my reading is done online now, there is still nothing like grabbing a new book, opening it for the first time and fully immersing myself. I had two purposes for this visit. One, I just love to scan around at the new releases to see if something interests me. The second was a business purpose. I wanted to pick up a copy of the new Problogger book. I figured two well known bloggers might shed some new light on the subject. Plus, like I always did when I was in the music industry, I feel it is a good idea to support people who are in your line of work because they encounter the same challenges and struggles you do on a day to day basis.

Time for the disclaimer. I love Chris Garrett’s blog and writing style and I am a frequent visitor to Darren Rowse’s Problogger.net website. I find them both very informative and well-versed in what it takes to succeed in blogging. I am also active in Chris Garrett’s Authority Blogger forum and follow them both on Twitter religiously. I consider both of them highly influential to me and what I have learned in blogging.

First off, I am not a fan of the title. Obviously, they needed to market it accordingly and if I had written the book, I probably would have named it something similar. In my opinion, It probably should have been called “Problogger - Secrets for Blogging Your Way to Potential Income’ because as any blogger knows, it is much more difficult to earn substantial income than the current title indicates. They do a good job explaining the challenges early on in the text, but I guess it needed a sexier title to grab the attention of a passer by. I also found the price tag ($24.95) a little steep considering its relatively low page count, but as with anything, had I purchased it early or online I would have been able to save a little bit of money.

Upon first glance, the book’s layout out is similar to many beginner technical books. It is obviously written with the novice in mind, and that is how it should be marketed. Isolated tips are located on basically every page, and usually they do not go ‘over the head’ of a non-technical person. Also included are exercises to help drive the information home. Chris Garrett has experience writing technical books and it shows in the quality. The book is broken down into 11 sections, with the first a brief introduction to the authors’ story and history. After which there are 10 specific chapters relating to certain aspects of blogging, ranging from setting up your blog to secrets from other successful blogs. Each chapter breaks things down in to easy to digest segments, and the book flows very well from chapter to chapter.

The authors try to convince you this book is for beginners and experts alike but it is just geared towards beginners, in my opinion. I had very high expectations for the ‘printed’ version of Problogger and I personally feel let down. I spent an afternoon reading this book, and it will probably sit in my bookcase for years to come. I was hoping for juicy secrets and a magic wand but what I got was stale (but accurate none the less) information. I probably built higher expectation than I should have, but that is how much I respect the authors. I compare it to watching Michael Jordan score 32 points in a game. If it was anyone else, 32 would be great! But with MJ, you grew used to those ‘average’ performances and held out for a 55 point outburst. This book was a 32 point game, not a 55 point outburst.

I want to like this book. I really do. It is very well-written but I don’t feel it gives any information that hasn’t been discussed at length on hundreds of niche blogs, including their own. Darren and Chris have always gone out of their way to explain in detail every aspect of blogging on their websites, and it makes the book seem unneeded for any blogger who has already spent time researching how to build a successful blog.

One big positive I took from this book is they prove once again that there is no easy way to having a successful blog. If a printed version of Problogger cannot give me anything new, then I need to stop waiting for the secret to success to arrive at my door and continue to work hard.

Have you read the book? I am interested in hearing opinions on the book. It is quite possible that my own expectation poisoned my perception of what this book is about.

In life, your reputation is something you should hold dear. In the blogging realm, it could mean the difference between a well received blog and a clunker. Sometimes a bad reputation can breed success (usually in a niche market, see John Chow), but it can lead to death of your brand if not handled correctly.

How do you recover from a well-publicized reputation hit?

I have looked to one of my idols, Bear Grylls, and the way he and his team handled his reputation hit in order to showcase some tried and true methods to regaining the trust of your audience.

For those who do not know, Bear Grylls is the host of the television show Man vs Wild. He has an extraordinary list of accomplishments including being the youngest Briton to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest and survive the trip down. He is charismatic, dynamic, and is an excellent speaker. Originally, the premise of the show was that of a survival expert being placed difficult situations with a 5 day window to reach civilization. It made for outstanding drama, and great entertainment. Bear would showcase his exceptional survival skills in the face of what appeared to be grave danger. A camera crew would follow but according to the introduction, they were only instructed to help in life and death situations. It was staged to appear in real time, and in a documentary format.

It also was a little too good to be true. Reports started surfacing about the staging of events and the fact he would receive assistance while filming these episodes. He was branded a fraud, Discovery Channel pulled the show off the air, and he was bashed all over the blogging and talk show realms. His reputation had taken a serious hit, and while it was in my opinion unfair, the damage had been done.

The problem with being labeled dishonest or fraudulent is that almost all other aspects of you reputation are now considered non-valid, at least to those who do not invest the time to know the full story behind the label. Most of what happened to Bear he had no control over. He didn’t edit the show, he just did what was needed to make the show entertaining from his end. There was no dispute that he was putting himself in difficult situations, or that his skills at surviving were exceptional. People were more fixated, however, on the fact that this gorge he just scaled without a rope or climbing equipment was near civilization and not isolated as the shows editing made it appear. The focus on him doing extraordinary things was completely lost.

So rather than running from this whole situation, Bear Grylls and the those associated with the show did some proper damage control. All the previous shows were re-edited to make sure that events that were stage were disclosed. New voice over spots also helped explain to people that these situations are controlled and there are people standing by to assist if need be. Producers behind the show identified that although some events may have been staged, Bear’s exceptional way of selling the situations is what made the show entertaining. After some careful re-branding, the show is now more of a survival ‘how-to’ guide and Bear’s reputation has been restored. The show is more popular than ever.

As a blogger, what can I take from this story?

If you feel your reputation has taken a hit, the first thing that has to happen is you need to identify the problem and correct it. In Man Vs Wild’s case, the problem was the producers didn’t trust that Bear Grylls’ survival skills and visual storytelling would be enough of a selling point for the viewer. They decided the make the show seem more dramatic by creating the whole ‘trapped in the wild, needing to find civilization’ storyline. It backfired on them when it came to light some events were staged. They immediately took steps to correct this. If you are an excellent writer, trust your content and your ability to storytell.
While rebuilding your reputation you need to focus on the positives. While the way they branded the show at the beginning was misleading, the show itself was entertaining. When you have a good product, you can take the occasional hit. After the show was re-branded, more of an emphasis was placed on Bear and the things he does, and this made the show more successful than ever. The producers focused on the positive while handling the negative accordingly.

When I was moonlighting across America as a rock singer, I heard the same thing over and over again. All publicity is good publicity. That is not entirely true. Bad publicity can destroy your reputation. But if you carefully spin the bad publicity, you can use it as a boon to bring traffic or new readers to your blog.

While it only seems like a few seconds have passed, it has been a over month since I started using Twitter to promote this website and blog. I posted two articles on the subject last month, the first was my novice guide to promoting with Twitter and the second was more of a response to those who questioned how I used Twitter to drive traffic to my website.  Now is the time to post the final piece, in which I go over in detail what I have discovered using my methods.

First off, for the past month I had been relying almost exclusively on Twitter for new traffic. I haven’t been promoting on my other websites, forums, or other blogs. I have still been commenting other blogs, but not nearly at the frequency as I was previous to this experiment. The purpose of this was to try to eliminate too many other outside sources of traffic. Since this blog isn’t set up to generate tons of revenue, I had no problems eliminating other sources of traffic to verify some of what I was testing.

Secondly, it should be factored in that I only work on this website 3 days a week. Since my intentions are for this blog to be a personal outlet and not a business, I don’t follow the monetized ‘mold’ of posting every single day. Now that the lame disclaimer has been stated, on to the factual goodness.

For those who didn’t read the first two posts, I will briefly go over my tactics. Twitter is a social networking tool. Oftenit is referred as ‘micro blogging’. Users are able to send messages, or tweets,  to people on their profile, but they are limited to 140 characters. I spent one week adding Twitter ‘friends’ by raiding the larger bloggers profiles and adding them to my own. After the initial push, I have spent most of my time building relationships with those who have felt compelled to check out my website or send me a message on Twitter. I installed Twhirl (a Twitter desktop client) to help facilitate this, and I always post a link to my latest and greatest blog post.

According to my statistics, 5495 hits have been brought to the website from Twitter.com. In my promotional plan, It was noted that I put links to this website and the about page in my Twitter profile. I assume that most of these hits are from people who clicked on the link from within that profile. When I send out links to posts, I use TinyUrl which come back in my reporting as TinyUrl referrals and not Twitter. The average length of time they spend on the site is slightly over one minute. This indicates to me that the majority of these hits are of the investigative variety to see who I am, or what my website it about. I did have over 2000 hits come from StumbleUpon, and I feel some of these may have been directly related to the Twitter promotion as to very few of my posts had been stumbled before I started this promotional push.

There was a decent spike in daily traffic after the initial push, however. I did all of my mass adding of Twitter profiles between May 2nd and May 8th. Check out the graph below, it showcases the daily page requests:

There was a ten day lull in the middle when I did not make any posts (a family situation kept me from working on my website or posting) . I noticed that each time I post, a nice amount of traffic is coming back to the website.  The site uses a plug-in which will broadcast my posts on Twitter. There are almost double the amount of people coming back to the website each post than I did before I started with the promotion. This indicates to me that I was able to attain at least a fair amount of new readers.

As far as RSS readership goes, this went up quite a bit. Before I started the promotional plan I was hovering near 30 RSS subscribers. Now it is over a hundred. The number hasn’t deviated much from the initial push, so that leads me to believe I have gained some loyal readers. I have also noticed a lot more comments, and a handful of repeat commentators.

There was some negative feedback at first, but most people are receptive to new blogs as long as they don’t over do it. I never spam from my Twitter account, and I aside from conversational tweets, I never send out random links to my blog.

In conclusion, I feel that if I continue to use Twitter effectively, I can expect to continue to drive traffic and increase my readers.

I am interested to hear from those who use Twitter. Have you noticed additional traffic to your website after you started using Twitter more actively?

I wish it were just so simple. But the point’s been missed, you’ve made a mess, and who would have guessed that it’s as simple as it seems.

-Katy Perry ‘Simple’

As I was driving in to work the other day, I listened to radio station Kiss 103.5 in Chicago. Usually, I don’t make it a habit to listen to Kiss because it embodies everything I don’t like about the music industry. Kiss is owned by a large company that basically dictates who is successful and who is not on mainstream radio in America. I do like good songs, however, and you do get a nice blend of songs on that station. A new song caught my ear as I was getting out of my car. It is by an artist named Katy Perry and the song is called ‘I Kissed A Girl’. As soon as I got to my computer, I headed over to MySpace and took another listen to the song. It was catchy, but nothing groundbreaking. It will probably be a hit. It has a few controversial lyrics and a terrific beat. Katy is attractive, and an excellent singer but my first impression is she is a cookie cutter pop singer. Watch a bit of the video below, it will help prove a point later in the post.

I Kissed A Girl

I headed over to Wikipedia to a little more investigation. There was very little information about the singer (which has changed in the last few days as the song has started to make it big). One thing that struck me as odd was she released an album when she was 16, back in 2001. Then there was no history until 2007 when she digitally released the single “Ur So Gay” on iTunes.I have been struggling in the music industry for the past 10 years. If Katy Perry was a true artist, there would be a history. No one just starts playing music, stops for 7 years, and then comes out of nowhere with a new look and sound. I just figured her new label buried it. Record labels like to do that from time to time.
I started doing a little web surfing and stumbled upon a handful of YouTube videos. Katy has been working for many years at becoming successful in music. She has starred in other peoples videos (Cupid’s Chokehold by the Gym Class Heroes), and she has been honing her craft for years. You watched the first video, now check out this one. It is called ‘Simple’ - It was on a movie soundtrack released by Java Records in 2005.

In 2004, Katy was listed in Blender magazine as the next big thing. She has been dropped by several labels, and has encountered many a hardship trying to get that big break in the music industry. She has been open in discussing this, especially at shows. In need of a change and, perhaps, better luck, she took a risk and reinvented herself. Ever since unveiling this new, more grownup ‘look’ and sound late last year, it has been full steam ahead for her music career.

I like to incorporate things I have learned in the music industry and apply them to blogging.

If you feel your talents are being overlooked, there is no shame in reinventing yourself. Evaluate what you are trying to accomplish and make changes when needed, even if it means adopting a new persona. As long as you are true to your personal vision, reinventing is a great way to get a fresh start at something you love.

When I started blogging, I was a loner. I didn’t really follow a lot of blogs. In the past few months I started to become very interested in other peoples writing and artistic styles. I personally love blogs because they give the blogger an opportunity to be creative on many levels, from the writing, to the layout, and other points in between. I am going to list a handful of my favorite blogs and why I love them. I am going to avoid talking about the bigger blogging for profit sites because many people talk about those daily. I still read and love Problogger and Dosh Dosh, for example, but I have discussed those blogs many times before. These are ones you may not have heard of (although a few of them are quite large, such as the Simple Dollar). I encourage everyone to comment with links to their favorite blogs as well.

The Simple Dollar.

I used to be horrible with money. Okay, okay. I still am horrible with money. As soon as I earn a dollar, I spend a dollar. As I have gotten older, I have started to see the importance of wise investing and proper use of the money that I earn.  Author Trent Hamm has tremendous insight on how to get your finances on track. His story is similar to many who have amassed a lot of credit card debt and attempted to learn how to budget properly, but he has developed effective habits to erase his debt. He is an excellent writer, and his posts are always helpful and insightful. The layout of the blog is simplistic and not overrun with advertisements, but it could probably use a little spice. You can tell in his writing that Trent really loves to help people. I read this blog every single day.

Dooce.com

I am not off to a good start with not discussing the blogs everyone has already heard of because Dooce.com is massively popular. That is because it is a fantastic, edgy and interesting blog.  Heather Armstrong has been featured on many other websites and television shows, and rightfully so. She has been at this for many, many years. Her website is classified as a ‘mommy blog’, but her blog has been running since long before she became a mother. She offers excellent layout, photography, and day to day posting. One of the parts I love the most is her running journal to her child. She is very detailed, sometimes graphic, but always entertaining and insightful. She has a dry sense of humor and it shows.

Confessions of a Housewife

I discovered this blog early on in my niche blogging experimenting. I was reading a post on another blog that discussed using a point system to help increase traffic.  Eve, the author of Confessions of a Housewife, developed a system that I started using immediately. What I noticed after a few days, however, is Eve’s blog isn’t really a how to make money niche blog. It is actually very well thought out and interesting to read. I think I live vicariously through blogs like this because I am not married and find married life intriguing. Aside from the blog, there are lots of wonderful resources on the website.

The Baseball Collector

Zack Hample is crazy. That is the first thing you will notice about him. His blog covers how he has snagged almost 4000 baseballs in major league stadiums. It is an interesting hobby that I am partial towards because I also collect baseballs. What stands out about this blog isn’t what he does, it is how well he writes about it. Zack is an established author (he has two popular baseball books to his credit) and he uses those skills on a day to day basis with his blog.  This was one of the first blogs I started reading on a regular basis several years ago, and I still read it to this day. The layout is generic because it is hosted by Major League Baseball but it gets the job done. Check out his blog and when you are done, purchase his new book Watching Baseball Smarter. It is an excellent read.

Selina Wragg’s Blog

What can I say? I am a sucker for pastels and great writing. Selina’s blog is basically just a day to day diary blog. It isn’t really a profit niche site, but it is more along the lines of Dooce.com.  I stumbled upon her blog when going through my Twitter promotion. I was adding people of interest and her website stood out,  so I started reading on a daily basis. She puts herself out there a lot more than most bloggers, as her about page is just loaded. But I think that is a very endearing quality of a blogger. While not as detailed, I made sure to have my personal MySpace, Facebook, and my band names on my About page so people can learn more about me if they so choose. The layout of her blog is just fantastic, as I said before, I love pastels, especially in blog themes.

The Kings of AR

I started following this website a few years back and it is flat out consistant. It is an outstanding music industry blog. I know there are many of those out there but I have found few as opinionated and right on the point as Kings of AR. They are music snobs, but for the right reasons. They also break industry news and have a history of bands they feature becoming signed to record labels. Since I have been an active musician for the last 10 years, I can really appreciate the advice on this website. The layout is very easy to follow and unlike many industry blogs, it is not overridden with advertisements.

Richard Roeper

I know this isn’t a blog, but Richard Roeper is my favorite columnist of all time. I have been reading his column for long before he became famous as a move critic. His column is a general opinion column, and it is very well thought out. When I was in high school, they used to sell the Sun Times in the morning for 25 cents to students. I would buy the paper and go straight to his column. He was the sole reason I became interested in writing.  Without discovering his column, I wouldn’t be blogging currently.

Those are just a few of the websites I read on a day to day basis. My RSS reader is overloaded with lots of great blogs, but I always look for new posts by the ones I listed before moving on to others.

What are some of your daily destinations?

I am addicted to creating websites. Most of them have failed worse than the Chicago Cubs in the playoffs. (Did I just go there? Yes, I did!)

However, I think I am starting to get a little more wise to this interweb game. I have been giving myself a much better chance at succeeding by thinking out my website ideas and planning them a little more effectively. This is completely opposite to how my approach used to be. Every time I saw someone with a great idea, I purchased a domain and pondered a site that could rival it. A prime example of this was a website to to rival Whateverlife.com. Whateverlife was created by a 17 year old from the Detroit area that specializes in free Myspace layouts. There were plenty of stories making the rounds on the web about her making $40,000 a month from AdSense ads. Hey! I want to make $40,000 a month in AdSense!

I began by creating a pretty simple website. I designed a few of my own free layouts (being in a band taught me a thing or two about Myspace layouts) and downloaded a solid 100 more. I had a few of my friends talk up the website on Myspace, and away I went to watch the money roll in. That is how Myspace works right? Everything is supposed to go viral.

That website grossed me approximately $0.00. That was before taxes however. So the net was more like $0.00.

After a month of promotion and no real traffic to the website, I shelved the idea and moved on to the next one. What I needed to evaluate, however, was what went wrong and how I could avoid it in the future. How did this website fail?

The concept for this website is tied to the success of another site, in this case, Myspace. The site came about a year too late. I don’t believe in the theory that you have to be the first person with a great idea to profit from it, just look at how many bloggers there are making money in the make money online genre. Although there were plenty of Myspace layout websites around, it didn’t seem like it would be a lot of work getting near the top of the search word rankings. The problem itself was that Myspace was failing in general. I am aware that it is still a hugely popular website, but it lost all its buzz. Facebook took over as being the hip and cool place to go to social network. If you weren’t established before this changeover, your website is basically dead in the water.

How did Whateverlife succeed where my website failed?

Whateverlife was started in 2005 at the height of the first Myspace traffic wave. The creator, Ashely Qualls, basically dove headfirst in to a ‘perfect storm’ for web traffic. Myspace had just started advertising that you can customize your profiles with a little code, and she was on the forefront of making that code available to people her own age. The reason Ms. Qualls is a millionaire now is because she was smart enough to put advertisements on her website when most people her age wouldn’t have even thought of that. She also established her brand long before putting the advertisements on the website. As soon as she started her ad campaign, she was instantly seeing an influx of dollars on AdSense because most of her target market wasn’t tech savvy and could easily click on an AdSense ad thinking it was a link to someplace else on her website.

The moral of the story is your website might be failing, and there is nothing you can really do about it. This is especially the case if your entire business model is tied to another website. All the SEO in the world cannot replicate that ‘perfect storm’ that someone like Ms. Qualls walked in to. What you can do is adjust your thinking process in an attempt to predict that next ‘perfect storm’. You have be on the cutting edge and be creative. If you aren’t on the front line, you at least have to be on one of the first 10 lines. If you create a website because you heard on 60 Minutes that someone made 40 million dollars with a website, you are probably years too late. Another question you need to ask yourself if ‘Can my website compete?’. You do not have to be the industry leader in any field to make good money, you just have to be able to compete with the industry leaders.

With a little proactive thinking, you can avoid wasting a month on a website that was destined to fail from the start.