Blogging For The Money: Don’t just do it for the money! Enjoy it…

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It’s true, I’m not a mommy blogger, nor even a mommy, nor even a woman… but can a ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ blogger make any money with SocialSpark? In this post, I’m sorry to disappoint some of you! After using SocialSpark for about three months on and off, it really depends!

It depends on a number of factors, some of which you can control and some of which you can’t. I offered several projects on PayPerPost a few months ago, and I found some Mommy Bloggers who were trying to do that! Let’s welcome Roselle, who gave me a great write-up on her blog! Thanks,…

roselle

Have a good audience, or get one!

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you will already likely have a good audience, but for those of us starting out, getting our blogs noticed can be a nightmare! But to get a better chance of posts, finding an audience for your blog is going to be very much the core task. If you have a better ranking or status, you’ll find it much easier to find good opportunities! Also, having a good audience means that you will be understand your blog’s purpose.

Choose the right niche!

When you start blogging it’s quite likely that you haven’t got a clear focus or niche to work on. Worse, after blogging for a while you find that you want to refine your niche even more! Don’t fret: perhaps you are just discovering your true interests. Blogging like that really helps bloggers to find their true focus. But do be aware of the more popular or more focused niches, and try to find your niche early!

Don’t just blog for the money!

The challenge when doing Social Spark is not to blog for the money, get the money and run! You have to really work at your posts to capture the essence of the opportunity, refine it, and work it in to the theme of your blog, the interest of your readers, and the requirements of the advertisers. I’ve actually purchased a few and found that some posts were really poorly written – didn’t engage the reader, but simply filled the MINIMUM requirements! N! After writing 181 opps over the past couple of years on many blogs, I’m now beginning to understand how to do this.

Show commitment to your blog!

Oddly, this is perhaps the one thing that beginning bloggers don’t think about: SHOW commitment to your blog! Be proud of it, dress it up, tidy it up, care for it … it’s YOUR BLOG, it’s YOUR BABY! There are a number of ways you can show your commitment:

  • #1 buy your own domain name – nothing shouts ‘amateur’ more than http://***.bravejournal.com or http://***.blogspot.com – It’s only $10! Yes, $10!
  • #2 use a theme, any theme, NOT the default theme on your blog. Try to personalize it even a LITTLE!
  • #3 keep an eye on your grammar and spelling! It irks a lot of readers to see words “spled rongli”.
  • #4 get an email address or contact form on your blog, anywhere, somewhere…

People are going to be dropping by your blog, so you really do want to try to put your best foot forward, right? Who knows where your blogging adventure will lead…? A new house, a new job, a new life…? If you think this is for you, sign up with SocialSpark, and try it out!

Sponsored by SocialSpark

Cool Stuff from Computex 2008: Video

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After all the hoopla has died down, you can see some great stuff in this video that was featured on ERA News in Taiwan, including (drum roll!) Asus EBOX PC.

I’ve been following this company’s products since the launch of their Asus EEE PC 700 in 2007. The breadth and innovation of the company’s products underlines the ambitions of this company to reshape the PC (sans Apple) world by packaging the PC in a variety of new forms: UMPC, SETBOX style, Asus Radio, Video Gaming, …

While the video is in Chinese, you will get to see some great gadgets in the video: first up, of course, is the EBox. There isn’t the same level of interest in this device, but I believe it has a number of advantages that will see this become an extremely popular choice for all sorts of un (and under-) served markets: kids computing, older folks, family computing, simpler networking, classrooms, etc..

The price, the size, and the low power consumption make this a VERY attractive computer for the next generation of household computers. You could put one in EVERY room in your house for a very affordable price.

In our business, we would find it relatively inexpensive to equip a small language classroom with five or six of these machines; networked together, they’d be quite a cool and effective computer-skills teaching classroom. Now I just have to sell that idea to my partners.