Internet Marketing: A Beginner's Perspective

My new journey into things I’ve learned so far about Affiliate Marketing continues.

WEB SITES AND BLOGS

Some sources said it was necessary, that I have my own web site, while other things I read said it wasn’t a requirement. No wonder I’m confused. At first, I thought I wouldn’t really need my own web site, as I was promoting other people’s products.

Starting my own web site intimidated me. I knew it would take time to get it set up, with the colors, fonts, style, and placement of things the way I wanted it to be. I could see myself easily getting bogged down with all those details. And after doing all that, it might not work right, since my knowledge about html and the other high tech stuff is rather limited.

I soon realized that I had no central location, where that mass of internet humanity would be flocking to my web site, just to see what I would be promoting next, or what I might even be ranting and raving about from time to time. I decided to start a blog, which did take time for me to set up, but I’m now glad I have one.

The only thing is, now that I have my brand new blog, I don’t think I’m getting much traffic, if any. My blog must have been placed on some rural road somewhere. No one told me, I wouldn’t be able to pick the location for my blog. I thought I’d just be able to direct the blog movers, to what I thought would be a good location for my brand new blog, on that vast extensive Internet Highway. I sure didn’t expect that my Blog would be placed in the middle of nowhere.

So what’s my next move? Am I supposed to stand in the middle of the road, trying to flag down whatever few cars might pass by, so that maybe somebody, anybody, might stop, take a look at my blog, and buy a product from me that I’m promoting there? Is begging an option?

In addition, I don’t yet have any items I’m directly trying to sell myself, except for those potential hand made affiliate cloaks I’m thinking about knitting or crocheting. As an affiliate marketer, I’m promoting other people’s products, and not any of my own.

So if anyone visits my blog, and clicks on my ads, at best they might go visit, a program I’m affiliated with. Even if they sign up under my cloaked referral affiliate links, they might just sign up for the free versions of the programs like I did, and I still won’t earn any money by them doing that.

As a writer, I’m glad I now have a blog. Especially since there are few restrictions about what I can blog about or how long or short my blog posts are supposed to be. In school, I had to write my essays about the topic the Teachers assigned me. At an online writing site, where my writing first went public, I had to get my writing to within their suggested guidelines for both a minimum and maximum word length to my articles.

Now having my own Blog, I can blog about whatever comes to mind. It feels freeing and empowering to be able to do that.

Then there are the recommendations that you’re supposed to write to a specific “niche”. With all the time I've already spent setting up my very first brand new blog, not much writing will ever get done that way. I guess you can expect that I will probably divert off that specific “niche” topic I’m writing about, from time to time.

As a driver of my car, I often enjoyed going off on some unexplored side road, just to see where that road would take me. Why should blogging on the Internet Highway, be all that different from those spontaneous side trips, I used to enjoy taking in my car?

Since my web site link is currently about promoting things, that leaves my “niche” topic
wide-open doesn‘t it? I could promote my two cats, deep-dish pizza, the weather, even myself from time to time. This is Jan’s Promo Place, after all.

Maybe I’ll need to get more specific? Maybe I’ll need to narrow it down more, as to what my specific blog “niche” will actually be? Well I kind of like having my particular “niche” be wide open and spacious, like the rural country road, my blog seems to be currently residing on. I like being able to promote whatever it is I want to promote.

Right now, it seems to be working well for me, but as I’ve mentioned to you before, I’m new at all of this.

Why I Love Blogging!

I never thought I’d see the day, when I was actually blogging. My previous blog post as to “Why I’m not a Blogger” written in May of 2007, might help you understand why I wasn’t quickly jumping on the blogging bandwagon.

I think the idea of trying to start a blog intimidated me. I knew you couldn’t just start writing something somewhere, and that would be all you’d need to do with it, ever. I think what scared me was the amount of time, I’d have to spend just trying to get one set up. And I was right about that.

I certainly got bogged down, in trying to get my new blog set up. Setting it up, took me much longer than I thought it would take. That included getting the search engines to start searching for my blog, setting it up the way I wanted it to appear, in color scheme, fonts, and placement of things. That didn‘t even include the actual writing, proofreading, editing, or revising of my blog posts.

But now I have to say I love Blogging. I’m happy I took the time to set it up, to get it the way I wanted it to be. There is something very freeing and very empowering, about being able to write about whatever I want to write about, with only a few restrictions being placed on me. The areas of profanity, or objectionable material in many different categories aren’t really the things I want to blog about to begin with. So I’m good with those particular restrictions being placed on me.

In school, I could write an article but it had to be whatever topic the teacher gave me to write about. When I joined an online writing site, my articles had to be within a specific word length, and be written about a certain topic. I actually found that quite helpful. I could find a topic I thought I could write about and then proceed. Sometimes that was much easier then trying to come up with ideas to write about, all by myself.

But with blogging, I can cover all kinds of topics if that’s what I want to do. There’s no restrictions on minimum or maximum word length. It’s not too likely I’ll write short posts very often, as brevity doesn’t seem to be my style. Nor do I want to make them so long, if someone were to look at the length of my blog posts, it would scare them away before they even began reading anything.

I like that I can write short or long posts, as the mood hits me, or as the topic might require. I can include a poem once in awhile. I can write in a serious manner, or write something sarcastic, tongue in cheek, and what I hope my readers might view as humorous.

I’m sure blogging on certain topics will take me off track from time to time, from the main idea of what this blog is supposed to be about. Or the topic might not fit in with that particular “niche” I’m supposed to be zoning in on. Well that’s another thing I like about blogging. My blog itself doesn’t require that I create several different blogs to write to different niches, different topics.

I’m not saying I’ll totally discount or ignore that good suggestion to write to a certain niche, and why it’s probably a good idea to create different blogs for different niches.

But while driving my car, I often found myself diverting off onto some unfamiliar road. Taking a drive down a road I’d never traveled on before, just to see where it might take me. That’s how life goes sometimes. You never know when you might get sidetracked or have to take a detour, during your travels through life.

Why should blogging be any different then life?

Why I'm Not A Blogger

I wrote this in May of 2007. Now that I’ve ventured into this blogging journey, my opinion of blogging has obviously been revised. So the following article is either the thing that started it all for me, or the thing I’ll have to blame it on, now that I’ve become just another crazed and obsessed blogger!

It might come as a shock to many people, but I don't write to a blog. At least not yet I don't. I can hear you now, laughing and pointing and telling me to finally get with the 21st century.

What if I run out of things I think are important enough to blog about? What if no one ever reads what I blog about? My blog could just sit idle and lonely in internet space somewhere, just sadly waiting for somebody, anybody to pay it a visit once in awhile.

Or worse, what if no one can locate my blog, or they get lost while they're searching for it? I'm sure I gave them good directions how to get here but there's a lot of distractions on the internet highway these days. It’ll probably be dark outside, before they even reach my blog. Then they'll be too exhausted to want to visit it. But now I'll still have to feed them, and put them up for a night or two, as any good hostess would do.

I’ve heard it's better if you get a lot of traffic coming to your blog in order for it to be successful. Do I have anything to say about what location my blog will get placed in? What if it’s located on some far off rural road somewhere, where no one might ever find it? Am I supposed to stand out in the middle of nowhere, trying to flag down the small amount of Blog traffic that might pass by, just to get somebody to stop, pull over and read my blog?

Other people keep saying you're supposed to write to a specific niche. But my mind doesn't quite work that way. I might want to write about many different things. Knitting, cats, peanut butter and jelly, songs or TV shows I like, just to name a few. Would that mean I'd have to create a separate blog for each of the various and mundane topics that find their way into my too cluttered mind?

Now that I’ve actually created my very first blog, that would be a large and time consuming task. I spent a lot of time, picking out my template design, and my color scheme for the one blog I currently own now! I’m still playing with it, moving things around, putting things in, taking them out.

If I were to do that for every different category I might want to blog about it’ll never get done. So since my blog is about Jan’s promo place, it seems to me there’s all kinds of things that can be promoted, which makes it a rather large, and very spacious type of niche. That leaves me lots of room to blog about all kinds of things I might want to promote, as well as some things I don’t understand at all, or even the need to occasionally rant and rave about something. It all comes under that “niche” topic of promoting, well more or less.

I've read people can make money by blogging. I'm sure not opposed to that. But if I got a lot of traffic to my blog, then all the fine folks in the nice quiet rural community where my previously undiscovered blog might reside, might get mad at me. It used to be a nice, quiet and peaceful place, before my blog became famous. Now it's just filled with traffic, pollution, and blog tourists cluttering up the place.

Then I've read you have to get your blog noticed in the search engines. What happens if the search engine develops a nasty oil leak? It could be days, maybe even weeks before a qualified search mechanic can get around to fixing those problems for me. Is it my fault that somebody else was fooling around in there, while they were searching for my unknown blog? Am I going to have to pick up the tab for that search engine repair? Well how am I supposed to make any profits from blogging, if I have to now pay the search mechanic to fix the search engine that my blog depends on?

I’m sure the hourly rate for search mechanics must be astronomical, since it’s a pretty specialized field. Not to mention basic maintenance costs, like periodically needing a search engine tune up. There's probably a lot more search engines than there are competent search mechanics around to fix them. That means delays in my being able to continue blogging, until that search mechanic finally gets around to me, and fixes whatever the problem is with my search engine.

But I have to admit it a Blog intrigues me a great deal. I might just have to go in search of a blog that suits my rambled thoughts and flexible fingers. It's located at the intersection of Route 99 and Highway 21, in the town of Anywhere, Internet Country. When you're passing through, be sure to stop by. We'll put our feet up, order pizza, drink lemonade, play some music, talk and joke and just enjoy the day.