Subdomain or self-hosted own domain? What to choose for your blog?

It seems to be a hard choice to make

Hi guys what’s happening? Do you know what is the title is about? (Domain what?), have you ever wonder why some bloggers’ blog are far more interactive, pretty, and different from others? Fear not, the answer lies within this post, I think it is time to getting into a topic regarding a little bit how blogging works and why you should care about this, I am sure this post is definitely benefits you from being a professional blogger, I will try my best to keep my explanation non-technical, so keep up with me guys.

First of all, what is domain and subdomain? Basically domain is a name for an IP address (Internet Protocol), an IP address consist a numerical label for device which are linking together, it can occur during the linking between two PCs or PC to the internet. I bet you are confuse at this point, just think of a domain name is a caller ID in phone and IP address is the person’s number, so when you are going to call a specific persons, you are looking for their names instead of their mobile numbers. Another example of domain name in a website URL:

google.com

Subdomain is just an extension of the domain, it is used to identify a particular service or department for an organization, just like google play store:

play.google.com

So you see the “google.com” is Google’s domain name and because they have a lot of services, so they had made several subdomain to separates it. Alright what is going to with blog? Now you may have known that you can either register yourself a free blogging website or paid to have one, the difference as below:

Free blogging service

Using the subdomain of the blogging platform, meaning your blog URL address will end up like this:

yourfancyname.blogservicename.com

The name you chose will have an extra name at the back before the “.com” the “blogservicename” represent the blogging platform available for example, wordpress.com, blogspot.com, and etc.

The benefits

Personal blog
Good for posting for a non-business purpose, people use to blog about their life, the movie they just watched, and the food they liked and cooked. If you are the type of person who likes to keep a digital journal, free blog is a go.

For beginners

For those who thinking of having blogging as your full time job but your direction is not yet solid, you may try free blog first to kind of get yourself used to the writing and publishing post, or even playing around the widgets first. If you already decided to go for your own domain name, you can upgrade it from free service to paid service (no worries okay?)

Paid domain

The paid domain name or self-hosted domain, this is where the magic happens, you will have a complete control not just limited to your website URL name but to other flexibilities such as custom widget, blog templates. You pay for the server space yearly and you have to manage everything on your own. “Sounds good, but where do get one?” You may ask, well you can get yourself in the blogging platform itself because they do provide this service, well most of them or you may get from other hosting services such as

• Hostgator
•  iPage
•  justhost.com
•  bluehost
• hub

Above are the top 5 web hosting service during 2013, each of them has their own awesome benefits, just choose the one you need mostly. So what if you decide to choose the hosting service from non-blogging platform? Well luckily they provide some extra steps in “mapping” your registered domain name with their blog site, with a little service fees of course.

The benefits

Your blog’s URL looks more professional!
Whether in business name card or anywhere, your blog URL is shorter and the name is nicer, people will know that you are serious in having blog as your full time once you have registered yourself a domain name, and it’s easier to remember.

Flexibilities
You have flexibility in moving to another blogging platform to other blog platform (given the fact that your domain name is registered other than blog platform).

Ads

You have the control whether to include ads or not, and you can choose what ads to put in your blog.

SEO the way you want

Since having control of the content of the blog, templates and stuffs, you can set the SEO the way you wanted such as meta tags, link structures and many more. For more infor, you can learn what is SEO and why SEO is important for your blog

So I hope this post will let you have some basic ideas in what type of service you wanted, the blog I am writing to publish this blog is a subdomain of blogspot.com, although it is a free service but it does not mean that I do not treat it seriously, so do not have the idea that free is not serious, it is the journey of being what you are going to become. Alright good luck to you all in that.

Market yourself like a PRO

It’s been a while, how are the blogs you guys had been working lately? I hope you all are doing it great, I decided to share some tips and tricks in increasing the chances of people or company that will hire you as a blogger for movie reviewer, a first-hand product tester and reviewer and much more, basically this post contain the possible ways to MARKET YOURSELF, not to mention to EXPOSE YOURSELF to the both potential target audience and clients who at first a stranger to you, but then becoming one of your followers or business partners in an instances.

Hire me please!

Have a place of you for viewers

First thing to do is to have a place for you to place your personal details, to enable people a platform or a place to view your basic details and to get a little background of you before they get into hiring you for the job they wanted. You could have an individual post titled “HIRE ME!” and begin writing your details starting with your nickname, your hobbies, your day job (if you have any), your interest in what type of books or movies may add in some points, let your viewers easily know what character you are.

Take your viewers for a tour

Next on the second part of the page, introduce your blogs by making a list by category (if possible) of what do you like or least to write about, State your interest in writing what kind of blog movie reviews, food reviews, gaming experience, or even places to go to or incidents such as political issues or activists activities. Besides that, also state how are you going to view certain products or event, which perspective are you going to approach. By doing so you are actually pinning down your target audience and the potential clients, I am sure you would not like to write a post that you know nothing and yet less interesting to you right? So to avoid wasting you and your clients’ time, be honest and state it out.

Social media is your friend!

I could not imagine having an internet business but does not own any of the popular social media, seriously? I hope you at least have a facebook account for a minimum requirement (even that is not enough), you have to register an account for twitter, youtube, facebook (for fan page), pinterest (if possible) or vimeo (for better and creative videos). Here’s why, for twitter, it allows you not just to follow those person who you like or who will inspire you in your business, but it also allows you to post your own blog post and set keywords (the hashtag system) and related links for your followers, your viewers will receive your updates instantly once you tweet. However twitter users are mostly for English but for those who has Chinese blog fear not, you still has weibo (微博) works more or less like twitter, developed by China.

Youtube and Vimeo is an optional choice as they are video base, suitable for vlog or vblog for a product but most people like to see and listen than to read, so if you can make your review via these channel it would be a big advantages.

Facebook fan page is most commonly used in Asia country, range from small business to self-posting photos, so you can create a new facebook account just for your blog and have a fan page to focus on your target audience, you may add in photos, videos, comment and replying the questions from users from time to time.

Statistics

You should make a list of statistics for your own references and your potential clients too, how many twitter followers or facebook fan page subscribers you have, you may choose to make this public or privately to send to client via email, this is the important part of your hard-earn audience who followed your blog post, your hard work pays off with the numbers of subscribers or followers you gain and to your potential client it is ‘gold’ to them as well for their marketing department, because depending on the statistics, the company or you can come up an online event such as prize giving contest of movie tickets or premium offers for those who can answer a few questions. So prepare as details as possible and easy to read and understand as well.

End with a reason

Finally a paragraph of why you should be hire by your potential client, give your best to make the ending short and sweet, leave your contact details (write it here again if you have stated at the top part, viewer will appreciate it because they do not need to scroll back up again).

Testimonials

This is optional, but for me I think that it is good to have your client’s testimonials about your service after a project, with the recognition from the other company, other potential clients will less likely to doubt your experience, it also shows that you are not an amateur blogger.

For the aggressive ones

If you hate to wait, you may approach clients yourself by directly email to them, present your blog, call to follow up or even have an appointment to meet them, ask them if they have an affiliate projects for you as a blogger or not.

So good luck in the process, see you guys in next post!

OMG, where and how to get ideas???

“Oh No!! I have run out of ideas to write, what should I do?!!” “I have been sitting here in front of my computer for a day facing a blank screen and not a single idea pops out!!! HELP!!” Sounds familiar? I bet most of us do, we tend to ran out of ideas to post a topic in our blog even if we crack our minds or shouting for inspirations from higher being for help but all you heard is only your own helpless voice echo from the wall, so what do you going to do about it? Do you drink a lot of coffee or do you just sleep all day to hope you will get your ideas in lucid dream (it’s hard to get one, not for me)? Well here we will go through some of the ways that may help you get some inspirations.



Let’s start with

Coffee

Cuppa coffee

Well I am not a coffee lover, to be honest I drink coffee because I need to be awake it is important to me because when I am out of ideas I will feel drowsy and then result in demotivated mood, why coffee helps? Because  coffee contains caffeine, and what does caffeine do is it attaches to our certain receptors so that Adenosine (something our brain produce) will not make us sleepy, it is important to know that coffee will not increase your current skills, instead it kind of take out the negative stuffs and let your performance runs smoothly. You may get yourself addicted and that is normal, please ONLY take 2 to 3 cups of coffee else you are consider as a heavy addictive in caffeine, in fact anything good that is too much, it’s bad for us. 

Coffitivity

Nice ambient sound occurring

Yes, you are right this is not an actual English term, it is a combination of the word ‘coffee’ and ‘creativity’, No, I did not create the word my own, there is actually a team that suggested a person cannot be creative when the environment is too quite or too loud, so a little noise or ambient sound will do great for our mind to spin creatively and the sound they suggested is putting yourself in a coffee shop. You can check them out by typing ‘coffitivity’ they actually provide a loop able coffee shop ambient shop (Yes, you heard me) just to get you some idea on what they are trying to prove, I personally think that is quite weird because I am listening to the ambient but what I see is my house environment, so I suggest to actually go to a real coffee shop and be in that moment can really help, maybe there are some random people to speak some keywords that will trigger your mind, who knows?, oh and do not forget to order a cup of coffee to really boost up your mind.

Toilet/Bathroom

Have you ever heard your friend or heard someone saying something like “Work desk is a place you sleep, Computer desk is a place you eat, and Toilet/bathroom is a place you think”? I think it is true, most of the slight ideas came to my mind during my time in toilet or bathroom. Ever wonder why and how a bathroom works for us? Well it act as a space for us to reflect ourselves or things, thing that had happened, happening, and will be happen in future, because we are alone is a given space, no one to interfere, it is a time we truly get in touch with ourselves, to be calm to think and analyze what is work and what is not work for us, including ideas, one of the best place for critical thinking, of course that must be an average clean toilet or bathroom.

Conclusion

Well then, I hope the above suggestions may help you get your ideas or inspirations out of the blue, or maybe if you have some great experience other than what you read above, please do write in the comment for sharing, until then have fun~ (Maybe some beer might help too?)

Struggling hard to be a blogger? You might need to realign your mindset

The road ahead is unknown, what will you do?

Are you the one who wish to become a professional blogger so badly at the first place but as time goes by you kind of run out of this motivation juice? You started to questioning yourself that “Is this what I really wanted?” and you doubt yourself each time for your answers, lack of skills maybe? Well sometimes it is not about the skills set, it is about your mindset. You might have the best skill but without a proper mindset, you will not feel happy, you will not enjoy the path. If you ever feel that way, it is time to journey inward.

1. A reason to be

This is the first and the most important point to start off with, you should find the reason why you should be a blogger. The WHY here I did not mean profit, it is a purpose, it is always have to be a purpose larger than yourself, why you do you decided to become a blogger? Why you did not choose to be just like what you had been told to get a normal job instead? Why should anyone bother to read your post? You reason can be a little bit irrational one but it MUST be a solid one such as “I believe the world can be change to a better place through my written words” or it can be as simple as “I believe my blog post may inspire readers from within”, yes it may sounds funny and unrealistic, people might make fun of you, even your closest friends and families, but come to think of it, if the Wright brothers are thinking realistic that time like anyone else, I believe we will not have aero plane until today, who will be crazy enough to try to bend metal and making it fly on the sky? That does not sounds REALISTIC at all isn’t it? If you heard of the story of The Wright brothers, they did not do it for fame, money or glory, they believe that if they can successfully invent this flying machine, it could change the course of the world and with this reason, they succeed, of course with a lot of hard work. So WHY do you wanted to blog?

2. A will to act

Nothing will come to flourish without actions, a dream will always stays as a dream if you let it be. So after you have found your reasons, you need to understand that to accomplish anything, a strong will is a must, else it would be just another regret that you will be talking to your grandson about. If you think you should improve your writing skill, you must have a will to take in the initiative to try to develop a practice or a routine for your skills, a will to go and read a lot of tutorials in how to write or what to focus on a blog, a will to make yourself to complete writing a blog post every day or every week and etc.; for this section I had to quote one of my favorite quote from Will Smith:

“The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft." - Will Smith”

It is not a competition between you and others, instead it is a competition between you and yourself, so remind yourself to get better when you are starting to get lazy or giving up, a strong skill with a constant will is much powerful than you think.

3. An idea to share

We as human is a social being, it is hard to be alone all the time, we need friends and families to share our thoughts. I believe you will feel good by sharing ideas with person who has a common moral value or thinking and sometimes you all might create something amazing in the middle of the conversation. So another way to get motivated is to look for someone who shares the same value but have a completely different way of expressing it. confused? Well, you will know when you notice one. It is important to look for those people or friend because they can help you to spread your WHY or reasons to attract those others to have the same values you do, in fact those friends are actually doing it for themselves at the same time as well. If your type of blog is about food for instance, you will have people who really know how to search for new or special café or food stalls which suits your style, you will be busy enjoying writing post about what you love, furthermore you can enjoy it with the people together, how cool is that?

Conclusion

I hope these few tips will help you to realign your mindset to a better one and hope it will make you have some serious thoughts about what you do (in this case being a professional paid blogger), if you think you only blog just to past some time then I suggest you forget about quitting your job and being a full-time blogger because you will not be happy about your choice and will give up eventually, at last I hope this post will help not just about blogging but as a life, may the force be with you good luck.

What is SEO and Why SEO is Important for Your Blog

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Google is the beginning of this SEO. We search things in Google by typing what we want to search for. For example, when you google “What is SEO”, Google will return results and display it in pages. Some are websites, some are blogs and etc. So, you want your blog to be displayed in the first page of the search result whenever people google something related to what you have mentioned in your blog. In order to climb to the first page and in the top position, the skill required is called SEO, search engine optimization. The easier people could find you in google, the more exposure you have. It will be a boost no matter in traffic that may bring you more followers to follow your blog updates, increase ads revenue, and even authority in the specific field.

Internet marketing world is dominated by many SEO experts as well as the situation in Malaysia. In the recent years , especially in the year 2013, the internet marketing of Malaysia seemed to find the momentum to continue to grow and develop to become a lifestyle trend of its own for the blog owner ( blogger ), which is probably just limit to write an opinion blogging activity or outpouring of the heart .

Community blogger has now treading new phase where they realize the importance of search engine functions (search engine) which is the main source of traffic blogs that they've built. Various posts they make will surely get a lot of readers so if the work is pretty good position through a keyword search on a search engine.

From Blogger to Become SEO Expert

Awareness of the importance of the function of the bloggers for the popularity of search engines has made information on their personal blogs is then introduced the bloggers will be a discipline in the world of internet is popular with the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or search engine optimization techniques.

A variety of information about SEO finally meet logarithm thinking mind and the bloggers. Various things about SEO from A to Z provoke bloggers’ ' hunger ' and desperado on SEO.

Enough about theories. What is the next step? The answer of course, practices!

Practicing one theory after theory that they understand SEO into writing for their paper to be made on a personal blog is important to me - trial error an SEO concept. Since it is not a secret anymore for the SEO experts that once did, every SEO experts will have a different experience when implementing an SEO concept.

In order to improve themselves, they will forge solidity SEO concepts that they understand. It is quite important for the blogger while venturing in the world of SEO competition. World competition will force bloggers to quickly able to read a map strength SEO concept by themselves and their competitors. Furthermore they can immediately develop and implement more optimal SEO strategies.

SEO strategy is a factor in the real world advantage an SEO expert. By having a strategy that has been proven through various experiences and SEO practices, a blogger will automatically transform into an SEO expert who will enliven the world of internet marketing Malaysia.

How Blogger Makes Money?

Like what’s in your mind, advertisement like Google Adsense and etc. Oh, that’s not the end. If a professional blogger just depend on the pay from Adsense, they will surely die of starvation. Yes, there are many success stories about generating great income from Adsense but remember it is not easy. And like what Warren Buffet says in earnings, “Never depend on a single income”. What if your profitable and the only source of income, the Adsense couldn’t meet your expectation like usual?

The major income: Articles, review and so on…

I have a few friends which are full time bloggers (blogging for living). Their blogs have great value in specific markets like travelling, gadgets, food and etc. About 30% of their articles were paid articles. Still not having the complete idea, huh? It means they are paid to write those articles like introduction, reviews, ratings and so on.

Why on earth they are paid to write those articles? Ok, let’s have an example, Sam wanted to be a blogger. First, Sam started a blog which posting articles related to a specific market – in this scenario, IT gadgets like smartphones and tablets PC. He regularly posting new articles for all those interesting stuffs related to gadgets. After sometime, he has gathered a number of fans or readers that are interested in his blog. If one who googled “IT Gadget” or related keywords in Google, Sam’s blog could be easily found in the first page of the search result.

Phone vendors, or region distributors or marketing firms see value in Sam’s blog. If Sam could have written an article about their new product, it will outspread as word of mouth. So, they contacted Sam and hope he will write an article regarding their new launched phone. Sam would be paid according to the number of words in the article. It depends on how both of the parties deal. Some bloggers have their standard of quotation, for example RM1 for one word with at least a thousand words in the article then it would be RM1000. This is not the end of the story yet.

The Bigger One: Real Live Events Participation

The numbers of readers which follow Sam’s blog continue to grow larger since some phone vendors or those within the gadget network has given priority to Sam about the latest information which the public seldom aware of. Sam’s authority increased very much and phone vendors even invite Sam to their events which include transportation, accommodation and of course attractive allowance per daily basis. Don't forget, the allowance does not include the pay for the article.

This is not a dream to get to this point. I know a fulltime blogger has been sponsored to fly to attend the Samsung Galaxy S4 Event in New York City. A blogger which write travelling articles was paid to stay in a 5 star hotel by the company for a week in Maldives just to produce an article review. There are lots more bloggers been pulled out to attend real live events such as being the judge of a certain contest and etc. Bloggers are paid to attend live events and writing articles regarding it. If they need to travel far to attend the event, acommodation and transportation is always been provided.

Conclusion, serious bloggers basically make money through
1. Online Advertisement - for example Adsense
2. Paid to write articles
3. Attend real live events

If in Taiwan, it is common to see bloggers attended TV shows and some even have contract with the TV station. Although is not so common in Malaysia, but still there are bloggers attended TV shows. Some are even judges of certain contests. It is hard to determine how much could a blogger earn, however to make a five figure income in RM is not a difficult task.

Final Advice Before Starting a Blog

Write niche blog that is focusing on something specific. Don’t mess your blog with all kinds of different topics because it will be hard to grow the number of followers to follow your blog. Have a vision as your direction so you can work out to achieve it. Be prepare and we will move on to How to setup a blog.