Even though I sometimes talk smack about John Chow, I want everyone to know that I am a big fan of his. John Chow is probably the first blogger that I ever read who really seems to have a good frame of mind when it comes to blogging and he is willing to share his time and knowledge with anyone who is willing to listen. His e-book really encouraged me to start this website and in the long run, my philosophy towards blogging and towards monetizing this blog will most likely turn out to be somewhat “Chow-esque”. This is why I want to dedicate my next few posts to John Chow and the things that I like most about his blog/blogging.
What I Like About John Chow Part 1: Sharing is Caring
On more than one occasion, I have been impressed by John’s amazing willingness to share what some bloggers would consider classified, a trade secret or something mysterious that only experienced bloggers should know and never share. I read many blogs before finally finding John’s and ultimately ended up being frustrated about the “big picture” talk that always went on with these blogs and communities. Everyone always talked about driving traffic and doing better SEO and secrets for monetizing a blog and so on, but it was at John’s blog that I first heard some “big picture” talk mixed with actionable information. For example, instead of talking about doing better SEO and moving on to another topic, John said to do better SEO by, for example, fixing your permalink structure in Wordpress.
These actionable items that John Chow dishes out on occasion have meant a lot to me. With those tiny nuggets of knowledge, I’ve not only become a better blog manager but I have also been able to learn, share, and increase my domain knowledge and ability to talk shop with other bloggers. Not only that, but I feel that I can now start a blog on any platform and know what to look for or improve in order to make the site just that much better.
Yesterday it was announced that Starbucks will be airing a national TV commercial in the near future. My question is, simply, does Starbucks really need a commercial or do they just have so much money to burn that they figured a commercial was a good idea?
In an effort to “to reach out to a broader audience”, Starbucks CEO Jim Donald said that the commercial will try to get people to go back to Starbucks and buy another over priced, over roasted (IMHO) ginormous cup of coffee. Starbucks has done a good job at marketing so far; it seems that its stores along account for a majority of the marketing. I’ll admit that I go to Starbucks once in a while for a quick shot of espresso and I’ll even go to study once in a while. The atmosphere is not bad and the smell really is pretty good. Given that there are approximately two Starbucks per American lining our streets, I think that a commercial is a bit foolhardy. A Starbucks commercial is the equivalent of a commercial for the sun. We all know the sun exists…we all feel the power of the sun, we all see its light. It’s the same for Starbucks. We all know it exists. We see its logo even from afar (if it’s possible to get far enough away from one) and know what the logo is for.
Rather than wasting using their money on a TV commercial campaign, I think Starbucks could do a lot better for themselves, as far as boosting sales, with a long-term project of some sort where they interview their coffee farmers and highlight the fair treatment of the farmers and the benefit that Starbucks brings to the poor communities.
This summer I had the opportunity to live with a family of coffee farmers in Nicaragua for 2 months and I learned a lot about the coffee business. This family acknowledged that even though there is a long way to go, Starbucks is their best client and the ones who pay them the most for coffee. The farmers, I found, only got paid $90-$100 per 100lb bag of coffee. That’s $1 per pound at best. For how much does Starbucks sell a 1lb bag of coffee? Think about it.
Although a TV commercial might help Starbucks sell a few more lattes this winter season, if I were the CEO I would be looking at long term growth and would try to cleanse my mental palette so that I can be a better leader for my company and in return, give a great return to my shareholders. After all, when it’s all said and done even the sun will run out of gas someday.
[poll=4]
When it comes to launching a new website, there is nothing more frustrating to me than a lack of visitors. I work hard on content and the creation of the site and to see a site receive little to no traffic feels like a slap to the face. This site has been one of my better attempts at online marketing but I am nowhere near my goal of 250 visitors per day.
In the past, I have tried several things in order to bring in traffic to my websites and these strategies included, but were not limited to: writing articles for article repositories, placing links on directories, placing ads on Google with Adwords, telling my friends, putting out flyers, announcing the new site on web boards, and using social bookmarking sites like Technorati, Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon.
Out of all of those things, one has worked better than most of the other ones combined, and that is the use of social bookmarking websites. The problem with the other methods (with the exception of Adwords) is that you get visitors who aren’t necessarily interested in your product or website. They’ll visit your site because they see a catchy title or because they want to support a friend, or frankly, because they’re bored. Since launching this site, a majority of my visitors have come from either Reddit or StumbleUpon. These two sources have accounted for nearly 88% of my incoming traffic and have led to a few loyal (I hope) RSS subscribers. These visitors actually have stayed on the site for a long enough time period to read a couple of articles and in my opinion, that’s a good visitor.
Reddit and StumbleUpon
Reddit and StumbeUpon are social bookmarking websites that drive traffic to a certain website as people vote for them. The thing about relying on either of those sites is that only posting your site won’t immediately drive traffic to your site. Sites only receive traffic if they’re voted on by other people and only the “popular” sites get a significant amount of traffic from their use. I’m not sure exactly what makes a site popular because I’ve seen a lot of bad content reach the top of these two sites, but I think it has something to do with the ability to have others vote for your site for a small fee. If you visit the forums at digitalpoint, you will be able to find people who are willing to vote for your site in exchange for a small fee. I have yet to try this out as I think it’s cheating a little bit, but it may be worth a try to get your site over the tipping point once you have somewhat established yourself. I don’t think that paying for votes is a good thing if your site is brand new, but if you already have a regular number of visitors to your site then gaining some paid momentum could be well worth the cost.
That being said, I will continue to write content that I think is good for my readers and good for my professional development. I will keep sharing what I try to do online and hopefully we can all learn from my mistakes. Thanks for visiting my site and vote for it if you like it! Don’t forget to sign up to my RSS feed too!
