Blogosis

Yeah! Just thought I would remind you all here, now, that any extra entries for the blogosis monthly blog contest end today. I haven’t added up the entries, but i don’t think it is as strong as it was last month. The amount of email subscribers may have gone up, but thats about it. So, if you did everything for all 11 chances, you might stand a pretty good chance to win.

So, you are gonna get about 90 dollars (10% of what I make online each month; tracked on the side bar) if you win, and 350+ Entrecard credits that I have gathered over the month.

Yup, just a little reminder that you could win. Check back in a couple days to see the winner.

How have I been, you might not be asking? I’m not too shabby. I am a bit tired, but not too bad at all. My grades in class are slipping from a 3.8 GPA to probably less than 3, but I am not too interested in school anymore. I make more than enough money to live, working only an hour a day, however the heck I want to here in Thailand, and if I could find someway to stay here without an Education visa, I would probably take it. My parents would kill me for that one, but gotta live your one life the way you want to.

I’m going to stop this post before I rant… I had a really good idea from that last sentence to rant on…

Ever since I started this whole online business and wanting to blog for money back in Early December, I didn’t know too far ahead of what I was doing. Well, the blogging thing has fallen through, but not all my online endeavors. They have since grown and expanded, and I am becoming a self-made entrepreneur. Just off of my freelance writing, if I were writing 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, I would be making about 1500 - 2000 dollars a week. Of course, I wouldn’t dare work that much on writing, because I am just far too lazy. Haha. Thats one of the great things about being at the head of a company, or being self employed. It’s all about you! Be your own boss! Let me show you why I love it!

I get to make my own work schedule

I don’t have a paper schedule pinned to my wall telling me what days I need to be in the office and what time in the morning I need to get there. No bell goes off to tell me its break time, and I am not limited to just 2 breaks every 4 hours or however you people with an office job are suffering.

Instead, it is my watch and a very loose schedule. Most of my clients know this about me. They work with me, providing a very loose schedule, sometimes only telling me “No rush to get these articles, but whenever you have the time could you please write about _____ for me?” I can schedule 2 seconds before I am going to start writing. I can spend a sleepless night pumping out articles and working on developing graphics and other websites. I can take as many bathroom breaks, lunch and snack times, and nights out with my friends as I want without having to worry (too much) about a developed work schedule.

If I only want to work 1 hour a day (and that is about the average as of now), then I only have to work one hour a day. No more tedious 8 hour (or 14… yup I have had one of those) days for me. I take on as much work as I can handle for an hour a day and churn out the articles that need to get done the soonest (talking about my freelancing). Then I am done. I can go out, I can visit the beach or my supermodel girlfriend’s latest photo-shoot set, and enjoy the other 23 hours of the day.

Being my own boss has me freer than ever, giving me the time I need to do whatever I want while still gaining enough money to pay well more than the expenses I incur for daily life. That’s another great thing about being your own boss: It’s your prices and your terms. I think that will be a future post. Yeah, I think I just turned this into a series post.

I’ve changed, that’s what has happened. Perhaps it has been due to my lack of sleep, but something is changing me. I’m getting way too lazy to do anything much that involves “work.” I’m so sad to say that this keeping this blog up has become “work” for me, instead of having fun and using it to express everything I want to.

A blog shouldn’t be considered work. Even, for some of the professional “web publishers” out there, they don’t even coin their “work” as “work.” It’s something that passes your time by, that gives you an outlet for writing and experiences and knowledge you have. I obviously haven’t been doing that the past couple weeks. February hasn’t been a good month (for me or the blog).

How am I going to turn this around? By writing about things I love and things that I know the best. What does this mean for the blog? It means it might stray away from blogging from here to there on my posts. It means that I might start doing restaurant reviews like a certain Asian I know. It means I will be covering a random amount of topics that come up in my thoughts and daily life. I’ll still try to tie in some connections to blogging in all my posts, but I am not making any promises.

I know this means I will lose half, if not all of my readers. Am I too concerned with that? Nope. I started this blog to see if it would make any money, and it really hasn’t. I got 5 bucks for an ad and that’s about all this blog has made me in the 2 months it’s been online. I’ve since found better ways to make money online, which is obviously working (tracked on my sidebar).

I will try to keep the monthly contest alive, although its performance this month has been lack luster. I may end up fixing it to a certain amount of money, until I am certain I make enough money to pay for college.

Like I said, I will most likely lose half my subscribers. I don’t blame you. Why add a random blog to your RSS feed anyways. Stick around for my writing if you enjoy it. If you need a blog about blogging specifically though, you have better options that have covered every topic already. No use regurgitating content.

So, what will I be covering? Blogging a bit, SEO, making money and all that crap, my experiments with Adwords and all that junk, freelance writing and graphic design, as well as random topics like what I had for lunch (hopefully I can get Chow to guest post), who said what during my courses, where I am and where the party is at during the weekend, Thai life and culture and girls, my supermodel girlfriend, and random shiat that pops into my head. I could make a bunch of different blogs for this, but I’m too lazy to do any more work.

So, you sent out your interview questions in that email format I was telling you all about in the 1^st and 2^nd posts in this series. Now, have you gotten some responses? No? Well, let’s figure out why this is.

Too Busy

If you are sending out your questions to big bloggers, you can’t always expect them to reply. Some bloggers get a lot of questions and emails every day, and they don’t have the time, or patience to sit down and read them all. Honestly, they skip over a lot of them. This is why you need a unique subject tag. If it’s generic and something like “Hey” or “What’s up, xxx” then they may not respond. Those are things good friends and clients might send to each other, not complete strangers.

Boooooorrrrrringggggg

Did you make that email of yours way to long? I don’t want to read through 500 words to get to your main point. Like I said, make the intro and body short, and get straight to the questions. Make it easy to find the question to. Don’t bury it in a paragraph. Good formatting of your email comes into play.

You Should Already Know This

What questions did you ask? Are you asking questions they’ve answered 100 times on their blog? Avoid these questions that are already blasted on their blog. Read back a few months into their blog. If they’ve been questioned and answered, there is no reason to ask that blogger again. Ask unique and creative questions that they wouldn’t have normally come up with.

That will wrap it up for this series. I’m going to be emailing my interview questions to a few bloggers around the blogosphere and you should see some answers starts to arrive here soon.

Anyone want to see more short series or interview me? Send me an email at justindupre@blogosis.com and let’s get talking!

What is something you have always wanted to see in a blog about blogging, yet you just haven’t seen it yet? Well, now I am giving you the chance to help me design a new theme for Blogosis. Should it have 3 columns, 2, or 17!? Do you want to see any special art or effects hanging around the blog? What colors seem appropriate for this kind of blog?Dark and scary, or pink and purple fruitiness?

I am also holding another contest for all our readers. This time you need to make something. Make the Blogosis.com brand/logo. I am not talking about that huge ass banner up there. I need something that grabs the readers attention and says “Wow, this is what Blogosis is!” The logo will be an essential part of the blog, and most of the blog design will be based around the logo theme. This means you need to play with typography, and maybe create a little logo (like what Darren Rowse has at problogger.net). I am running this contest on a few websites around the internet, but if someone from my blog wins you will get $50 via PayPal. You will also get a link in the footer and blog roll for as long as I own this blog!

So, send me the logos via email at justindupre @ blogosis . com, or leave a link in the comments. This is an excellent way to get some reputation and a little extra pocket change for all your little expenses. Enter today!

If you missed the first post in this series, make sure you check it out here.

Beyond getting in contact with your interviewee, you need to be asking the proper questions to him or her. If I were to pick anyone to interview, they would obviously be in my niche and someone successful at it (Darren Rowse for instance). Now, these top guys get 100s of other emails and inquiries every day, so I need to make my subject title stick out. These guys are immediately deleting the emails that ask “How can I make 10,000 dollars in my first month of blogging?”

Make the Subject Interesting

I won’t be asking “Can I interview you?” in the subject. Generally, these get turned down because they are just so busy and can’t take enough time out of their day to do a little networking with you. Instead, say something interesting in the topic. “Hey, did you know this about your blog?” or “I’ve got something interesting to share with you about blogging.” Anything, be creative, use your imagination, but you need to stay friendly. I sure as hell wouldn’t reply to an email saying “I want to know why your blog sucks so much.” Then again, that could work.

Introduce Yourself

So we are past the subject. Now, you will want to say Hey, (Blogger’s Name), or whatever formality that you feel appropriate. I discussed this in the first post of this series. Then, put in a small introduction. When I mean small, I mean short and sweet and small. Your name, your blog, and a few other short details about yourself are enough. You aren’t interviewing yourself here, you are interviewing them.

Why did I decide to interview you?

Leave a short message about the interview next. Why you chose them, and what you plan to do with any answers. Let this, again, be simple. You can’t bore the blogger into closing your email. A few sentences about the details of the questions is enough.

Get on with it

Now what? Just get into the questions. Don’t wait to see if they agree to arranging an interview. It just creates hassle and once again, the blogger won’t want to separate time from daily activities to answer your questions.

Make it Easy

Write your questions out and make them clear and noticeable. Maybe bold them, bullet them, make them bigger. Do anything to draw attention to this point. This is the most important part of the email, and you won’t want to skimp.

Say Goodbye

After your questions have been asked, conclude it. Say thanks and I hope to hear from you; all that goodness and candy to make them feel appreciated. Don’t threaten them by saying you won’t read them anymore if they don’t reply. That’s pretty ridiculous to think anyways. I don’t need pissy readers. Just realize they were probably too busy to answer.

Ask the Right Questions

Or, perhaps, you just asked the wrong questions. I will be covering that in the next series post.

This will be Blogosis’ first short series of posts I will be doing. I’m doing this, because it is easy on my super busy schedule. I’ve got to make $500 dollars in the next 12 days so I can give out over $100 dollars in the Monthly Blogosis Contest. Hehe. Anyways, this series is about giving and receiving interviews, and is relevant as at the end of the series, I will post interviews I received from other bloggers experimenting with ‘the process of an interview.’

Making that initial contact with an interviewee is the most critical part of whether or not you will be successful in obtaining a proper interview with the blogger of your choice. Following in this series are some steps I have implemented to get more answers from bigger bloggers when attempting to get answers for my questions.

Get Personal

Whether or not you are interviewing 1 or 100 bloggers, you will want to be as personable as possible. This means no massive emailing plans with your interview questions. Don’t send out 100 emails with the others emails hidden in the CC address. None of that “Hello, and To Whom It May Concern” crap. This immediately lets your “interviewee” know that you know absolutely nothing about him/her, or that you weren’t interested enough in them to care to send an individual email.

Instead, send those emails out 1 by 1. Know the blogger you are sending questions to, their background, their age, their recent posts, and other miscellaneous facts. This will help you tune your question to the person you would like to interview. If you are writing to 13 year old Carl Ocab, you obviously wouldn’t write with the same verbatim as you would with some 60+ year old blogger that studies linguistics. Are you writing for a friend, or a very big and busy money blog? Changing your attitude towards different personalities is essential to get a good response.

The more effort you put into getting personal with them, the more likely they are to give you a response. You are generally looking for any kind of response, otherwise you know you are doing something wrong. Even a definite “NO! I will not answer this question,” is better than a “…”, although I think that means you may need a new question. Think of it like this. You see that hot girl/guy across the club floor. You can show interest, but until you get up in their face, you won’t get any answers (I know well how this feels. Haha).

If anyone wants to be a part of my interview, just make sure you have a blog (which you really should if you are here), and post a comment here. I’m sorry if I didn’t send it to you on my own already. I don’t read that many blogs anymore.

I want to that Mr. Polite for writing this title in my last post comments.

Anyways, for my dedicated readers, you probably noticed I wasn’t in the best of moods for the past week. This may have been from a lack of sleep, overworking myself, or just a silly mood swing, but did you enjoy it? General consensus was no.

Even had I been giving advice on how to make your blog better, which Andrew told me I hadn’t been in another post, but I still had a pissy, bitchy attitude, would you have listened to me? Chances are that you wouldn’t.

Do you listen to the guy at the party that talks about everything like he is an expert, and then you say something in denial of his facts, and that person will turn around to just tell you how wrong you are? I wouldn’t listen to that crap, no matter how right he was. I can’t stand people that need to be right, and when they are wrong, they won’t apologize. Don’t do this on your blog, ever. There could be thousands of people out there that have more experience than you in your niche or certain aspects of it. Open up and let them in on a discussion. Allow their ideas to flow in.

Make your blog friendly. Who honestly likes that bitchy, whiny ‘friend’ who will complain about all their problems without listening to yours? No one…

Thanks to my readers and subscribers for reminding me.

Haha, that’s a great blog title. Catchy, right?

I’m not here to blog about great blog titles, at least not yet. Some, but I’m sure not all of you know that I run multiple blogs, websites, and I do a ton of freelancing work. It’s important, diversification of your skills and talents that is, especially for any entrepreneur. A successful, wealthy entrepreneur does not select the only product he likes and attempt to sell it. The thing he likes is what he will do for fun. A good entrepreneur sells products people want or better yet, things that people need.

Covering their Needs

As a blogger that wants to be successful, I attempt to get need and provide solutions. I run a few different websites where I can cover many different types of wants and needs. I freelance for people that need articles written on many topics. And then, I come back to fun and play with this blog about the thing I love to do: blog!

Open up opportunities

There are many advantages of diversification. First of all, I open myself to a whole bunch of markets. Within a whole bunch of different markets, I have a whole bunch of different people that have a whole bunch of different needs that have to be met and that in turn has a whole bunch of… haha. Just kidding.

I am basically selling myself like those girls hanging out here in Thailand at the corner of shady alley roads. What!!!? Don’t tell me you are going to unsubscribe because of that! (I’m just trying to brighten up the mood around here. My last few blog posts have showed you what I am like when I am miserable. Now, I am Happy Boy) Those girls though, they make good money! So, because I am selling “my whole body” (OH MY GOD… Straight to Hell) of skills and abilities, I make a lot more money than say, if I just sold my left kidney? Get it? Got it? Goooooooood.

Make More Money

Anyways, I am making a lot of money by diversification! I start making money by freelance writing. There is really easy money in this if you can target the right crowd and have the proper skill sets to complete tasks. (I already make more money per hour than my mother does. Poor Mommy! Don’t worry. Your son loves you and will buy you a car someday.) I my freelancing cash start new blogs, which gives me a little return on that money. Then on that money, I can experiment with CPC. I’m losing most of that money, but that’s to be expected for the first month. I shouldn’t really be losing more than 300 dollars a month, which is nothing. When I start making money from that, I will have a stack of cash that I can’t even fit in my wallet. After that, I can diversify a little more by investing in more websites, more blogs, new options, and hiring employees to make money for me! Wow, diversification! That makes me, like the Pimp of those girls I was talking about. (Are you offended yet? I’m sooooo sooooo sooooooooo sorry.)

Build Traffic

Out of diversification, I get a lot of traffic. People wanting to see my writing samples,when they inquire my freelancing writing services, get redirected to my websites and blogs. They subscribe and they bookmark and come back for more. I post on forums and add freelancing and blog links at the bottom. They cross through them. This is all good and dandy for picking up a little extra traffic, especially if you can refer them to a website or blog of yours in the niche of the type of writing they require.

Get in the Network, Yo!

Networking is great from my ability to diversify. One person sees my work, and they ask where they got it. Guess who just got a new client. Lots of my clients make really good connections, and even if they don’t need any work done, we can have a good chat. I can ask them if they have any future projects lined up, and request to be contacted if they start on any. They can refer to me if they can’t finish a product for one of their clients. It’s like a huge line and I’m the best rollercoaster they will ever know. When they get off, if they enjoyed the ride, they get right back in line for more. I’ve had several contacts that have been referred to me for long time work just because their pal said my stuff was great. I’ve also made friends that I will probably have for a very long time.

Learn a Lot About Yourself and Communication

With diversification, you are going to learn a holy load of good things. I’ve been able to manage my time a little better on all my projects (except I am still trying to fit sleeping into the equation. That’s alright! I’m still a young gun and have plenty more years left to sleep).

I feel so in control of my life, as well. I am making all these choices to do all these projects, and because I am managing them myself I am not stressed about it. If I had a boss tell me to do this stuff, I probably couldn’t handle it because it’s not something I want to do. I want to take my own orders, make my clients pleased, and not have to speak up to someone. I talk to my clients on a level surface, as if talking eye to eye, like any friend would. I can be more personal, and gain communication skills while doing it. I’ve learned what people love to hear, and what people never want to hear.

All of this from simply diversifying myself and my skills. Wow, wow, and wow. Diversification! Learn it. Live it. Love it. It will help your personal skills, and I can see no reason why it wouldn’t help your blogging journeys.

Oh yeah. Want to say thanks to Andrew for donating to the Monthly Blogosis Contest. He is giving away a free 125 x 125 ad spot anywhere on his blog to the winner.

Also, congrats to C-Squared. You win $5 bucks via PayPal, a $5 gift certificate from Amazon, and a blog review on this blog. You ripped my blog apart, so expect no mercy little missy. Use the contact page to get the info you need to contact me. Thank you Thank you.

What da’? I kinda feel like this kid…

I am amazed that my last post got absolutely no comments. I have 80 subscribers, and not one of you read the end of that last post? You know the post were I said if you posted a helpful comment, I would give you $5 dollars via PayPal and a $5 gift certificate to Amazon. I even said it straight up in the post title. I don’t know how much more obvious it could get.

So, I am moving that $5 dollars and Amazon gift card to this post. On top of that, I will give a thorough review of your blog, analyzing your content, design, and giving you some links to your posts. You can expect a few new readers to your blog which I know could help a lot of the bloggers that read this blog. How do you win?

Give me the best comment, advice, hate message, or argument to why I am not getting much in the way of comments? I am really trying to make this an active community, and I am attempting to lure you in with questions, but I’m lucky to get more than a few comments on any blog post. If one person leaves a comment that says, “Your blog sucks,” they win. So, leave a comment, hopefully a little better than that, but anything is fair game.

If no one comments, then I win and I will be reviewing my own blog. I’m serious. Punishment… HEHEHE.