blogging as mainstream career?

Friend was asking me, I want to quit my job and start doing what I really love to do, and get paid as well.

The obvious answer, start blogging!

The reality is, you don’t really make enough money in blogging, it is not as easy as it seems, like any other paying job, it takes hard work to make enough money.

But I still told my friend to start blogging, no not because I believe it is easy to do, and you will make easy money stay home, I coined blogging as a option for one reason, you will eventually find what you really love to do.

Let me explain, the success of the blog is purely based on the content, and then how much you and your blog site is connected with the similar mind.

Content:
You write a good and useful content, you need to do research on the topic, that means you learn, and then document what have you learnt, to do this consistently you need to find the subject that really matters to you, more you learn more authoritative you are in your own subject.

More authoritative in your subject, you will attract people with similar interests.

As you become subject matter expert, there are people looking to use your knowledge and willing to pay for it, these people come in touch with you through the contacts you have established, this is a simple concept, say if I am good at plumbing, some of my friend is going to refer their friends to me or to my contents when they need plumbing help.

Now I am doing what I really love, I know better about the subject, I have connection would turn to me for help, since I am good at it, I can start charging for the help I may extend.

Blogging is not the solution itself, it is just a medium, help you find what you really love and project yourself as the expert in the topic.

Key to blogging success is:
1. Content
2. Consistent content
3. Connect with right people

Aug 13

how do i build a website for my business or brand? step by step guide for newbie or beginner.

intended audience for this blog post is:

you never built a website before
you dont have any web development experience or knowledge
you want to build a website for your business or brand

i am going to walk you through the simplest possible way to get your website up and running within few hours, for your business or brand or just for yourself like a profile page.

when we say building a website we need to have the followings:-

domain name
hosting
design

domain name:

first, you should register the domain name for your website, there are many domain registrants available, personally i prefer namecheap, they are cheaper, as well as they have better domain management, we will come back to that in detail in another post, mean time, when we buy a domain, we need to configure the domain to point to hosting, so this domain management is very important for newbies, , and they have very easy registration process.

once you have your domain purchased, you need a hosting to run the website from, that brings us to second part of the blog:

please note: if you are buying hosting from Midphase, skip the domain purchase step, as they provide one free domain with hosting you purchase, which will do all the necessary configurations with the hosting for you. i recommend this path.

hosting:

this is the where a people will get lost, and end up hiring professionals to do the work for them and end up paying huge sum, to make it worse the hired professionals might make the things complicated and forever you are on their hook, this doesn’t have to be this complicated.

buy hosting from MidPhase which i use personally, they have very good support team, they reply back with solution almost immediately.

when you have purchased the hosting, you will receive the email from hosting company containing the login details for your hosting account
1. if you have purchased domain from other than hosting company itself, then you need to configure the domain such a way it knows where its hosting is, that instruction will come with the welcome mail, or take support desk help, they are friendly and does this for us.
login to your hosting account and there you will find “softaculous” there you will find “wordpress” in the right side navigator menu, select wordpress and press install
once you have your domain pointed to hosting, wordpress installed for the domain, you are ready with the website, now you need to configure your website.

design:

depending upon the requirement, you select the look and feel of your website with the tons of wordpress themes available for free, if you need very customized website, i would suggest woothemes, they are very good.

now you have a shiny website for your business / brand.

diamontip.com / rantsonsoftware.com / shanmugaraja.info are all running under wordpress and with the same hosting i recommend.

May 12

why it is important for B2B business to have a blog?

why it is important for B2B business to have a blog? Or why it is important for B2B business to have rich contents online specific and relevant to their business offerings?

B2B business model is often selling enterprise level products to other business or providing services to another business, when the business will search for the product or service is when they have need for it, either direct need or indirect need, and in the case of direct needs, the business will look for the product or service that will solve the problem for them, in that case they will search for the companies that provide that solution, they select the companies( or product) based on the budget, how exactly the solution fits in for the solution they are looking for, and of course the brand or how trust worthy the company is to buy the solution from them, to get the answers for all these questions they have two options

Directly approach the companies
Do some research online.

If they are directly approached, its well and good, companies will have their marketing and support team in place to convince and add them to their invoice, but if the company choose the other way around to do the research online, they probably need to fed with proper information already, it is companies responsibility to be present where customer(company) going to do get their research details from, first place customer going to begin their search is from “www.google.com” or other search engines like bing and yahoo, their search could be anything like these:

How do i solve problem xyz
Who are best in providing solutions for xyz
Reviews on abc products
How to use abc product

As a company we need to provide contents for these topics, and ensure our information tops the list of search engine result page, and catches potential customers eye, not necessarily these contents should be provided from our blog alone, that is one mandatory step we need to make, also we need to ensure we have presence in all key areas like industry specific blogs, forums, websites etc literally wherever our potential customer goes fishing for information, we may have to write contents from third party point of view and refer to our primary website.

thats pretty much explaining why we should have blog and content presence, what if we dont do that?

Well, unless we do extensive advertising or we have super strong market presence, we are bound to get buried over the pile of information without getting noticed by the world, and if we are going to take word of mouth approach, you know how fast we are going to snail from customer to customer. When customers search for the solution exactly your product/service will solve, customer going to find the information provided by some other company merely matching their requirement, probably going to get in discussions for next stage.

we know why we need a strong content presence for the B2B company and what effect it will have when we dont, now let us see what needs to be done:

Have a corporate blog that talks about your product, not say ‘we have product xyz, wanna buy?’ sort of contents, but explaining each and every features and how it is going to solve real world problems, who could be best to write those content than your engineer, support and marketing personnels?
Have social media presence, not just just top three facebook, twitter and google+, but also those least popular sites even with the slightest chance of your potential customer might use it.
Talk customers language, replicate other customers language, this cannot happen in your own blog but in relevant forums, sites etc
Measure and channelize the flow, so your customer came to know about product/service, have proper ‘call to action’ in place.

Like always, open to learn and correct myself, let me know if you have any comments through comment section below:

Dec 12

when you advertise, you better deliver else say NO

Small story:

once upon a time Lion and Tiger were near the lake and about to drink water, just before that, Lion uttered a loud Roar, and Tiger asked “why now?! just you and me are here, don’t you think its foolish?!” Lion replied, “well, i am king of the forest and i have to communicate the message every now and then, that’s my Advertisement and sending the message nobody come near”

Rabbit over heard the conversation and thought “if only this noise is required i can make noise and drink my share of water peacefully” so practiced enough to give a roar with its squeaky voice while drinking water, one fine day Fox walking by wanted to see where the noise is coming from and spotted the Rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story: “when you advertise, be prepared to deliver or handle the situation”

with the power of social media and with proper blending of Inbound Marketing strategies, you will start attracting prospective customers even before you really are something, when you land the customer be ready to deliver else communicate you are not doing it NOW!

why? :-

it is simply over promise and under deliver situation when you don’t deliver what is expected of from you, you are just burning a bridge or future opportunity lead. i am not saying to play it safe, i am saying “deliver” at any cost, if not politely say, NO and direct them in right direction.

when you put your future lead in right direction you make much trusted customer for you, who will turn to you in future as well.

Dec 12

Do you know what is benefit selling?

first, is there such classification as “benefit selling”?

well i am not a management or marketing professional, so i am not sure, i googled and i just found few websites talking exclusively about it, maybe they have different terms for it.

what is benefit selling is?

simply put, you sell the benefit the customers going to enjoy buy owning the product for its unique features etc., instead of detailing out the features.

why this works?

take apple iPod advertisements for example, instead of speaking technical details about the product, they simply say “it loads 12,000 songs, 8 hours of music, sexy chrome finish” that is they are selling the benefit not the product features, this eliminates the customers to put extra effort to relate the features to the benefit they might get.

and in psychology perspective everybody wants to help themselves first, then they are ready to help others.

if a sales person approach a customer and says, “hi buy this mp3 player, it has 8GB space, i will get good commission for each sale”, even if the customer is in need of it, he wouldn’t buy, he wouldn’t buy from that sales person unless he sees some benefit for him.

alternatively, if the sales person approach the customer and says, “do you know listening to music increases concentration power? ”, “it looks really cool to wear a mp3 all the time” and “i am selling mp3 players hand picked myself, want to buy one?”

second approach leaves no option but feeling if he buys the mp3 players he buys only from the second sales person. because he sees the benefit of best hand picked mp3 player, he already know he wants to improve concentration or look fashionable.

that is exactly selling benefits instead of detailed feature information.

Nov 21

what leads to success

passion

do it for love – not for money [its not like work for charity, but it should be last in the list, if you have seen “The Social Network” movie, Mark’s friend will be asking him to start monetizing the website, but Mark stands firm and says we don't know yet what this website is upto and when Sean Parker steps up, he will refer as making million dollar is good, but billion is great, so when you are just beginning or whatever you never know the real value you and your work is upto, so don't do it with the price tag]

work

work, hard work – have fun at work [i have worked with many people and witnessed this myself, those who succeed in their work are the one’s that work really hard with smile on their face, they do it as if they are playing a game, they work hard and get thrill out of it]

good

be really good at what you do [nobody likes mediocre or incomplete work, we all love german engineering for its perfect finish and smoothness]
practice, practice and practice [improve daily]

focus

focus doing one thing – only one thing at a time [if you are doing all the above and feel you are loosing somewhere, it would be focus for sure]

push

push yourself [when everyone else finish doing at what is expected of them, you do one final round of check, that's extra – push!]

serve

serve something of value [you work should mean something to someone, find that someone and know what your work is doing to them, get motivated]
be useful
solve a problem

ideas

be creative [this will make our day to day work interesting and exciting…]
out of box thinking

persist

stay firm with your decisions, goals [sometimes we have to face with troubles, you know if persistence isnt there…”quitter” will be born]

Oct 3

blogging for senior’s and highly experienced people – why you should start blogging?

I was talking to my friend’s father, i treat him like my own uncle, he is a graduate from IIT madras, and a scientist at Indian Arms(they design/research weapons or something like that) what you have to know is, he is very techie with lots of knowledge, with huge potential to guide next generation engineers in his sector of work.

I was asking how he gather knowledge and how he share his knowledge with the world, and how he connect with the similar minds working on same subjects,the answer is pretty plain: i talk to my colleagues, i regularly read the journals and magazines on this topic from the office library, which is kind of shocking for me, then i ended up asking if he blogs about his learning, to my surprise he doesn’t do that, and he is kind of no idea about it, was asking what is it, then finally why the pain? so all his knowledge sharing happens among his peers. He is not alone, my father a electrical engineer with vast of knowledge in his sector, he never communicates about the subject with people outside his work circle. It made me to conclude many of seniors in previous generation, aren’t really sharing knowledge over internet, their medium of sharing knowledge happens only at work. These gentlemen are capable to share and guide the next generation and stop them from re-inventing the wheels instead focus on next big thing. for that these gentlemen should start blogging or get involved in similar activity.

here’s the series of questions i faced with when i ask them to blog:

Why i should blog?

For others:

You have spent more than a decade working so and so topic, you know the pit falls new comers will ought to face, you know what is proven and what is not proven, you know the challenges that needs to be solved, those who starting in your sector will be better informed and be thankful.

For you:

You will become the authority of the subject, almost every starters these days start to gain knowledge on something after searching over internet, there is the very good possibility you will be quoted whenever there is a discussion on that topic, “Mr.xyz said in his blog post that abc is possible…”, that is the moment to pride for, after you retire, you will still be asked for the help and guidance, if you are more giving insight on the topic, more you become the de-facto for the topic.

If you are convinced:

How do i blog?

Blogging is easy and free, you have so many options where to blog, prominent one’s are wordpress and blogspot.

Choose your platform and start writing the articles on your topic of interest, just treat it like your extended notebook, where you jot down your ideas and gained knowledge.

Ok, blogging requires lot of effort and time, what i will gain from it?

As i said earlier, you will become the authority of the topic, very good chances are you’re quoted among next generation professionals, if that sounds like a charity, i can show you, how business takes place in your blog…

You write a very content rich blog posts, which contains lots of useful information, which means you will attract almost everyone searching for the specific information to your blog site, say if your blog about electrical engineering involves uninterrupted power supply(UPS) for industries, which means many of your blog visitors are either working on UPS and electrical engineering, and you have product recommendation related for those visitors, eg: cheap UPS, battery, job sites for engineers, etc…(there are thousands of them).

Those are targeted adverts, i can explain them more, i have blogged them in detailed in other blog post.

I hope this is convincing enough to start a blog today! My best wishes and thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Sep 27

how to sell – sales approach simplified

If you want to sell service or product, your sales approach need to be as follow:

what am i selling?

I dont have to mention, you should be knowing everything about your product or service in detail, at least the selling points.

to who am i selling?

Know to whome you are selling and define them, age brackets, geo distribution, there are many categorization out there.

where my buyers hangout?

Know where you customer will hang out, where they spend their time, i hope you get the idea – the advertisement you see during your favorite football match is classic example.

where my buyers are searching for me?

where they gather information, whome they talk to for product/service suggestions, conferences they take part in, journals they read, all these places your customers specifically searching for your product/service.

what is my buyers language?

We call it as keywords, classic example is “where do i get ruby?” For one customer they meant the gem stone Ruby, and another customer meant the ruby programming language and installer for it, so you need to understand all possible keywords,languages customer will use to find your product.

Sep 26

Failure is success, mediocrity is failure

Failure makes you move on, mediocrity stalls you and keeps you from reaching your potential – this awesome quote i got from this blog post

In my own words, ‘Failure is success, mediocrity is failure’, when we face failure the obvious is we try again but with more improved method else give up and try on something better, but when we achieve mediocrity, thats neither success or failure: it stalls us, and keeps us in the same place for very long time until one fine day we wake up out of coma, and realize we got very comfortable sitting inside the warm horse crap, when everything goes well for you, do a self check, is this the exactly what you wanted or you got compromised, if compromised, better drag some challenges within, put yourself in front of the problems.

Many entrepreneurs, founders are stuck between corporate cubicle jungle with the mediocrity success they achieve frequently, it maybe pay check or the challenges they face and solution they provide at work each day.

I would say failure is success, i have always took a better second step when faced with failure, but not with mediocrity it always keeps me in doubt and suspense.

So guys! Failure is success, mediocrity is failure!

Cheers for exceptional success!!

Jun 16

how making money online works in simple terms?

you probably heard this concept of making money online, i am not a guru here to tell you how to do things, but i am here to tell you what i have learnt about it, there are several ways to make money online, one of the way is to write blogs and earn money through it, how does that work? lets take a look at it.

before we go in details please try to get answer from your own self for the following points:

if you want to make purchase decision, where do you turn to, to do the research on it? library or newspaper or friends or Internet
if you want to know about something that is relevant for your work, where do you turn to, to do the research on it? library or newspaper or friends or Internet

if my estimate is correct, almost 80% of them will turn to internet, why? they are

free
have most updated information
easily accessible
trusted resource in most cases

now you get the idea, we promote the product in internet for the customers for the companies who are willing to pay the money for the purpose.

does it mean we are replacing TV adverts? No, we are not replacing TV adverts, at least for now, why? TV adverts are push markets and internet is seek markets.

push market is – we push product to customers even if they want the product or not, we position brands.

seek market is – customer search for the particular product, and we show the relevant advert for the customer to choose.

seek market has very good success rate since customer is already searching for the information, all they have to do is prove the customer that they are better than their competitor, how that is achieved? that is achieved by bloggers and internet content writers who persuade the customers.

now you are even clear why companies are willing to pay for the bloggers for having adverts and even write content about their product.

does it mean companies will pay for every blog owners for posting their adverts? NO!!! they pay only to the productive blogs - how they determine productive? that is determined by how much sales they make for their product, and how much valid visitors are visiting their blogs. what is valid visitors? say you are running a blogs that talks about music, you get music loving visitors to your blog, and

1. you have placed the music label advert – you and advertiser win,

2. you placed the advert for dog food, the chances of the sales are very slim, why? do you think the one visited to your blog to know about the music will end up buying the awesome dog food? Chances are very slim!!!

so you need to make articles that is good for the niche and you need to get traffic that are interested in the niche you are writing about and finally analyze the visitors and place the relevant adverts. that is were you start making money begins

diamontip

search ranking and social media for business

Category Archives: entrepreneur