How to Make Money Doing What You Love Learn advanced self-improvement techniques that will get you out of the job you hate and into making money by doing what you love.

It was a really tough decision trying to pick the Blog I would review for the Free Blog Review For Blogger Who Wants to Make Money. After going through all the replies and checking out everyone’s Blogs, I narrowed it down to a few Bloggers who I felt I could help the most but I wasn’t sure who to pick yet. I then got an email from Ace, who donated the review and he gave me his two picks and it just happened to be that one of my picks was also one of his two picks (Simon), so I decided to use Simon’s Blog for the review.

Simon, before I get started please be aware that everything I list is going to be my personal opinion. I am not saying you have to do everything I am going to write here in order to make money, but I am just going to share my opinion and you can take whatever resonates with you and leave anything that doesn’t.

I’m not going to pull any punches, I’ll say it like I see it. I’ll try not to be too rough, but I do want to point out what I see as things that are holding you back form making money from your Blog.

Even though this is a review of Simon’s Blog, there are plenty of lessons here that everyone should be able to apply.

So, lets get started.

First Impressions

The first impression I got when loading your front page was that I was reading a newspaper or I’ve landed on CraigsList. There isn’t a lot of color, or anything to grab my attention or to uniquely identify your Blog from any other website to make it stand out. The only graphic in sight is someone’s Entrecard.

Taking a quick glance at your archives shows me that you’re posting about 7-10 posts per month on average and it looks like you’ve been at the game for just over a year.

Things seem to be fairly analytically organized in a logical way with your categories on the right side, archives, Blogroll etc. and the recent posts and most popular posts on the left.

The domain name obviously tells me that I’m at the site of someone named Simon Stampleton. The tagline tells me this is a personal development and career development Blog for Techies and Geeks.

Techie Bias

The first thing I’d like to go through for you Simon is to give you an impression of what my intuition is telling me about you and your Blog.

I’ve been a “Techie” and “Geek” ever since I was a little kid. I’ve owned and programmed computers since the days when 128kb or memory was considered a massive amount, and I’ve programmed in languages ranging from Assembler all the way to C#. I also have a lot of experience in the IT industry all the way from management straight through to being the CTO of a publicly traded company. The reason I bring this up is so that you know that I understand the audience you are writing for.

The impression I get is that you are very intelligent and highly creative individual with a *massive* amount of great content inside you to share with people, and a lot of passion inside to get it all out.

What I’m sensing, however, is that you are trying too hard to stay within the rules that most programmers live by when it comes to your Blog. Meaning, everything on your Blog is calculated, intellectually and logically organized and there isn’t anything “extra” added that doesn’t need to be there. No color, no graphics, no extras, no shine, no pictures, nothing. It’s like you’re trying to build a website that “loads fast” or something like that.

When you’re writing code for a packet encryption algorithm or something then yeah, you want clean un-bloated code. When you’re building a Blog, you’ve got to think about it form the users EXPERIENCE. You need a design for you Blog. Don’t be afraid to make it pretty. Make it shine. Engage people’s emotions!

Selling Out to the Use What Works Philosophy

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my endeavors online is realizing and selling out to something I like to call the Use What Works Philosophy. Basically, what it means is that as logical human beings and especially as programmers / IT people, we make certain calculated assumptions and guesses as to how things should work. Basically we analyze all the data in front of us and then we make an intelligent best guess as to how things should work.

The problem is that on the Internet, when it comes to the human beings that use the websites, how things should work has very little to do with how things actually work. It’s true. People are strange creatures. They are mostly illogical. So when we use logic to make educated guesses, we almost always miss our mark because most people don’t act logically. They think they do, but they don’t. Most people are ruled by two main forces - Habit and Emotions. Take it or leave it, that’s just how it is.

In the real world, this is why Techies have a hard time selling things to people. They are intelligent and know everything about the product they created and programmed but they can’t sell a single copy to anyone. So they bring in a sales guy who has no clue how the product works, but somehow he’s able to go out there and talk to a prospect and make a sale. Half the time the sales guy doesn’t even know more than 1% of what the product does or how it works or any of the features of it. Yet they can sell. Why?

The reason for this is because good sales people study and understand how humans work. Not how products work.

Simon, if you seriously want to make more money from your Blog, you need to start a new chapter in your Personal Development career on human psychology and start studying people. Not from a management point of view but from a sales, marketing, promotional point of view. The cool thing is that on the Internet, you can use your analytical skills to be able to understand people (your visitors) much better than they even understand themselves!

First You Must Commit

The first thing I see is that you’ve made a commitment to make money from your Blog as of May 1st. In your post you say this:

“I will need sustainable income to leave my day job, which is why you’ll see some ads and product recommendations on the site, but my intention is to make them non-intrusive and to not detract from a quality experience.”

Ok, if I was coaching you via phone this is where you’d get a 5 minute earful with a lot of colorful words. When I read that, this is what I’m hearing:

“Hello Mr. Reader… if it’s OK with you, I would like to be able to make a few pennies by providing you with all this free advice I’m giving you, so if at all possible could I please place a few ads somewhere off in the corner where you won’t notice them and they won’t bother you? I promise not to make them obtrusive. Please don’t leave.”

Listen Simon… You’re an awesome guy. You’re writing awesome content. The content you write HELPS people. You DESERVE to make money from it! You’re offering your readership great content and you’re going to continue to improve it and get better at delivering even better content right? So stop screwing around with feeling apologetic about having advertising on your site and feeling guilty for it!

Start monetizing your site. Get some ads up there. Find products that are good and useful for people. Promote them. Show people what’s good and then give them the ability to buy those things and make a small commission in the process. Get some advertisers to sponsor you on the site. Throw their ads up there too. Don’t be shy! If you’re going to monetize, then MONETIZE. Don’t do it half way. Go all the way, don’t be afraid of pissing off the few visitors you’ve got who are going to bitch and say “Oh my God Simon, you’ve got banner ads on your site now? Boo Hoo, I’m going to leave…how dare you try to make money off me!”

Forget them.

And forget any friend or family you might have that you think will criticize you if you try to monetize your site or start doing some promotional stuff. They don’t pay your bills, do they? Then forget them.

Sorry, as you can tell I’m very vocal and passionate about this point. I totally feel that you’re playing small because you’re afraid of what people might think of you and your site if you turn it into a money making site. Don’t worry about them. When you’re making $30,000/month from your Blog, they’ll be copying you and doing the exact same thing you’re doing.

If you try to play small, and you try to rely on your Blog income to pay your bills, you’ll go bankrupt and starve. I want you to go to the store and pickup PC Magazine or WIRED or some other techie magazine. THAT’S who you have to model and look at. How much advertising is in one of those magazines? Tonnes, right? Do you think they’re afraid of people complaining? Who cares…people still buy the magazine. Why? Because the money they make from advertising allows them to fund the really cool magazine they have and bring you content, interviews, reviews of products etc. that you find valuable on shiny glossy paper for a few bucks.

You know when I was getting my site re-designed by UBD, I was talking to one the guys there when we were initially coming up with the look for the site. When I told them about the ad spots I wanted and how I wanted AdSense in my posts, I was told that it’s not good for a young Blog like mine to have advertising on it because it might turn off some people. You know what I told them? I said I didn’t care. I told them that I will work my ass off to make sure the content I write for my Blog is good quality and I will offer it to people for free.

If someone comes to my site and has the attitude of “Oh my God, he has ads on here…I’m not sticking around…he’s not making money off me!” and they decide to leave because of it, then GOOD! CYA! I can’t help those people anyways! They’ll never be Inspired Money Makers because they live with a lack mentality where they think that somehow I’m stealing money from them by putting ads on MY SITE. That makes no sense?! If you don’t want to click on an ad, then don’t click it!

Simon, if people are going to judge you or me for putting ads on our site, that’s their problem not ours. Don’t let those few people stop you from building an awesome, valuable resource for the rest of the world out there who has no problem with you making money from your Blog as long as you’re providing them valuable content that helps to enrich their lives.

You’re on my site all the time, right? I have ads on my site. Doesn’t stop you from coming! You want to attract people just like you to your site so don’t worry about the few negative party poopers that think that money is the root of all evil and “how dare you try to make money doing something like Blogging!”

So, to end this rant, you must commit to making money from your Blog. Go for it! All the way!

Promoting

Links

The next thing you should be spending a big percentage of your Blog time on is promoting your Blog. I did a quick Google search for the number of links you’ve got coming to your site ( link: www.simonstapleton.com ). You’ve got 7 links.

For comparison reasons, InspiredMoneyMaker.com has 511.

StevePavlina.com has 73,800.

If I told you that you will make $1/month for every link you get to your site, how many links would you go out there and get?

RSS

You mentioned that you’re frustrated with your low RSS subscription rate. Here are a few things to look at.

Firstly, when I look at your source I notice this line:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="SimonStapleton.com RSS Feed"
href="http://www.SimonStapleton.com/wordpress/feed/" />

I think this might be sending some of your RSS subscribers to your Wordpress Feed instead of your Feedburner feed. You might want to get that checked. Also, from what I can see in the source file, you’re also still running Wordpress 2.3.3? Version 2.5.1 is currently out, time to upgrade.

The next one I tell you about you’re going to be kicking yourself for, hehe.

When you go to one of your post pages, such as this one: http://www.simonstapleton.com/wordpress/2008/05/01/simonstapletoncom-why-do-i-do-this/

And you scroll down to the part where it says:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you hover over the link where it says “subscribe to my RSS feed!” are you aware that it points to this feed:

“http://feeds.feedburner.com/inspiredmoneymaker”

Dude, I know you like my site, but you don’t need to send me your RSS subscribers, LOL!

It’s weird, it’s only like that on your individual post pages.

Technorati

I ran over to Technorati to check out what your profile on there looks like and I couldn’t find one. You should get one setup as it helps you to keep track of who’s linking to you and who you’re linking to. When you write an article on your site and it links to someone else’s Blog, their Technorati ranking will go up and they will see that you linked to them. They might become curious and visit your site and maybe even subscribe to your Blog.

Plus it’s a good way to watch the rank of your Blog. It can be a positive experience to watch your ranking go up and can inspire you to write more content and promote your Blog.

Commenting

When you search through the links via Google, I notice some links indexed from my site to yours. Meaning, you’re commenting on my site a lot and that’s awesome. Are you doing any commenting anywhere else? This might be a good idea to get some more traffic from other sources. However, don’t stop commenting on here of course!

You might want to look at some other techie type Blogs that are getting around the same amount of traffic as mine and become a top commenter on that Blog contributing some good content. That will help to drive some traffic to your Blog from the “Techie Crowd”.

Forum Promoting

One of the ways that I get some good quality of traffic to my site is by being super active in forums. One of those is the StevePavlina.com forums where I have +1,200 quality posts and each one of them has my Blog link in the signature line. I contribute a lot to those forums and people follow me onto here from there. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how you found me.

My suggestion there would be to pick a forum category like the “IT” section and become the local guru there helping people in your area of expertise. People will begin to know you, trust you and it will help to drive some seed traffic to your site.

Sitemap?

Do you have a Google Sitemap on your site? If not, get one immediately. Use Google XML Sitemaps to create a sitemap for your Blog and submit it to Google using Google Webmaster Tools. It will help to get your Blog indexed faster on Google. I notice that your site has a Pagerank of 0 after being around for over a year. This, combined with the lack of links may be why.

Social Sites

Social site readers like Digg and StumbleUpon love lists and posts that can be read quickly and referred back to later on.

I noticed you have this post “5 Tips for beating recession in techical roles“. You might want to try writing a “Top 10″ or “Top 50″ or “101 Ways” type of list. Keep the points short and sweet.

Here are some ideas:

- 50 Ways to Know You’re a Self-Professed Geek
- 101 Pieces of Techie Jargon That Will Make People Think You’re Smart
- 50 Programming Tricks That Will Make You A Jedi

etc.

Try to make them fun. If you want inspiration, try reading some of the stories on Digg.

Blog Carnivals

Submit your best article of the week to at least one Blog Carnival every week. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Content

You’ve got good content. I’m not going to say much about that as I can tell you’ve got lots of goodies to share.

However, I would like to offer you a challenge. If you say you’re committed to making your Blog make money, I would like to challenge you to write 90 posts in the next 90 days. You’re currently doing about 30-35 per 90 days. Try doing an average of one per day and see what happens. You might be surprised what you find.

Remember, you don’t need to write some super profound 1,500 word article every single time. A few smaller ones here and there are OK. If you find a good YouTube video, post that, etc. Also remember that you don’t have to write every day to post every day. You can write 5 posts on the weekends and then post them whenever you want with the Wordpress scheduled post feature.

Other Ideas

Here are some other ideas you might want to look at:

1. Interview someone in your field. Perhaps a HR manager of an IT firm, ask him what he looks for when hiring people. This will help people who are looking for a Job in the IT field. Find someone to Interview. This can even be done via email.
2. Blend Your AdSense. Your AdSense Block is currently grey background, black border, blue link, green url. Test making the background the same as your Blog background, no border, and the links the same color as your links.
3. Diversify Your Income. As far as I can tell, I see that you’re primarily relying on AdSense and Amazon Affiliate sales to monetize your site. You need to diversify that. Firstly, you need an Advertise page so that anyone who wants to purchase ad space on your site can do so. For example, how the heck do you know that I wouldn’t want to purchase a banner ad on your site Simon? Why are you not giving me that option? I use OIOPublisher to make it really easy to automate all my banner and link ad sales.
4. Personalize. Your Blog has your name on it but your picture is nowhere to be found. Put your picture up. People like to see what the person they are reading looks like. I’m a visual person and I remember people’s faces a lot more then their names, so by having your face on your Blog you make yourself more memorable.
5. Study John Chow and John Cow. Being an introverted / analytical / techie / business type like you, I know exactly how hard it is for us to get into that promotional mindset. There has been so much I have learned from John Chow and John Cow about promoting Blogs. I’m not saying you listen to everything they say, but there is a lot you can learn by watching what they do and how they do it. In the offline world, another person you might want to study in terms of learning to promote yourself is Mohammad Ali.
6. Consider a Site Re-Design. Ideally a custom design would be awesome, but if you cant afford it even just a good quality Wordpress theme with some color and shine would be nice. You might consider going for one of the paid themes which only cost like $39, or $99 or something. Even just a few bucks like that ensures that your theme is used by only a handful of people since most people are not willing or able to invest in a paid Wordpress theme. Use that to your advantage.

I hope this gives you a lot to get working on Simon. I really think you’ve got a bright future ahead of you in the Blogging world, you just need to learn the art of self-promotion. In this world, there is no sales and marketing department that sells your product after you code it and build it. You’ve got to become your own Don King. Nobody is going to do it for you. You owe it to all the people who will get tremendous value from your Blog, and you owe it to your family and your son to spend more time with him!

Best of luck Simon. I hope I wasn’t too rough on you.

- Paul

Simon’s Stapleton runs a Blog offering Career & Personal Development Advice to Technical Professionals and Self-Professed Geeks over at www.SimonStapleton.com.