Audio Version of this Article

Here are a few things, that will negatively ‘brand’ a pacific rim blogger, regardless of how good, bad or otherwise they actually are.  Follow these rules and it will help you to be more successful as a blogger.

1. Avoide any use of the words mummy, mummsy, daddy, mommy above the fold, and possibly on the front page at all.  I realize a number of bloggers from this area are ‘Mommy Bloggers’ but ‘Mommy Bloggers’ get an unfair bad reputation as it is and this unfortunately (do to the low quality of many many blogs from the area) goes triple for ‘Mommy Bloggers in the Pacific Rim. 
2. Get rid of The orange blogger ‘B’ in the icon of a FireFox tab
3. Using a default blogger template of any variety is BAD.  (there are free custom blogger templates out there, go get them!)
4. Avoid any hint of writing about the United States when the writer has not been to the actual location.  Don’t get me wrong, TV and movies and culture in general can definitely minimize the lack of knowledge, but it doesn’t bridge the gap when you write 20+ articles per week.  I certainly could not write effectively about life in Manila or Hong Kong or Seoul myself, and I’ve studied business, language and culture there for years.  I’ve never been there, and so I basically don’t know what I’m talking about. 
5. Here’s a tough one and one I violate myself on my personal blog (but my personal blog makes very little money, so take that into consideration too!) Don’t include more than one picture of your kids on your front page at any time.  My kids are flat out beautiful.  I’m biased they are my kids.  They are just your typical cookie cutter, run of the mill muttly kids to everyone else’s eyes.  Unless you are a great children’s photographer, try and keep this at a minimum on sites where you want to make money.  (this really goes for all bloggers, not just pacific rim, and note it goes for me too!)
6. Name Your Site with English Words – If you want to pick up English speaking ad dollars, consider the benefits ($$$) of naming your site with an English word.  Its a cultural bias thing, but until China actually overtakes the world economy in total, you want the good paying stuff, you have to go with the advertiser language of choice.  (one exception to this rule, I think Wuching.com does a good job, but the site looks great and the articles (absent the url) are written in very good English))
7. DO NOT dominate the above fold section of your website with massive Adsense ads (like a 300 x 250) and a Google search box too, sitting right above the first article,so that the reader & the advertiser have to scroll down, just to read the title.
8. When your Readers Comments Brand You Negatively – If your readers leave lots of comments and tend to unknowingly do things that would also go against these rules, (like using the words mummsy, mummy, daddy, etc. in an excessive fashion in their comments) or speak in very broken English, don’t put a comment widget in your sidebar, and if you absolutely must, don’t put it above the fold.
9. If you screw up and write an article that breaks these rules, go back and fix it! Someone will find it and it will make a bad impression now, as opposed to whenever you wrote it as things might have been more forgiving back then.  Today, competition is getting tougher as times get tougher so put your best face forward.
10. Write some top X lists more often. If you are a Pacific Rim blogger, and you want to earn more, but are running out of topics (based on the recommendations above), use what you have available.  You obviously have internet access, do some research and put together some great lists.  These are often times one type of linkbait.  They can be a top 10 list like this, but I’d recommend building up a longer list than just 10.  Shoot for 20 and don’t stop if you can make it to 100.  These are great for bringing in Google search traffic, but more importantly, it can help keep your English writing focused and help you build up better and better skills so that you can eventually blog in a more free form fashion in ways that will be undecipherable from bloggers in the US, Canada, or the UK.

Bonus Advanced Tip!

If you are the best writer in the Pacific Rim, but you want to do well with a generic US audience, consider hiring a US Voice Actor to read your articles as a podcast.  The cost is not as high as you might think, and might just help you become hugely successful.  I’m a ghost writer myself, and its not easy giving someone else my words and thoughts, but it does pay the bills!

Inspired by this Conversation in the Boards at Izea.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Tips for Better Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.