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Why Kids Like Carl Ocab Will Inherit The Earth
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There’s been a bit of controversy over under-age bloggers this year, particularly focused on Carl Ocab. Let me get my bias out right from the beginning – I’m all for kids starting blogs and trying to make money from them.
Blogging is a very accessible way for kids to get experience online, learning as they earn (or don’t!) with real, immediate feedback about what makes good content, and what drives traffic, and how to build relationships. The “real world” of adults will judge them purely on their results – a consideration that’s actually hard for kids to get in the physical world. The verdict of the blogosphere might be harsh, but it will be accurate feedback in exactly the way that school reports aren’t.
I was tickled when I Googled “Carl Ocab” today and found a gorgeous guerrilla marketing blog post about Carl from a 10-year-old blogger was in the first page of results (monkeylime3tc.wordpress.com/*carl*-*ocab*/). Way to generate traffic! Leveraging off someone else’s controversial blog. Full marks to James Brennan. (Although he will probably have to up the ante on quality content to retain any of that traffic!)
We get the kids in our Cash-Smart Kids program into some form of online activity from their first month, and blogging is a vital promotional skill, even if your core business is selling pink meringue elephants. Google loves blogs, so if you’re interested in using organic search or PPC to drive traffic, there’s no escaping the blog!
I’m going to swing out here and make a prediction (you heard it here first!).
More and more kids are going to start taking blogging seriously as a money-making activity.
This will impact YOU.
How?
1. More traffic for everyone
As these kids cruise around looking for ideas to copy, affiliate links, and freebies, they will boost everyone’s traffic numbers – but will they distort the demographic of the visitors who currently click on your PPC and affiliate ads?
2. Growing centres of gravity in the kid blogosphere
Let’s face it – kids have more surfing time than most adults. If Ashley Qualls (age 17, making $70,000+ per month from her site) can pull the traffic numbers she pulls for WhateverLife by giving away My Space layouts, then there are many, many blogging niches which could pull way more numbers than yet another blog about “How To Make Money From Blogging”. But who is best placed to be creating the compelling content for those niches?
3. What happens when you have four million kid bloggers all having flame wars in their posts …. and linking to one another?
Sure, none of us may be interested, but the teen and tween demographics are utterly immersed in “who said what about whom” for their every waking moment – blogging is just another medium for that. And with all that traffic and all those links, the serious adult blogs are potentially going to drift downward in the “Top X” lists.
So, what can you do to protect your ranking and revenues?
Only slightly tongue-in-cheek here – get a kid.
Seriously, if a kid has a huge readership, and you’re quoted in every third post as their mentor … ka ching!
Or, use a popular kid as a guest blogger, or start a parallel blog in the kidosphere and have a panel of kids you consult about whether your posts are “lame” in their eyes … or blog about how awful some of these kid bloggers are and then leap to the defence of others (in the spirit of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”).
No matter how you respond to the challenge, the kids are here to stay – and I say, let’s celebrate the great leveller that is the Internet, where a 12-year-old can write or speak and have their ideas taken seriously on their merits. We have long underestimated our kids, but the likes of Ben Casnocha, Ashley Qualls, and the legions of less high-profile under-18 internet entrepreneurs are proving that kids can do anything an adult can do.
Jenny Ford
About the Author: Jenny Ford is an expert in educating children about business and wealth creation. She is one of the founders of www.Cash-Smart-Kids.com, and her blog can be seen at www.RaisingEntrepreneurs.org. She holds an Honours degree in Psychology, a Diploma in Training and Assessment Systems, and an Advanced Diploma in Business Management. She is the mother of three young entrepreneurs, all of whom started successful businesses when they were nine to twelve years old.
Relevent recent blog posts
http://raisingentrepreneurs.org/blog/2007/11/25/the-controversy-over-carl-the-kid-blogger-carl-ocab/
http://raisingentrepreneurs.org/blog/2007/11/18/7-reasons-why-kids-can-beat-adults-at-making-money-online/
New Things Win
Yesterday on my way home, I was listening to my iPod. My friend asked “What are you listening to Carl?” Then she suddenly grabbed my iPod and plugged the earphones into her ear. “What’s this? This sounds old school.” she laughs.
Actually, I was listening to Queen’s Seaside Rendezvous that time. I know its 70’s but what the heck? It’s great. It’s awesome! After that she added “Listen to something new.” Of course I ignored that and kept listening.
After a short pause, I asked her back “What are you listening to by the way?” I saw songs by Rhinna, T-Pain, etc. I’m not saying those guys suck but what I’ve realized is that they’re new. People are proud to use new things, to wear new clothes, to buy new products. Even though it’s not really remarkable than what they have – but it’s new.
“People think new is better”
What you should do is leverage this trait. When you’re selling something emphasize that it’s new.
Ever wonder why most cereals say “New flavor blah blah” but it was selling for more than a year? Perhaps the new and improved Tide formula? Think about it.
Since Freddie’s anniversary just passed this Nov. 25 R.I.P. Freddie. Your songs will never stop playing.
Image by 2litro
Get You Mind and Body Right and the Rest Will Follow
Spending hours upon hours online can take it’s toll on you. To counteract that you should get off of the computer. WHAT?! “But I need to be online in order to make money,” you say. Now I know that most folks are online to get money, but how many are actually being productive? I would think that many online entrepreneurs waste a big chunk of their time when online.
What can you do to make your time online more effective? Make a daily or weekly map of what you plan on doing online. That way you get online and know exactly what you are about to do, instead of procrastinating or letting things distract you. You will be surprised with your efficiency and productiveness. Build that tunnel vision with your time spent online. You can even designate how much time you plan on spending online. This allows you to spend X minutes or hours performing a task and makes you prioritize those duties. For a person like me it’s wise to factor in some extra unexpected time online, especially since I have a large instant messenger list.
Now that you are a more focused “interneting” machine, you have some spare time. Those extra hours you just saved yourself should be used to get some much needed exercise into your weekly routine. When I say exercise I don’t mean go run a marathon. What I mean is that you should get off of the computer and go for a walk, or do some push ups. Something physical. Anything. It’s also good to get some sunlight and fresh air.
I follow these simple practices and am still able to exercise, spend time with my family, live a normal life, read all of my email, do my marketing, write my blog posts, and read all of the 58 blogs I am subscribed to. Believe me, those extra few minutes you spend planning your online routine will save you hours that you didn’t even know you had.
Israel has been in the internet marketing, web design arena for 6 years. He currently has his own personal weight loss blog at Fat Man Unleashed.
A Hardcore Advice On Making Money with AdSense
This post is guest posted by Grandstart – Hardcore Strategies to Make Money Online.
Forget about blending your ads, disregard the heat map, toss away Joel Comm’s book. Don’t bother reading those tips dished out by make money online bloggers who have never even seen a Google checque.
If you want to make money with AdSense, read closely.
Simple sites make more money with AdSense
How do these sites look? Scroll below.
These sites are pretty clear-cut. There are no clutters and they don’t confuse the visitors. They don’t offer 97 or so options.
I did post about this in “Tighten your page and get 20-30% AdSense CTR” four months back. After that article, I redesigned my sites – further stretching their simplicity. Well, the result was an even better CTR.
It was not without a model. I followed closely the sites of the real AdSense gurus. And one of them is Michael Green. Michael, an internet marketer par excellence, is also a Conservative Member of the Parliament (UK).
Michael’s site is earning six figures monthly. Well, yes the traffic is already there. But the point is you have to convert that traffic into clicks.
Michael made his site incredibly simple that his CTR went to an amazing 30-40%.
Look at his site:
Here’s another example of a website that rakes in tons of AdSense money:
Now you know what a simple site looks. Yes, it’s on the edge of being ugly!
But do YOU care if it brings in 5 to 10 times more than your current earnings?
Ha!Ha! I feel your pain if you do a complete overhaul of your beautiful site.
If you still doubt that simple sites make more AdSense money than your 3 columned blog, why not try typing www.google.com? The site is the mother of all the simple sites. It collected tons of clicks in 2006.
Look at the Google site again. Ridiculously simple. While its competitors were busy converting their sites into a doorway of all information, Google concentrated on being simple. A plain logo and no banners. Content on the left and money ads on the right. Hey! there are even ads on the left.
The Google visitor is left with only a few choices. It’s either the content on the left or the persuasive ad on the right. The visitor is always in a hurry and decides quickly which makes Google’s CTR shoot thru the roof.
Follow Google’s example. Why have we not done this before? Google is showing us how it makes tons of money.
Should I say more of the elements of a simple site? Like above the fold ads and white background? Watch out for my succeeding posts at www.grandstart.com
Video Review – Squidoo Versus Conventional Domain
This post is sponsored by Roshawn Hall
Who Am I?
Hi, my name is Charles Lau. I do Internet reviews in my blog, and this is my 19th video review.
Introduction
Another interesting challenge is coming up when for the first time I have been asked to do a review on someone who is using Squidoo. Squidoo has been a great place for anyone of us who are not sure how to do our own website. And we have Roshawn Hall here in the review who is using Squidoo to be his identity exposure. It makes me wonder why Roshawn Hall is not having his own dot com for his own presence. But to think of his brand position, he is actually leveraging his traffic from Squidoo network and his own marketing effort such as this review we are going through today.
Come to think of it. Many of us are not taking advantage of the free service from Squidoo for our free exposure to the Internet world. Furthermore, we can also make money by hosting our information with Squidoo!
The Video Review
Publishing On Squidoo
By publishing one page of information of what we can offer, this is what Squidoo called it as a “Lens”. Having to be with Squidoo, you practically have every article being linked from other Squidoo pages’ PR juice. Instantly, you are going to be exposed from Squidoo traffic, as well as the search engine traffic. And with your other marketing tactics, you are going to enjoy great exposure for your Internet business!
Don’t you think that Squidoo seems to be able to position every page as though they are the main page for exposure? Every article being written on Squidoo seems to be of high importance. But that’s only if you do it well with the Squidoo platform.
Roshawn Positioning His Squidoo Pages
He has a few lens on Squidoo to share with his traffic. And they are all inter-linked. When I glanced through the lens, I actually learn something more about affiliate marketing. It makes me think that there is so much more to do with squidoo than just a lens. Roshawn has positioned all his information on Squidoo which I believe could be his initial marketing tactic to make his first exposure since September 2007. I suspect that his subsequent step will be his own domain name which could be Roshawn Hall dot Com or something else. Most of us tend to have our exposure from our own website which we have to struggle for more traffic exposure…
About Roshawn’s Contents
He has nicely dissected Affiliate Marketing into different areas which I define them as:
1) Beginning affiliate marketing: This is what Roshawn called it as Red-Light Green Affiliate Marketing. This is basically a quick start tip to get yourself warm up for affiliate marketing business.
2) Places where Affiliate Marketers must Go!: This is what Roshawn called it as The Affiliate Knockout List. This is the place where we get to know all the list of submitting to directories for articles, press release, social bookmarking and blog.
3) Make Your Affiliate Website A Niche.: This is what Roshawn called it as KingMe Affiliate Marketing. This is the place where we have to make a king out of ourselves. There must be a niche or a reason why we are visiting this site frequently!
4) Affiliate Marketers Pulling Through The Difficult Times: This is what Roshawn called it as Affiliate Marketing Cheat Codes. I don’t understand why he called it a cheat sheet. But this is definitely a must to read for affiliates who are doing badly or even to quit!
5) Money-Making Tips For Affiliates: This is what Roshawn called it as The Affiliate Bankers List. This is yet another list which we cannot miss! This is like a good tips and tricks for us to look into to tap into some of the untouched areas of marketing which can increase traffic or revenue!
6) Introducing To The Author, Roshawn Hall!: Roshawn admitted that he is the The Wittiest InternetMarketer Ever! This is the place to tell everybody why we should listen to him! Good job, Roshawn Hall!
Why Are You Not Using Domain Name for Your Website?
This question keeps popping up in my mind as I was doing a review. Although it might be a good idea to leverage on the traffic from Squidoo, the overall branding should go back to the actual domain name. That’s my thought only of course. I even thought he could actually do hand-in-hand with his own dot com website to create a bigger exposure. But of course, there might be a chance that he will move into this area at a later stage… Anyway, he’s been working on Squidoo since September… So time will tell…
Conclusion
I must admit that he has written great articles inside. And I would look forward to him writing his own blog and be his first RSS subscriber. He has great thoughts and writes from a big picture in his mind. Great stuff in his lens. Again, I wonder when he’s going to start his website.
Simply by looking at his contents and his leverage on squidoo, I can see how far-sighted he can be. Why? Because he is already making money even though he hasn’t spent probably even a single cent! The most he could have spent is his time to work out all the materials to bring in the money! Also, just look at his contents too! You can understand how much he already knows about affiliate marketing which every single one of us has to go through at our beginning stage of affiliate marketing.
My Best Blog Tip EVER Series – Courtney Tuttle
On the last episode of the Best Blog Tip EVER, we’ve exposed Seth Godin’s short but remarkable tip – that is not only for blogging, but life in general.
For today, we will be having someone who has been in the make money online niche for some time, a rising blogger on full-throttle and the founder of BloggingZoom (A Digg for bloggers) Please welcome the 5th person to give his best blog tip ever, Courtney Tuttle:
His Best Blog Tip EVER:
Never, ever settle for being mediocre. If you are content with mediocre that’s what you’re going to create – a mediocre blog. If you believe that you can create an elite level blog, you can. If you truly believe in yourself, the ideas will come. All that’s left is continuing to put one foot in front of the other.
The last two sentences that Court gave is very powerful. What you think of, you attract.
Carl Ocab is one of the most successful teenage bloggers on the net. But remarkably, Carl was just 13 years old when he rose to fame with his hugely popular “make money online” website: www.carlocab.com
