It’s time to do our new business newsletter. We’ve had quite a few problems with this issue but it’s finally done… I can breathe a little when the new newsletter is done. Summer is coming and this is the best time to promote our business as our target parents are now looking for schools for the summer and afterwards. So the newsletter is a very good promotional tool.
At the moment, we’re pretty limited in the presentation for the actual newsletter: we don’t do color yet. But I’m becoming certain that this is the direction we need to go in: of course, we’ll then need to send out the flyer to be done commercially. OK. This is what it looks like! It was made using MS Publisher 98 … in Windows 98SE, but later versions of Office include this, too.
Even in this era of online commerce, creating a short off-line flyer, newsletter or card can be a good way to gain additional attention for your service, store or website. You can use the wizards in Word or Publisher 2008 to get you started with the basic design, write a few short columns, make it informational and of value to the readers.
Layout
I created two documents, each A4 in size. Then I named number 1 – pages 1 and 4. Number 2 is pages 2 and 3. I used a simple printer connection to the photocopier in our office and printed 2 pages on each A4 page. It was tricky to get the double-sided effect, and I wasted quite a few sheets in the photocopier. But soon, I was able to double print each A4 page. Folded in the middle, I had a four-page newsletter.
Tracking Results
I create a special link to the online sites (use a redirect if you want to) to track the traffic. If you get really smart, you can create several runs with different URLs to track the effects of different distribution points (in a larger city, this would be a great idea!).
When clients or potential clients are just looking for simple introductory information without too much hype or a sales presentation, this kind of flyer or newsletter can really answer their questions without pressure sales. I usually attach a name card to the newsletter with a personal name on it.
And it works. New clients often pick one up on the way in. Of course, as a community tool, I also distribute it to our existing clients. So there’s an added bonus there, too.
Today is the last day in 2007, and in Taipei, we’re already approaching the end of the year with the usual fireworks at 101! If you haven’t seen them, they’re quite spectacular. I’ve added a video. After the video we’ll look at 2007 in review.
It has been an amazing year on InvestorBlogger… As I start to recap what’s happened in my blog since December 31st, 2006… let’s just see how it has played out.
Blog Audience
On the upside, the profile of the blog is now much higher than it was last year at the same time. In fact, my blog has gone from an Alexa of millions to 113K. On Technorati, it’s moved up to under 50K at the moment. We currently have a readership that’s now a little under 80 or so on our RSS feeds.
Traffic wise, InvestorBlogger has now reached about 1500 Unique Visitors per month on average, with traffic doubling just in the last few months alone. Page views are running at about 3000, too. This has helped with additional traffic from links, advertising and so on.
Blog Content
In addition, we’ve added nearly 800 posts this year alone! That’s incredible. We’ve already published a best of 2007 with posts that generated the most traffic. But there’s a ton of good posts amongst those 220,000 words on the blog! The reorganization of the categories helped me to think much more clearly about the nature of the blog. We currently have 13 categories. Unfortunately, some of the posts are wrongly categorized from the early part of the year. I don’t have a tool to help reorganize them… Any plugins?
Online Income
In early September, I passed the $5,000 mark in total online income. Since then, I’ve been moving in on earning $7,000. Offline income hasn’t been so successful, but the active/passive ratio of the income has been quite surprising, approximately 40% of the income is automatic – I don’t have to do anything! Obviously the paid posting that I have been doing is quite active, but there are a number of other sources of income that need little or no intervention on my part.
Challenges
Offline: 2006/7 was a difficult year for my business: faced with declining admissions, and rising costs. We set out to tackle both. And we have succeeded. But running a business as we are is certainly not a passive thing.
Online: The blog has moved from regular hosting to a virtual server. I was getting frustrated at the slower response times, then the blog was unavailable for part of August (not good!). Eventually, I took the plunge and opted for faster hosting. For a while, things were fine; but then in November problems returned.
Finally, I took a carving knife and began going through the hosted files to pare down what was not being used. Eventually, I found one plugin that might have been the reason for ALL the problems in the first place. It was duly removed. But the benefit was that a lot of junk, some of it insecure or old was either passworded, moved to inside the root folder or deleted. The result has been a better performing server overall. I’m still experiencing mild spikes in activity, but that may be due to other junk in old user accounts. I’ll be cleaning them out during the year.
The Carnival of Making Real Money is helping to drive traffic to the blog because it is hosted right here on the blog. The current entry has generated so many submissions that I’m having a problem dealing with them all. Still, we’re looking forward to the next issue.
We’ve run several promotions throughout the year, none of which really has taken hold. But that’s okay. The first was the BlogBuzz that ran in June and in November. I’ve had the opportunity to review a number of websites and provide additional exposure to our traffic.
We’ve also run advertising in three fronts: a review on Michael Kwan’s Blog (which really helped to coalesce my thoughts on design), a text link on CashQuests (which generated about 65 visitors), and a link on John Cow’s Blog (which has brought 90 visitors).
Well, I’m really looking forward to 2008, and whatever happens, it will be an interesting year! I hope you enjoyed these posts in 2007 as much as I have in writing them.
This week has been a rather quite week for my blog with a large jump in traffic (thanks to Stumble, though I’ve done some L-O-N-G posts, on a number of good topics. Here’s a quick recap if you missed them:
The titles are self-explanatory so you can pick and choose. The *two most popular stories brought over 60% of my traffic this week, and that doesn’t record those who read the stories on the front page of the blog or via feed.
In other news, Carnival of Making Real Money is about to publish #4 tomorrow, so you’ll be able to see what I’ve been editing. I’ve chosen 22 wonderful, informed and inspired articles out of the submissions. I’ve had to tighten the criteria for the Carnival a little, though! If you’d like to submit, visit the submission page.
Get more publicity for your website!
If you are looking for a Blog Buzz or would like to be added to the Friends of InvestorBlogger pages, please drop me a line at investorblogger @ gmail dot com.
Buying Advertising
Of course, if you wish to purchase some advertising on the blog, I’d be happy to provide banners, links, reviews, and top spots and so on. You can simply use the same form and inquire.
