Paid Blogging - No Substitute for Quality

Paid blogging is a practice that is all too common on the internet and you will find that the lower end of the scale it is basically a sweatshop of amateur content writers pumping out thousands of useless articles everyday. The type of site that will take any content and allow you to spam it full of links to a product or website who has paid the hosting company or middle man a lot more.

There are two types of paid blogging and to know the difference between good and bad you must first consider the structure of the transaction. Bloggers are effectively journalists, not in the traditional sense but on a small scale. You will find many people who started in blogging are now having articles commissioned by large newspapers who have grabbed hold of the idea of opinion pieces and seek 'experts' to help their readers understand a topic that may be hot in current pop culture. So what are the different types?

If you Google paid blogging you will find a number of article farms that let you connect to people who want to buy content, the problem is that you will find the pay is between $1 to $10 regardless of your expertise. This in effect means quality is low as anyone who blogs professionally does not spend less than 30 minutes writing an article and for that kind of money your talking about taking work that is below minimum wage in the US and UK. So who does take all this bottom level work? Well either people who do not value their time very much, or people who have English as their second language. This means that you can find a whole array of badly written articles about different products. The company paying has been sold a false promise of increased traffic and great content, many of these sites proclaim to have hundreds of thousands of social media followers who will see your article but that in itself is not entirely true. Most twitter and certainly Facebook followers will never see your content, they will never engage with your brand. The reason being is that the majority of their social media followers are in fact people who want to write and get paid by them, hardly your target audience for selling car parts. Facebook has begun to realise this and thus has removed your posts on pages from the majority of your fans timeline, on average only 5-7% of your fans will ever see a post you make, that is unless the page owner pays a handsome fee to promote it.

The second type of paid blogging is like a special club that you only get into by proving your worth. This is where the best bloggers reside, working for big companies and websites who value quality and realise that they need to pay good money for the great articles. This is where your big business have departments that look for exceptional bloggers and approach them with a decent offer of pay for an articulate and worthy blog post. The pay can vary from $100 up to thousands for a quality article. They do not go in for shady social media tactics instead allowing the quality of the work to speak volumes and the writers, if in a niche field, will already have a great network of hungry consumers waiting on their next article. To actually make a living from writing you must break into this circle, and how do I do that you may ask? Well unfortunately there is not a simple answer otherwise it would suddenly become a wash with poor quality and drive the price down for everybody. The only sure fire way to make good money is to invest time into some of your own blogs, build up a reputation and engage in social media and forum interactions with others bloggers and PR workers. If your website consistently pumps out good quality informative articles then you will find that these high paying jobs will find their way to you. Of Course is does help if you advertise the fact you are willing to write content for pay.

How to get started

Get a blog, its doesn't have to be your own domain you can open one easily on a free blogging site. Consider what your content will be about, try to avoid going too broad brush you can have a lot of niche websites but if it is confusing to the reader then you may find it is counter productive to your aims. Once you have built up a steady stream of content you will then need to start trying to build links so that Google can find you and value your blog. Guest Blogging is a good way to do this and another aspect that it provides is that other people will edit and critique your work. If you get a lot of rejections from guest blogging opportunities this is an indication you certainly aren't ready to recieve any paid work. Keeping it all in your niche is key to ensuring that quality is built from the Guest blogs so do not be tempted to write about a foriegn subjects just because its a page rank 4 site that offer two backlinks.

Monetise your Blog

Google ads are a great way for you to have a trickle income, this is a passive income stream that can be valuable as your build your portfolio. Many well read informative blogs can get around $200 easily from their ad revenue and if you have three or four blogs this could really add up.

Start to Engage with Others

Once you have a well ranked and informative site that is producing good quality content on a regular basis (minimum 3 articles per week) then you can begin to seek out others in the paid blogging arena. This may take some time as there is no website where they all hang out. Start to engage on linkedin and Google+ with other content writers and you may find they have some great advice. Keep your writing CV up to date with examples of your own blogs and guest blogs that you have been published on other website.

The First Paid Pitch

To begin you may wish to find a freelance job board and look for opportunities in your field, these will pay between $20 and $40 per article. Doing this well is the key, think of it like an audition. Do not rush your work as to have it rejected would kill your confidence. These smaller but wholesome opportunities will provide you with another rung on the ladder to your full time paid blogger status.

Summary

The one over riding aspect of blogging for money is to make sure you build a reputation before you begin. There is no substitute for time and content, the longer your blog has been established and the more quality content you have then the rest will take care of itself. So if your looking for an instant pay off you may be better to just go and get a job in your local town and do this part time until your starting to see some pay off.

If you'd like more information or want to find some decent freelance job boards then drop me an email at Steve @ Vinyl Puppet .com

Summly - How a Teenager Made Millions

The news that Yahoo is to buy up media app summly came as a shock for a number of reasons. Firstly the fact an app was purchased days before its android launch left many consumers feeling aggrieved that they are now never going to experience this app, secondly the inventor was a teen, Nick D'Aloisio. Most people start in business young, either washing cars, doing odd jobs or just getting a paper delivery job, but this teenager went one step further. He is now thought to be the youngest self made millionaire in the UK and shines as an example to others that age is never a barrier to success.

The premise of his app was to learn and search the news sites across the world for news relevant to you and provide it in summarised snippets. Effectively taking the effort out of flicking through countless pages of useless news to find the articles you may be interested in. At 15 coming up with an app idea may not be too difficult but to actually realise this app and garner funding was the step that set young Nick apart from the rest. A small break from an experienced investor who saw real potential meant he could launch a prototype of the app which went on to recieve huge media interest due to its volume of downloads. This then attracted much more investment and he built a strong group of investors and technologists to turn the business into a mobile app business. Yahoo have bought this app, not for their own portfolio but to integrate into their existing systems and to give young Nick a job to help them do it. The most interesting aspect of this story is that Nick is still in School, so effectively works part time on this.

So next time you have an idea don't give up, remember young Nick and think if a kid at school working part time can become a millionaire then surely you can be successful at your chosen path. Another lesson would be that good investors can make your ideas into reality so sourcing and pitching your ideas is key to its success.

Guest Blogging in Googles Sights

Whilst Google is always one step behind any black hat webmasters out there they do eventually catch up. The rise in popularity of Guest Blogging has shown that you can get quality content for your site in exchange for one or two links to other peoples sites. In practice this sounds like a lovely way of improving your blog and building links. But like any good idea which started with a few good quality blogs it has quickly descended into a free for all.

If you have a number of websites you will have no doubt received the numerous emails offering you SEO help at ridiculously low prices? Well the first thing I noticed about these is that the emails weren't even written properly. The English is poor on a lot of these so called SEO expert companies communications and that should immediately set alarm bells ringing. Essentially what they do is sub contract out paid work to writers who receive very small amounts if anything of the original fee. This means your website is put at risk because the only websites that are likely to accept such poor quality content are either Article Directories or flipped sites that are purely written by guest bloggers with no original content from the web owner.

This means you are associating yourself with people who Google will downgrade at the next update and some of that bad affect will blow back into your website. So before you part with $20 for 5 quality backlinks have a bit of a think about what it is your trying to acheive. Most SEO tactics might show good results in the first month with huge volumes of traffic coming into your website but if you are punished this will soon drop and by then it is too late to stop the tactics these SEO 'experts' have used. It would also be worth noting here that if you are guest posting to drive traffic to an eCommerce site then you really need to ensure that the link is relative, there is no point in advertising your plumbing company with an article on fashion.

But there is some hope out there if you want to ensure quality content. Ensure you check out the background of those wishing to do the work for you, ask for a CV of previous work and always ask them if they are English first language speaker. Always check the link of any guest post you are about to post onto your blog and make sure its relevant and always check the article is of sufficient quality. To find quality writers check out some well moderated Google plus communities like Uk Guest Posting or you are welcome to leave a comment with your email and I will be in touch to help.

A Company in Decline

It is never a good move for a company CEO to get involved in decisions that should be taken by their management. A move that undermines the very skill they employ people for and a decision that can result in a huge reduction in talent. This was what happened at Yahoo when the CEO Marissa Mayer decided to remove the opportunity for employees to work from home. Home working was touted as the future for offices in an ever globalising economy that would reduce the overheads of companies, reduce pollution by cutting commuting, improve the chances of employment for the disabled and provide jobs to remote locations that would otherwise be unavailable easing the burden on the housing stock in cities and towns. This announcement is a blow to all who work for this company and leaves many with only a few months to find alternative employment.

What it demonstrates when a CEO begins tweaking company HR policies is that they are in free fall. A well organised, profitable and innovative company utilises many different working practices and often these decisions are simply left in the hands of imediate line managers to make judgements about the benefit to the company of any individual wishin to take up a flexible working arrangement. This decision making has been removed from Yahoo managers who are being told that they have obviously got it so badly wrong that they have had to completely withdraw this flexible working option. A CEO of a successful growing company would never usually get involved in such decisions as they would be busy actually growing the company and providing leadership that could improve the profit of the organisation. If a CEO is revoking HR policies they are clearly not busy enough trying to save the company. Since her appointment Marissa has yet to provide a clear direction for the future of Yahoo.

Another point this highlights is that perhaps companies have a natural shelf life and should not continue beyond their peak. There are hundreds of examples of technology companies that grow large on the back of a boom and then begin to decline as the industry moves on, they then desperately attempt to purchase back their market share by buying up small companies and inhaling them into their own corporate machine. Unfortunately most small start ups and ideas need a driving force behind them, someone who generated the original idea with a vision of where it could end up. By buying a company you are removing a lot of the drive that got them any prominence in the first place and then trusting its success to a workforce that is so far removed from their original mission that they are unable to add any value or enthusiasm. Another great example of this would be RBS who had a huge expansion on the back of company buy outs, this led them to multi billion pound profits annually only to come crashing down in 2008. Of those original companies bought they are being slowly disposed of to other companies and some have even completely dissipated. This kind of expansion can only occur when you have bled dry your original mission and are unhappy to maintain a good service for your basic founding idea. If RBS had simply stayed committed to providing personal and corporate banking they would arguably now be reporting annual profits in excess of 1 billion instead of owing the treasury thousands of pounds and being constantly fined by authorities across the globe.

What is the driving factor behind these huge corporations buying up and diversifying beyond recognition? Profit. Unfortunately with most shareholder owned businesses it is seen as the primary objective of any organisation. A stable profit annually is seen as a poor investment for the stock market that thrives on boom and bust. Hopefully some large failures will have resulted in some rethinking across the board rooms of big companies, a sustainable profitable business should remain such by constantly improving what they do, all ventures into different areas should be taken with a huge amount of due diligence and risk modelling.

As much as this stands true for large companies this advice could be used by small business too. Never forget your custom base, your original service or product that made you profitable. Expansion may seem like a great idea but if it comes at the expense of your original business this can prove dangerous ground. Always insulate your profit making business from any expansion by ensuring the mechanism exists to not only maintain but also improve your current operation, either with a dedicated workforce or a great management team. Greed is the quickest way to bankruptcy.

Identifying Talent

Talent development is the best way to ensure you company has a pipeline of promising staff that are both engaged and skillful to help you grow and improve. Whilst buying in talented people can be effective the identification and promotion of talent internally has a ripple effect across your organisation to help incentivise staff and improve morale. If others see that there are clear career paths open to them they will be more productive and demonstrate the types of behaviors that you wish to promote.

One of the best ways of identifying talent is to use the 9 box Matrix system of categorising employees. This should not be done in secret but be a very open and honest discussion between manager and employee.

The 9 box matrix contains different areas which determine two factors, their performance and their potential. Each employee is positioned in a box, best to keep this simple as some people like to have the position within the box as a factor.

Firstly the manager and employee should mark where they would place the employee, it can often lead to disagreements but it is good to identify and address some behavioural observations that have been made about the employee. It can also mean that perhaps the manager assumes something about the employee.

Most businesses need a large number of employees in boxes 2,5,6 and 3 who have acceptable or high performance but have little or no potential to move forward. This is not to say they could not be trained to do a higher grade position but it means they perhaps do not wish to progress as they enjoy their job or their job is in an area where promotion may not be possible unless a new skill was developed. But these people will always be the bedrock of any success by ensuring the work is done well.

Those in box 1 should be actively managed out of the business. They would have been identified as lacking the requisite skills for the role and all training interventions undertaken have not improved the situation. If this box is used frequently in your organisation then you may wish to determine the length of service of those falling into this category as it could point to a deficiency with your recruitement process and if the process is outsourced to agents can be used to give direct feedback to those agencies to help improve future joiners.

Those in box 4 and 7 should be moved out of this box within 6 months or fall into box 1. This can be done by targeting training to their particular deficiency. It may also be wise to provide a mentor to those in box 7 as they will be a valuable asset should their current performance improve.

Boxes 8, 9 and 6 are those that should fill any job vacancies at higher positions and providing working groups and mentors will help to keep their ideas fertilised until an opportunity present itself.

One final thing to consider during this classification is that on a micro level it is often difficult to identify how the individual would move to the next box so ensure your management are clear on how the path to the next box whether that be vertical or horizontal is achieved. On a macro level this grid will give you great insight into your organisation and working on percentages can really tell you if you have a good workforce or if perhaps more should be done with training or engagement. A box with more employees to the left should identify overall training deficiencies and a box with more to the bottom will identify a problem with staff engagement.

How to fairly asses your employees

One of the most common ways to incentivise staff is to have an annual bonus, traditionally this is either at Christmas or at the end of a tax year. But one of the many questions is how do you effectively assess staff in a non liner productive industry. Well the best way is to compare them to peers, many companies use the bell curve to achieve this with the principle being when graphed it will have the appearance of a bell, with as many people having exceeded expectations as those that have not. Some elements to consider listed below:

Set clear objectives

Even for staff with no sales or service targets you can set more broad objectives and even align to companies performance. This is a way to ensure staff stay focused and should be aligned closely to the companies objectives, whether that be growth through sales, improvement through service or to maintain current standards. Whilst not everyone has direct relationship with more specific targets they can influence this and also means that if the company does not succeed then the employees will not be eligible for a bonus. Setting this at the start of the year is vital, you cannot judge someone on performance without first telling them what aspects you are judging them on. Also you should regularly discuss this with the employees ensuring they understand how they can influence the different elements they may be judged on.

Make sure evidence is used

It is important that both the manager and the employee gather evidence throughout the year to support any decision about performance. This should be discussed regularly to ensure that nothing is missed, often the biggest mistake about review meetings is that they focus on more current performance and fails to recognise performance from previously in the year. Evidence can take the form of stakeholder feedback, emails, customer or client recommendations and also any behavioural observations. Feedback should be encouraged via an email signature or directly asked for from any stakeholders to ensure that not only positive feedback is sought from stakeholders that may have had a successful interaction with. Encourage constructive feedback to be seen in a positive light to help the employee improve.

Rating should be no surprise

If regular discussions held, clear objectives set and evidence gathered there should  be no surprise come the review at the end of the year. If an employee feels that they have shown evidence but they are being treated unfairly then you should have a referral process to the next step up in the hierarchy. Not all line managers are adept at dealing with delivering potentially bad news so ensure some form of guidance is provided and framework for discussion is in place. Not everyone will be happy with their rating but if discussed regularly then this upset can be minimised. Good managers can coach and manage staff to improve and use reviewing conversations as a way to motivate, a bad manager will demotivate staff.

Whilst reviews are used as an assessment against peers it can create healthy competition but by highlighting cooperative working as a good thing will ensure  no negative effects of this competition. Also ensure that they are judged relative to their own experience, it may be easier for someone with five years experience than someone new into the role, however your objectives and expectations of the latter may not be as high as that of the experienced employee.

Impact of Redundancy on Workforce

In the current economic times it is often difficult to ensure that staff stay motivated and productive. An increase in absence levels in due to Stress and anxiety has been sited as a direct result of the economic pressure being felt across the economy which in turn adds pressure to employees to work harder, faster and smarter. Dealing with change in an organisation is valueable skill and often one which is purchased from consultancy firms to address. Independent consultancy firms are seem as less emotionally attached to the company and therefore they can provide the impartial advice around how to best restructure.

Unfortunately large organisations go through peaks and troughs of redundancy programmes and recruitment campaigns and against the backdrop of difficult financial times many employees lose their job. Looking at the impact on the affected individuals is perhaps the main focus and rightly so but do companies pay enough attention to the knock on effect of this?

Legislation

Legislation in employment is strigent, difficult to navigate and often leads to very interesting situations which can damage the attitudes of the remaining workforce. A large organisation does not have the flexibility to simply move resource around and often has a recruitment campaign as a result of a redundancy programme. This would seem crazy, as you are losing the skills you wish to retain and having to go to the employment market to buy in new skills, which will not be effective for at least 3 months (average time employee takes to become productive in a new job). This is due to the terms of reference of a job and the clearly defined legislation that exists to ensure that employees are treated fairly, you may not change the majority of an employees role without having to displace and reinterview them for the new position. This can also be triggered during a company buy out or merger. The two existing sets of staff having completely different role profiles and responsibilities. Legislation is more difficult the more documented an organisation becomes, so with all the protection a role profile will offer the company and individual it can also be the hurdle which makes the employee lose their job or the organisation lose a valuable asset.

Managing change

The morale of many employees at risk, of redundancy or having been selected to be made redundant with a notice period of 3-6 months, is often low which means that you have a risk in your business that needs to be managed closely, sensitively and without prejudice. If they become dissengaged this can have a knock on effect to other members of the organisation, cause friction amongst co-workers who have to pick up any slack in the workload and put pressure on managers who are under qualified to deal with emotional issues. Managing change is an entire industry and there are ways to ensure engagement levels remain high until the exit date, ensuring the employee feels included without enforced participation in irrelevant meetings and ensuring the impact on the wider workforce is minimalised through clarity around the reasoning and next steps of any redundancy. Some companies prefer to purchase external consultants to come in and provide this clear direction to their managers and hopefully educate their management pool for any future issues that can arise.

Garden leave

As a last resort often companies will pay the employee to not be at work, instead having others do their activity and allowing the employee to refresh their CV and work on skills for a career move. This is not preferred as it can send out a negative message about that employee and cause friction which may be difficult with any future dealings. In large companies it is never a good idea to burn bridges as they may well be back one day to help the business again. Garden leave is difficult and expensive to manage and therefore would only be if the negative impact on the business or the individual was such that the subsequent cost was worth it.

Good Leavers

A good leaver is always a good sign, and through continued dialogue can be acheived easily. With many large organisations it is worth discussing future opportunities and the impact the last few months will have on any future employment with the company. Employees will know that in today's world a career is no longer a 40 year sentence at the same company but a smaller collection of roles which add to their diversified CV and experience. So the likelyhood of them coming back to a company is higher than ever before. Also ensuring that the management recognise the effort against a backdrop of a difficult event is a good tool to ensure the employee remains engaged.