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Man Vs Blog

Scott Sweeney's Blogging Tips

New Man vs Blog for the One Year AnniversaryNovember 23

Man Vs Blog turned a year old this week! I cannot believe it has been a whole year since I started this blog back on Blogger. I have learned so much about blogging and have tried to share as much of that with everyone who reads this blog. In addition to meeting a lot of wonderful people, it has been a ton of fun. But I have learned a few hard lessons in the process. First and foremost, having a make money online blog is pointless unless you have plenty of time and resources to make it happen. There are so many of them out there and the competition will be strong. Secondly, I learned you need to create a focus and stay with it. My blog has had several reincarnations because I just didn’t know what I wanted from this blog. Would it be a make money online blog? Will it be a music blog? Because of this, I have seen my readership fluctuate, and people have come and gone. I can accept that. I had a big boost in May and June when I started doing a lot of promotion on Twitter, but that has also started to shift in recent months. With that said, I have finally decided on what the main focus of this blog will be in looking towards the future.

What will this blog become?

I decided there are already gurus for everything related to making money online. And many people do it better than me. I currently author three blogs that have generated income for myself in the past year. Rather than focusing on telling you what I did, someone else out there has done it better than

How Do You Promote Your Product?October 17

When I started my first band, I was a greenhorn when it came to promotion. I just assumed we would write awesome songs, and fans would be sure to follow. Sound familiar? That could be you when it comes to your blog. Making the assumption that quality writing will automatically bring you readers is naive and could be dangerous to the overall longevity of your blog.

So what tools are at your disposal?

Most of the popular blog authors have their list of what to do when starting your first blog. Almost always at the top of the list is comment other blogs. The simple reason, of course, is to start a discussion with your content. But discussion alone isn’t enough to really drive quality traffic to your website. Recently, I have seen several popular blogs use PPC advertising such as Google Adwords to drive additional traffic to their websites. I have used this approach on one of my bother blogs and it has seemed to pay dividends. But after reading all the lists, and doing all the free promotion, what if you are still stuck and in need of some assistance. There are a lot of great websites that you can turn to.

If you are looking for help, Marketing Mule has a wide array of tools for those who are looking for an edge w

Social Media in BloggingOctober 10

At Problogger, Darren posted a pretty good article relating to how he uses social media sites to help build his business. [ read post ]. Without getting too heavy in to the article, it basically describes how he uses social media to drive traffic back towards his blog, and a beneficial byproduct of this have been mini communities starting up within these social media outlets.

It got me thinking about the last 5 years of social media networking and how I have applied them towards building my music career, and more recently, my web businesses. Social media is a confusing and ever-changing monster. The first time I saw the benefit from social media was when my band was playing Iowa City in 2003. We needed a way to reach out to people in that area. The website HotOrNot.com had a huge buzz, so we created some profiles and started sending messages to college age people in Iowa City.

We were shocked to see that several of the people we messaged showed up at the venue.

This was 2003 and before MySpace changed the game. But the principals worked then and they work now.  If you have something to offer that is of quality, taking time to promote and reach out will do nothing but benefit and grow your business. In the online world, that involves building quality social media profiles. Many people neglect this part of the process. They never participate in communities,

Does Music Industry Contradict the Writing Industry?October 10

For the long time followers of ManVsBlog, I have mentioned my past in the music industry and how I am still an active musician and songwriter. I have been recording a record over the past month, and I thought long and hard how I was going to release the music. For 8 years, I have done things the ’standard’ way it is usually done in the music industry. I would created a record and then I would press it (the process of converting the music to CD). At this point, I would schedule a big CD release show and make a huge deal out of it only to be disappointed because after a little time, the hype wears out and then all you are left with is the music. I took an idea that Butch Walker used and created a website called Downloadmycdforfree.Com. Basically, the gist is you can download the low quality MP3 of the record for free. If you want the higher quality stuff, you can donate a nominal sum and download it that way. The point is, for all intents an purposes, people will trade and steal your music anyway. This way, I give them an incentive to ‘try’ out the music, and if they like, maybe they will give back.

The question I raise is does it cheapen the music by offering it for free, or does it work as a promotional tool to get my music out to more people? I have been handing out free music for years (samplers cds at shows, music on my myspace page) b

The State of Affairs in MusicSeptember 26

There is a lot of talk these days about how the record industry is losing money because of pirating and illegal file sharing. I am a songwriter who has spent thousands of dollars of my own money, to recoup very little, and I have downloaded plenty of music illegally. I don’t think it is hurting the artists; it is hurting the labels. That is from the industries inability to adapt.

The value of music is a complicated issue. Different music has a different personal value to people, and even then, different values at different points in a persons life. The personal value of a song varies. To a songwriter, a song’s value is not exclusively a paycheck. To perform in front of an audience, to have your song felt and understood, is often something less tangible than money. Yet there are those who say that dropping the price of music, or moving away from the fixed price model, is going to devalue music. The truth is that music has been undergoing a devaluing by major record labels for many years.

The monetary value of a song should be derived from its personal value.

Ultimately, there has got to be a standardized price for music. I don’t feel the tip jar mentality is entirely practical. The drawback to fixed pricing is that it creates the concept of average personal value. For years, the label