It Is Who You Know, Not What You Know!

When you look at blog stats for some of the top bloggers on the internet it comes to no surprise that their volumes of comments are based on who they know and not really what they know.

The question then becomes, how do the writers of those blogs get to know the people who read or comment on their blogs?

Surveys show that most of the followers of a person’s blog site (84%) are personal friends. Then 10% are strangers interested in the subject. That leaves 6% to people who just stumble upon the site.

So, it seems that the more you tell friends about your blog the more people are going to start following what you have to say. This also confirms what I have been saying for over a year now that there has to be some crossover to the offline world in order to make the online world work.

Now, if your friends are all offline and do not participate online for any reason then the problems turns to getting offliners online. Why is this a problem? Well SPAMMING and other forms of deception are not helping. Estimates show that there are over 500 million people in the world who have been online, got so feed up with the trash, deceit, deception and the spam they have left the internet for ever. That means that there are a lot of people who know how to get online and are capable of doing so but choose not to because they see no value to being online.

So, getting friends to come online to read your blogs is near impossible.

How about making new friends who are online? Well that is also pretty tough given the fact that over 83% of the people online are looking for an angle or driven by something other than reading blogs. The number one thing that people come online for is to find someone of the opposite sex to communicate with or look at. This closely edged out scamming by just a few decimal points. Give all of this I see why most people are finding it hard to attract strangers to their sites.

How do the blogs sites explain having tens of thousands of friends? Over 78% of the blogs sites that have thousands of real people viewers are on the subject of Technology. Blogs sites that discuss subjects pertaining to anything new or are fashionably popular are going to draw the few hundred thousand people who roam around the internet after going to their friends sites to read. So if the search engines pick up a keyword on Britney Spears or other popular celebrities or subjects they will send them to those blog sites.

So, back to why it is who you know more than what you know. Getting to know anyone online is getting tougher and it only makes sense that if you are wanting to make a go of being online then you need to bring your offline friends online. If that does not work then you are going to have to make friends offline who are interested in what you have to say and are interested in coming online to read about it. So to make blogging worthwhile you need to get started build on the list of people you know off line.

To learn more about this subject and more on business and golf, check out the IBGS Site.

Burnout: Blogging to No Avail

OK, I know there are a bunch of you out there. I see your blog sites. You have reach or gone pass the Burnout stage, haven’t you?

How can I tell? Well your site has not had a new post in six of more months or years. I really don’t blame ya. It is a shame. There is a lot of good information being written out in the blogsphere that is really good to know.

I have found that there are a large number of people who have been writing about what I have been writing about here for a long time before I started writing about it. That is depressing in itself, but the fact is, there more to this blogging thing than loading up a WP site and getting with it.

Nope, as I am reading from other people this blogging game that people use as part of their internet marketing is just one side of the coin flip.

Over the past three years I have been keeping my eyes open to learn more about what this blogging thing is all about. What I have learned and many before have written is in order to get to be popular online you have to have two things…a lot of online friends and, more importantly, some sort of OFFLINE group you are part of that has more people in it than you have online friends. That is the only way this game will work. Being just only online only works for Spammers.

For some of you this might have come as a surprise, but for us seasoned vets this becomes relevant about six months after your start blogging. That is about how long it takes for you to start thinking Is This Really All Worth It…

You can learn more about this and other relevant subjects at the IBGS site.

Affiliate Programs: Do They Work?

I get people telling me that with as much as I blog I should use some sort of an Affiliate Program to profit from all of the views to my pages. That is all in good thinking, but WTF is an Affiliate Program.

Naturally, I went out to Google and checked out what an Affiliate Program is about. I read until my eyes were red, which is about 30 minutes when I am bored and still have not gotten a handle on what the big deal is about being part of an affiliate program.

I saw where there were these huge conferences on affiliate programs. I watched video’s on how people were excited to go to the conference so they could network and meet clients. Now, I like conferences and they do generate a lot of businesses if you go to the right conference, but None the less, who are these people networking with and who are their clients?

As I understand it, and I could be wrong here, an affiliate program is where you advertise something on your site for sale and you get a commission for sending someone who saw the ad on your site to the site you are affiliated with to buy something. OK, that sounds good, but how often does that happen?

According to my market studies only .01% of visitors to a web-site click on one ad on a site. If there are hundreds of ads, they only click on one….OK, now, out of that .01% of the total views to a page, .001% click on more than one ad. Now these figures dramatically contradict what these affiliate programs say is standard and the studies I have done are based on hard facts from interviews I have done with many people online and even more offline.

So, where is the money? How are these sites making the money they say they are making? I am not saying they are lying, I am saying that they would have to have over a million page views to each site they have an affiliate relationship with to get to the sales they say they are getting. Those are numbers that are hard to believe…so there has to be more to this that they are telling.

Maybe that is what goes on at these huge conferences…or maybe they are just going to the conferences to play business golf. I could believe in them playing golf at one of these conferences to sell their products more than I can believe in the number of hits they will have to get to their sites.

Now, I would be interested in one of these affiliate programs if someone could show me the money?

Where Are The Bloggers Going?

One of the many things I do each day is check out other people’s blogs. I have read a lot of good stuff and I have seen things that make me questions a lot of things. However, out of all of this it is surprising to find how many of the people I have met over the past three years online are now gone.

Recently I have been able to find a few of the people I communicated with frequently to ask why they are no longer online. Most report what I have been reporting for sometime now that there just is not enough people interested in what they have to say to make it worth their while furnishing their thoughts on a subject or expertise on an issue.

Now, this comes to be a surprise in most cases I reviewed especially where the people I am talking to provide the ever popular information on what is going on in the tech world. In the cases where the person was just blogging on subject related to what they did everyday, like this blog, it was understandable they would not have the huge volumes of viewers.

So why aren’t people reading other people’s blogs anymore? Could it be that with their being 165 Million web-sites on the internet right now there are just too many places for people to go to read? Could it be that what people come to the internet to do is not check out what other people are writing? Or, is there other reasons?

Truly, I would say times are changing on the internet and where it is going today is anyone’s guess. Last year it was blogging, then it turned to podcasting and then it turned to VideoCasting and now the internet is….who knows what it is . The point is there are a lot of good ideas and good people leaving the internet who have a lot to say on things about issues that matter. I am sure they leave after asking themselves, Is This ALL Really Worth it.

Read more at IBGS.

SEO: Doesn’t Work On an Offline Niche

I told ya I would be back and bring to you notice of a few of the things I have been dealing with online and offline to get my business back off the floor after being KO’d by a marketing company I ran into online not to mention that inept agent I hired.

I’ll tell ya those stories all in due time. Right now, let’s talk about SEO’s and how they do not and will not work on markets that have a niche and are mostly offline.
Over the past four years, starting a year before I started blogging, I was being hit-up by literally hundreds of people who were an internet marketer and an expert in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I’ll leave it with you know what these people do and are after. So that I make myself perfectly clean, SEO’s work for online stuff. It will not work on stuff that is traditionally looked for Offline.

Anyway, it takes a tremendous amount of time to deal with these people who usually have over inflated egos and are pumped up with the new “stay-positive-at-all-costs’ drugs that are going around. By the time I get through their pitch on how they are averaging $4000 a minute, and can guarantee that they can produce 100k page views to my sites, I am pretty bored. My thinking is if they were making that kind of cash WTF are they talking to me?

Then when I explain to them that I have been around the block a few times with following the prescribed methods of internet marketing and still have not produced the numbers they say I should be getting, they still feel they can prove me wrong. OK, prove me wrong!…but my point is, when your market is offline all of these schemes to get hit counts on AdSense and Google ads is a complete waste of time.

What I have proved many times over, my and most golf business’ markets are not online yet and they will not come on line anytime soon until these men and women who get high on getting false hits to their sites by the millions go away.
So, SEO’s are who I have been dealing with over the past four weeks. And what did I get out of it…more stuff for my next book is about all. There is nothing new out there I have not tried or doesn’t cost $50k. And even if I was to spend that kind of money it would have to be insured it would work since I know who I am marketing to is still offline.

So with all of the crap online that is not working like some of the so called internet guru’s say works, what am I doing online? Well I have asked myself that questions a few thousand times and it looks like I have now gathered a good size following of liked mind people who are supporting me spiritually to help be part of the solutions instead of jumping offline with the solutions I know will work. There is a lot online that is good, but, man, is there a lot of deception online.

Since the real people I market to will eventually be coming online I figured I would keep my presence online to greet them when they get here and hopefully guide them around the potholes (or cesspools) of the internet. That is the least I could do with the experience I have gathering over the past three years. I have found a ton of places to stay away from and that is valuable for those people coming to the internet to find what I have to offer.

I’ll be writing more information of what all I learned while I was away for a few weeks. Hopefully this will continue my efforts to determine Is This Really All Worth It?

You can learn more on what else is going on in the world of Real Business go to IBGS Business Golf and The Duke Consults.

Hold Your Horses!

OK, OK, OK!… I have not forgotten you.  Yes, I am back to blogging and I will get to my followers here as soon as I can.

It is interesting to find out after a few weeks that I have developed four or five different fan bases.  My fans here have to be the funniest and demanding.  A few of them who cross over to my IBGS site saw where I told everyone there I was back.  They immediately wanted to know when I was going to make my appearance over here.

Well, here I am.  In the next few days I will try to get a report out on all of the crap I have been through while I was gone.  So let me get my stuff together and I will get back here to fill you in on what is going down.

Still On Sabbatical

Yes, I am still on sabbatical to write my book.  However, I do want to address some emails I am getting.  To all of my fans who have been emailing asking me questions…here are some of the answers..

About my next book…Yes, I am still writing on the book…more and more information keeps coming in each day that I want to add to the book so hopefully I can have the E-book ready for you by October.  This is book is going to be a good one.  I have been releasing a few tid-bits out on the subject of the book over at Duke Consults…if you want to know a little bit about what is going to be in the book and what the book will be all about…you can check that out over there.  I will continue to release stuff from the book as time permits.

YES, I have been working on another Business Golf venture.

 

First of all, thank you to all of my loyal business golf fans…it is good to hear from you all and that you realize the value of business golf.  Some of you have been very supportive to offer ideas on things you would like for me to help you with.  When I combine your requests with what I am writing about in my next book it has spurred me on to get something going to cover it all.

I am working on launching something new in the online golf world.  I will be releasing information on the new venture this week.   Check out what all the latest is over at IBGS.

Taking Sabbatical!

I looked up the word Sabbatical and its definition pretty well describes what I am going to be doing.

A sabbatical year is a prolonged hiatus, typically one year, in the career of an individual taken in order to fulfill some goal, e.g., writing a book or traveling extensively for research.

Well, I guess it is time to finally fess up that none of this stuff out here on the internet really works. I would like to say it is just me, but unfortunately there are a large number of us out here that are now realizing that None of this is really all worth it.

I will be taking a sabbatical to work on my next book that I will be outlining all of the fallacies of the internet…until then you may want to check out my other book to catch up on what is going on.

You can check out the periodic blogs I will post over at my main site, IBGS Blog. Hope you enjoy the archive of blogs I have posted here.

In “The Zone”

About this time of day, (3:30PM on Friday), I go into what I call “The Zone”.  For a moment I am feeling very relaxed and thinking…”Man, could I use a cold beer”. 

Then I remember that I am out of beer so that means I would have to fight the friggin Dallas traffic on a Friday afternoon to get to the local beer store where everyone else who hit “The Zone” is heading or is ahead of me because their “Zone” was ten minutes before my “Zone”.

OK, anyway, back to “The Zone”…I would say that these few moments each Friday are probably the best feeling I have all week, except for tonight when I get to watch the only TV I watch all week which is Dr Who. 

OK, yaw, I am somewhat of a Nerd.  BUT, since they took Studio 60 off the air all I have now is the Discovery Channel, The Military Channel, MONK and Dr Who…a total of four hours a week…

So, here I am in “The Zone” for the moment, then it will be back to what I was in before and that is “The Hell” of the internet…

So, I am cherishing “The Zone” for a moment then it back battling SPAM, SCAMs and all of the other disgusts of cyberspace to get to what really works online.

Hey, Who The Heck Are You, Anyway?

I think my good friend Paul O’Flaherty is onto something here.  Who The Heck Am I?  I have the same problem with the name thing.  You can Google my name and it comes up with trying to get you to spell it with Two “T”’s, when the correct spelling is with one ‘T’ or my last name spelled ‘Duck’.  I have even had some of the sites that write about me confusing me with my friend Paul by calling me Mr. O’Duke.

Then you have the Mr Business Golf name I go by…WOW, want to know how many ways there are to butcher that name up?

Of course, at least Mr O’Flaherty, and I we use are real names…the ones our mom’s gave us, not the names you see around the internet like “Stick Ittome” or “Sir Spamalot”.  You can only image what you are going to get from someone with those names.

So who the heck are we anyway if our names are not spelled correctly? 

OH, well, guess its time to get back to reading more about what is going on out here that I questions is really working.