Posted by randfish

I’m not always a fan of Guy Kawasaki’s work, but really enjoyed his post on the OPEN Forum – A Dozen Don’ts for Entrepreneurs. I thought I’d take a stab at replicating it with some of my biggest warnings for those in our field.

For the list below, the word "clients" is interchangeable with "marketing manager" or "executive team" for in-house SEOs.

1. Don’t Create False Expectations
   Clients are just like everyone else – when you exceed their expectations, they love you. When you disappoint, they’re angry. Make it easy for yourself and don’t oversell. If anything, undersell your abilities to do great things and let them be surprised. It’s a hard thing to do, particularly in a competitive bidding environment, but humility and hard work often shine through in presentations and good clients will see that and honor it.
   _
2. Don’t Ignore Analytics
   Website analytics, both visitor traffic and third party metrics, are important parts of SEO. When things are going well, even if best practices aren’t being followed, it can be wise to match up data and trends to see what’s made a real difference. Don’t undertake an SEO project unless you have at least the essential data points (this also comes in handy once changes have been implemented and your work starts to have an impact).
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3. Don’t Always Take Your Client at Their Word
   If you talk to lots of clients, you’ll find that none of them have ever spammed the engines, bought a link, accidentally cloaked for Googlebot or hidden text, yet the statististics tell another story. Never assume your clients are being dishonest, but always watch out for activities they might not be aware of (or might not have realized were problematic). This goes beyond just white and black hat – we had a client who thought they had a couple dozen active domains; turns out they had nearly a hundred – canonicalization alone has been a big project and a big return.
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4. Don’t Get Into Projects with People You Don’t Like
   If ever you get a "funny feeling" about a client, move on if you can possibly afford it. Some people just don’t click together, and when interpersonal relationships aren’t working, projects have a way of not working out, either. It’s always better to get out before something’s signed than after.
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5. Don’t Give an Unqualified Answer Unless You’re Extremely Certain You’re Right
   If you’ve been reading SEOmoz lately or hearing me speak at conferences, you’ll notice that my advice comes with a lot more caveats than it used to. It’s been a tough lesson, but there’s very rarely a "this is ALWAYS better than that" in the field of SEO. Exceptions abound, so cage your language accordingly.
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6. Don’t Confuse SEO & Sales
   If your client comes to you wanting to drive sales with SEO, make sure they’re keenly aware of the multiple responsiblities inherent in such a request. Yes – SEO can drive lots of high quality, targeted traffic at the perfect moment for capturing the sale. But NO – SEO cannot convert that visit into dollars. If the website sucks at turning visitors into leads, do the right thing and recommend CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) before they dive into SEO.
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7. Don’t Rest on Your Laurels
   If you’re not paying attention in the SEO world, even for just a few weeks, you can miss massive changes. Look at June! We’ve had a reversal of position on nofollow and Javascript links from Google, a new engine/algorithm/brand from Microsoft, adoption of rich text formatting in the SERPs, evidence that header tags may not be as valuable as we thought and data suggesting that alt attributes are highly correlated with good rankings. Stay ahead of the curve and devote some resources to industry news – you owe it to your clients and yourselves.
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8. Don’t Undervalue Your Work
   SEO is hard work. For every consulting hour, there’s days of research, testing, reading, surfing and experimenting. Don’t undersell your services or accept that what you do doesn’t provide tremendous value. If you’re being undervalued now, consider how terrificly trackable SEO really is and show them the data. It’s almost always on your side.
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9. Don’t Believe Everything You Read
   Yes, even here at SEOmoz! We certainly try our best to provide high quality, accurate information, as do many other great sites on SEO, but no one is right 100% of the time, and, more importantly, not every piece of advice is applicable for every business or every situation.
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10. Don’t Underestimate Dev Contributions
    I was recently asked "what’s the biggest roadblock to SEO," and didn’t need to think for 10 seconds before quoting Mr. Ballmer’s infamous adage "Developers! Developers! Developers!" If you get bandwidth cycles for SEO projects, use them wisely. If the developers have made critical SEO errors, don’t be quick to criticize – you’ll make enemies, and, oftentimes, be guilty of hypocrisy. Stay humble, prioritize the big pieces and make sure you have the resources before you commit to improving traffic.
    _
11. Don’t Overstate Your Influence or Abilities
    Just because you have the ear of some important minds at Google/Yahoo!/Facebook/etc. doesn’t mean you can influence change within these large organizations. I’ve heard a lot of stories from companies that worked with SEOs of how they promised to get their penalty lifted or special treatment from an engine because they got a response to an email they sent to a search engineer. Perhaps an even better rule is – don’t promise something you can’t personally control and deliver.
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12. Don’t Get Overconfident and Dismiss Other Marketing Channels
    OK, yes – SEO rocks. But don’t forget how valuable other marketing activities like email, PPC, CRO, affiliate programs, even display advertising can be for the right scenario. Once you’ve found the SEO hammer, it’s easy to see every problem as a nail – I’ve certainly been guilty of it. If you can resist, think holistically and provide the best answer from a strategic (rather than tactical) level, you’ll become even better and more valuable to your clients.

Your turn – any "don’ts" you’d recommend to fellow SEOs?

p.s. If you haven’t read the whole Malcolm Gladwell vs. Chris Anderson with Seth Godin weighing in thing, it’s pretty worthwhile

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Posted by RobOusbey

We all like links from big sites right?

Whether it’s in an editorial article, a guest post, etc, it’s great for sending some strength and trust to your site. However, the drawback of links from big sites, is that you might find it’s on a small page. The newly published page will take some time to get indexed, much of it’s strength (certainly initially) is likely to come from internal links, and it’s unlikely to have a great crawl rate.

The front pages of sites, on the other hand, tend to have a much greater diversity of domains pointing to them and a good crawl rate. Furthermore, Google is likely to look with suspicion at an old article that suddenly gains a new link, compared to site front pages which have new links added to them more often, and legitimately.

So, this suggests that a link from the front page of a small site may be better than a link from an inner page on a large site.

As an example, I dived into the Lifehacker archives, and found their coverage of a handy looking tool, Programmer’s Notepad 2. Let’s imagine that the site owner had done the work to contact Lifehacker, foster a relationship and ultimately get them to post coverage of the app. You can now see their link on this page:

• lifehacker.com/5105267/programmers-notepad-2-helps-you-code-wrangle (mozRank: 0*, mozTrust: 2.5)

(* N.B.: this page is fairly old, and has been rated by Linkscape – the mozRank is just very very low and rounds off to zero.)
Of course, they’ve also been mentioned by smaller sites. I imagine that these sites either found out about them through the grapevine, but I like to think that the app’s owners also fired off a few mass emails to programming / web dev websites to say "Check this out, we built it and I think you might like it."

So check out some of the small sites that have linked to them from the front page:

Domain	URL MozRank	URL MozTrust
www.pappons.com	1.28	1.12
www.jasonbadams.net	1.78	2.36
links.tecwiz.de	2.08	1.39
dintiradan.ermarian.net	2.49	2.54
www.deleyna.com	2.33	3.24
freeware.startingiseasy.com	3.30	3.00

(Ordering the Linkscape report for the Programmer’s Notepad 2 site, by "mozRank Passed to URL" suggests that Lifehacker.com first appears at around the 400th page in the list.)

The downside of a link on the strong-front-page-of-a-less-strong-site is that it isn’t going to be around forever, and may be removed at somepoint. However, the strength passed in the mean time, combined with the quick indexation of the links will be beneficial.

This works particularly well when you can contact smallish sites in a very relevant niche. To find those sites, I currently recommend having a drill down in these directories:

• www.Blogged.com,
• dir.Blogflux.com,

and also that you look for directories of sites in that niche. For instance, whilst trying to find some UK craft websites this week, I found that Craftyblogs.co.uk was very helpful. There are bound to be similar niche lists for almost anything you need to look for.

In summary: when planning your linkbuilding strategy, don’t forget that whilst links from strong domains can be useful, weaker domains can often pass more strength if you are linked to from the front (or other strong high level) page.

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Posted by randfish

My good friend, Aaron Kahlow, posed an interesting question during the Online Marketing Summit yesterday afternoon in Portland, OR. Aaron asked:

If a client came to you with $1 million to invest in a single Internet marketing channel, which one would you choose?

Obviously, the question is a bit ridiculous (given that there’s no additional detail provided), but it’s designed to elicit an "off-the-cuff" response to a challenging scenario. The answer, of course, is "it depends" – and therein lies the rub. On what does it depend? Well… That’s what I hope to answer with this blog post. My goal is not to solve the issue for an individual campaign, but from a very strategic level – asking questions like "where is the company today and where does it want to get to?" then applying those answers to the selection of marketing opportunities. Let’s start by defining the macro-level channels themselves, then examine how we’d reach the right conclusions.

Internet Marketing Channels

• Display Advertising
  • The process of placing ads on third-party websites with the goal of creating branding awareness and/or generating traffic
  • Examples: Banner ads, video ads, interactive ads, overlays, interstitials, etc.
• Email Marketing
  • The process of collecting email addresses from potential leads and marketing to them via email messages
  • Examples: Email newsletters, brand building emails, conversion-focused emails, etc.
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) 
  • The process of bidding for placement at search engines (major or niche) to earn visibility and traffic when relevant queries are performed
  • Examples: Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Business.com Advertising, etc.
• Online Public Relations
  • The process of generating media from primarily online outlets in order to earn branding and traffic
  • Examples: PRNewswire, PRWeb, Internet media focused PR agency work, etc.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • The process of earning rankings in the "organic" results of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing)
  • Examples: Keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, etc.
• Affiliate Marketing
  • The process of incentivizing other sites to push your product in exchange for a share of the revenue they drive
  • Examples: Commission Junction, in-house affiliate programs, etc.
• Social Media Marketing (SMM) 
  • The process of leveraging social media platforms (small and large) to earn visibility and traffic
  • Examples: Facebook Group pages, Twitter marketing, pushing content on Digg, etc.
• Viral Content Campaigns
  • The process of generating creative content that will help spread your branding/marketing message and earn traffic
  • Examples: Linkbait production, viral videos, guerrilla marketing, etc.
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) 
  • The process of improving the path from landing to conversion to get more leads/signups/customers
  • Examples: Split & multivariate testing, click-through-rate improvements, purchase-process simplification, etc.

Some of these may overlap – for example, viral content campaigns may simply be a means to an end of better search engine optimization – but as they can all be separate entities, engaged in for their own purposes, I’ve made them distinct.

Primary Variables to Use in the Selection Process

Although other factors should certainly play into the decision making, these three elements are excellent for narrowing down the options:

• Company Goals – What are the top priorities for the business to achieve?
  • Brand Awareness – the current marketplace doesn’t have enough familiarity/comfort with your brand to visit, engage or purchase from you.
  • Education – the market for your product/service needs to be created; potential customers don’t yet realize the problem they need you to solve.
  • Raw Traffic – your business is monetized with advertising and needs more traffic/page views.
  • Sales – your business has clear market demand on the web that needs to be drawn to your site and converted into leads/sales
• Budget - How much do you have to spend on your marketing effort(s)?
  • Very High: in excess of $1 million
  • High: $100K – $1 million
  • Moderate: $25K – $100K
  • Low: $5K – $25K
  • Tiny: <$5K
• Available Talent – What personnel with free bandwidth or trustworthy, outsourced vendors do you have available? 
  • Strong Dev Resources – you have technology staff ready and able to make changes to your site to support marketing goals
  • Strong Creative Resources – you have writers/artists/brainstormers poised for action
  • Strong Search Resources – you have search marketing talent prepared for battle in the results
  • Strong Social Resources – you have strong online networkers set to engage the Twit-Face-Digg-o-Sphere

General Tiers of ROI, Effort & Cost by Channel

These are based on my personal opinions (though, based on conversations, they appear to reflect the experiences of many web marketers and internal marketing departments). 

I suspect there will be lots of contention about these, particularly from marketers who specialize in non-tier 1 activities. I do think that over time, activities like social media marketing and viral may move to tier 1, but as yet, I believe that companies haven’t seen the same consistency or trackability in ROI from these as Tier 1 channels. The eMarketer research I showed this weekend certainly suggests that these newer investments may have a chance to prove themselves fairly quickly.

Formulas for Choosing the Right Channel

Once again, I’m using my own opinions and experiences, but you can use this same format to help with your own decisions, even if the ordering is somewhat different:

And of course, last, but not least, there’s the strengths of your organization to consider. If you have amazing talent in these fields, that might sway you to lean more towards particular activities as shown below:

• Strong Dev Resources – lean towards:
  • CRO
  • SEO
  • Viral Content (particularly dev intensive stuff like tools, widgets, etc.)
• Strong Creative Resources – lean towards:
  • Viral Content (particularly written/graphic content that can be produced in a standard CMS)
  • Email (great copywriters write great emails)
  • Display (great designers make great ads)
• Strong Search Marketing Resources – lean towards:
  • SEO
  • PPC
• Strong Social Resources - lean towards:
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Viral Content
  • Online PR

That wraps up my brief, high level summation of this tough question, and hopefully it can help some marketers and marketing departments to find the right paths for their organizations/clients.

I’d, of course, love to hear your feedback and ideas as well.

p.s. OMS Seattle is tomorrow, and I’ll be speaking there in the afternoon – hope to see some of you there!

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I’ll draw the winner of the Omni chair 48 hours after I first announce this on Twitter and will update this page and @ProBloggerDeals with the winner’s Twitter handle once I do.

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“What are the first steps to optimizing my blog for searches?” – question submitted by @monedays using the #pbquestions hashtag on Twitter.

Much has been written on the topic of search engine optimization for bloggers – but let me give you a few basic first steps:

1. Content is King

The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog. I suspect others will argue differently but as I look at my own blogs success in the search engines I’d say that this has been the number one factor.

Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written – of course they do this by passing on the link to your post and often they’ll do it in a way that helps your search rankings (on their own blog for example).

2. Anticipate What People Will be Searching For

Every time you write a post you should be automatically be considering what words people might be putting into search engines to find that type of information. Once you know what kinds of words they’re using you’re in a great position to position yourself for that search.

3. Titles Titles Titles

There are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to titles. Google pays particular attention to titles – so make sure you get them right:

• first make sure that the way you set your blog up puts the title of your post in the ‘title tags’ on the back end of your blog. This is really important.
• if you’re just looking from an SEO perspective don’t include your blog name in the title tags of single posts. This dilutes your keywords. Of course if you’re looking more at branding including your blog’s name in the title tags might be worth doing.
• next – include the keywords that you identified in point #2 in your post title
• also, keep in mind that the words you use at the start of a title tend to carry more weight than words you use later in your title

4. Keywords in other parts of your post

Use the keywords you identified in point #2 within your post also. If you want Google to rank you for a term or phrase you need to use that term or phrase. Use it in sub headings in your post (use h tags where you can), use it in the content itself, use the words in the alt tags of images etc. Don’t go over the topic but do use the words where you can naturally in the post.

5. Link to Your Own Posts

Don’t over do this one but while links from other sites are a great way to increase your blog’s rankings so are links from your blog. Interlink your posts to share where readers can find more information on your topic (where relevant) but also consider linking to key posts on your blog from other places on the blog (sidebar, front page etc).

6. Links from Outside Your Blog

Links from other sites to yours are key in SEO but they can be hard to get. Start to linking to your blog from other sites that you have or are active on. Some (like on Twitter) won’t count for anything much as they have no-follow tags but they are all potential ways for people to access your site and some will help with SEO.

Don’t become obsessed with getting links – rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time. However if you’ve written a great post that you think will be relevant to another blog don’t be afraid to let that blogger or website owner know about it – they could just link up.

Also – take note of the type of posts that you write that do well at getting other sites to link to you. You can learn a lot about generating linkable content by doing so and might just develop a technique that will work again and again.

7. Plugins

I don’t tend to do much to the back end of my blog to alter things like meta tags – but there are some good plugins around if you’re using WordPress that can help with some of this and that may give you a small edge. Check out 9 SEO plugins that every WordPress Blog Should have for some suggestions on this.

8. Readers Begat Readers

This isn’t an SEO technique as such but it plays a part. The more readers you have the more likely your blog is to be found by other readers. There’s a certain ’snowballing’ thing that happens on a site over time – as you get readers quite often momentum grows as those readers pass on your site to others in their network. They link to you, they bookmark you, they tweet about you, they email friends about you, they blog about you, they suggest your site in recommendation engines….

Not all of this counts with SEO but some does and the accumulation of it over time all certainly helps to grow both organic and search traffic. I guess what I’m saying is to get readers any way you can – don’t just focus upon ‘SEO’ as such. It all counts.

My Hunch with SEO

Before I share my hunch…. let me say that I’m not an SEO and this could be completely wrong…. but it’s a hunch that I’ve had for a while now.

I’ve been doing this blogging thing for almost 7 years now and from what I can see the tweaks that many bloggers do on their blogs to optimize it seem to be having less and less impact on the rankings of blogs. Don’t get me wrong – I stand by the above tips completely and would do them as a common sense bare minimum – but from where I sit Google seem to be in the business of finding the best information that they can for their users. They don’t always get it right but I think they do a pretty good job.

As a blogger your job should be to provide the best information that you can.

It strikes me that Google have an ever increasing way of working out if your information is good. It’s not just about what keywords you have or how many links that you get – but these days they own Feedburner (know how many people subscribe to your blog and what links people are clicking on), they own Google Reader (again giving them all kinds of great data), they own Gmail, Google Analytics, YouTube etc…..

Now they may or may not use all the data in their ranking of sites but they certainly could know a lot about your blog and the posts you write. There’s also been increasing talk over the last 6 months or so about how easy it’d be for search engines to start generating data on what content is being shared in social networks and bookmarking sites.

My hunch is that many traditional SEO methods are less important (NOT irrelevant though) and that other factors are increasingly going to come into play. I’m sure that some will work out ways to manipulate this (SEO 2.0?) but increasingly the way to get ranked high in Google will be that you just need to keep producing great content and making sure that it’s sneezed out to your network.

Help this process along by giving your readers way to share your content (and seed it to social networks) as well as to become subscribers.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

8 First Step SEO Tips for Bloggers

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Image by -nathan

“Should I quit my blog and start Lifestreaming, Videocasting, Social Messaging/Networking etc?”

There’s been another round of ‘blogging is dead’ posts doing the rounds of late and as a result I’ve had a number of emails hitting my inbox over the last week from bloggers asking if they should stop blogging.

Here’s some of the advice I’ve been sharing:

• Blogging is not dead – it’s evolving.
• You should be evolving too (read Blogs are Out of Beta, But Bloggers Should always be in Beta)
• Keep being useful, keep solving problems and keep meeting needs – whatever the medium this is key.
• Keep producing content – people continue to search the web for content in huge numbers. It’s not all about networking and bookmarking – whether it be text, video or audio – keep producing content.
• Experiment with different mediums – to the best of your ability keep abreast of the ‘new’ mediums that are emerging.
• Build a ‘Home Base’ – many people flit from one medium to another and end up with nothing of their own (read more on the Home Bases and Outposts that I use).
• Build a Brand – the mediums are tools. They’ll come and go in time – the key is to build something that lasts beyond them.
• Don’t be Precious about your ‘Blog’ and be open to change – there’s no one ‘right’ way to blog. Blogs can have comments or not have comments, have full RSS feeds or partial ones, look like a traditional blog or act and look more like a lifestream or portal. The key is to know what you want to achieve and let that shape what you do with your blog.
• Don’t abandon your blog too quickly – your primary efforts may move into a different medium but blogs can be an important part of the mix of what you do online. Don’t abandon your blog – build upon it, let it evolve, leverage what you’ve already built and use it where appropriate in the mix of what you do.

My last piece of advice is particularly for those with limited time or capacity to fully engage with all of the mediums and tools that are currently at our fingertips.

I get the sense from a lot of bloggers that they feel that they’re being left behind – that all this new stuff that is emerging is beyond them – that it’s hopeless to keep on blogging. My message to you if you’re feeling this way is to keep at it. Even as a full time blogger/web entrepreneur I don’t have time to fully engage with all of the new technologies that are currently emerging. I too feel some of those ‘overwhelming’ feelings.

I think the key is to engage with the new technologies to the point that you’re able but to know when to stop and focus upon what you already have in front of you.

The problem as I see it is that whether it be a blog, a Twitter presence, a podcast or some other kind of website or presence – it takes time to build these things up to successful levels. If you only give a medium a short time before moving to the next one you’ll just end up with a trail of abandoned accounts and sites behind you.

I see a lot of people running from one thing to the next and not really achieving anything. They live in a constant state of distraction and experimentation. There’s nothing wrong with new things and testing them out – but unless you’re fortunate enough to have a lot of spare time or an amazing capacity not to sleep there comes a time where you need to choose a handful of things to do (or even just one) and to do it to the best of your ability.

For me – this means focusing mainly upon building blogs. My blogs are evolving and looking less and less like blogs as I experiment with different ways of presenting the information on them and play with different technologies on them – but I try to keep my focus steady upon the long term goals that I have. As a result I’ve managed to build them into profitable properties.

Yes I’ll continue to experiment with other technologies but for me they are only about adding value to my primary web properties.

What do you think? How are you approaching what you do in this ever changing web?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Should I Quit Blogging?

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Posted by MikeK@DanconiaMedia

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

It’s been said here before: Press releases are much less powerful than they used to be for SEO purposes. While churning out news releases and submitting them to free sites may not do much, the medium can actually be more powerful than ever if used right. Convincing a single reporter or high-profile blogger to pick up your news is infinitely more beneficial than posting worthless releases all over the place and Digg’ing and StumbleUpon’ing them with your multiple accounts.

I have a somewhat unique perspective about news releases. Not too long ago, I worked full-time as a newspaper reporter, and my inbox was regularly inundated with press releases. Some of them caught my attention and were turned into lengthy stories. Others, however, failed to captivate me or my peers and, as a result, went nowhere.

Here are some tips on how to craft your releases in a way that increases the odds of them getting noticed by the media:

Get to the point. Make it clear from the get-go what your release is about. Don’t try to be cute. I used to get releases all the time from PR people who buried the news or tried to get creative with their writing. Sometimes, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what some releases were even about. If you’re looking for a creative outlet, press release writing is not the avenue. Try writing a short story.

At least pretend you’re objective. Obviously, you have a vested interest in what you’re writing about, but it’s still important to craft your releases like down-the-middle news stories. Avoid unnecessary adjectives; most adjectives are unneeded. You don’t want your release to read like an advertisement. Pick out the newsiest element and concentrate on that.

Speak English. I see releases all the time that are stuffed with industry jargon that most people do not understand. Don’t assume that what you’re writing about is a familiar subject for the people who’ll read your release. Dumb it down. Assume your release will be read by the densest guy in the room.

Send it out manually. Instead of just dumping your releases into submission sites and hoping someone important notices, email it yourself to media outlets and bloggers you think might be interested in it. If you’re publicizing a new product, send your release to newspapers in the company’s area. If you can, find out which reporters cover the relevant beat and send it to them directly; that usually only takes a phone call.

Have good timing. If you’re looking for coverage, sending your release out on Election Day or after hours on a Friday is goofy. Those are good times to release bad news you’re obligated to report – any White House spokesman will tell you that – but it’ll do you no good unless your story is wildly sensational. News outlets are typically more desperate for copy during the summer months and around holidays.

Act like a human. Interactivevoices’ post about getting a link from CNN.com – the only PR10 news site – illustrated this perfectly. There’s no harm in picking up the phone and calling reporters directly to see if they’re interested in your story. For all you know, the only thing preventing your news from being published is an over-finicky spam filter.

Don’t beg. When I was working as a reporter, I didn’t realize why some sources were so hellbent on me including links in my stories. Now I know. If your link is relevant to the story, the reporter will probably include it. If not, you’re still getting good publicity.

Of course, all of this will only help if you actually have something worthwhile to say. If you think there’s nothing interesting to say about your enterprise, you’re probably wrong. You just need to think long and hard to figure out what it is.

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This post was written by Aditya Mahesh, founder of AMBeat.com, a complete resource for entrepreneurs complete with advice articles, start-up profiles, interviews, news analysis, and more.

Common wisdom suggests that academics are always chief in importance. Students, at least those here in the United States, are told time and time again that extra-curricular activities, whether it is a sports team or clubs, always come after academics. Student entrepreneurs and bloggers have a tendency not to follow this rule of thought.

Throughout my high school and college experiences, I have always been more dedicated to and more passionate about my business and my blogs than I have my schoolwork. I was recently going through my Algebra notebook from 11th grade and noticed that for every page of Math notes were three pages of business ideas, future blog posts, marketing strategies, etc. Still, while I always placed more emphasis on my business, I was always able to balance my work with my academics, allowing me to excel in both.

For those of you who are not students, the information in this post is still applicable for balancing a blog/work balance of you blog part-time and work at another job or a blog/life balance if you are a full time blogger.

The key to managing my business work and my school work is time man