May 10, 2013

Who’s Min Min?

I’m a blogger who’s a fountain of ideas, who makes her ideas come true and who’s passionate about her choice of career.

I started my first website 10 years ago. I wrote poems and hosted them on webs.com. It drove traffic immediately. So I registered a domain, learned programming and online marketing by myself, and started my Internet career.

The domain is called LoveIsLonely.com. It says, even if we love and are loved, we’re still lonely. It was a personal poetry site, but eventually became a popular poetry community. Because of the domain name, the poetry site is home to lonely souls.

To help lonely souls make friends, I launched a penpal website. To help solve their relationship problems, I created a relationship blog, and after that, I created about a dozen blogs full of my ideas and life experiences.

During the process of improving my websites, I learned a lot by actually applying knowledge and ideas to my websites from content, to programming and marketing.

This is a precious experience. All these make me a true blogger.

What challenges have you faced in blogging?

My websites were growing, but growing slowly, because I worked on everything alone. I find myself more into creating, running, and promoting websites and I only write when I’m inspired.

As a fountain of ideas, I gave suggestions to Ann Smarty. Since I’m good at writing, I already started to add notes to articles in the Gallery before I became a moderator. Because what I was doing was exactly what a moderator is supposed to do, I naturally became a part of team without any need for training.

The great thing about Ann Smarty is that she brings people together and she takes action.

What does your blogging routine look like?

Since I focus on developing blogs, I spend most of my time improving site structure and promoting my websites, and I have to take care of 20 websites now. So I don’t blog daily. I’m quite quality obsessed. I could spend 2-5 hours writing an article, and I only write when I’m inspired. What I lack is time. Apart from getting guest posts through MBG, I also hire writers to write for my blogs. We also craft guest posts for other bloggers.

My routine is hectic. I’m always asked “Do you ever sleep?”

I have to deal with emails and MBG’s inbox every day from morning, answering all the questions, solving all the issues, responding to inquiries in MBG forums. I add complex issues to my to-do folder and mark them, will deal with them later one by one through the day.

Our moderators reside in different time zones. I usually start to moderate articles when my fellow European colleagues are sleeping. So MBG never sleeps.

Whenever my ideas pop up, I start to write proposals. Sometimes I don’t sleep at all.

I spend the rest of my time working on my websites.

What blogging tips could you offer our audience (bloggers)?

Investment

A blog is an investment, even if it’s cheap nowadays, because it’s your time, and your time is expensive.

So when you decide to invest your time on your blog, you have to be focused; you have to focus your energy on limited blogs, until at least one succeeds, because you only have limited time and energy.

The reason a blog is more successful than others is that the blogger concentrates on the blog; he spends more time and energy on the blog than others.

Even though I have 20 websites to take care of now, I only had one at the beginning until I learned all the necessary skills from it and it also led to my 2^nd website 3 years later. So from my 2^nd website, the rest is not from scratch, and it took 3 years part time for me to reach that point.

Niche

Focus on a niche, not all in one type. It’s the niche, and your passion for that niche that makes your blog stand out.

One of my writers said something that touched me. He said, I want to create a foundation as someone who started writing with his favorite things and branched out from there.

Your 1^st blog is your foundation; only when it succeeds, you can then branch out from it. So it has to be your passionate niche.

Online course

Take an online writing course that’s related to your writing genre if possible; it’s your asset.

Don’t work alone

There’s a saying, you cannot find love; love finds you. It also applies to the people you can work with, no matter if they’re your employees, contractors, partners or boss.

I had been working alone for years, but I no longer work alone now. I have passionate people who assist me, passionate writers who write for my blogs, expert partners who partner with me, and a great boss who indulges my ideas.

This all happened when I started to join MBG and network with others. I didn’t look for them; they came to me. But I do give myself a chance to let others know me and get to know them at the same time.

If you can, then partner with someone who’s good at marketing, so you can concentrate on writing. Vice versa. If you’re good at marketing, partner with someone who’s passionate about writing.

But, remember, you cannot find them; they find you. And until then, be prepared and get ready.

Working with selected others is much better than working alone or working with unselected ones.

Now, many of our audience already know that you are also a moderator. Any tips for our audience (Guest Bloggers) based on your role as a MBG moderator?

Expert

You should be an expert or hire an expert to write articles, because readers want to read expert articles, but not laymen’s. An English literature writer may not beat a teenager when writing about video games if the writer never plays a video game or the game he played was out of date.

I admit that a skillful professional writer is able to write good articles effortlessly, however, the articles that truly touch us deeply are those from the bottom of a heart.

If you ever encounter one passionate writer, please, please cherish him.

You can always find an editor to edit articles.

Tailor made

Discuss with favorite publishers about content ideas and keep their preferences in mind when writing new articles.

A successful blog has its focus, its main theme, so it needs articles highly relevant to its theme.

Originality

Be original. It’s actually my foremost tip, but I keep the best to the last time. Be original; it’s easy to say, difficult to do. But I love originality and I will strive for it my entire life whenever I have the opportunity to do so, to tell everyone if possible, please, please be original.

In order to write an original article, you need to start from scratch, but never from “research”; you need to start from your own experiences, from your own memories, from your own notes, and from your own perspectives and then reach your own unique new insights.

After that, you can research to verify facts in your memory.

If you ever start an article from research, you can never be truly original. Your view is influenced by others first. You’re simply rewriting other’s views.

It’s not that you cannot have similar views as others, rather, you should approach your articles originally. The approach should be original.

All my tips here today are original, from my very own experiences as a blogger, marketer, guest blogger, and moderator. They’re from the bottom of my heart. I don’t need to Google to find these tips to give them to you.

Any final words?

There’re no smarter people; there are only different people. Everyone has something greater than others; you just need to find your strength and let it shine, let it shine.

On top of that, luck plays a certain role. If you failed, never regret, as long as you’ve done your best.

Luck is pre-destined by your past. If you work hard on the right track now, from today, you will have luck in the future.

If you enjoy this interview, that’s because you hear passions in my words. I would like to hear your passions too.

Min Min is a Search Engine Originality Evangelist, Prudent Strategist and Inspiring Mentor. One of her ultimate missions is to advocate originality. She will strive for it her entire life – to tell everyone, if possible, please be original. “Search Engine Originality” was coined by Min Min on Oct. 16, 2014.

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