Did you ever wonder how to market yourself without really marketing yourself? I know the question sounds a bit confusing, but did you? Let me explain what I am asking. Well you know most businesses just buy ads on the websites to market themselves, but there is a way around that which is called Indirect Marketing. Atleast that is what I call it.

I really learnt this idea from Market Leverage. Every blog that I check on daily/weekly basis, I see the staff of Market Leverage there. Photos of their staff in the brand T-Shirt. I checked their webstie multiple times. Finally have decided to sign up with them today.

What this company has been doing is buying shirts of that particular site such as Shoemoney, ZacJohnson, and many other blogs and just wearing it and taking a picture and send it to the blogger, so they can post it. Pretty smart. Not just that, but they have taken it to the next level by making personal relationships with the bloggers by giving gifts to them. What else would you want in an affiliate company? Props to Market Leverage.

But what do you learn from this? Well I learn that sometimes you have to drive the audience from your competitor in a nicer way by offering them gifts and making personal relations with them. Also you can network with your audience. As my audience is bloggers, I try to network as much as I can on the IMs through facebook and others. I will be attending a few conferences as well. But most importantly, I have been making some traditions on the blog such as Pimp my Blog. With things like this I can attract more visitors, and I have noticed after the first blog I pimped, the number of subscribers have increased, and I am certain it will increase as I pimp more and more blogs.

I have been trying to find local online businesses who are located near where I live, so I can go meet them and make connections. As I already have mentioned that I will try my best to visit Microsoft’s headquarters on my trip to Seattle. I have also realized that Market Leverage is based in Florida, so I might visit them also because they are only 2 hours of a drive away. Hoping it will be ok with them. (I will contact ahead of time), or maybe one of them will find this post and reply here.

Sending business gifts is another way to make more connections, and do you know Business Gifts are exempted from taxes. Well, as you guys already know I promote all the companies who send me free gifts. Many other blogs do the same as well. I have alot of Balkhis shirts laying around, so if anyone of you are interested in buying one, the price is $25 / shirt. If you get this shirt and take a picture in it. I will post it on Balkhis and give your site a mention

So the key point of Indirect Marketing is networking and making more friends so you get more promotion through them. Eventhough I haven’t recieved anything from Market Leverage, they have already got me on their side. You can also do the same by using the techniques used by this company. Even a simplest act of linking to another site and giving them a mention if you like them can come in handy in a long run because webmasters do check who is linking to them and who is not.

Let me know what you guys think about this topic…

Ok. This was one of the entertaining questions that I found going through my email, and I thought to myself how will I answer this one. Let me establish one thing… With hard work, dedicated team, capital investment, and time, nothing is hard! But if you lack one of those things than there are some niches in the webmaster world that can get impossible to be successful at.

I will go ahead and rank 3 niches where it will be very hard for an individual to find success.

Webmaster Forum

When you have the big dawgs in the industry such as Digitalpoint, Sitepoint, Namepros, Webmaster-talk, and Bloggeries, I would say that it gets really competitive. Because all the forums that I have listed above already have the content your new forum will have. You will still be behind the 100,000 post that they will be getting while you develop your forum. Alot of Capital Investment, and I mean alot is necessary to start a webmaster forum and get it big. Also you must be patience. It will not be quick to get the users away from a place and bring them to yours.

Search Engines

Really and truly for all the brave heart beginners who get in the business with a goal that they are going to make a search engine as big as google. It might sound easy, but it is not. First without a real capital investment you can’t go anywhere. Even if you have that, you will need some of the best developers in the world. Even Microsoft with it’s Live can’t compete with Google.

SEO Tools

This niche is another dead end because some serious innovation is necessary. Many SEO Tools has came out in public which were good in the beginning and due to lack of support those massive user base has fallen everytime. It can be one of the easiest/hardest because it will be easy to get the users, but hard to keep them!

While I agree that there are many more niches that can be even harder in the webmaster world above are the ones that I believe are the hardest in my opinion. Feel free to add on about your opinion, and if you have a good reply such as

Niche:
Why do you think:

I will include it in this post

Alright, this is rather a mini contest on Balkhis to keep the excitement going along with Pimp my Blog. Ok in this contest I have prizes for not just the Top Commentators, but it is for some random email subscribers and other users so keep reading.

Prizes will be given to the top 3 commentators.

First commentator will get 1000 entrecards
Second commentator will get 300 entrecards
Third commentator will get 200 entrecards

Prizes for the Subscribers via Email

One Randomly selected email subscriber will also get 300 entrecards
One Randomly selected email subscriber will get a 125 x 125 banner spot

Prizes for those who post about this contest:

People who blog about this mini-contest on their blog will get 50 entrecards by default and the chance to enter the draw of winning a Paid Review on Balkhis. Also another one will get a 125 x 125 banner ad on Balkhis.

Just send a trackback with your post, or you can post a comment here with a link to your post and You will be counbted in.

Alright I am hoping this mini-contest will bring excitement to every user at Balkhis. If anyone is interested in donating a prize and get some promotion from the contest, feel free to contact me using the contact form.

I will announce the winner on June 2nd, 2008….

Alright everyone, If you don’t know what IzeaFest is you are missing out on alot. It is one of the largest event being held in Florida for the year of 2008 by Izea Inc. This is exciting because it is in Florida, and I can attend it without any big issues. It took me a long time because I had certain questions for Izea Staff and as you know because they have such a big event coming, they were relatively busy, but I did got a phone call yesterday. Good to know that there is NO AGE LIMIT! So all bloggers can come, and I think you should because alot of the experienced bloggers such as Shoemoney, Chow and others are coming as well.

Some of the speakers that I am looking forward to hear from:

Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney.com)
Merlin Mann (43folders.com)
John Chow (Johnchow.com)
Neil Patel (Pronetadvertiser.com)

This conference is a 3 day Conference starting on September 11, 2008 – September 13, 2008… Right in the middle of school year. Unlike most of the expensive conferences there are, this one is very affordable. $50 for the first 100 people who register. This was originally for the first 50 people, but I was notified yesterday on the phone that this has been extended for the first 100 people, and it will only last till May 14, 2008. You can get the tickets on normal price if you are waiting on other information like I am waiting on my classes for only $65. Which is not that big of a difference. You can also pay $14 extra and spend your sunday in Disney with other bloggers.

They have bunch of other hotels rather than just the Grand Bohemian, where the conference is being held at. You can pick a one that suit yourself by visiting here.

I will probably be making my reservation later on in August when I get my syllabus and see that I don’t have any exams that weekend. But I do recommend everyone to head over to IzeaFest.com and register themselves if you are interested in meeting me and meeting all the other bloggers.

See you in Orlando, Florida

The title of this post is pretty self explanatory. I got this question via email. Which name should you use when you are commenting on blogs? or even expanding it to registering on forums? I have always used to wonder this when I started in the web industry. It often becomes a tough choice, but I believe one choice out weighs the other one.

Often times, I see that people are commenting on blogs with their companies names, or with their websites name. Why? Well because in the top commentators, their anchor will be shown, and they will rank high. Other people will know the brand name of their website. What could be better branding technique than this? People who think this way are only thinking short term in my opinion. I say that because not many people hold their businesses for extremely long time. Specially the webmasters who most of the time sell their sites, so when you comment on the page next, and you have a different brand name in your titles, people won’t know who you are. That is a whole new start. I think your brand should be known by your name not you being known as your brand because when you sell the brand basically you are worthless, but if people know you, and they know that Larry is the owner of Google a successful brand, so if Larry starts another company most people will expect him to succeed, and he will get alot of popularity. Same concept will work in blog commenting as well.

Therefore, you will see wherever I comment, I include Syed Balkhi rather than Balkhis, or Uzzz Productions because I want to be known with my name. People should recognize, so when I launch a new project, they are like OH, this is launched by Syed Balkhi. I know this guy we have seen him commenting at xxx blog. This way you already have tons of loyal users already built…

What about forum names? what should you do? Pick one screen name and have it at all the forums you are registered at. I am mostly known by “smub”, my initials, on most forums. The reason why people have to do such things is because the world is so big that same name exists, and I dont want a number in front of my name therefore people go along with having nicknames, but don’t get a brand name there as well. Say I registered as Uzzz Productions, and than I want to sell the company. I sold the company, but people will still be contacting me about the company. Also, the new owner might not like it as well.

These are my thoughts on what name should you use when commenting on blogs. What do you guys think? Also if anyone have any more questions they want to be answered here feel free to use the contact form.