9. Exam and blogging

Hello! This week we had our first exam out of two. The exam was OK, I believe I'll pass, the rest is in the hands of the teachers ;)

The exam was on Thursday, but before that we had a pretty cool guest lecturer on Monday. He was Ilpo Kärkkäinen, a DJ and electronic music producer, one of the big names in that field in Finland. He lectured us about blogging, as he's been a professional blogger for 5 years. To be completely honest, I was I little bit disappointed that the topic once again was blogs.. But sure, blogging is increasing its popularity constantly and his lecture was great.

He gave us 4 main points:

1.

• It helps you think concrete because it's public. So you need to do proper research and focus.
• It is creative, and one tips was to go beyond Google. That makes it more interesting.
• Even if your blog is not public, it is like a journal of your learning's

2.

• It takes time and patients
• You can work from home, that's always a good thing right? ;)
• Many different opportunities
• Remember to present everything proudly
• Can also be done as a side business
• Incomes:

1. Advertising - Google AdSense, remember to build up traffic first. 
2. Affiliate marketing - You pay only for the accomplished targets (like a registration in an online service).
3. Selling products
4. Get free stuff and discounts - recommend only stuff in your blog you like yourself 

• Passive income: Work with it once, get paid constantly
• Active income: Sell service, get paid when work is done

3.

• We are all social creatures
• Same minded people all over the world
• Don't try to be perfect, be honest
• Important! Make it easy to contact you
• Share knowledge

4.

• Make goals and define them clearly
• Achieve goals
• Remember that peoples interest are shifting

In addition to these, Ilpo told also about Google Analytics and Google trends. Google Analytics is a very basic website analyzer. It tells you the visits of the page, locations, demographics etc. You can also see the real time statistics and where the traffic is coming from (like mobile or web..). In Google Trends you can see the interest in different topics at the moment. You can also see what is "in" in specific countries. The statistic bases on what people search on Google. This is a really good tool specially for bloggers.

Hope I'll sleep tonight as well as she does :)