I have a brand new blog that I started roughly about 1 month ago (In Late August 2011) and I am quite pleased about it’s potential – not so much in terms of revenue but more along the lines of building a loyal following. These days, blogs are no longer personal diaries – they can (and are) be used by future employers because of one simple reason: It will give them a much better overview of who you are and what interests you than a hundred resumes combined. One of the biggest issues new bloggers run into is lack of readers during the early stages. I should know: I have about 6 high quality posts in my brand new blog and have gotten only one comment without any marketing. I decided to do a “soft launch” of the blog and spent a grand total of $120.
Stumbleupon Ads – $100
I am thoroughly impressed by Stumbleupon Ads. For just $100, it can give you several accurate metrics about your content. (Note: You can spend as little as $25, but I decided to spend $100 so I could get a higher data sample). There are 3 packages : Light, Standard & Premium. The “Light” package is the cheapest one and that is what I used for my campaign – a healthy $0.05 per visitor. Perfect.
Most Important Metric: Feedback Score (%)
Since the blog is brand new, I wanted to make sure that the content was great, so the Feedback Score is a very important metric. Essentially, it is the ratio of people who like the site/content to people who don’t. If you notice, for both campaigns, the feedback score is over 85-90%+. This is a good sign.
Fiverr – $20
I really like fiverr — obviously because of the cost. I only decided to spend $20 to see how effective it would be. So what did I accomplish with $20 ? I managed to:
1.) Get 2000 twitter followers on a brand new account
2.) Design 5 variations of a logo for the new blog
3.) Get 6 reviews & 50 “favorites” on StumbleUpon
4.) 30 Google+ Votes for the blog and posts
Not bad.
Final Thoughts
I am not planning on doing a more concentrated launch involving things like Guest Blogging, SEO, etc. till I have at least 15 more high quality posts lined up. As far as this mini-campaign, I managed to generate a healthy amount of traffic, get a second opinion on my content, receive over 100+ “likes” via Facebook and several dozen tweets. Remember : it does NOT take much money to give a “mini-marketing” boost to your brand new blog and get some valuable feedback in the process!
