Personally, the blog subject is immaterial.

What’s important is to have a plan in place to generate traffic, and content, and depending on your goals, whether you’re able to successfully use the blog for branding, JV or monetization purposes.

As I’ve said, once you master the dynamics of blogging, it’s merely rinse-and-repeat.

While the examples Andrew mentioned are blogging about blogging … there are plenty of blogs that do other things!

- LifeCoachesBlog.com markets “The Idea” of self improvement … just the idea

- I own two blogs where I just market myself, just building my reputation socially (in one blog) and among professional peers (in the other)

- I own another blog which is focussed around promoting a very niche product. It only has an alexa of about $750,000 … but the site still makes about $800-$1000 per month (Sorry can’t disclose, will lose my competitive edge!)

If you open 9rules or digg or technorati, you’ll find tonnes of other blogs that promote lots of other things!

It’s just that they’re not all that visible because “WE” are not in the target audience … being IM enthusiasts we tend to read the blogs that are about IM.

If you already have a niche in mind, you can certainly increase your traffic by applying the blog strategies andrew talks about (Nope, I don’t get a commission for saying that, I’m just amazed at the kind of results he’s gotten over the past few months)

Let me answer your question another way.

As you say, the point of Internet Marketing is to market something.

IMO I don’t revere or discount a blog, or a website for that matter by their choice of niche - whether it’s performance cars, iPods, weight loss or Internet Marketing products.

Likewise, I don’t see a ‘conflict’ (if that’s what you’re refering to) to using a channel like direct mail to promote a direct mail system.

It’s the best way to evaluate whether someone’s walking their talk, isn’t it?

In my marketing efforts, the metrics for me are:
1) How effective is the process?
2) What measurable results have been achieved?
3) How can the results be further enhanced?

Maybe I’m wrong, but you seem to be imputing a moral judgement on the products?

If I was marketing levitra, viagra, poker, weight loss pills or debt refinancing, would that make it ‘better’?

The thing is that Internet Marketing is a system. If it can be successfully applied to one area, it can be easily replicated to another.

PS: You seem to assume I don’t have any niche sites…

It’s interested here again.

a bunch of questions for you, which might not be related to this specific post.

Looking at sites like Alvin’s, Tofulover’s. yours, and Gobala’s, i am getting a sense that you are all blogging on the same subject… which is.. blogging about ways to improve blogging to generate revenues?

Isn’t the whole concept of IM to actually market something?

Looks like most of the links that are provided are all talking about the same stuff. What are the actual niche market “product” that are being marketed? Just the SEO/IM techniques themselves?

If you’re familiar with WordPress, you’d know that the plugins can be moved very easily.

Perhaps you are using a less optimized set of plugins.

Nice sharing of the secretblogweapon =) I am also thinking of converting my blog using that… but problem is I have many plug-ins installed on my blog.. will that affect the installation?

Alvin Phang
http://www.gathersuccess.com