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These are the responses to the first Ask Josh round of questions. I opened up the floor for people to ask whatever they felt like asking. I don’t think there will be any perfect answers, but you asked for my opinion, so I’m giving it ;). Here we go:

BigPappa asks: What it the air speed velocity of an unladen African Swallow? There has been significant discussion but I don’t remember an answer being reached.

Josh: 10 meters per second. Thank you for providing the answer in a follow-up comment http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/.

Sherry asks: Just a question, are you wearing the hat always?

Josh: Sort answer is Yes, I usually wear a hat.

chris asks: I’m tossing up whether to personalize my blog about employment issues, or leave as an anonymous site (which it currently is). So I wanted to ask what difference it makes, marketing wise, on having a personal ‘this is me’ blog vs. an anonymous blog.

Josh: I would personalize the blog. Personalizing helps to enable discussion and communication from visitors. When a site or page is anonymous, it is perceived as a static website. The element of a real-life human being behind the helm goes a long way. People like to relate to a real person.

What type of ‘low cost’ ways can I compete with likes of Monster.com on marketing? Or should I not try?

Josh: From what I can tell looking from at your site, the best angle to go about helping people with their resumes would be to personally ensure success with your service. I like the testimonials and think there should be more of them throughout the blog. If you can guarantee and deliver the promise of the best personal resume service out there, people will naturally talk about it. The lowest cost way to promote your service is to make it the best service possible. As demand grows, so can your pricing structure. Maybe throw in a simple resume editing service or a two-tied slow / fast service.

Metroknow asks: Hey there Josh, my apologies if you’ve answered this before, but I was curious about your thoughts on the benefits of Entrecard. I still use it a little, but I have felt that the time trade off to build credits is not worth the return (very few clickthroughs, for example). What are your thoughts on Entrecard?

Josh: Personally, I see value in Entrecard (EC) or else I would have removed it from my blog. I think you can get out what you put into it at the cost of time. I rarely drop Entrecards anymore because I do not have the time. I do keep EC because I do get a trickle of visitors, comments and subscribers from it. I don’t recommend spending time dropping cards. Spend that 20-40 minutes a day building better content, making comments, building links to your blog and whatever it takes to increase your exposure. Dropping cards on people so they will drop cards back won’t help increase your readership or make more money. But putting the widget into your blog and leaving it there doesn’t cost a thing.

Susie Kleiner asks: As an “unconventional marketer” what are your thoughts on exhibiting at trade shows? With many companies cutting back their marketing budgets, do you feel this is area will be affected or do you foresee people continuing to push product/service through trade show marketing?

Josh: I think trade shows are invaluable simply because of the networking factor. I do believe these shows will and are taking a big hit right now with current economic circumstances. I believe people will start to get more creative with how they market at trade shows. Just this year there were numerous non-tech businesses at the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. They went there because they knew that is where the talkers are. Believe it or not, bloggers talked about them, go figure.

A new marketing idea that some are starting to run are free workshops. Free workshops aren’t new. But running them for the sole purpose of helping others in order to get them to use your services is a new idea. What if people started opening up free courses on starting a business blog? Do you think businesses would show up? Do you think they might solicit your services after realizing it is something they need but don’t have the capacity to see through? I think so.

Matt Urdan asks: What’s the best way to monetize your blog without it becoming overrun with ad banners with designs you can’t control?

Josh: Use your blog to promote yourself and establish yourself as an authority on a subject. Unless you are receiving 300+ unique visitors a day, I wouldn’t mess with ads. They will only dilute your message. Selling unadvertised paid reviews or links can be another way to monetize your blog. I think having something people want and using your blog to promote that is the best way to monetize it.

You can create a thousand different sites that will produce good income all on their own. If your blog is your flagship site, I would leave it alone and use it as a funnel to recommend products or services to others occasionally but more as a free and open resource tool. The better idea would be if the products or services you recommend were your own.

Matt Richling asks: I see at the bottom of your blog, on the right side, you have some quick monthly goals. I was wondering what some of your more long term goals for the blog are? Or maybe your vision for where you see your blog in the future!?

I started posting goals on my blog about the second month into blogging. I thought they would be a great way to track progress and forward movement. I don’t give them too much thought anymore, just kind of fun to have. I don’t blog because of money. I blog because I like to network and share my passion for marketing in lighthearted, open discussions.

I would like to see this site develop into a community where more than one person posts frequently about the subject at hand. I want people to come, visit and walk away with something of value for free. As this site grows and more people visit it, I hope they get more and more value. I used to think that being an A-list blogger was the way to be and how to make money online. I now know it is better to network and give from your blog than to take. Anything I make from the blog I put back into the blog. I make money through different means online.

So to answer your question in numbers:

• RSS goal for the next year: 3,000+
• Newsletter subscribers for the next year 1,500+
• Frequent posters 3+

If you didn’t get your question is this time, thats ok. I am sure I have have another soon. I had a lot of fun answering these questions and hope that they showed you a little bit more about myself and other readers on the Unconventional Marketing Blog.

It looks like our dear old friend Graham at Entrecard is listing his site for sale. Now Entrecard and the community that goes with it can be yours, well that is if you mesh well with Graham’s vision. The site is listed here on Sitepoint.

If you are in the market for an online advertising company that serves over 80 million impressions to its ads monthly, here you go. Currently the site is generating $2,000 monthly from the sales of ads on the site itself, not across the network. I don’t know how it is possible to only make $2,000 per month while severing 80,000,000+ impressions, but it is true. I am sure the next person in line with some deeper development pockets could tap into more than 80 million ad impressions across more than 20,000 blogs for a much bigger return.

There is a huge potential just waiting to get picked up by the right hands. Now that’s a marketing idea, just buy your own blog ad network.

Over the last month give or take I have been running a test for this blog to determine what kind of traffic and visitors I would receive if I put the least amount of effort into running my blog.

I did 11 posts over the past 30 days, just about averaging 1 post every 3 days for the non-math majors. Along with minimal posts, I quit buying Entrecard ads or promoting in any other way. I noticed a little down tick in traffic and comments as fewer posts are appearing but has been pretty consistent since, with about 330 unique visits per day and 600ish page views.

If you notice that little up tick towards the end of the chart, that was a result of my last post with the help of a Wordpress plugin called Auto Social Poster (not an affiliate link). What you can do is have you post submitted to various different bookmarking sites at the time of posting. The plugin isn’t free, but I would highly recommend it if you are running a Wordpress Blog.

I found that instead of posting and promoting, I can focus more on posting and know that promotion is being done. I will now run another experiment here to determine whether posting daily versus every three days with the aid of ASP will result in more traffic. I will continue to not buy any ads on Entrecard in order to preserve the experiment. Instead, I will be giving away all of the credits I accumulate to this month’s the top commenter (horse race can be viewed to the right the side bar —-> ).

On one more note, I have begun to use a mailing list. The purpose of the list is to provide only marketing ideas and marketing strategies to subscribers. I will not spam you or try to sell you anything. It is simply for the people serious in receiving free marketing ideas and using them anyway you see fit. To subscribe, fill in your email to the right sidebar and hit submit.

Hats off to everyone who reads and contributes to this blog. As a show of appreciation I would love to mention with a short blurb every blog that wants to be acknowledged. So if that is you, drop me an email (josh@joshwhitford.com), leave me a message, send a quick note on the contact page or call me for those who already know my number. I will do a quick and short write up for any blog you want with a link.

Every now and then I like to give recognition and to give back to those who helped build up this blog, such as the supporters page. If you don’t see your name listed on the support page and would like it to be, send me a message for that as well. After all, you deserve it. So crack open a nice cold one, because this blog’s for you.

I was going to publish an earth-shattering post that would revolutionize online marketing through unconventional techniques, but I thought I would put that on hold. Instead, I’ll share with everyone that this blog is now #1 on Google (GOOG) for the keyword term Unconventional Marketing and Unconventional marketing Blog. Here is the pic.

Over the past month or two I have been floating between #2 and #3 depending on the day and weather, apparently. Now my goals are honing in on some other marketing terms as well as my name and Josh Blog. I never knew before blogging that there was another Josh Whitford in this world, but there is. And not only that, but he is an author and professor, thus holding the #1 spot for our names. In time. As far as the other terms go, I am slowly beginning to pick off the less searched for marketing terms and using those as the blog’s foundation before conquering others larger terms.

I have been developing SEO skills over the last two months as I questioned how to rank #1 for selected terms. What I have found is that ranking for keywords is pretty easy and straight forward, but depending on the terms can take a lot of time and effort to achieve. I hope to build up the skills and continue to use that to benefit this blog and those around me. If you are wondering where I learned about SEO here are the blogs you should visit. There are many more out there but these are the most legit I have found.

• Make Money Online (Vic)
• Make Money Online (Grizzly)
• How to Make Money Online for Beginners
• Learn. Rank. Dominate

As a way of celebrating, I will offer 200 Entrecredits to the first 20 people to leave a comment on this post. If you don’t have Entrecard, I will offer up a free link on my blog roll instead. I will send the credits to the email you use in posting your comments.