Iranian Blogger Nima Heydarian
October 23, 2008 Posted by Tyler CruzThe following is a paid review and is completely of my own opinion and is not influenced by being paid. If you’re interested in having me review your site or product, please view my advertising page.
Nima Heydarian is an Iranian-American student who moved to the US from Iran 7 years ago. In addition to his blog NimaHeydarian.com, of which this review is about, Nima also runs the sites PokerEagles.com, HookahLounge.net, and IranianLawyers.net.
Nima’s blog, according to his About Page, attempts to share his experiences and lessons learned as an entrepreneur as well as provide off-topic posts such as photography tips, Farsi lessons, political views, trip reports, etc.
Since Nima’s blog has been established since July of 2006, I decided to read all of his posts from August 1st to present.
His blog has a decent theme and is laid out pretty well and is thus easy to navigate, although it can appear a bit ad heavy at times with the 250×250 embedded banners when the posts are short.
While the archives show that he used to post sporadically in the past, it appears Nima has focused on improving his post frequency as he has averaged a new post every couple days during the past few months.
Overall, you could classify Nima’s blog in the "make money online" niche, but there are quite a lot of completely off-topic posts which can be confusing to the reader as it makes you wonder just what type of blog you are reading at times.
For example, while I personally love learning about other cultures and can appreciate Nima sharing his obvious passion with Iran, Farsi, and calligraphy, some of them are just very out of place in a blog that is supposed to be geared towards Internet marketing and entrepreneurship.
Providing a personal post here and there is great (I encourage it), but personal posts shouldn’t be confused with off-topic posts. For example, I’d love to see some photos of Nima visiting Iran and going on a trip, but posting rather obscure photos on Iranian poetry and calligraphy is just getting too off-topic for me.
I don’t want to prevent him from sharing his other interests with people, but that really belongs on another blog. For example, his Aberooye Rafteh – Hamid Mosadegh post is simply a picture of the following image with a link to "Hamid Mosadegh" which is written in a script I do not understand (Farsi, I presume?)
The cultural stuff is only one example. Other examples of completely off-topic posts include political posts and even a post on how to Draw Root Locus Plots Using Matlab.
Again, while I think the occasional personal post is a welcome change of pace to any blog, it’s very important to not confuse personal with completely off-topic. Doing so leads to making the blog become very unfocused and rather random at times, which in turn makes it difficult to target to a particular group, in this case: Internet marketing junkies.
However, recently it seems that Nima has been trying to focus more on related "make money online" posts, so maybe he has already come to this realization 🙂
Another constructive criticism I’d like to make is in regards to post length. Nima’s average post is around 200-250 words which is quite short; around 4-5 paragraphs. While it’s sometimes good or even necessary to publish a short, to-the-point post, the majority of the time people want more.
In fact, I think that simply increasing the length of the posts by providing more details and thoughts will dramatically improve Nima’s blog. With the immense amount of competition and other content out there, in this niche especially, it is absolutely vital to supply good content. Nima has some good ideas and post topics, he just needs to spend a little more time on the posts themselves.
With those easy-to-address criticisms out of the way, NimaHeydarian.com does provide some useful and interesting posts. Below are some of the better posts Nima has written, which I’d like to see more of in the future:
- Entrepreneurship Tips 2 – Hiring Employees
- How To Compartmentalize Work From Life
- BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Review
- Advantages Of LLC For Internet Entrepreneurs
- Using Forum Posting Services To Market Your Forum
To reinforce my suggestion above, the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Review post is probably my favourite simply because it’s one of the longer posts on the blog and actually provides you with useful content.
Nima Heydarian definitely has a passion for making money online, and he has an interesting story to tell since he grew up in Iran.
His blog NimaHeydarian.com is a decent blog in the "make money online" niche, but in order to get noticed and grow a strong readership he will need to focus more on the direction he wants to take his blog (less off-topic posts and more Internet/business related), as well as put a bit more time and effort into the posts he writes.
Nima may be one of the smaller bloggers out there, but often you can learn a lot faster from people who are closer to your skill/experience level. Like everyone, Nima is always looking for new RSS subscribers so feel free to subscribe to his blog.
I would also get rid of the archives section in the sidebar. Although it’s great to see the blog has been established since July 2006 you quickly see that there was no real effort put into the site until august this year. Was an instant turn off for me.
Same here. When nothing of worth is posted until recently, its not good to show off “lazy” or “worthless” posts. I’d put a “most recent posts” widget there instead of an archives.
hmmm nice review. I will also suggest to focus more on the main topics and less on other topics. Always talk more about what you are blogging about
Hi,
Tyler, thanks for the review and everyone else thanks for the comments.
I do agree with your advice that the blog needs to be more focused on topic and longer posts. As you said I am trying to give the blog more straight forward direction.
Again, thanks for the advice. I will be reading all upcoming comments as well to further improve the site.
Very nice review.I would have said the same as the previous commentators, guess you’ve taken it on board.
Keep up the good work.
Monica
What´s with all the unkonwn people thinking that they can start up a blog about mamking money online?
Ridiculous… those guys have like 3 bucks in their pocket and they are out there pretending to be big shots.
You probably have 2 bucks?
I’d add an email subscribe box in the sidebar, would increase the amount of subscribers.
Otherwise, site design and feel looks decent. 🙂
You should get rid of some adsense units , because you are over the limit. Read the rules.
hey tyler you should take some of your own advice about keeping on topic! Since you seem to have make money ads all over your site. So which is it a money making blog or your life blog. i think you should separate then like your telling this guy haha.
dude, its a make money online blog, you would think he is also trying to make money. come on. I do also think that one should always add a personal touch to his blog because you seem more human rather than a blabaling machine, no one likes that.
Hey Hahaha,
I dunno what your problem is…everytime you write something, it’s always negative. If you really dislike this blog then why waste your time reading it? I guess your mission in life is too obvious…
Blogs are also community, and that necessitates a personal touch. John Chow puts up pics of his food. Shoemoney posts MMA and recently politics. Neither are hurting for subscribers. Perhaps the asides do help make a blog more sticky than a blogroll of technical posts.
With that said, the Top Dog bloggers seem to keep the off-topics to just one or two consistent areas. Not posting ever mundane detail.
For Nima, consistency seems to be the key advice. Consistency on number and frequency of posts, consistency of topic areas, etc.
Well yes, that’s my point 🙂
Posting pics of food is classified as personal because John is eating the food and we can associate the food with John.
Jeremy owns an MMA site and has sponsored fighters and even hangs around with some on occassion, so we can classify that as personal-related as well.
I posted a video of myself shaving (with my new razor) a number of weeks back and I consider that personal because I’m the one shaving.
As long as you can directly relate yourself to the off-topic material and you think it is interesting to your readers than I consider that as personal.
So, for Nima, if he had showed us a video of himself in a day at his Farsi calligraphy school, I’d consider that much more interesting than simply seeing “random” Farsi poetry which has no meaning to those of us with no knowledge of the art.
I guess the key is, if you’re going to post something off-topic, make sure that either the majority of your readers can connect with it and find it interesting, or else make sure you’re directly connected to it somehow.
Keep working hard, making money online is about working hard, trying things and learning / implementing as much as you can.
And if anyone’s looking for a Verizon BlackBerry 8830 World Edition phone, I’m selling mine.. Has been sitting in it’s box since I got my iPhone. 🙂
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