Written on April 14th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse

Tea Guy Asks about Hosting - Blog Case Study

Case Studies 19 comments

The following post was submitted by Bill Lengeman as part of the enternetusers Case Study Series

My question is probably not uncommon for bloggers at beginner to intermediate level. Should I start hosting my own blog and using a proper domain name?

I started blogging in July of 2005 like so many others, more or less on a lark. As a freelance writer trying to get reestablished in the business I found that I was mostly marketing myself and doing very little writing. I start blogging as a way of forcing myself to write something every day.

And promptly proceeded to bore myself to death - and presumably any readers who happened across my site. At about this time I started to develop a keen interest in high quality specialty teas and began writing about that. One thing led to another and soon that I all I was writing about. Soon enough I changed the name of the blog and ditched all content that had nothing to do with tea (you can see it here at Tea Guy Speaks).

I gradually started to take the site a little more seriously and eventually began adding images, making contacts in the tea industry and building up a fair amount of decent content. I also dabble with AdSense and Amazon Affiliates, but to no great effect thus far. And though I’m steadily building up readership my stats are no great shakes.

A few months back I bought teaguyspeaks.com and.net though GoDaddy in anticipation of moving over to that domain. I’m not daunted by the technical aspects of making the move. What I am concerned about is that I’ve done a modest amount of work getting my site’s URL out to various engines, directories and so on.

How will the move to my own domain effect those listings and what’s the best way to go about making such a move without throwing away everything I’ve done so far?

Thanks,
Bill

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Written on April 13th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 06:04 pm by Wayne Hurlbert

Blogs: Frequently Asked Questions

Blog Promotion, General 18 comments

What are blogs anyway?

A blog is a regularly updated website consisting of regular article postings. Links to and from other blogs and traditional websites are a prominent feature of most blogs. A blog tends to be focussed on a single topic or issue, and usually invites comments from readers on the posted articles, starting a conversation between writer (called a blogger) and the readers. A blog usually reflects the personality of the writer, and is most often written in a personal and informal style.

Isn’t a blog just an online diary?

An online diary, or personal blog is only one type of blog. Along with personal blogs, there are many types of business, technology, and professional blogs. The personal blog was once the predominate form of blog, but that is definitely no longer the case.

Are there different types of blogs?

Blogs can be in the form of written blogs, hosted on a blog server or on the webmaster’s own site. Blogs can also be found that use audio postings rather than written posts. There are blogs for every type of business, profession, and technological concept. Writers, lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, search engine optimization experts, marketers, and public relations professionals are just a few of the professions making use of blogs in their businesses.

What value does a blog have for a business?

A blog opens up the lines of communication between the blog writer and the reader. By becoming accessible to the public, a business can be seen as more than simply a faceless company, but a group of real people. The blog provides a powerful element of personal contact with the reader, building trust and confidence in the business and its personnel.

What type of businesses could benefit from a blog?

Any type of business that requires communication with potential readers in the general public can benefit from maintaining a blog. The public can be current and potential customers and clients, the news media, other business or professionals in the industry, or simply casual readers interested in the topic.

What business uses does a blog have?

A blog is ideal for opening the lines of communication between the business and the current and future customers. Communications builds trust that goes far in the areas of marketing and public relations. The blog puts a human face on the company and builds the level of trust. People are far more likely to purchase products and services from other people who they know and trust. A blog is also a very powerful tool for improving search engine rankings because of the keyword rich fresh content and the abundant incoming links.

Are blogs a useful networking tool?

Because of the intensive personalization involved with writing blog posts, the blog is a natural networking vehicle. Readers interact with the writer through the blog comments and by e-mail. The contacts often lead eventually to many shared business opportunities. Successful business arrangements formed between two blog owners, and between a blogger and a reader, occur very frequently.

How could I start a blog?

A blog can be started readily by opening an account with the many free and fee based blogging platforms. Most are very user friendly and a blog can be underway in a matter of minutes. Most blog hosts allow the business to FTP the posts to the company’s own website, providing additional onsite keyword laden content.

Can I start a blog for free?

There are a number of free blog hosting companies. The best known free blogging platform is Google owned Blogger. There are many other free hosts as well, including tblog http://www.tblog.com and blog-city http://www.blog-city.com. As with all free hosts, there are limitations on services and features, so careful examination of the blog hosting service is recommended.

Can I host a blog on my own website instead of the blog host?

It is very popular for businesses to host the blog on their own business website. Most blog tools feature an FTP that enables the file transfer of the blog posts directly to the main business website. The post is entered at the blog host, and then printed on the business website. The additional content and inbound links provided by the blog, along with the additional traffic generated to the business site, are the main reasons for the file transfer to the main site. WordPress is one of the most popular systems for onsite hosting of a blog.

Where do I get ideas to write about on the blog?

A business blog can include articles about industry and company news, new products and services, research and development efforts, business tips, and product reviews. Ideas for selecting and using the industry’s products and services are also good topic idea generators.

What value are blog comments?

The comments section of the blog post is very important. By providing feedback from the blog’s readers, the blogger can build a conversation with the customer base. The readers’ comments are also an excellent source of product and marketing ideas and mini surveys. The comments section of many business blogs is often the most widely read part of the blog. The opinions of the readers can help steer a company away from some bad marketing ideas, and often toward some very good ones. The comments section starts that business and customer interaction in a very positive way.

What is an RSS feed?

RSS stands for either Rich Site Syndication or Really Simple Syndication (no one agrees on the definition). RSS provides an instant update of the latest blog posts. To send an RSS feed, blog must use and be coded for broadcasting an RSS feed. It is very easy to set up an RSS feed and so coding is not really a major concern for most website owners. The RSS feed is read from an RSS aggregator which collects the feeds in the subscription. They are read by the subscriber in a manner similar to reading e-mail.

Should a blog have an RSS feed?

A blog should definitely include an RSS feed. The feed increases the blog’s readership to include many subscribers who would not otherwise visit the blog. The ease of reading an RSS feed increases the likelihood of the blog enhancing the site’s sales, marketing, and public relations efforts. The RSS gets the message out in a timely way to the general public, including the media, and prospective customers.

Do blogs have value in the search engines?

A blog component to a website is a powerful search engine optimization technique. The combination of fresh theme relevant content and incoming links is just what the search engine algorithms ordered. The strong Google PageRanks displayed by blogs, combined with frequent blog updates, ensure that a blog is crawled and reindexed often by the search engine spiders.

Why do blogs perform so well in the search engines?

Blogs perform well in the search engines for several reasons. First of all, blogs are updated regularly with fresh keyword rich posts. The posts tend to be centered around just a few major themes, making the entire blog strongly themed for those keyword phrases. Incoming links from the vast majority of other blogs and websites share that same theme, providing the blog with the full power of their link popularity boost and Google PageRank transfer. Links from within the posts on other blogs are not only powerfully theme related, but often contain some desirable keyword laden link anchor text.

Are blogs posts classified as theme relevant content?

A blog post is usually very theme relevant as most blogs are written around very few topics. A blog tends to be very focussed in its subject matter. For that reason, blogs have high keyword density for their most important keyword phrases. Not only are the blog posts theme relevant but most incoming and outgoing links and link anchor text are theme relevant as well. Even though blog posts scroll off the blog’s home page very quickly, they are replaced by other theme relevant posts, maintaining the blog’s overall themes and topics.

Can a blog be optimized for the search engines beyond links and content?

Blog title tags can be optimized to contain the most important keywords. The h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 tags are part of most blog templates offered by the many blog hosting companies. Search engine sensitive code can also be used to ensure ease of spider crawling in the same way as with traditional websites. Individual blog pages should have their own title tags and not the same ones as the home page. Some blog platforms require coding workarounds to get individual title tags on a page.

Are there different types of blog links?

There are main types of links found on blogs. There are the links to other blogs on the link list, referred to as a blogroll. Secondly, there are links to other blogs from within the blog posts themselves. Thirdly, there are internal links from one referenced blog post to another, either from within a blog post or as categorized and archived links. Fourthly, there are links from blog comments.

Are blog links downgraded by search engines like guest book links?

Because there are many types of blog links, there is often confusion about their treatment by the various search engines; most notably by Google. The links from the blogroll and from within the posts are treated like any other inbound, outbound, and internal website links. They are awarded Google PageRank transfer and link popularity value in accordance with the search engine algorithm. The links that are being downgraded are links sent out from blog comments, as a result of spamming activity by other webmasters. Normal blog links are not affected.

Can a blog be listed in any free internet directories?

There are many free internet directories that are open only to blogs. Not only do the blog directories provide link popularity value, and Google PageRank transfer, but they are known to also supply some regular fresh visitor traffic. Blogs are also eligible for inclusion in the many free internet directories designed for traditional websites. Because a blog is simply another type of website, blogs are deemed acceptable for submission and inclusion in the mainstream internet directories.

Do the DMOZ and Yahoo! Directories accept blogs?

As with any other type of website, blogs are eligible for inclusion in both the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) and the Yahoo! Directory. The DMOZ Directory has recently created a blog specific category to accommodate the many blogs submitted, while also including many blogs in the standard website categories should their subject matter be suitable.

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Written on April 13th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse

PC Doctor - Blog Case Study

Case Studies 8 comments

The following post was submitted by Adrian W Kingsley-Hughes as part of the enternetusers Case Study Series

PC Doctor blog, a blog designed to help people get more from their PCs, back in April of last year.

I bought it to life after a long period of being asked by people why I didn’t have a blog and a longer period of thinking, worrying (standard stuff like “do I have the time?”, “do I have enough to say?”, “will I ever get any readers?”) and then, finally, some constructive planning. One day I just uploaded WordPress to the server, set it up and within five minutes I had a brand new blog. Admittedly, I’d set up a load of blogs and forums before this so the process wasn’t new to me but I still felt a huge buzz of excitement because this was MY blog! After a few basic tweaks and mods (specifically, I let FeedBurner handle my RSS feed and added SiteMeter stats tracking so I could see what was going on, stats wise) I was ready to blog!

I got going straight away and even used the default WordPress template for quite a few months. I worked on the assumption that it was content that was going to draw readers and not how it looked, and since I’m a writer by trade I wasn’t put off by having to write a lot. I’m glad I did this because I could have spent weeks on the style and have no content. Also, since I knew that it would take weeks for any real traffic to show up on the site (from the search engines) I knew that I had time to tweak the look and fix anything that might be broken (or that I might break).

I started off populating the blog with stuff that I’d wanted to put up on the website for some time but hadn’t found the time. I found that by having a backlog of material to go on the web actually help because after a couple of weeks the blog had a good number of posts and the place didn’t feel empty any more. Traffic was slow to begin with but by using Technorati (I tagged everything back then!), leveraging my existing websites by cross-linking, and stated participating in the blogosphere through comments and trackbacks. Traffic was depressingly slow for the first few weeks but I knew that I’d be basically talking to myself for week and I remained optimistic. I lived by the motto that “if you build it, they will come”, and eventually, come they did! Within a year Google has gone from bringing no one to the blog to now bringing in 85% of my readers.

After a year, and over 2500 posts, I can say that I’m now really addicted to blogging. I love the speed with which I can get information onto the web, the speed that others can find out about it through RSS/web feeds and the great sense of community that has formed around blogs.

Three of the best decisions that I made in running my blog were:

1. Use WordPress. This platform is a joy to use and the folks behind it really are committed to the project.
2. Use BlogJet for posting. BlogJet allows me to concentrate of my content rather than having to mess around with HTML. Some of my posts containing a lot of formatting and dozens of images and
   BlogJet handles all this for me.
3. I’m so glad that I used FeedBurner to power my RSS/web feed. Using FeedBurner I’m able to offload all the technical issues onto someone else and I’m able to keep an eye on the stats. I now also make use of the
   FeedBlitz RSS-to-email service incorporated into FeedBurner - I’m amazed how many people want to get news of daily posts via email!

I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way but the biggest by far was not starting earlier. I wish that I’d just gotten on with the blog two or three years ago rather than putting it off. Don’t be put off - just start blogging! I also wish that I hadn’t put the blog into a folder called ‘WordPress’ - I could change it but I can’t be bothered and it’s not worth risking the loss in traffic - choose your URL and the folder for your blog carefully!

For the next year I plan on doing what I did last year and post a goodly number of posts every day. I also have plans to launch two new blogs, both spin-offs of the PC Doctor blog and both on computer-related topics. After that, who know what will happen!

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Written on April 12th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 01:04 am by Aaron Brazell

Humanity Still Trumps

General 14 comments

This post has been submitted by regular contributor - Aaron Brazell

I suppose this is somewhat of a tangent but if you bear with me, I believe this dovetails nicely with the focus of this blog. Last Friday, I went through one of the most terrifying situations a parent can go through - having surgery performed on a child. In my case, my son is two years old.

Sure, in my case, the operation was minor, and the doctors were the best doctors in the world, but nonetheless - no surgery is minor and no doctor is immune from making mistakes.

So after an agonizing period of waiting while specialists, anasthesioloigists, and nurses paraded over to check on him while we waited for the procedure to begin, they finally took him into the back room to sedate him. The poor child had a look of sheer terror on his face while the doctors tried to calm him. One nice inhale of “the gas” and a wide-eyed look put him in a deep sleep.

My wife and I were allowed to go and grab a bite to eat in the cafeteria and were summoned a short time later to come be with our son. He was coming out of his drug-induced sleep and had been numbed from the waist down as well, so he definitely wasn’t feeling pain - we were told.

As parents, we sat there with Devin holding him and stroking his hair. He was miserable and the heart strings were being tugged as we sat watching him in discomfort. As parents, this sort of thing is agonizing. You hate to see your child uncomfortable.

The nurse, who I am sure is very experienced and very knowledgeable, kept trying to calm us and tell us things like “He can’t feel anything”, “This is normal” and “he’ll go back to sleep for a bit”.

At one point, the nurse looked and said, “I’m going to give him another dose of the pain medicine. He shouldn’t be waking up so soon. At another time, the monitor went off because he wasn’t getting enough oxygen. So the nurse fetched him an oxygen mask and made a comment about how it was very odd that he wasn’t getting oxygen.

The point of this very long and windy entry is that people that run an internet business, including bloggers who are monetizing their blogs, can easily fall into a pattern of the expected. It’s relatively easy to read entries here at enternetusers and other sites that talk about optimizing sites for search engines, how to make title tags efficient or how to garner the most traffic and ad revenue. Like this Johns Hopkins nurse, there are notable experts in fields that will make their wizardry seem easy. And following the advice of experts will usually put you ahead of the crowd.

However, the one factor that cannot be quantified, measured, explained or predicted is the human factor. Despite the fact that our blogs and businesses are internet-based, they are based in humanity - a humanity that is unpredictable, emotional and takes different shapes for different humans. Sometimes all the 10 step processes and tricks don’t work because there are humans in the picture messing the formulas up.

Fortunately for us as bloggers, one size doesn’t fit all and when one formula fails, chances are we can find one that works in our situation with our personalities.

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Written on April 12th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse

Getting Knickers in a Twist over Blog Sponsorship - Blog Case Study

Case Studies 10 comments

The following post was submitted by Danae Shell as part of the enternetusers Case Study Series

I’m the editor of a lingerie weblog called Knickers (warning: as Danae says - this is a lingerie blog and could be unsuitable for some workplaces etc - Darren).

Knickers is a product weblog that features beautiful lingerie with advice about what to wear, etc., and also has an ongoing interview series with lingerie designers and other professionals within the industry. I started Knickers because there was no resource like it on the web, no ‘lingerie heaven’ where women could go to find beautiful lingerie and learn about bra-sizing, and what suits their body type.

Knickers has been running for nine months now, and it’s getting to the point where the weblog needs to start monetizing properly, or it’s not going to be worth the amount of time I put into it. The main sources of revenue just now are Google ads and affiliate links, neither of which performing beautifully. I’m now seriously considering sponsorship for Knickers, but am concerned about the implications ‘will I lose credibility? Will I alienate other designers? Will new readers be confused as to whether I’m owned by the sponsor?’

I’ve looked around quite a bit for pro-blogging articles about sponsorship, but it’s usually only mentioned as one possible revenue stream, i.e. ‘or, you can get a sponsorship.’ I’d be really interested to hear from other bloggers who have done sponsorships, and to learn how they decided a price for the sponsorship, what their terms were, and how it’s working for them. I think an ideal sponsorship would be one that brings added value to the readers of the weblog, and would love to hear of creative ways bloggers have teamed up with sponsors to benefit their readers.

Thanks in advance for your insights!

Danae Shell
Editor
Knickers www.knickersblog.com

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Written on April 11th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 03:04 am by Darren Rowse

10 Steps to Guarantee You’ll Never Make More than 0.14 cents per month with AdSense

Adsense 65 comments

Every day I come across and courses which promise to teach people how to make thousands of dollars a day with AdSense by following a few easy steps - so I thought it was time for one that shows you how to guarantee to keep your blog from making money with AdSense. Here’s my top 10 tips for a guaranteed earning of 0.14 cents or less per month from your blog:

1. Position Ads Out of Sight - Ensure that you put any ad units that you put on your blog below the fold where they’ll be sure not to annoy your readers. If you do choose to put your ads above the fold (why you would I’ll never know) make sure they are placed in the white zones in the diagram to the right. Obviously the bottom of the page is best but the top right corner and right hand skyscraper positions can also work against you very well. Do your best to keep the ads away from the areas that people’s eyes will be drawn to (ie away from content, pictures etc). This helps keep the money from rolling in quite well.

2. Only post to your blog once every few weeks - Lull your readers into a hypnotic trance decrease the chances of them ever visiting your blog.

3. Unclear Post Topics - If and when you do choose to post make sure that your posts have as little focus as possible in terms of topic. Write about multiple topics in every post in an attempt to confuse the AdSense bots. Never blog about anything with a commercial aspect to it and attempt to keep your posts as uninteresting, unoriginal and as useless to readers as you possibly can.

4. Poor Post Titles - Never use the keywords that relate to your post in your post’s title. In order to get lower paying (and irrelevant) ads use the word ‘blog’ as much as possible both in your titles and posts. Also try to find topics to write about that AdSense has no ads in their inventory for. Do this by simply adding keywords into Google.com until no ads come up next to the search results.

5. Never set your ads to show Alternative Ads - If you do your readers will see ads that might make you money when Google can’t find any of their own to show (something that ideally you will have if you get #4 above right). A much better strategy is to just allow the PSA (public service ads) to appear which will guarantee you earn nothing at all.

6. Click your own AdSense ads - This might make your AdSense total go up for a little while but the chances are that you’ll never see the money because you’ll be banned from the system. You might even go into negative earnings if Google decides to get their lawyers onto you!

7. Break Other Rules - If clicking on your own ads doesn’t get you banned fast enough try breaking some of the other AdSense terms and conditions like blatantly encouraging your readers to click your ads, using obscene language, writing constantly about violent and adult topics, labeling your ads with things like ‘free prizes if you click here’ or by putting flashing arrows pointing at the ads etc. Another good one is to add YPN ads to the same pages that AdSense ads are on. This has the double bonus of possibly getting you banned from both programs in one hit! If AdSense do contact you to make a change to some rule you’ve broken it’s best to ignore these emails, or if you decide to write back be as argumentative and uncooperative as possible.

8. Make your ads stand out - Set your AdSense ad design to completely clash with the rest of your blog’s design. Blending your ads is for sissies - be bold! In essense what you’re aiming for is to make your ads look as much out of place and as ad-like as possible. Here’s a few of my personal favorites (keep in mind I’m not a very good designer - I’m sure you could do worse if you put your mind to it):

9. Never track your AdSense ads performance - Definitely do not use channels to monitor how your different ads perform. This way you’ll ensure that if you do happen to fluke some well performing ads - you’ll never know which ones they were and will never be able to reproduce the results elsewhere.

10. Lower your Traffic - Ultimate the probably one of the best ways to ensure you never make much money from AdSense is to work hard at maintaining as little traffic as possible to your blog. You can do this in many ways including:

• Ignoring any readers that do happen upon your blog
• Practicing black hat SEO principles to make sure you get banned from Google and other Search Engines
• Writing the worst content possible
• Stealing other people’s content (and other unethical practices)
• Post as infrequently as possible (I know I’ve said this already - but it’s worth repeating)
• Never promote your blog in any online or offline forums

If you do have an occasional surge in traffic you can always remove the ads from the page that is getting the most traffic. Some bloggers do this well by only showing ads on certain pages (like their front page) and not showing them on other pages that get traffic.

Bonus Chitika Tip - If you want to branch out from AdSense and not earn much from other ad programs you might like to join up with Chitika and try many of the above strategies also. Another good one with Chitika is to use the default settings and keywords. If you really want to push it with Chitika you should target keywords that are as irrelevant to the topic of your blog as possible. In fact you can use this strategy with many money making strategies for your blog - especially affiliate programs. The more irrelevant they are to your blog’s topic the less chance they will convert!

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Written on April 11th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse

Gaining a Top Google Ranking in Two Weeks - Blog Case Study

Case Studies 29 comments

The following post was submitted by Martin Roth as part of the enternetusers Case Study Series

An excellent way to jump-start a new blog is to write a lively and authoritative article about your particular topic, then alert other bloggers in the hope that some of them will link to you. I’ve done it for two of my blogs, with good results.

The first time was with Bird Flu Update, which I launched last October. I decided to try to write an article that would appeal to bloggers. And what sort of theme would most appeal to bloggers? Something on blogging, I reasoned.

I posted my article, “The Bird Flu Bloggers” – a review of all the best blogs covering bird flu - late in October, then sent polite emails to 50-or-so of the most popular writers in the blogosphere, suggesting they might be interested in it. A couple of them mentioned it on their sites, bringing me several thousand hits over a few days.

I repeated the process a month later with “The Best Bird Flu Humor on the Internet – A Top Ten List” Only one blogger linked to it, but that was sufficient for a further several thousand hits.

Of course, these massive hit waves are just short-term. But I found that each time when the tide turned I was left with quite a few more regular visitors than before.

The same has now happened with my men’s grooming blog, Shaverama which I launched in January. By late-February it was averaging three visitors per day. Then I wrote an article about Gillette’s new five-blade Fusion shaving system. Once again, the emphasis was on bloggers. I looked at how some newspaper commentators had adopted a tone of intense sarcasm about a razor with five blades. Meanwhile, many bloggers reviewed it objectively, and usually favorably.

I titled my article “Gillette Fusion Razor – The Mainstream Media Mocks; Bloggers Give Objective Reviews” and posted it on February 24th, then sent off short, polite emails about it to around 50 leading bloggers.

Half-a-dozen of them linked to it, including – joy of joys – Instapundit, who wrote simply: “Mainstream media vs. the blogs: A close shave.” Over the following week I received more than 7,000 visitors.

Now that the tumult has died down I am getting about 60 visitors a day, and – to my astonishment – when you do a Google search on “Gillette Fusion Shaving System” I come out at Number One. Even for the far more common search term, “Gillette Fusion,” I manage to squeeze into the Top Twenty.

Of course, writing articles is not for everyone. Some bloggers simply are not good at putting together a readable, authoritative, medium-sized article.

And finding a theme can also be tricky. I am an experienced journalist of several decades, a former foreign correspondent and a book author, yet I am struggling to think of article ideas for other blogs that I run.

Try to be topical. See what the leading bloggers are writing about. Getting a link from Instapundit was possibly helped by the fact that he (Professor Glenn Reynolds) had himself earlier written about his own purchase of a Gillette Fusion razor. Don’t make your article too heavy. A little humor is good.

Be polite in your emails to other bloggers, alerting them of your piece. Try to sum up the article in just one or two short sentences. And don’t repeat the process more than, say, once or twice a month.

Of course, even the best article may not attract any links. All the bloggers you email may have a ton of other things to write about on that particular day. I thought my article on bird flu humor was a winner, but only a single blogger (OxBlog ) linked to it. In fact, one of the bloggers emailed me back sniffily to say that he didn’t think it appropriate to make jokes about bird flu.

But if you can make it work, I can think of few quicker ways for an invisible blogger to start getting known.

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Written on April 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 02:04 pm by Darren Rowse

Jill’s Story - Blog Case Study

Case Studies 28 comments

The following post was submitted by Jill Manty as part of the enternetusers Case Study Series

My husband convinced me to start a blog related to my organic baby business. He had been interested in blogging for over a year and had been trying to get me interested for most of that time. I kind of felt like it was a waste of time and didn’t really see the potential for profit. My organic business blog relates to news of interest to parents who are interested in organics, alternative energy, attachment parenting, etc. It’s made a little money. It pays for itself, plus a tiny bit extra, but it certainly wasn’t enough to make a living.

Then, in December I was reading on enternetusers, and I read that Darren had written a blog on the Summer Olympics in 2004. The Winter Olympics were coming up, and I thought we should write about them. My husband wasn’t sure that it was a money making idea, but I convinced him that it would be, so we bought www.2006turinolympics.com. I started writing at least one post daily at the end of December. By February, I was writing 5-6 posts per day. During the Olympics, I was sometimes writing closer to 10 posts per day.

I consider the site a success for a number of reasons. One, it made money. Not enough to retire on, but enough to buy a used car, which we desperately needed. Two, I was interviewed by several media sources and was even quoted for a front page story in The Washington Post. That was pretty exciting, as that sort of thing doesn’t usually happen to a stay-at-home wife and mom to five children. Finally, I consider it a success because it has finally gotten me to see what my husband has said along– you can make a living from blogging. We’re in the process of trying out several new blogging ideas. Some of them have been more successful than others. I have no doubt we will drop some of them in time, or convert them to something different.

What have I learned from this experience that I’m taking into our new blogs?

1. If you are inspired by an idea for a blog, go for it! Even if it doesn’t make money, you’ll learn from it.

2. Contrary to popular advice, you do not have to love what you’re writing about. It does need to be something that you can be excited about, but it doesn’t have to be your first love. Prior to this Olympics, I hadn’t even watched the last two (or more) Olympics. But the more I read about the Olympics, the more interested and excited I was. I started the blog because I thought it would be profitable. I continued it because it was profitable. I will continue to write on it because, along the way, I became interested.

3. A great way to make money on a blog is to pick a topic that a huge number of people are interested in. Even if you only get a tiny percentage of a million visitors searching on a topic, you can still make decent money off of that.

4. Be specific when picking a topic for your blog. It’s much easier to make money off of the Olympics or Dogs than a site devoted to sports or animals.

5. Timing is important. If you’re planning to blog about an event, such as the Olympics, you have to start blogging before the Olympics start. We now have a summer Olympic news site and a winter Olympics news site. I’m already posting about the 2008 and 2010 Olympics and actually making some money from it.

6. Your domain name choice is important, too. Having 2006turinolympics.com as our domain certainly helped in getting traffic and media exposure.

And finally–

7. People read blogs because they like you and because you provide a different perspective. I received so many very nice comments from people as the Olympics were winding down. They really appreciated the blog because I tried very hard to be positive about the athletes and the Olympics. You don’t have to be a negative, naysayer to be a successful blogger.

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Written on April 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:04 pm by Darren Rowse

Australian AdSense Publishers Get Direct Debit Payments

Adsense, General 21 comments

Good news for Aussies today with AdSense notifyig them that they can now be paid by direct deposit! Here’s an excerpt from the email sent:

‘We have recently added a new payment option for Australia and wish to invite you to sign up to receive payments directly to your bank account.

I’m not sure if this is just an Australian thing or whether other countries have now been upgraded to EFT payments also but I know a few other Aussies that will be happy about this one.

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Written on April 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 10:04 am by Aaron Brazell

Mark Pilgrim Gets Back in the Game

Blog News, General 2 comments

Mark Pilgrim is back. Mark Pilgrim was actually one of the early shapers of my philosophy on blogging and left me somewhat disappointed when he left the game a few years ago. It looks like he’s back though, based on his entertaining (as a parent) entry on bath time with his child, one cannot be sure what shape his blogging will take this time around.

Hat Tip: Blog Herald

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