First of all, thanks Terry for keeping up the forth here while I was busy partying away through Christmas. Actually I wish I was partying, but except for the actual Xmas day I was online pretty much all the time. I failed to blog during this time because I was de-cluttering my business including laptop, desktop, mind and other things. But Terry wished you all a happy Christmas from all of us and he talked about blogging them together.

I want to talk about clutter and how it can upset our blogging day. In the last couple of month I noticed a disturbing trend in my mind where I struggled to keep up with all my assignments, both self imposed and paid. There was an ever increasing amount of information that kept bombarding my mind to be read and heard, but the dealing with became a little ridiculous.

It wasn’t for lack of time management, but for information overload. I tried to absorb too much and deal with too many things and on the bottom line this sent me close to mental collapse. (Well, not really but this is what it could do if left un treated).

I realized that I simply couldn’t keep up with the pace I had self inflicted upon me and something had to give to allow for smoother performance. The biggest issue for me was to keep up with reading all the new blog posts (skimming), visiting the more interesting ones and comment. I spent around 3 hours a day in the end to do this as well as promoter other people’s stuff through social media.

This is simply crazy! I cannot keep doing this with a growing writing business and my intentions to grow other income streams if I already run out of time. Therefore this activity had to give big time and these days I limit myself to read and comment on only those blogs that actually give me value for my time spent there.

If I don’t learn something new that I can implement, then I won’t bother reading the blog any longer. Interestingly enough I keep floating back to the same blogs over and over again since they do give me value and therefore I can justify what I do.

My priorities were to organize myself better and since shifting my focus on this more Zen style approach it has made a huge difference.

Sometimes when we feel overloaded and overworked, it really does pay to stop and take a good look at why! This little “break” has given me insight into where I need to cut back and where I need to get more active.

I’m in the process of de-cluttering my business and my life and it feels like a fresh breath of air.

Monika Mundell

Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: de-clutter,get organized,clean out your business clutter,blogging web 2.0

Hello, if you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Filed under: Blogging | No Comments »

Its nice when you can write a piece that ties up the previous two posts perfectly. I’m talking about Monika’s and my latest posts about blogs, here at Blogging Web 2.0.

Specifically its about acquiring expired domains to avoid the sandbox problem and getting a ready made platform to really kick things off with. Add to that the flexibility of free Blogger blogs where you can delve headlong right into a happening niche and develop a ton of traffic almost overnight. 

Well, put those two ideas together and you have a recipe for a dynamite entrance onto the niche blogging stage if you use good judgement and trip over a little good luck along the way.

The luck will come from finding an expired domain with some decent age and page rank - with solid traceable backlinks and not de-indexed as can happen. The good judgement will come from chosing the right niche to launch your free Blogger blogs into.

Then you use one to really boost the other.

I mean use the heavily PR laden domain to link to your free blogs to add weight to them in the SERPs. Better if you can find a few good domains in the same niche with PR and then you’re laughing all the way to the bank! You’ll have a veritable army of blogs to smother the competition out of the niche that you want to dominate with your high PR Generals bringing up the rear of an army of free blogging Infantry to take the SERPs by storm!

Now doen’t that sound like something you should be doing to make some money?

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0

Filed under: Blogging | No Comments »

This is a super short post as I’d like to simply wish all our readers a very happy Christmas and a prosperous 2008.

In the short lifetime of this blog, we’ve grown such a lot and its all thanks to everyone who has given us their support by visiting, commenting and in some cases joining in and guest posting for us.

So thanks to everyone involved from Monika and myself and may you have a stonking New Year and if you don’t get what you want, you’d better hope you want what you get!

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0

Filed under: Important News | 1 Comment »

Terry wrote a great post about domain registration and how much better it is to start off with a pre-owned domain opposed to registering a brand new one. Not only will you avoid the sandbox, but you’ll have a good chance of getting a good PR for a decent price.

In the meantime however you can kick ass with blogger blogs. Grizzly wrote a top pillar post on let’s make money right now and I’m not going to repeat what he said.

Let me tell you one thing: if you are desperate to make money on the Internet (which applies to around 95 % of you) then you need to go and read Grizzly’s post! And while you are there you also hop over to Vic’s blog and learn what you have been doing wrong all this time.

I blog about the blogger blogs to show you my results since I have taken Grizzly’s golden tips on board and run with it 2.5 days ago.

As Griz suggested I went and registered a blogger blog. I chose a subject that is popular and started of by using the keyword in the blogs URL

It would read like this: http://yourkeyword.blogspot.com

I then set up the blog using one of the pre-fab themes there and also made sure to use the keyword in the description field.

Next I started writing some blog posts using the keyword often but not so much that it looked crappy or couldn’t be read. To date (2.5 days later) I have 10 posts on the blog that are all related to the main keyword I’m targeting.

In the same time frame I’ve had 2,844 unique hits to the blog so far and still counting. If you are not excited by this stat alone, you need to get a reality check!

Since my Writers Manifesto Blog is now around 8 months young and I’m getting 800 unique’s + a day getting 2,844 unique’s in 2.5 days to a brand new blog is just out of this world.

The point of this post is not to brag to you - actually far from it. But it is to show you that it can be done by anybody if you follow the advice given. And I’m telling you right now, I won’t hold your hand doing this either and silly questions on “but how did you do this” will be ignored.

This would only show to me that you didn’t read Grizzly’s post and therefore nothing will change for you.

Money wise I have only made a couple of dollars in that time frame which shows that I need to monetize better. This is probably were I struggle most. I need to learn what works best for my audience and I suspect this is often a hit and miss too.

I’m excited about what happens when we do the right thing and once I manage to make some sales I will be onto a true winner.

Monika Mundell

Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: kick ass blogger traffic,blogger,blogging,blogging web 2.0,seo

Filed under: Blogging, SEO | 5 Comments »

Blogging can be done successfully on either a free blogging host or your own professional hosting of course, but if you truly want to have full control over what you do with your blog, then self hosting is the way to go for more than one reason.

The main reason I want to cover here about the benefits of self hosting is choice of domain name. With free blogging hosts you can probably find something close to what you are looking for, but there is one big, big advantage to having your own domain name over a free blog’s domain name when you want to start a new blog.

That is keeping it out of the Google sandbox.

Google has this place, a bit like a dark cupboard that it puts any new sites or blogs that it thinks might be misbehaving. By misbehaving, I mean primarily engaging in tactics that could be interpreted as spamming. So if the big G thinks your new blog is one of those, in you will go and you may not see any more daylight for several months. That will put the dampeners on your ability to attract traffic and will delay any chance you have of making money from it.

So how do you avoid the dreaded sandbox?

Don’t create a new domain. Instead, search out an old one that has expired that you can pick up for a few dollars and put your new blog on that instead. You’ll bypass the sandbox purely thanks to the age of the domain name - preferably get one that is two years or more old.

Where do you get an expired or second-hand domain name?

There are lots of places that sell them - mainly the same places you go to register new ones, like GoDaddy. The process is simple and  you can even pick them up with existing PR so you’ll have a ready made off the shelf domain that is ready to make money from!

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0

Filed under: Blogging | 5 Comments »

Incoming links are part of the bread and butter for any blog and website. Without them our blog dries out and we are left with only crumbs - of traffic that is. Since incoming links are essential for SEO purposes we need to learn as much as we can do get more links pointing to our blog.

And no, this isn’t a post about submitting your blog to directories. In fact, I have never done this before. My time is too valuable to fart around with directory submissions and there is a much easier way to get back links and getting indexed quickly even with a new blog.

The open secret is social bookmarking sites!

With social bookmarking sites you can gain a tremendous amount of incoming links within a relative short period of time. And not only that, you will also save a lot of time by not having to submit your posts to every site (of which there are hundreds) individually.

You can do this easy and fast with OnlyWire

OnlyWire not only allows you to bookmark your posts to 22 sites within a couple of minutes, but most of them have a very high Page Rank. This means for every bookmark you submit you will get one incoming link back to your post.

Over time this can result in a huge amount of incoming links to your blog with as little as 2 minutes work daily (after your post is published).

But this goes even further. As you bookmark your posts on these sites, bloggers will pick them up if they like what they see and maybe even blog about you, so more links again.

As you can probably see, doing this kind of activity will help your traffic too.

OnlyWire isn’t the only bookmarking service on the market

(by the way it is free)

But it certainly helps to get you some incoming links!

Monika Mundell

Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: incoming links,web 2.0,blogging web 2.0,blogging,social bookmarking

Filed under: Internet Marketing | No Comments »

It’s always exciting when you get to take on a new website project that involves several people all starting up a new online business. However, once the initial excitement has waned and reality has set in, or worse, you suddenly find yourself in way over your head, then you need to make a proper plan on paper.

The first thing you need to work out is how much of your working day you can afford to give over to your new project. That will depend hugely on what you have agreed to do.

In my case, it is to build a new website and have it ready to sell online distance learning courses. If that was all it involved, life would be pretty easy… but there’s more (there nearly always is).

As this isn’t just a commission from a third party but something that I’m personally involved with, there is a lot more to it than producing a package that I can hand over to someone else on a certain date, collect my cheque and wash my hands of it.

I’m hosting the website so have to set up emails for all the partners. I have to create a blog that everyone can access and update. I also have to work on all the courses that we will be promoting as in many cases they have to be re-written and brought up to date. Luckily we will go live with as many as I can have ready to go on launch date, so there is not too much pressure to do a massive re-write, although it would be nice to start with ten complete and ready to go courses. I also have to set up a database to enrol students on the courses and also set up an online payment system.

Did I say I thought it would be easy?

Didn’t think so.

So for anyone finding themselves in a similar situation, how would you cope with all that work and still continue with your own ongoing online business?

Here’s how I’ll be doing it, so you might get some ideas from this:

Before anything can be done, I’ll write down and draw on paper what the website needs to look like roughly and how many pages and sub-pages there will be. I’ll also write down how many email accounts and their details and requirements. Then to make a list of the first five courses in order of importance (or projected sales potential) that I want to have ready to go first, then the next five. I’ll work out how I want my database to look and my access page for queries and updates.

If you don’t know much about databases, learn to love MySQL (or Access if you can’t function without Microsoft)! I personally prefer MySQL and have enough knowledge to do what I need to do. If you don’t, then you’ll be looking at outsourcing this part of the project.

Also before you get started, keep a blank page and give it the title: “Other Details I Didn’t Think Of!” - you’ll come back to this one more than once! Then you can work on your daily schedule:

• Split your working day into two separate halves with a break in-between
• First half goes on the new project so you can show your progress in the evening if anyone else wants an update. Then sub-plan your morning for the project.

On the first day:

• Start by doing a couple of hours on the course re-writes then put them to one side.
• Next, do some work on the website and at least get the home page and a site map up on the server.
• Next create the blog as this is easy to do along with setting up the email accounts so the partners can all communicate with one another.
• By this time you’ll probably have run out it, so take a break.

On subsequent days:

• Keep the same times as the first day with a couple of hours writing time first.
• The next couple of hours can go on the website design and adding more pages. You can also use this time to work on the database.
• Whatever time is left can go on promotion (yes start as soon as possible) – that is time that you spent setting up the blog and email accounts on the first day. Initial promotion will include writing articles to submit to article directories to get the site indexed by the search engines as fast as possible. It will also include researching speciality forums in the right niches to sign up with and do some getting-to-know-you posting.

That’s about as much as you can do over the initial creation period as live promotion in the form of advertising can only be started once the site is live and open for business (I’m not including pre-launch advertising which can be done in the weeks leading up to launch).

Lastly, go back to your “Other Details I Didn’t Think Of!” page and add whatever you forgot in the initial stages. You’ll be surprised how you fill this page up!

My own project will be starting off slow and growing naturally using free promotional methods as well as letting the site rise naturally in the SERPs, so there’s no worries over advertising. Also, all of the offline work will be handled by other members of the team so I won’t end up doing everything (that’s why you have a team). In fact, once the initial build and launch is done, my workload will be less than the others and will only include website maintenance and online free promotional work etc, which won’t take up too much time and I can get back to normal with my other online work.

Well, that’s how it’ll get done doing it my way, which of course will involve taking that schedule and turning it on it’s head and inside out as I can’t stand working to a schedule! But at least it will give me a rough guide to how to divide my working day give or take a few hours either way!

Everyone has their own preference, so of course you should go with what works best for you.

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0

Filed under: Internet Marketing | 2 Comments »