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

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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

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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

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We all struggle with clutter in our life and this often stops us by getting ahead and actually getting things done. As Terry mentioned the other day, a blogging waste of time is so easily achieved by not focusing on the relevant, which results in us sabotaging ourselves instead of moving ahead.

But in a world full of distraction we really need to get better at shutting distractions out of our minds, so we can concentrate better on the tasks at hand.

Have you ever found yourself staring at your screen for hours not knowing what to do next because you felt so overwhelmed with all the work that needed to be done? I’m sure we can all relate to this in one way or another.

Often when these blocks happen we make things worse by procrastinating, instead of starting somewhere and eliminating the work one by one.

I used to be a Master procrastinator for many years and only recently started to get a grasp on the idea of actually working to achieve things.

While I don’t claim to be an expert in any way, I can simply try to share with you what helped me to become a “near task master” (please note the word “near”).

With Christmas and the holidays just around the corner it is more important than ever to get organized now, because we will most likely want to spend some time offline celebrating, stuff our tummies with yummy food and be merry and not worry about the bulk load of work that awaits us when we return to the office.

Claim a day now to get organized and save weeks later down the track.

26 Ways To Get Organized Now!

1. check email accounts only twice a day and answer queries ASAP.
2. use manila folder files for individual projects
3. alternatively use folders on your hard drive to to do the same
4. keep all your passwords and log-in details in the same location (notebook, special file on your hard drive, print out)
5. always write your to do list today for tomorrow. That way you can get going the instant you step into your office.
6. take some time once a week to plan the following week. Sunday evenings might be suitable for most and also back up your hard drive while doing this.
7. finish tasks before creating too many new ones
8. eliminate email clutter
9. eliminate paper clutter
10. shut out distractions from family (make it clear to them that you do run a business, therefore you need “your” time to work.
11. Try to achieve a main task and a new goal every week. This could run into several weeks of working on the same project, but it will help to grow your business
12. focus on quality - not quantity
13. outsource the work you suck at or the work you hate to do and keep putting off.
14. execute a plan and then put the plan into action
15. ask for help
16. spring clean your office
17. take breaks (you’ll be amazed at how much more you get done this way)
18. only take on board what you can handle with a 10% stretch (for growth)
19. learn to say NO (most of us struggle to do so)
20. JV with a like minded person to achieve something together
21. upgrade your computer for faster performance
22. read books that help you organize your life
23. streamline your life (often less is more, especially if you work it)
24. stop stressing about Christmas, focus on togetherness instead of frantically buying crappy presents nobody ever wanted anyway. Do a secret Santa instead.
25. use time tracking tools
26. and finally … get a life away from the computer

If you have more useful tips that can be added to this list, please leave them in the comments section.

If you need help or clarification, then please just ask

Monika Mundell

Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: get organized,organize yourself,organize your life,organize your work,blogging web 2.0

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With all the recent shenanigans taking place in the blogging world due to a certain search engine’s apparent unremitting blood-lust for taking the scalps of anyone it catches not toeing it’s straight and incessantly narrowing line, a veritable mountain of opinions, speculations and debates have been raging volcanically with unrelenting vigour and verve in and around the blogging community.

That’s all very well, but can you imagine just how much valuable time and energy has been squandered by the perpetual see-sawing of blog posts scrabbling to and fro between indignant bloggers and sympathetic well-wishers? Rather a lot if this particular author’s woeful affiliation with such practices is anything to go by.

What is this mysterious lure which suddenly brings all and sundry out of the cyber-woodwork to unite in their wallowing together in this mire of woe and mourning of the loss of their hard earned blogging accolades? In short, their sorrowful lamentations of the loss of page rank. The problem is that these writings are not confined to only our own blogs. We comment in each other’s blogs further fuelling the fires and fanning the flames spreading the message far and wide to anyone who cares to listen and respond.

It’s a kind of attraction that binds like together with like, similar to a nation uniting against an external aggressor in the face of war.

Unfortunately any war, no matter how defined and subsequently fought is a costly pastime.

For bloggers who go to the trouble of seeing this as a war that they should fight to the bitter end, it will ultimately cost them dearly in terms of their time and hard work. These are valuable resources that could be infinitely better put to use in hunting down alternative sources of online income instead of channelling all their energy into practices that are highly likely to bring them directly into their adversary’s line of fire.

I can’t help thinking about the similarity between the three little pigs building their house of sticks only to have it blown down by the big bad wolf.

When I think of all the time and writing that I have expended on this subject so far, it annoys me that I could have been putting them to better use. While I’ve attracted quite a lot of new readers to my own blog despite this, it hasn’t made me any of the green stuff that channelling all that energy into my other projects would have done. In fact it could have cost me a lot more in lost time that will now have to be made up somehow if I want those other projects that are dangling in mid-air to stabilize, grow and eventually bear fruit.

The point to this post?

While it’s important to be an active part of the Internet Marketing corner of the blogging community and being supportive and sympathetic to your peers, colleagues and friends, it’s equally important to keep enough distance between you so that you can see the larger vista. By taking a step back and not becoming too deeply entrenched in things that you can do very little about, you will find yourself more at liberty to concentrate on the things that are more important to your own online welfare.

Like making money, which is why any Internet Marketer is here in the first place!

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0
  

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Do you want more visitors and more inbound links to your blog? Of course you do! Who wouldn’t?! In this post I am going to give you five ways to get more direct visitors to your blog as well as more inbound links to bring in traffic for years to come.

1) Provide quality. I shouldn’t even have to mention this but it seems many bloggers somehow overlook it. Quality posts are the foundation of any successful blog. You cannot expect people to visit your blog or anyone to link to you if you don’t provide quality information. The higher quality your posts, the more likely it is that people will keep coming back to read what you have written. They will also tell others about your blog and link to you as another resource for their visitors.

2) Post frequently. Nobody wants to come to a blog and see the same post sitting there for weeks at a time. Part of the appeal of a blog is the ability to update it often, and that is exactly what you should do! Some of the top bloggers say to post a few times per day, others say a few times per week. But one thing they all agree on is that you should post regularly. People love frequently updated blogs and will come back often to read. You will also have a much easier time getting inbound links to a blog that’s updated frequently.

3) Link to other blogs. If you link to posts you enjoy on other blogs, they will eventually link back to posts they enjoy on your blog. They will also come visit your blog to see where the link came from. If you have frequently provided quality content (as in steps 1 & 2) they will most likely visit again and again. Link to other blogs often without expecting anything in return, and the karma will soon come back to you.

4) Simple social bookmarking. Make it easy for your readers to submit your posts to social bookmarking sites. You will see on many blogs there are buttons for popular social bookmarking sites above and/or below each post and they are set up to submit the post as easily as possible. This is something every serious blogger should do. It only takes a few minutes to set it up so these appear in every blog post, so there is no excuse for not doing it. You get many more visitors and inbound links if you have a popular post on a social bookmarking site.

5) Blogging communities. You should definitely join blogging communities such as MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog, and network with other bloggers. Forming friendships with other bloggers is a great way to increase traffic to your blog, and these people will usually be more than happy to link to your blog since they know who you are.

Well, there you have it. Five ways to get more inbound links and increase the traffic to your blog. Stay consistent with each of these tips and you will have a well-known, high traffic blog sooner than you think.

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Owner of the Money Making Blog

Filed under: Blogging | 12 Comments »

This blog started out in September this year and considering it is still young it is growing just nicely. This is due to the top writers who blog with us here and credit belongs to all of them. Both Terry and myself are excited about the high caliber of quality shown and we know that this blog will go from strength to strength over the coming month.

The month of November has been great for traffic once again. We have now officially topped the quarter of a million hits 2.5 month into being and that is partially due to one of my posts track your time being picked up by Life Hack, one of the biggest blogs online.

This has resulted in more than 320 visitors from Life Hack since they featured my post. This just goes to show what can happen when a big blog picks up your post.

Currently this blog gets an average of about 267 visitors/day and 8576 hits/day. As you can see, we have gone from 85,770 hits in October to over a quarter of a million hits one month later!

As far as income is concerned, we managed to make a couple of dollars once again.

Scratchback: $ 2.95

Clickbank: $ 0

Amazon: $ 0

Google Adwords: $ 3.78

Widget Bucks: $ 0 (I’m not counting the $25 sign up bonus until I get paid for it)

Total income November 2007 = $ 6.73

As for the guest blogger who took Novembers $30 home for writing the most entries, congratulations are on order again for Karen Zara. She did it again with a cheeky home run in the last minutes of the month toppling Trent by 1 post.

Well done Karen, I’ll PayPal the money to you as before.

Thanks to all of you who make this blog happen and taking shape and here is to a great end of year! (It started great already with a whopper Google day!)

And if it wasn’t for our readers, we wouldn’t be here in the first place, so thank you to all of you.

Monika

Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: blogging web 2.0,blogging stats,blogging web 2.0 stats

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