New Year, New Blog!

I finally did it! I've got my own domain name and moved to http://this-affiliate-marketing-path.com/ -so please come and stop by!

In a New Place

I am now at a place where I think I can pour all of my earnings back into my internet publishing - up to this point I've had to use most of what I made for bills.

I have been keeping with my current schedule pretty well, but this changes things. So in the next few weeks I need to carefully evaluate where the money will go and what I should focus on - I am very excited!

threads like this scare me...

I saw this in the Digital Point Forums today: "It happend ( All Accounts Banned ) 25.000$ month."

OMG, that's so scary - of course, upon reading more, the guy did break the terms by having more than one account... I get so nervous because once every few months I'll accidentally click one of my ads while feverishly working on a site, then I'll nervously write them a letter apologizing, to which they always reply "thank you for your honesty, again. Please review our guidelines...."

We all see it happen here and there... but $25,000 a month??? - ouch.

What can you do? That's why I'm focusing ob some new blogs right now, so I can use Text Link Ads and some other promising forms of advertising.

Where to go from here?

I'm facing a bit of a dilemma now - I have around 40 sites and 15 blogs now, and I am struggling with where to go from here. They all have a good amount of content - some purely original, some PLR's, and some press releases - I'm not worried about the kind of content on them at this point because they all seem to bring in relativelty the same amount of traffic, relative to how much I've promoted them.

I know that I definitely do want to start working on my new site - the one that's going to be purely original, hopefully very high quality, and based on something I enjoy doing - I do want to work on that, so I plan on writing it into my schedule.

But now what do I do with all of these other sites?

I thought of looking at them from a revenue angle, and going for a goal that seemed pretty simple - to promote each site until it's making a regular $2 a day - then move on... and then I thought that I should really promote the new blogs and get them ready to submit to Text Link Ads in a few months... and then I have some promising older sites I'd also like to focus on... One is in DMOZ, that might be a good one to focus on, one is getting a good amount of Google traffic, that might be a good one to facus one, one's making more than the others, that might be a good one to focus on too.

See my problem?? Where to go?????

So, I have decided, for now, to promote my sites/blogs at a week at a time. I didn't want to worry about adding content but with the blogs, I think I'd better, so I'll spend a little time updating them.

I'm going to start with the sites/blogs that look the most promising - and promote them for a week - with article distribution, submitting to directories (which I really hate!), and quality link exchanges.

I also have an ebook I will be promoting.

And then I plan on writing a little each day for the new site - this will be my most important daily internet task.

I suppose I will do this until something better presents itself - the content is there, time to get back to promoting!

Social Bookmarking Worked for Me!

Since I recently decided that it would be a good idea to diversify my online empire with a few blogs, I started looking into things like social bookmarking. I didn't think it would help at all, but I tried it out, if for nothing other than to further my site-building education.

With most of the blogs that I tagged on del.icio.us, nothing much happened - I got the random visitor here and there, but nothing to speak of really. That was the case with all except for one of my blogs... one of them got picked up by a section in Yahoo! At first I got a nice little flood of visitors, then it calmed down... but it didn't stop. I realized that if I posted new content every day - that this section of Yahoo! would pick it up.

Last month I made about $70 from these visitors. And that's not all... since my brand new blog had this great backlink (I can only assume) I started getting a nice handful of Google visitors - this equated to more revenue.

So all in all, for taking a few seconds to submit my posts to del.icio.us, I ended up making about $100 extra last month - making the month's total $560.

Another thing about blogs is that it seems easier to get good backlinks with them - I've made some good blogroll exchanges and have even stumbled into getting 4 PR 7 backlinks... so I'm very optimistic to see how they turn out in a few months.

As for the other sites... they seem to be doing a little better all the time - of course, it is the holidays, but they're getting more Google traffic than before - so that's promising.

How do blog networks get away with linking all of their blogs together?

Everyone has thought that excessively linking their own sites together is a no-no - especially if they are unrelated. But blog networks don't seem too worried about this. I've noticed several blog networks lately that link all of their blogs together, the most prominent being Weblogs, Inc., which links their entire network of blogs over a slew of subjects on the sidebar of each and every blog.

These networks have very high PR and seem to get a lot of comments... so how is it that they don't get penalized?

Do you link your own blogs together? And under what conditions?

That was fun...

Ok, it looks like things settled down right after my little flood of traffic - I still have a little trickling in from Yahoo! but not like before - luckily I got the AdSense earnings on there long enough to make for a better than average day.

Alright, I've settled down - that just REALLY surprised me - I know now that I'm going to tag as much as possible - and I don't even know how or why all of that works, really, but it was really amazing to see a site go from zero traffic to a steady stream in no time.

HOLY S#*T one of my new blogs is suddenly getting a FLOOD of traffic!

[edited title - i'll be nice :) ]

Wahhh - I didn't even have ads on it until just now - let's hope it keeps up!

I didn't even know what "tagging" was before today - but I looked into it and decided to tag a few of my new blogs in del.icio.us - or whatever - today (grumbling, I might add, I really didn't think it would do a darn thing).

So I check back about a half hour later - and I'd gotten 70 uniques (from ZERO) in that half hour - all coming from a section of Yahoo! that has a link to the new blog. TOO BAD IT ONLY HAS LIKE FOUR POSTS - LOL! So I just stuck some AdSense on there - wish me luck guys - I'm at work and have to head home now so I won't be able to check on it till later.

OMG I'm more giddy than a schoolgirl - hope it lasts!!!!!

If You Give a Blogger Some Syrup... A ReviewMe Review

Sponsored Post:

Getting paid per post may seem like the syrup on the pancake for bloggers, but many have concerns about it, like 'is it really worth it' and 'will it make me a whore' and 'where is a good place to get started'? Well, the answer to the first two questions can get complex, but the third one isn't.

Over the past few weeks, ReviewMe has been one of those buzzwords that's been flying around blogs and forums. But like many other affiliate-marketing related buzzwords, I chose to ignore it - I mean, there are just too many "new ways to make money online" for one to look into each and every one - especially since my time is limited. So I ignored it. That is, until two bloggers who I really trust, Chrissie and Empress were checking it out - and had some good things to say about it.

So I decided to give it a spin, seeing as how I am currently working on some new blogs and plan on looking into good ways of monetizing them in the future. The first thing that impressed me (as well as other bloggers) is how quickly you can get started (webmasters tend to have disturbingly short attention spans). It took right around three minutes for me to apply and to get accepted, and voila! I had a project.

The payout is another thing that impressed me - I can see how one could make a pretty good amount per post if they had a decent blog going.

Now, for the big question on everybody's mind:

Will this make me a dirty little whore??

I don't think so... if the review is on topic with your blog - and if you're honest in your review (remember - they aren't paying you to give a good review - just a review - so by all means - be honest!), then I think it can be valuable to the reader. And as BJ pointed out, if you're clever enough, you can make a paid post full of integrity and wildly entertaining as well.

What if I can't make it wildly entertaining?

Then sharpening your thinking skills through writing will certainly help you become a cleverer writer along the way. And that's another plus - I know I put a lot more thought into this post than I do for most of my blog posts - which often range from stream-of-consciousness to downright flippant. Something about having an assignment just makes me want to make things a little more... structured - for good or for bad.

But whatever the case, having writing assignments may compel you to write more, which may make you a better writer, which may make your blog more interesting, which may make your payout higher, which may make you want to write more, and chances are, if you're writing more... you may want some syrup to go with it.

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