Recently in Site News Category

I am in the process of running an upgrade on the site, things may not work for the next few hours.

I started working with the ideas presented in this e-book about a month ago and in that time I have more than doubled my profits from PPC campaigns. If you are interested in learning how to double your pay-per-click profits then go check it out.

 

I have been pretty darn busy lately, which is one of the reasons I haven't posted much recently. The paid stuff has pretty much dries up over here. I can get plenty of the cheap paying ones from PPP and occasionally ReviewMe but with the loss in PR I haven't gotten anything from PayU2Blog lately. No big deal, I will just keep posting stuff and eventually my PR will go back up. I went for a few years knowing nothing about PR until I started monetizing my blogs anyway. I mainly do this because I enjoy it. The money is nice but it certainly isn't the main factor.

Business stuff I only think about while I am at work and occasionally when I am reading news sites, thus the lack of posts lately. Once the holidays are past I will have a bit more free time and will be able to add some fresh content here.

I am getting tons of PayU2Blog posts on my other sites though. I am pretty quick about posting them, although the way the last couple of months have been, I end up posting them all at once on my day off, sometimes right on the deadline to get them up. I think I currently have about 14 of them assigned, which is very nice. That's a minimum of $70 right there. I was hoping to get more of them posted this evening but I wrote a review on a crappy piece of software on my tech site and it took me forever to get posted. It's actually not all that crappy, it's just not something I would use. Some folks might find it extremely useful. I guess I am just used to the programs that I use every day and I don't like to change them.

I have played around with a couple of different GPS apps for my Samsung i760 and wanted to get recommendations from other folks that use it as well. Let me know in the comments or in a trackback what your favorite software is and why. Requirements needs to be that it will run on a Windows Mobile 6 device and be able to use a Bluetooth GPS device as well as be under $100 and have a trial I can check out prior to purchasing.

As a matter of fact, let's make this a contest. Best one gets $25 payable through PayPal or an iTunes gift certificate. The contest will end on December 1st and I will pick the winner by the 10th so that I have time to judge which app I like the best. I will post this to my other sites as well in order to get a bit of exposure. Use my contact form at Shadowscope to let me know that you have entered after you comment or send the ping, that way I can insure that it's not caught in my spam folder.

I have been remiss in posting anything at all this week here due to the fact that I have worked somewhere in the vicinity of 75+ hours since Thursday morning. I am pretty beat but will try and catch up on my posting tomorrow. I only have one full day off and have to unfortunately be back at work on Friday morning.

I seem to be having issues with some of the blogrolls from blogrolling not wanting to load either. I know at least that it's no my imagination because I just received an email about it from someone who administers several different blogrolls with them.

That's very weird. I was trying to access some of my videos on Youtube and can't seem to get there from here...I don't know if the site is down or not but I darn sure couldn't get any videos to load and when I try to go to youtube.com it finally just times out on me.

I guess I will just have to check back later and see what's going on.

I am almost finished configuring my templates and styles over at Shadowscope and I should be able to get these done today or tomorrow. There are several different links and widgets that I have to get back up as well as the sponsored areas. I apologize to those folks who have links missing. It's been an extremely long week and I have not been able to get it finished nearly as fast as I wanted.

The good news is that everything should be much faster and more integrated than it was before.

It took me a couple of days, but the site is back online finally. I will start adding in my links and blogrolls when I get home this evening. Thanks for being patient about it.

Technorati Tags: Movabletype

I had to add an extra 10 GB of bandwidth last week due to high usage with all of my sites and for the first time I may have to add another ten. This sucks. I already pay $27 a month and every 10GB costs me another $10. I know I am making money off of it, but I personally don't feel like I am getting the speed benefits from spending so much money.

Currently I am just over 33GB with seven days left in the month. I will wait and see what it's looking like in the morning and if I am over 34 I will add another 10 just to make sure that I don't run out.

I upgraded the site to Movabletype 4.01 last night. Everything seems to have gone pretty well so far. One of the things that they said I should notice is a slight increase in speed with comments and posting entries. So far that actually seems pretty true. It's not a humongous difference but it does seem a bit faster than it did before.

Finally got around to running the upgrade for the latest MT release candidate. Please let me know if there are any kind of errors.

Back at the beginning of July I posted some goals on my main site, Shadowscope. There were two of them. One was to post 300 entries in the month and the other was to make at least $1000 in July. Let's see how I did.

We'll start with the posts.
At Shadowscope I posted 299 entries. Just short of my goal but I also had some stuff up here and at TheAppDotNet
At this site I posted 80 blog entries
At TheAppDotNet I managed 89 posts.
That's a grand total 468 blog entries in one month or an average of 15.1 blog posts a day. Although I wanted to hit 300 at Shadowscope I have started to post more here and the tech blog which takes away time at the other two sites so I still think I hit the goal line. This month I am setting the same goal, except that I will make it 300 at Shadowscope, 100 at each of the other two sites. More posting means more traffic.

Alright, let's see how I did financially. I just downloaded my history from Paypal so it will take a minute or two to look through.

Google Adsense - $116 and some odd change. This was a direct deposit and I don't remember the exact amount.
Sponsored Reviews - $404.30
TextLinkAds - $16.00
ReviewMe - $25.00
PayPerPost - $538.95
Blogsvertise - $75.00
Direct Offers - $8.50
Smorty - $21.00
Bloggerwave $10.00
Blogitive - $10.00
PayU2Blog - $105.00

I made $1329.75 last month through blogging. Not too shabby. I certainly couldn't live off of it, but I don't do it full time either. That's more than most of my employees bring home in a month at an hourly rate and this month I will at least double that, or that is my goal anyway. I intend to make at least $2600 this month and so far I am well on my way.

I have posted step #10 over at my Technology blog.

Step #7 in the 101 steps to better blogging is to submit your site to NewsNow, a British news aggregator. Due to their policies conflicting with some of the stuff on two of my sites, Miles Business Blog is the only one I submitted. Like Marcus, upon submission I received this message,

Thank you for your application.

Due to the volume of applications received, we are unfortunately unable to reply to every application. After completing the submission form, you can expect to hear from us one calendar month if your application has been accepted.

If you do not hear from us within one calendar month, you may assume your application has been declined.

I suppose now we will just wait and see what happens next month.

Technorati : 101 steps, better blogging

Marcus wrote about submitting his site and a post to 9Rules as step #6 in 101 Steps To Better Blogging. The post he wrote was about 101 steps. Nice idea and it would drive more traffic both to his site and to 9rules but apparently they are not concerned with traffic or attracting new users to their anti-social networking site because 30 minutes after he posted about it they sent him this email,

Marcus,

I just deleted your topic and suspended your newly created my.9rules account for spamming Notes. We do not tolerate spam or blatant self-promotion of any kind and have a zero tolerance policy towards spammers.

Mike

Mike Rundle
Co-Founder, Design Guy - 9rules, Inc.

What a great bunch of guys. Well, on the site they do say they are exclusive. I don't guess I will be adding this site at all. So much for Step #6!

Zoomba posted an article over at Wincustomize which I just ran across that has left me flabbergasted.

You have unions in a lot of industries nowadays; automobile manufacturing, resource mining, airline staffing etc.  However, unions are something that have been slow to expand into more white-collar fields such as information technology.  A few years ago a push began to unionize IT operations roles, and other tasks that can require long hours for no additional pay or compensation.  The latest group to the "We should unionize!" party though is a little out of the ordinary.  People are talking about forming a union for Bloggers.

You must be frigging joking. I hate unions. I repeat, I HATE! unions. There was a time in our recent past in the United States when we needed unions to protect workers and make sure that they were paid properly and keep children and other low wage workers out of the factories. That time is no more. Capitalism rules and the people who work hardest and smartest make the most money. Sorry suckers, that's just the way it is.

It get's better.

Well, a group of bloggers feel they need to have stronger bargaining rights, a set of professional standards, and an easier time of getting better health insurance rates.  Strength in numbers.

Bwahhahaha. WTF are they going to do if they don't get better health insurance rates and bargaining rights, stop blogging? One can only hope. Hey bloggers here's a clue. If you do make your living on the Internet welcome to the world of entrepreneurism and sole ownership corporations. Just because you sit on your ass spouting nonsense doesn't make you any damn better than any of the rest of us struggling to make ends meet and that comes from someone who is padding his earnings by making money online.

The original article is published at the Los Angeles Times and can be found here. One paragraph in and I understand what is going on completely.

In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers is trying to band together to form a labor union it hopes will help members receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

AHA! Left-leaning bloggers my aching ass. A bunch of damned communists and socialists (yes, Virginia there is a difference between the two) trying to force us to guarantee something to them whether they work hard or not. Bite me. If I enjoy what you are writing I will visit your site, thereby gaining you ad traffic and once or twice a week, if I really like you I will click on the damn ads. I certainly don't consider myself a Shakespeare of the Internet but if any of the guys that I do consider the best of the best were to unionize I would puke like I had just drank a bunch of Chatham Artillery Punch and my eyes would roll back in ma head like a poan star.

Here is a really fun part of the article as well...

Organizers hope a bloggers' labor group will showcase not only the growing professionalism of the Web-based writers but also the importance of their roles in candidates' campaigns.

"I think people have just gotten to the point where people outside the blogosphere understand the value of what it is that we do on the progressive side," said Susie Madrak, author of the Suburban Guerrilla blog, who is active in the union campaign. "And I think they feel a little more entitled to ask for something now."

Now I see. The normal folks that aren't bloggers need to know just how important you think you are and give you money. Just like a bunch of damned left-wing whining maggots.

You want more money as a writer? Sell a damn book. That's exactly what my brother does and if I could stiring two coherent paragraphs together I might too.

This is being cross-posted at Shadowscope and Miles Business Blog, and hopefully Indie Bloggers as well. This is also my open track-back post for Monday August 6th.



Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, Committees of Correspondence, Rosemary's Thoughts, DeMediacratic Nation, Right Truth, DragonLady's World, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, third world county, Pirate's Cove, Nuke's news and views, The Pink Flamingo, Wyvern dreams, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

That is hilarious. I couldn't remember which step it was when I put my about me page together last night so it is fitting that I get over to Marcus site today and see that what I did IS step #5. Well good deal.

The reason to do this is to let your readers know who you are and make things much more personal. I react more and comment more on other people's sites if I at least think I know who they are and have a little insight into their lives.

One thing I did do that was recommended was that I didn't call it "about me" at least not on my main page. If you look at the sidebar it's called "About Richard". If I get time I will work on this step over at TheAppDotNet this afternoon as well. I already have one at Shadowscope.

Technorati : 101 Steps

There isn't a lot of stuff that bothers me about things that people do other than stupidity, but stinking pedophiles are an entirely different story. The picture Texas Fred is using as a header fits my feelings about it to the tee. I've added the blogroll to the sidebar as well.

Vigilante Justice
Fight the Pedofreaks

One of the things I did quite a while back on Shadowscope was to disable nofollow so that any commenter links were direct to their site. I am adding the do-follow blogroll her in preparation to join the blogroll if it's still accepting new members, and I have disabled nofollow as well. That means that any comments that you make here will be a direct back-link to your site.

That doesn't mean that you should go around posting comments just to get links, but it is a nice incentive.

Here is the blogroll...and if you are interested in joining, head on over to Tricia's Musings.

Technorati : Do-Follow