It’s time for another ProBlogger poll. This one is a little light hearted - but could also be interesting.

The Question - Where is Your Favorite Place to Blog?

I’ve included five options - but feel free to tick ‘other’ and leave your answer in comments below.

Looking forward to see how this one shapes up.

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from ProBlogger Blog Tips

Ever since hitting my $1,000 milestone last month, I’ve been eagerly awaiting making this post. I love breaking personal records… part of it is the OCD in me, but another part is the fact that it’s simply very motivating.

My goal for my blog’s December income was to set a new record and hit $1,200. I did quite a fair bit of work in trying to make this goal, and now I’m fairly close to having maximized the monetization potential of my blog. However, there are still a couple tricks I have up my sleeve without having to oversaturate my blog with an overabundance of banners and ads.

First, I have a deal with a certain ad network pending which should hopefully go live in January. Secondly, I haven’t taken advantage of affiliating yet. Writing reviews or promoting various products or services through affiliate programs makes up a large portion of blog income for some of the top bloggers, and I have yet to try my hand at this. However, I have been working on this, and have been reviewing a certain product during the past week. I’m about 30% done and hope to have a review of it up within another week or two, and will then see for the first time, the potential of affiliating on my blog.

But other than these two things, I’ve pretty much maximized my eCPM; December’s eCPM was around $55 (not counting RSS views; only actual visits to my blog), which works out to 5 cents per page view. Now that my blog is finally properly monetized, I need to focus on marketing and promotion. I started this already with my $300 RSS Contest which was a great success.

Anyhow, here are the results for December 2007:

As you can see, December brought in a new record at $1,103.64! This is bitter-sweet though; while it’s a new record, I didn’t make my goal of $1,200.

This is partly due to the season - as John Chow had predicted to me, December is usually a poor performing month due to the holidays. Not only do we have Christmas, but New Years as well.

The other reason December didn’t make my goal was because of timing. I sell my ads on a fixed monthly price, and sometimes advertisers renew their campaigns early. In fact, normally they do renew early so that their campaigns will continue to run unaffected. However, not all the advertisers renewed “early” this month, so I didn’t make my goal.

Private Ads are continuing to dominate the earnings breakdown, which is fine with me. But I’d like for the Affiliates section to grow.

Sidewide 125×125 Banner Slots Available

I currently have two slots available for the Sitewide 125×125 Banner campaigns. They cost $40 a month and can be purchased on my advertising page. If they’re good enough for John Chow to purchase, they’re good enough for you!

Sponsor Shoutouts

I’d like to give some quick shoutouts to my repeat sponsors and advertisers:

• InstantCoding - You must know these guys by now, as they have the most prominent ad on my blog. Check out my review of them.
• PSDGator - While it’s the first time PSDGator.com has been advertised on my blog, it was bought by longtime repeat advertiser Lee Bandoni, who had previously advertised GetMeContent.com. It’s sure nice to see a new banner up top - it will probably do well due to the “change of scenery” alone.
• TTZMedia - John Chow has continued to renew his ad for his TheTechZone affiliate program for the third time. Check out TTZMedia.com and try John Chow’s very own affiliate program.
• Entrecard - Entrecard purchased two reviews from my blog. Read the first one here, and the second one here which details the effects of having used Entrecard for two weeks on my blog.
• AdToll - They bought another paid review from me, as well as a 125×125. Check out my latest review of them where I discuss some of the latest improvements.
• WordZe - they haven’t purchased any advertising this month, but I’m making continual residual income from them each month. Their referral program is really lucrative, check it out if you have the chance, or read my extensive review of them.
• Finally, a big thank you to NeverBlueAds for sponsoring my $300 RSS Contest!

Overall, I’m satisfied with December’s results. Even though I didn’t make my goal, I did set a new record, and helped silent a couple of TylerHaters who thought that November’s earnings was a fluke

My goal for January is to make $1,300. Wish me luck, it’s not as easy as it sounds!

Originally Syndicated via RSS from TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur’s Journey

Today John Chow answers my question about how he improved his blog in 2007.

This question is an easy one to answer because there was one thing I did to my blog in 2007 that impacted it more than anything else I have ever tired for John Chow dot Com.

I got a custom made theme

Before the custom theme, my blog ran a free Wordpress theme and while it served me well, it was very limiting from a branding and monetization stand point. Nate Whitehill of Unique Blog Design created a theme for me that was not only unique, it allow me to fully monetize the blog.

The different was dramatic. Traffic double the day the new theme went live. It dropped a few days after but overall, the new theme has been responsible for a 25% increase in traffic. Income increase was even more dramatic. The blog went from $17,828.61 in August with the old theme to $27,240.83 in November with the new theme.

Unique Blog Design charges up to $1,500 for a custom design theme. While that may seem expensive, it’s a small price to pay when you look at the big picture. If you want to a problogger, then you have to roll with your own theme.

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from ProBlogger Blog Tips

Happy New Year!

Here in Australia it’s 2008 already and later this morning V (my wife) and I will go out for our annual Goal Setting/Resolutions brunch and will sit down with our resolutions notebook and think about the year that is ahead of us. In setting goals we tend to break them down into different areas including:

• Physical (getting fit, diet etc)
• Travel (vacations etc)
• Friends (what people we want to invest more time into seeing)
• Family (things we’d like to achieve as a family)
• Spiritual (making time for connecting with this is important to us)

There are other areas - but you get the picture.

For each area we attempt to come up with some achievable goals as individuals and then share them with each other to see what similarities there are and what we can achieve together. The whole process is both fun and inspiring.

Later in the week I’ll sit down and go through a similar process with my blogs - setting some goals for the coming months. (here’s a series I wrote a couple of years on strategic blogging that has some tips on how to do this)

All this goal setting has me in the mood to hear what others are hoping to achieve in 2008. So I’d like to throw it open for some discussion (sometimes I think publicly stating some of your goals can be helpful in keeping you accountable to them):

• What do you want to achieve with your blog/s in 2008?
• What specific goals have you set for the year ahead in different areas of your blogging (design, content, community, traffic etc)

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from ProBlogger Blog Tips

Reviews of my blog continue to come in and so here are 5 new reviews of my blog, and my own mini-reviews of their blogs in return. This makes a new total of 124 reviews of my blog… it’s hard to believe that 124 different blogs have reviewed me!

(Note: I’m really being far too generous with my reviews now. It was originally supposed to be just one paragraph in return, and now my reviews are often longer than the ones I get of my blog!)

The Reviews

#1 GradeMoney.com - This is one of the worst reviews of my blog I’ve read… so bad, in fact, that it’s actually fairly humorous. Now, I don’t want to insult or make fun of the guy - I’m not like that, but this is a good example why you want to put at least a little effort when undergoing "deals" such as my TylerReviews - if you don’t put the effort into writing a review for me, why should I for you?

In fact, when I found out that his original "review" was only around 100 words, I politely reminded him that there was a 200-word minimum. How did he fix this? He copy/pasted three paragraphs from my About Page.

Again, I’m not trying to attack him, but illustrate the point that you get what you pay for (or write for in this case). Desmond Ong is only 17 and from Malaysia - I know I can’t speak Malaysian so I can’t fault his poor English, but the lack of effort still shows. If he had put more effort into the review I would have given him a real nice long and constructive review like I did with Derek-Baker.com last batch since Desmond has me on his blogroll (I wonder if I’ll stay there after this review…), but since I can see his lack of effort in the review, I shall return the favour… although… my review is probably slightly longer than his already

#2 SvensWorld.de - Nice honest and "casual" review. Instead of providing a summary of his blog (you can visit it yourself…), I’d like to suggest two simple but helpful suggestions.

First, the smilies on his blog show a border around them and appear on new lines, which makes posts appear… well… ugly. Both of these "bugs" can be fixed quite easily within his theme. The border appears because Sven has borders set to images when they appear, and so they get applied to the smilies as well. Sven needs to either turn off borders of images in posts by default and then apply them as he needs them (ex.http://svensworld.de/?p=58″>his review of my site and have no way (that I can see) to view his front page, other than manually typing in his URL into my address bar.

#3 Blog.XavierMedia.com - The author of XavierMedia’s blog has been working on his blog since March of 2006 and has around 500 posts archived, making it quite-well established.

Like my review above, I’m going to skip on a summary of the site and suggest two constructive criticisms instead:

First, Andreas (the owner) should remove the prerequisite of having visitors register and log in in order to comment. I only know this because I have received countless complaints when I used to require logging in as well. I had used to do it only because I was receiving too much spam, but that has (thankfully) gone away so I’m able to let anyone comment.

You should really never enable that option unless you are receiving a lot of spam or trolls like I was - otherwise it’s just one more thing stopping people from commenting on your posts. I usually receive 2, sometimes 3-times as many comments when I let anyone comment as opposed to having them register and log in.

Secondly, while I think that Andreas’s blog is a bit too ad heavy for not being that big or popular, I’ll let all the banners go. But there needs to be some reduction somewhere, and I think that a good thing to pitch would be the "Xavier Tools" area in the top right.

Not only does it take up a lot of valuable space where blog navigation should be, but it is rather redundant. See, this is the blog of Xavier Media. If I wanted to use Xavier Media’s tools, I’d go to XavierMedia.com. I’m on the blog to read about Xavier Media or web-related posts, not to use the tools.

If he wants to leverage his blog to bring traffic to Xavier Media, he should do so with a small well-placed link or banner here and there - less is often better.

#4 LearnHow2Earn.com - LearnHow2Earn.com is run by Nick, a 20-something grad student by day and information systems professional by night. Nick is actually one of the guest posters on my blog, and the author of yesterday’s post.

Here are two pieces of advice I have for Nick’s blog. The first is simple: please remove the thick blue border from all the linked images on the site, such as the four 125×125 ads.

By default, most browsers will add this border when an image is linked, and it can be removed with a simple border="0" parameter within the image tag. Heh, not the most ground-breaking piece of advice I’ve given, but the bordered images do annoy me *smile*.

My second piece of advice is simple as well: it’s time to market your site. I think that Nick realized this himself though and is on his way to doing so, considering that he is now a guest writer on my blog, did this TylerReview, and even purchased a 125×125 banner on my blog (which will go live on January 2nd). So, I think Nick understand that he has to do something to get his blog "out there".

Because Nick writes some nice posts on LearnHow2Earn.com, some of which are: 5 Reasons to Diversify Your Net Portfolio, Blog Goals for 2008, and Entrecard Vs. Blogrush.

What I find strange is that Nick bought a banner on my site (and perhaps other advertising on other sites as well), but doesn’t have a blogroll on his blog!

EXCHANGE SOME LINKS! Never underestimate the value of a simple link exchange. Let’s say you average 1 click per link each day for every blog you exchange links with in your blogroll, and you have 10 blogs on your blogroll. That is 300 targeted, quality clicks each month that you are getting for free. When you’re a growing blog, this is extremely valuable traffic. And I’m not even mentioning the SEO benefits from the backlinks.

And it’s not like exchanging links costs anything or is difficult; in fact, I bet that Nick could exchange links with 10 other related blogs within 48 hours. I would suggest that he try to target blogs that are slightly larger than his to exchange links with.

#5 Ciao9to5.com - Will Harrison runs Ciao9to5.com, which is only several weeks old. His blog covers most general "make money online" topics that you’d might expect, but it is hard to navigate through the older ones due to the lack of an archives page [*hint hint* Will :)]

Now, I might get mixed reactions to the following suggestion, and I don’t want to sound so cutthroat, but it’s an important point to bring up: Will, as many other bloggers, are too generous with their blogroll.

Will has 6 bloggers on his blogroll - all blogs that he reads regularly and enjoys, and thus wants to promote and share. This is the main point of what a blogroll is for, and it’s nice of Will to do this, but it’s also rather generous. Only one of those 6 blogs actually links back to Ciao9to5.com. If Will instead added more blogs there that agree to link back to him, he would receive the benefit of some nice traffic (200-300 clicks a month as mentioned in the LearnHow2Earn review above).

But maybe Will already knows this and plans to add some reciprocal blog links in the future and is just using these ones to start a blogroll, or to use temporarily. In any case, I’m happy that I’m on his blogroll

The Results

It will be slightly difficult to analyze the results, in terms of Technorati at least, this time around since I held my RSS contest which brought in some "press" from 7-8 blogs.

In fact, it might explain for the rather large jump I gained in Technorati, jumping from 8,963 to 7,838 which is an increase of 1,125. I still really want to get in the top 1,000 though.

Review My Blog

I’ll link back to anyone who reviews my site in an upcoming post such as this one.

The review should be at least 200 words and can be positive, negative, or anywhere inbetween, and one of the links within the review must use the anchor text “internet entrepreneur”, “webmaster blog”, "top blogger", "blogging tips", or “make money blogging” when linking back to my blog.

In return, you’ll get a link back to your blog and a paragraph (or more) written about your blog in an upcoming post on my blog which has an average RSS readership of 1,000, and receives around 500 unique visitors per day. E-mail me at tylercruz@gmail.com with your blog’s URL when you’re done.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur’s Journey

It has been a while since I have updated my blog mostly because I have been on vacation and was to busy relaxing that I did not update or do any work at all.

I went on 1 trip to the sea which ended up in going to another 2 trips. I am also leaving on Thursday for one last trip until Sunday. In the meantime, I plan on writing a number of posts so that my blog will be ready for while I am away. I am sure that my not updating has affected my traffic patterns (we will see in my next update).

So until next time, have a happy new year and keep safe!

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Make Money Online With Internet Entrepreneur Matt Geri

I talk about the importance of updating your blog version to protect against hackers and the such. Well, there is now another version to update to. Wordpress 2.3.2 is now available for download and I recommend that you do install it. What it does is prevent people from being able to see your timestamped posts. Although I had not seen it, rumors had it that around the Blogsphere, people’s blogs were showing the timestamps before they were meant to appear. Although I have not seen it myself, I believe it if Wordpress is willing to make another update.

Another thing that it does is correct an error that shows your database table structure. Although I am no-techie, I know that it is imperative that no one knows what your database looks like. If they can get access to that, they can do a lot of damage and I don’t really think I want any of that. You can also make a custom error page now. Basically, if someone goes to your site and sees an error page, you can put a link on it and use that to get traffic to your main site.

Just to quench any worries, you don’t need to worry about updating your database when you do this update. All that you must do is update the wordpress files and voila, you are done. Go ahead and install the update and make sure that your site is safe. And I must say…I like this new wordpress. It tells you right at the top of your dashboard that there is a new version of WordPress available. That is really awesome. Anyways…Go install it!

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Dorm Earning

It goes without saying that you are interested in career and that is what prompted you to read this article. It is now for you decide if your effort has been fruitful or not.

There are so many good opportunities out there for young, bright, intelligent, career-minded individuals. With so much out there it is hard to know, as a High School Student, what career choices you may be interested in pursuing. In can be very difficult to make up your mind, and now you have to start looking at where you want to go to college. Take a look at some of these choices and then look around on-line on your own. The following Schools have some really unique characteristics in regards to beauty and location.

There are so many reasons why one writes an article. We also had a reason. It was simple enough. We knew that we could write better about career than what is being presented on the net.

Pepperdine University located in Malibu, California. Is one of the all time favorites among adults. If you take a survey among adults, many would tell you the same thing, if only I had known more about Pepperdine before I made any College Decisions. Malibu offers numerous opportunities for the young students of Pepperdine and the University offers an education on one of the most beautiful College Campuses in the world.

We chose to write this article about career of the simple reason that we believed we could write better and now when you are reading about career dont you think that we were right in our thinking.

University of Missouri located in Columbia, Missouri is the most All-American Midwestern campus you will find. Students can easily walk the campus and with nearby Stephens College and Columbia College, this is the all-around good times, good friends town!

University of Tennessee located in Knoxville, Tennessee is nothing like you have ever seen before if you are sports-oriented. You know you are in VOLS COUNTRY when you are within 90 miles of the campus. It is why Peyton Manning is still a legend here.

Virginia Tech located in Blacksburg, Virginia is in the middle of nowhere if you ask some of the locals. The scenery offers something more from a time long ago but the college is one of the best in Virginia. The Football Fans love their Vick and they arent talking about Big Brother!

University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California will speak for itself. If you love sports, you know the great names that have gone through USC, and you know of a few greats there now. Its a school that still carries the occasional stigma, University of Spoiled Children! And isnt that just special?

How did these 5 schools make this list? These are five schools that offer something really unique to offer students other than the outstanding education that all five provide.

Pepperdine will probably never be topped for beauty, you know you have arrived in a very special place from the moment you see it. In Columbia, Missouri you will be able to enjoy downtown within a few minutes walk of the Universitys Campus and you will be able to walk the entire campus easily. Many students hop back and forth between the 3 Colleges in Columbia for many academic events with ease.

Knoxville, Tennessee is just fun. The Great Smoky Mountains is a hour drive or less and its just beautiful. Virginia Tech allows students a quality education in a beautiful setting with real wholesome towns like Christiansburg right around the corner. Radford University isnt far either. And Finally, USC, its in Los Angeles, what more could you want?

In this article we have tried to discuss some of the potential benefits and problems with career and we hope that he information provided would be beneficial to you.

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Comedy Fundraiser to Benefit Non-Profit “Women In Need of Growth
PR Inside - N.G.S mission is to provide a foundation in recovery and self-sufficiency for alcoholic and chemically dependent women, by providing a safe, structured, alcohol and drug free home, extended counseling, life skills training and assistance for career

Eastbrook guidance team puts experience to good use
Marion Chronicle-Tribune - Ballinger said he likes to work with students’ school schedules, career and college development, personnel counseling and financial aid. Beardsley also said she enjoys her job. “I like to help kids reach their goals, whatever they may be,” she said.

Career

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Internet Business Income Opportunity

I am in the niche of “make money online.” But, so are another thousand people. Actually, there are probably more than just one thousand people in this niche. Regardless of the fact, there are tons of people who are all trying to do the exact same thing as I am and that is make money by teaching you how to make money online. However, the only problem with that is that there is considerable competition. Well, rather than that competition being negative and taking away from your blog success, why not make it aid you? How can you do that?

Comment on other people’s blogs. Now look…I know. It has been said on about one thousand other blogs, but I wanted to take it a step further by provoking a thought. What are you looking to gain from commenting on other people’s blogs? “Traffic, Jacob, obviously!” But for some people, that is not what they are looking to gain at all. Instead, what they are looking to gain is page rank, for whatever reason. Or, maybe they are looking to try and gain some good rankings in the search engines, so a link from just anywhere is not going to really help you out because of the “no_follow” tag. So, what do you do?

You ask yourself that question. You take a minute and try to determine what you are trying to gain. If it is traffic that you are trying to gain like is my goal 99% of the time, then what you are going to want to do is find blogs that are in your niche and comment on blog posts. But, the thing to remember when commenting on these blogs is that you want to post comments that demonstrate your intelligence. If you are not posting with intelligence, why is someone going to visit you and read your blog? I rarely comment unless I can form a few sentences. In those sentences, I say whether I agree or disagree and then I give my reason for that. Or, I expand on what they say. By doing this, people will check out your blog.

Now, if you are looking to gain ranking in the search engines or perhaps just increase your page rank, you are going to need to find blogs that have disabled the “no_follow” tag. Once you have found a list of these blogs, you want to start commenting. I would recommend posting comments that still make sense, but you are doing this primarily for links, so get as many as you can in the fastest time. Make your comments coherent, but chances are, the blogger will approve your comment just because it is comment. When it asks for your name, put the anchor text that you want to rank for in the search engines and then link to your site.

Whether you are looking to gain more traffic or rank better in the search engines, commenting on another blog is a phenomenal way to grow your blog. Sure, other people have written about commenting on blogs, but have they ever provoked the thought as to WHY you want to do it other than just ‘to grow my blog.’ Sure, that’s great, but without a battle plan, you are not going to have as much success. So, before you go out on a commenting frenzy, really decide what your goal is and then go for it. By doing it this way, you can’t fail! Best of luck.

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Dorm Earning

Why do I earn online? That is a question that I get from time to time. Actually, the question that I get is, “why are you not being a normal person and getting a job rather than being a loser and earning online?” When will people realize that what I am doing is just taking a step to become a business man? Probably not for a long while, or, at least until people realize that there is a lot of money to be made on the web. So, what do I answer? “I earn on the web because I want to own my own businesses…And, because I can make money 24/7 while you can only get paid based on an hourly basis.” They look at me and then proceed to argue.

But, that brings up a very good point. Earning on the web is a very passive income. My blog is up 24/7 and someone can access it all the time and if they see an ad they like, they can click on it. What about someone who works at the grocery store? Can they make money 24/7? Of course not. They can only earn for the hours that they are given. And the funny thing is, they are making seven or eight bucks an hour. So…The big answer to your questions about why I earn online is because I can make money all the time while they can only make money sometimes.

Another reason why I never want to earn money at some job is because I hate to feel like my work is going for nothing. The truth is, I feel more motivated when it comes to my websites. I feel like if I don’t do a great job working on my websites, I won’t succeed. If I do a bad job at the grocery store or the bare minimum, I will still get paid so long as I don’t do anything foolish. Basically, I like to have control over my success. If I do amazing, I want to make money to show for it and not get a five cent raise. That’s why I earn online. Why do you earn online? What are your reasons for earning on the web?

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Dorm Earning