Today over at Shoemoney, Shoe relates a story where a DMOZ editor contacted him and wanted $5000 or he would remove Shoe’s listing in DMOZ! Pretty pathetic. Unfortunately, when Shoe told him to take a hike, he got delisted!
I wonder how much money DMOZ editors make, and if I should become one…lol
Sorry I haven’t posted for about a week now. I’ve actually been busy with a lot of websites/acquisitions. I now have 34 live websites (excluding this one), although 2 of those are really just 1 page sites (so nothing major). I bought them all at Digital Point Forums. I’m cheating a bit by buying instead of making, but nobody makes everything they own nowadays. I’ll post some more information here about the big network of sites I acquired in the coming days.
One of the blogs I’ve become very interested in lately is having a contest - review the Linkrain Articles blog, get a free PR4 backlink, and possibly win $50. Linkrain is run by Andreas Moser, who works for a real estate site as the SEO and Marketing Manager. Among other sites, he runs the Linkrain Web Directory, which is the parent site for his Linkrain Articles blog. I’m happy to do my own review of this blog.
Ok, BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) Scoring (0-10; 0 being shite and 10 being the Google-buster):
The details:
Design: Although I rated Linkrain’s design a 6, the overall design is solid. Clean, functional, but nothing special or fancy. He recently cleaned up his design a bit, such as getting rid of The World’s Most Beautiful RSS Button (it really wasn’t). I’d probably give him a 7, but I’m seeing the sidebar sitting below the blog entries in IE6. It looks fine in IE7.
Content: This is where Linkrain shines (is there a pun in there somewhere?). Andreas has some great tips and advice, and he seems to share it freely. Here’s some of my favorites that you might like, too:
I didn’t particularly care for his posts on Good/Evil blogs or Madeleine McCann, but there’s tons of other posts that are great and definitely worth reading.
Communication/Community: While probably not a full community yet, Andreas has some great communication on his blog. He responds to comments, has the top comments plugin to reward frequent commenting, and has launched a very useful Ask/Answer program. This really gets readers engaged and coming back for more.
Overall, I really like Linkrain Articles SEO Blog, and I look forward to reading it every day. I suggest you at least give it a read or two.
Ever hear of those people that make a full time living from their blog/website(s)? Well, apparently this guy, Yaro Starak, does it.
Problogger Darren Rowse (you may have heard of him, he makes big bucks on the net, too) points out that Yaro’s launching a new project, called Blog Mastermind, where he teaches you to do the same thing - make a full time income from blogging. You can get an idea of what he’s offering from his Blog Profits Blueprint. The full Blog Matermind program includes quite a bit of e-mentoring - lessons via email, audio series, a members-only forum, blog case studies, extreme makeover advice for your blog, interviews with Yaro and some bonus interviews with Pro Bloggers like Darren. The program sends you a monthly package for $47 a month - but it’s that price for only a few days while he markets his launch.
This program is geared for beginning to intermediate bloggers who want to make money from blogging (sounds like me…). The $47 a month is a bit steep (especially if you’re not making money!), but it’s got a 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can cancel at any time. Problogger added his endorsement to it (but with his own affiliate links, mind you), so it sounds like a pretty good deal. You can check out Blog Mastermind here. That’s an affiliate link, and I haven’t tried the program, but I’m seriously considering it. I’ll let you know if I do and what I think of it. I’m posting it now (before I tried it) because the price is scheduled to go to $77/month in a few days.
If anyone has signed up, please drop a comment to let me know what you think.
I switched themes. I hope I can stick with this one.
I was using 123RedBlack, but it had a couple quirks I wasn’t willing to try to fix.
I like this theme, but I really wanted 3 columns. I’ll just have to live without. Plenty of blogs get by with just 2 columns, so I can, too.
I will say one thing - once you download the template, switching between themes is a breeze. Just one click and it switches everything over. Nice.
I’ve always gone by the 20 second rule. It appears I’ve been shortchanging myself.
Two Connecticut College students actually set out to test the 5 second rule - you know, the one where if you drop your food on the floor, and as long as you pick it up within 5 seconds, it’s ok to eat? What they found is that wet food (they tested apple slices) is actually good for at least 30 seconds before bacteria starts to cultivate on the food. Dry food (skittles) actually takes about 5 minutes!
So the next time you drop your food, just pick it back up and brush off anything that’s crunchy or moves on its own, and eat it! Anything else would just be wasteful. 
I got duped.
I won two auctions on ebay for Page Rank 4 and Page Rank 6 domains. The auctions ended at slightly different times, and when I won the PR4 domain, I paid for it pretty quickly. But while poking around on the net, I learned that Page Rank can be faked! And wouldn’t you know it, when I checked the domains I won on fake page rank checkers, mine turned up fake! Damn. Luckily, I never paid for the ‘PR6′ domain, which was for quite a bit more money.
I tried to get my money back by filing a claim through Paypal, but Paypal’s Buyer Protection doesn’t cover ‘intangibles.’ So I got the shaft. The seller refused to refund my money (actually, he offered to refund a portion of my money if I admitted fault - FUNK YOU, buddy!).
So how do they fake page rank? They do a 301 or 302 redirect, which basically means they point their site to another domain that has the desired page rank. Google picks up the ‘new’ PR when they do their updates. Domains with higher PR are more desireable (and can earn more money by selling links, for example), so there’s real incentive to do this.
To the important part - how do I protect my self?
Don’t take the shaft like I did.
I thought I’d go back to my first post and take a more in-depth view of ‘what’s happened so far.’ Since it was a single book that kinda kicked things off, I thought I’d do a book recommendation/review:
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
Scary title, even scarier to look at the book, when you see how thick it is. My friend sent this book to me about a year ago, because he’s a coding junkie and he likes to infect me with his crazy ideas. I never really liked the programming I had to do in college, so I really didn’t think I’d like it. But I started to read it, just to give it a shot, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t start to like it.
Despite its bulky exterior, the book is a very easy read. The authors have done a great job of writing the book for the way peoples’ brains learn and store new information. They use a conversational style, which really helps with getting through the whole 600+ pages (yup, 600+ pages), but they also employ humor, pictures, redundancy, activities, multiple learning styles and a ton of other methods to make sure you learn what you’re reading, and it sticks. They even spend several pages telling you how they do it and why. Interesting stuff in its own right.
The book walks you through everything from what HTML means, how servers work (roughly) to building a complete website. I mean, really walks you through it. Everything is step by step, and presented to you in a way for it to stick in your brain. You can build a complete website with the stuff you read in this book.
I read it cover to cover, fast as I could (several nights and a plane ride). I haven’t built any full-up websites of note using what I’ve learned, but I started a sincere effort of publishing a site within the last few weeks (I’m not counting this blog). I’ll let you know when it’s done.
If you’re interested in learning how to build a website, or just learn html/css, this book is it. Don’t be afraid of it hugeness.
I’ve given birth to another blog. I’m not running any other blogs curently, but there’s 70 million or so blogs that other people have started, so this really is just another blog.
I looked around at a couple blogs to see how others kicked off their first post, and it looks like they just started writing. They didn’t launch with that Wordpress ‘Hello World!’ post. Since this is a ‘chronicles of’ type blog, though, I think writing about the birth of it is appropriate. Let’s just hope that my readership doesn’t fall below 1 (me) through boredom. We’ll find out, I guess.
So what’s the scoop?
I’ve been interested in making money online for a few years now. I’ve sold quite a bit of stuff on ebay and made some decent cash there for on the side. I’ve always known that there’s bigger and better things out there in i-land, though, and so I’ve begun to pursue the dream of a full-time income from internet enterprise. I thought that this blog would be a means to that end, although in the last month or so that this blog has been sitting waiting for its first post, I’ve begun to think this blog probably won’t support me full time, but other ventures I’m into will. In any case, my goal is to chronicle my misadventures and hopefully make money along the way.
What’s happened so far?
There you have it. Vote for me in 2013. Or else.
Mike