Choosing my domain
Finding a new domain can be a pain in the ass. The domains you want are all taken and you usually end up with something you don’t really like. Rather than having to waste my time trying to get PR, Google links, Yahoo links etc. I went and bought a domain with most of this already done for me. You might think this is going to be expensive, trust me, it isn’t. Head over to Freshdrop.net. here are thousands of domains you can get your hands on. Some are 10 years old, some have PR, some are listed in the DMOZ directory and it also tells you the number of Google search results and Yahoo backlinks. Make sure you are searching in the Closeouts section and in the search settings set fake to No. Once you’ve found your domain name it will cost you $5 and then you have to pay the GoDaddy yearly registration fee which is $10. You now have a domain with a lot of annoying work already done for you.

The Design
All of my blogs use WordPress so finding a theme for my new blog was easy. Firstly, I worked out my blogs main goal. Make money with Adsense. So off I went and found a decent WordPress theme designed to maximize my Adsense earnings. Now, most Adsense themes are crap and make your blog look like a spam blog. You must improve the look of your Adsense theme to keep the reader interested. I spent about 15 minutes improving the graphics on the blog and removing sneaky backlinks to crappy sites.

More Link Love
Now I went on a mission to get myself some more backlinks and Improve my search engine rankings a little bit more. Rather than paying for links I went and found blogs with Do Follow enabled. On these blogs I posted useful, well written comments. If I’d posted crap, the blog owner probably wouldn’t have approved my comment. Below you will find links to blogs that do follow. Do follow blogs will give you an all important back link for free.

D-List
Dot Com Mogul

Getting People To Review Me
The domain I purchased came with a PR 3. I went and found other blogs in the same niche as mine and asked for a review exchange. I review their blog if they review mine. I made sure the blogs I asked had a heap load of traffic. I also asked to review exchange with blogs with no PR but had a decent amount of traffic. Hopefully the fact that I have a PR3 will lure the no PR, high traffic site in to reviewing me. Paying people $100 plus to review your blog is a waste. If you’re clever enough you can think of lots of ways to get free reviews. As you can see, I used my page rank.

Forums
I headed over to digital point and added my new blog to my signature. Digital point is probably the biggest forum for people in the website/blog world. I found topics with questions in that related to my niche, WordPress and Adsense. I used Google search to find a clever answer to the question, I then made some changes to the answer so it looked like my own and so people wouldn’t suspect that I’ve simply used copy and paste. I then posted my clever answer. Hopefully making myself look clever will give people the impression that I know what I’m talking about. This might attract them over to my blogs. I know it’s cheating, but I don’t care! I want to make money.

Digg and StumbleUpon
Another great little traffic boost was submitting my posts to Digg and StumbleUpon. 1 Digg and 1 Stumble isn’t going to do much so I went and found a place where people will Digg and Stumble you if you do the same for them. Here’s one such place. Piqqus.com. If you search Google you can find plenty of sign up invites.

So that’s a basic run down of how I’ve got my blog up and running in one day. It’s all very basic but it’s all very effective too. The most important thing is though, most of it was free. The only expense was buying the domain. Next I plan to start an Google Adwords campaign. If it’s successful I’ll give you a run down of what exactly I did.

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Bringing In The Boys
Because of my little time problem, I’m seriously considering hiring a blogger. Nothing major, I’ll just be looking to paying someone x amount a week to write 3-5 posts a week here or x amount a week to track down suitable websites and publish them over at CMSNerd. I don’t think my blogs, especially Funk13 are appealing enough yet to guest bloggers so it’s going to have to be paid help. But Before I start throwing my cash around, I need to work out the pros and cons of this idea. So, here they are.

Pros

• I could strike it lucky and hire a God like content creator or a person with amazing hunting skills. This superhuman! Should give my blogs what they need, that all important traffic boost.
• With another person on board I’ll be able to ask their opinions about new ideas I have for the blogs.
• Hopefully my new blogger will already have a fan base, so hopefully their readers will stop by and check out this place and the others.
• I’ll be giving myself what I need most. Time!
• Hopefully my new friend will be able to teach me a trick or two about blogging and traffic building.

Cons

• I’ll be loosing out on precious blogging experience. The hardest task on a blog is content creation, if I’m not doing that part my skills and knowledge won’t grow.
• Bloggers cost money. If I start asking for their opinions and advice too, they’re probably going to want more of it.
• Readers might be put off by the bloggers content or choice of websites, because I’ll be busy working away on other things, I might not realize this until it’s to late.
• The new guy could be a total ass and start flame wars with other bloggers I like.
• I don’t want to come across as something I’m not. I can’t really afford to be paying people to blog for me, hiring people might give people the impression that I’m trying to look like a blog making $100’s.

So that’s really all I can think of. I’m all for trying new things so I’ll probably give this thing a try. I’ll start of slowly see how it goes. If it works, great! If it doesn’t. You’re Fired!!

If you’re interested, drop me an email via the contant page. I’ll need examples of your work, whether you want to write for funk13 or CMSNerd and what your rates are.

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Well probably the most noticeable has been the drop in traffic. While dropping my 300 a day, I was getting between 100-200 unique visitors a day. Not bad considering my blog was and is still very new. Now I’m getting between 30-60 unique visits a day, I have no other form of advertising going on apart from a couple of link exchanges, so I’m very happy with my 30-60. The number of comments I receive has dropped slightly, but nothing to drastic. This proves the point that the majority of EC’ers are only on your blog to drop. Nothing else. It’s nice to know my traffic is here to read my blog, not drop their cards. A stat I rarely keep track of but noticed an increase in is my RSS subscription. I logged into my feedburner account on Saturday to find I have 31 subscribers. I can’t really put that down to pulling out of Entrecard dropping though. The two stats I’m most happy with though, are my ”Bounce Rate” and my ” Avg. Time on Site”. for the first time in months they seem to be heading in the rite direction.

What have I been doing then?
As Entrecard isn’t eating up all of the time I have to spend on the internet, I’ve actually had to time to concentrate on ”Make money online” and ”Make money blogging. I recently registered a whole lot of Domain Names. One domain name now has a fully developed site which more or less runs itself. And no, it isn’t a spam blog or a blog that uses other peoples posts. I’ve also set up a couple of Niche blogs, one focuses on iPod accessories and the other is an educational resource. I intend to use these two to make money using Google Adsense. People say Google Adsense is dead, I can assure you it isn’t.

With the domains I can’t find a use for just yet, I’ve discovered domain parking. You change the name servers of your domains to which ever parking service you use, then you receive a percentage of the revenue generated from the ads placed upon your domain names. So far in April, I’ve earned $25 from domain parking. I’m currently using Sedo to park my domains, as far as I’m aware we split the ad revenue 50/50, so really I’ve earned $50. I’ve heard there are better companies out there offering a better revenue split. I really need to start looking in to it.

I’ve also started working on referrals. If you don’t no what this is? Where have you been? Basically, I receive x-amount of $ if somebody signs up for a service or purchases something via a link I’ve placed on one of my blogs. The 125×125 orange FlashDen ad banner you see in my sidebar is starting to finally generate some revenue. By placing it on my CMSNerd site, I’ve improved my click through rate and people are starting to actually purchase credits to spend on FlashDen. This means I earn a commission fee. The obvious reason why the FlashDen referral scheme is working so well on CMSNerd is because it’s targeting the rite audience, CMSNerd is a site aimed at web designers. Flashden is a web designers paradise. Now I need to find some referral schemes that I think will work well with Funk13.

I’ve discovered there are endless ways to make money online, I love reading about them and trying them out. Now I’m actually starting to make money online myself, I can afford to try bigger and better schemes. I just have to try and stay within my limits, but still have the balls to experiment. As I’ve learned with most things I’ve tried, practice makes perfect. If something fails the first time, pick yourself and try again.

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Advertising my site is easy and cost free. I’ve posted 3 messages in total on 3 different forums. All of the forums are CMS (content management system) sites. The people who use these forums are all my potential audience. It’s perfect direct advertising with out any cost. As a result of my advertising I received 98 visits on my first day resulting in 21 submissions.

Now, I’ve estimated that there’s about 200 popular CMSes out there listed under the following categories:

• Portals
• Blogs
• e-commerce
• Groupware
• Forums
• e-Learning
• Image Galleries

If I can promote my site on their forums and forums related to their CMS, I should start to bring in a decent amount of traffic. I know that not all of the visitors will be interested, but they’re still visiting.

If you’re looking for a new project to start, why don’t you try something similar? It’s so easy to get it up and running. First I went and found a new host with a decent amount of Disk Space. I eventually decided on using HostGator. The next thing you need to do is find yourself a gallery template, I can assure you there are lots out there. Remember, you don’t have to stick with WordPress. Next you will need to find a domain name. My site is about CMS and I’m a bit of a geek/nerd when it comes to CMS. So, the domain I registered was CMSNerd.com. I would have preferred geek but it was already taken. Once your site is up and running you now need to find your target audience. Content Management Systems was mine so I started promoting my site in that area. You don’t have to stick to CMS websites remember. You could go with Flash based websites or you could target a specific area. WordPress premium themes. I think there’s a few like that already though. Just research the area you want to showcase.

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Anyway, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, I registered the domain cmsnerd.com. This was a domain registered with the intention of developing it in to some kind of site. Before I started blogging I was always playing around with content management systems. Joomla, PHPcow, PHP-Nuke, those kinds of things. If I hadn’t taken a such a liking to blogging I’d probably still be pissing around with them now. So, my latest plan. Well, you might have noticed that there seems to be a big craze with WordPress css theme galleries. csselite.com is a good example. Basically these bloggers screen shot a website they think looks good and they simply upload it to their blog and showcase it. Well I’ve decided to do the same but I’ll be targeting certain cms driven sites. I’ll name the cms the site is using, upload a screen shot and post some info on the customizations. Sounds simple enough, but I’m guessing it won’t be.

I’ve been looking around for sites similar to what I want to do and I’ve found virtually nothing. Now this could be for the following reasons:

• There isn’t really a market for it
• I don’t know how to search properly
• People have tried and failed
• CMS is dying (I doubt that, wordpress is starting to look more like a cms)
• It’s to similar to css galleries

To be honest I’m quite glad there isn’t much competition, there’s no pressure on me. I just have to post a few screen shots a day and Google will come along and index me. This is the main reason I’ve decided to create this type of blog/site. I wont be eating up all of my time. I’m not to fussed about running around promoting it yet. I just want to get something out there, get the ball rolling. I’m absolutely terrible at affiliate marketing so maybe developing sites is where I’ll come good. I won’t know if I don’t try. One bad thing is, I forgot how much time it takes to set up a new blog, well for me anyway. I’ve had to find a cheap/free host to get it up and running, sort of my Name Servers, sort out my sitemaps, customize the theme I’m using. There’s still quite a lot that needs to be done.

Here’s the link to my site http://cmsnerd.com I think it’s down at the moment though. Damn cheap ass free hosting! Like I said, there’s still a lot of work that needs doing, but I’m just going to take my time with it and build it up slowly. If you want to be really nice you can submit some sites for review and you can vote on the sites I’ve listed.

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Domains I will try to make a profit on.

I’ve been searching for things to watch out for in 2008/2009. Gadgets, software, phones etc. After reading ”geek” reviews on everything I found, I then decide on which item I would take a gamble on. The gamble is registering a domain name related to that product. I’ve noticed a few HD ipod video converters are to be released this spring and summer. So I’ve registered a few domain names relating to those types of products. One of them is xdockhd.com. xdockhd is an actual name of a product, so I might be able to make some money through referrals or someone might want to take that domain of my hands. I probably wont make any money from it, but there’s always a chance. It’s better than smoking my life away.

Domains I might try to develop.

These are domains that I’ve registered with the intention of developing them in to actual websites within 1-2 years. I’ve registered quite a few of these and my favorite one at the moment is cmsnerd.com. (Content management system) cmsgeek.com had already been registered. I’ll probably try and develop some type of cms theme or review site with that domain name. It will take time, but remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Names for the Hell of it

Sometimes I purchase a domain name just for the hell of. Weird names or just stupid names. My favorite one here is fatlol.com. Yes I’m immature, but I have nothing against fat people, I just like stupid things. Anyway, If I don’t make any money at all from this little venture, I won’t be to bothered. It’s fun looking for names to register and you also get to meet some very nice people along the way. It’s a shame that wasn’t the case on my Freelance Adventure.

If you’re interested, I’ve been registering my domain names over at name.com. $5.99 1yr with Google Apps. Be careful though, to renew this domain after your year is up, it will cost you $7.99. I don’t plan on keeping most of domain names for over a year, so I’m not to worried.

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If I’m honest, i guess I was getting a bit pissed off with a couple of my customers too. Once you’ve created something for them and they’ve paid you, they automatically think that they should get priority. On Saturday I created a logo for some guy, he liked what I had created for him and he very kindly paid me. He then asked for 3 or 4 more designs. I agreed. About 2 hours later I received an email off this person telling me to hurry up and if I didn’t, he would tell everyone how bad my service was. I tried to explain that I have other people waiting and that his new banners and logos should be complete within 24hrs. His reply started with ”but I just paid you”. Yes you did, but only for the 1st banner I’d created. Anyway, I’d had enough after reading those five words and I simply deleted and blocked his email address.

I don’t think I was been harsh, I work on a first come first serve basis. Not ”you will get what you want when you want just because you’ve paid me” Anyway, as from today I will only be doing custom graphics if people contact me directly through this blog. I’ve asked for all of the posts I’ve created on different forums to be deleted or blocked. It’s nice to be able to concentrate solely on blogging again. I think my biggest mistake was running around promoting my services on as many forums as possible, I really thought I could cope running 2 very demanding projects. I think maybe if I had the time it would be quite possible, but I’m not making enough money to be able to quit my day job. Actually, I probably would struggle even if I didn’t have to work, promoting a freelance site and actually completing the jobs is probably more time consuming than running your blog. There wouldn’t be enough time in the day to give both 100%

Maybe some people are able to do both things? If you can? I would appreciate some tips.

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As you probably know, if you’re serious about making money online, you need to be experimenting with lots of different things. Posting away on one blog everyday might bring in some pocket change, but it isn’t going to get you that big beach house in the Bahamas is it? Or is it? If you know the secret and have some evidence to back it up? I’ll happily take out a bank loan pay you a six figure sum of your choice.

Anyway, funk13 isn’t the only blog/project I’m working on. I have at least 5 projects on the go at the moment. The one I’m going to discuss here with you is the one that has failed.

The Master Plan
Not actually a master plan. More of a, lets try this and see how it works. I wanted to experiment with eBay and affiliates. I created a website intended to drive people to eBay and certain products/items. If someone purchased one of the products/items shown on my site, I would receive a commission fee. Sounds simple enough, but it isn’t. To make these types of websites work, you’ve really got to know your stuff. I thought reading a couple of eBooks on Google Adwords would make me a marketing mogul. How wrong was I? These so called eBooks that promise you endless riches are complete and utter crap. The techniques in these eBooks are old and overused. I wish I hadn’t been so naive.

Two more reasons why I failed are cost and knowledge. I was competing with guys who have been into marketing for many many years. They’ve made lots of money already. They have the funds and the the know how when it comes down to marketing an affiliate site. I think putting all my eggs in to one basket (Google) didn’t help either. I could have tried advertising on Yahoo as well.

What I’ve learned

• You must research the products you’re trying to sell. For a beginner, trying to sell something that’s hugely popular is very risky. It will probably end in failure.

• The affiliate site or product you’re working on really needs %100 of your attention. Trying to run a few blogs and an affiliate site wasn’t the best idea for a beginner.

• Never expect to succeed. Because if you fail, not only will you be a lot more disappointed, it might put you off trying again.

Final Thoughts
I will be most definitely be trying affiliate marketing again. Although I lost a few ££ promoting my products, I’ve gained a lot of valuable knowledge. I wont be writing my own eBook anytime soon, but on my next attempt, I might actually make a small amount of profit.

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Because nearly all make money online information is the same, just written differently. People are using the same ideas thinking they’re new, when really they aren’t. Yes, these ideas may work now, but what’s going to happen in 5 years time, when even more people have realised they too can get rich of the internet? I’m sure you can answer that question yourself. Because people are to comfortable distributing re-written methods, we hardly ever see new, fresh and exciting ways to get rich from the web. I’m bored at staring at the the same affiliate marketing campaigns. ”Get a product, use Adwords, blah blah blah”. O.k some people explain in better, or make it seem different, but it isn’t.

Maybe people are, using unique methods to make money. And if they are, I hope they keep their ideas to themselves. I know it’s good to swap ideas around, but when you have to watch these ideas get re-written and promoted as ”ground breaking” a thousand times it’s kind of sad.

It’s not hard to think of your own unique ways to make some extra money. The internet is a huge, huge place. It’s full areas waiting to be exploited. Just sit back and think. I’m sure you can find something that nobody else is doing yet. In the short time I’ve been blogging, I’ve already found one area I think I can use to make a small profit. If it doesn’t work, who cares? I’ll try something else. At least your thinking for yourself. Don’t let setbacks put you down. I’m sure if you try 10 ideas, there’s a good chance at least 1 of them will work for you. Even if it doesn’t make you thousands, it’s still made you something. And Something is better than nothing. The most important thing to me would be the fact that it’s my idea. And I’d be happy with myself because I’m trying.

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Because I didn’t really want to flood Funk13 with off topic posts, I was put off by the whole ppp thing. But then I thought to myself, why don’t I create another blog to use for paid posting. Fair enough, creating a new blog is fairly easy, but I’m sure most of you agree, running two blogs is a little harder. So, an idea I’ve come up with is this.

I’ve created a blog where I can post reviews about everyday, items, gadgets and products. http://funkreviews.com/ I’m quite lucky, because my working day consists mostly of testing out new gizmo’s for faults and writing reports on them. I’m pretty confident I’ll never fall short of things to review. As long as the men and women at google are indexing my posts, and I can grab a few visits from Entrecard, I should hopefully get accepted by many of the ppp networks out there.

I’ll also be posting other non make money blogging topics. Nothing to big, I’m not trying to compete with anyone because getting Funk13 established is my main goal. All I’m doing is experimenting, I think experimenting is the best thing to do in the make money online world. I just need a solid base to give this ppp thing a try and see if it’s possible to make money with it.

At the moment http://funkreviews.com/ is full of reviews I wrote for a consumer review site last year. I’m probably breeching copyright even though I wrote the reviews. They’re all out of date now anyway, so who cares? Anyway, I don’t really want to stick with the tech side of things. It gets a bit boring. So, my plan is to write about absolutely anything I want. I’ll probably fill it full of blog reviews or something. I like reviewing blogs. I have about 30 days before I can start applying to the ppp sites. So, if you want anything reviewed, let me know.

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