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Blogging Income

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As numerous internet users are evidently conscious of, the internet not only provides a platform to view a wide variety of information on a huge amount of topics, but it also presents for many people the chance to not only make a little money but in point of fact to earn a sufficient amount to earn a living from the internet. Online enterpreneurs will find that there are many ways in which to earn an online living, activities such as selling on eBay, joining affiliate marketing programs and selling resell rights products to mention just a few of the more popular ones. In addition to those however, what about blogging?

Today’s popular online blogging sites such as WordPress and Blogger are now a major tool for discerning Internet entrepreneurs to make online money quickly. Even though there has been some criticism of the “blogosphere” – as certain people will insist on calling it – for being a platform for a whole world of moaning teenagers, quite simply the truth of the matter is that not only are a vast number of blogs a more reliable and informative news source than the more conventional mass media, they also present the developing businessperson with a way to get money coming through the door quickly. All it calls for is a bit of thought, an idea and the motivation to make it happen.

In short, you can run it one of two ways. You can build your blog whichever way you choose, for instance as an information source on a particular topic or as an entertainment site that online surfers will visit regularly for their own enjoyment and for the free information value that it affords. A blog with a positive reputation can attract advertisers, just as any newspaper or magazine can. If your blog achieves a reputation for providing something that a large number of visitors read, potential advertisers may possibly approach you, or you can approach them instead proposing a not-to-be-missed opportunity to obtain their product advertising space in a place where people are quite likely to look. This may be sufficient for an individual to live on, although this is not going to happen straightaway.

As an alternative you can use the blog as a way of promoting a more conventional business. Blogs are not at all difficult to navigate around and in fact are also very easy to update with fresh information when you see the need arise. Therefore it is not vital to have a great deal of technical internet knowledge to keep a blog up and running, and also to use it as a way of bringing customers through the door. And then all you will be required to do is provide something your visitors will be prepared to buy – and that can be just about nearly anything. You will be able to do your own research on what you feel is a sellable product. As an introduction let’s say, you can start out with an affiliate program to advertise something that appeals to you – for example, DVD’s or CD’s of your favourite performing artists, home improvement products, information books, self-help products, collectible items and so forth.

If you want to discover more about blogs and blogging then you should really visit this site. Take a look around the site, it will provide you with plenty of information and ideas. Happy Blogging!!




Why Your Blog is Not Making Money

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When it comes to professional blogging, it’s hard to make sweeping generalizations, especially when it’s about the average earnings of a blogger.  Some people make money blogging fairly easily, ringing up a thousand dollars in revenue in their third month alone.  Some bloggers, however, don’t have as much luck, even if they felt that they did their best with their sites.

If you’ve hit a dead end as far as your blog’s earnings are concerned, there’s bound to be a combination of factors behind that.  Below is a list of some fairly common reasons why a blog isn’t earning as much money as it should:

1.  You’re asking for money too soon in the game:

Blogs take a long time before they can get recognition and be established as a credible source of information for a particular niche.  Because of this, it’s probably going to take a while before you see any rewards from your efforts.  Competition is stiff in the blogosphere, and much of the first months (or the first year!) of your blog will be spent in establishing why you’re different from the rest.  Until you’ve actually made a name for yourself (and your blog), revenue will be hard to come by.

For some people, it takes only three months before the cash starts rolling in.  For others, however, it can take longer than a year before any rewards seem apparent.  Be patient, work hard at your blog, and your efforts will pay off sooner or later – exactly when that will happen is still a mystery.

2.  Ads have taken over your blog:

You put up your blog in the hopes of getting some extra cash, and one of the first things you do is plaster your blog with Google Adsense in the hopes that your blog will be a revenue market.  Smart idea?  Absolutely not.  When you’re first starting out, the last thing you want to do is drive away readers, which is exactly what you’ll end up doing if you cover your blog with ads at the get go.   Keep advertising to the barest minimum if your blog is still new, and work on building your reputation through the quality of your blog posts.

3.  You’re not updating as often as you should:

Some bloggers work under the assumption that 3 or 4 blog posts in a week is a good posting rate if they want to monetize their blogs.  Unfortunately, bloggers have to work much harder than that, especially if they’re just starting out.  By delivering fresh content at a regular pace, you’re giving off the message that you can be relied on to provide new and valuable information every time.  Regular updates also prod Google and other major search engines to index your blog frequently, which can positively affect your search engine rankings in the long-term.

4.  Money is your primary concern:
This is one of the most fundamental mistakes that bloggers commit:  blogging only for the sake of money and nothing else.  While it’s okay to want to make money blogging – who doesn’t? – what’s more important is for you to actually be passionate about what you’re writing and to be devoted to your blog and its progress.  Bloggers who are in it only for the money  tend to flood their sites with marketing gimmickry that don’t yield long term benefits.  More dedicated and substantial blogs, however, are the winners in the long run.

If any of these common traps are exactly the sort you’ve fallen into, it’s not too late!  Just make a few key adjustments and changes to your blogging strategy, cultivate some patience and tenacity with your blog, and the rewards will come to you in due time.

WP_Posts database crashed – HELP!

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If you see this post a few times it’s because I really need help and I’m posting it on three of my blogs – sorry for the repeat, but if you can help, please do!

I need some help fixing my husbands blog – Guitar Licks. Today when he visited the site (while I was still sleeping) the blog had error messages stating that the WP_posts database had crashed.

When you visit his site it loads with the WP theme and sidebars, but there’s error messages at the top and a “post cannot be found” message where current posts should be listed on the index page.

Some of the errors state:

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_title` ( `post_title`)

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_content` ( `post_content`)

So I’m assuming this error has something to do with the Yet another related post plugin that I’m using on most of my blogs. This blog is using the plugin version 2.16 and is using WP 2.62.

In the Yet another related posts plugin admin area there was a message that said:

YARPP’s “consider titles” and “consider bodies” relatedness criteria require your wp_posts table to use the MyISAM storage engine, but the table seems to be using the engine. These two options have been disabled.
To restore these features, please update your wp_posts table by executing the following SQL directive: ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ENGINE = MyISAM; . No data will be erased by altering the table’s engine, although there are performance implications.
If, despite this check, you are sure that wp_posts is using the MyISAM engine, press this magic button:

I clicked on the “magic button” as the plugin seems to be working just fine in all of my other blogs and I ended up with even more errors!

Help!

I’ve looked at the WP database for this blog and the WP_posts table says “in use” and I can’t browse it. I also can’t use the backup plugin in Guitar licks – it’s there and functioning but just hung when I tried to do a back up.

I’ve backed up the whole database using PHPmyAdmin so I have a copy in case something goes terribly wrong. Now I just need to know how to fix it.

Should I just place a check mark on WP_posts and then click the repair function at the bottom of the structure screen in PHPmyAdmin and see if that repairs the problem?

I’m nervous about attempting to fix this as I’ve never had to try to repair a database error before. Any help would be appreciated.

PLRpro opens it’s doors today – exciting site creation software

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The doors to PLRpro are opening again today at 9:00 a.m.. If you’ve been waiting for your chance to join this fantastic PLR content site here’s your chance!

Note: that time above was wrong. It was supposed to be 9:00 pm PST but I think it will be more like 11 PM. Sorry.

I decided to check out PLRPro a few months ago when the doors to this membership site last opened, and I must say that I’m impressed with the content, the resources and the level of service.

I’m impressed, not just because of the quality they bring to the table in regards to PLR Content, but also because of the additional education and material that they provide for free. In fact, something you’ll probably want to checkout before you join PLRPro is their http://www.ninetydaychallenge.net site which takes a user from start to finish, and they offer that for free.

When I first joined PLRpro there were offering the following:

  • 440 articles across 11 niches (40 articles in each niche)
  • Full keyword research in each niche
  • Affiliate lists for each niche
  • Header Graphics for each niche
  • 5 Website Templates each month
  • Articles done in 8 languages
  • 50 PR4 sites that you can get links from to get your sites indexed and crawled

In addition to the above I also joined because they were creating a new system, Project Green Button, which would make it easy to create HTML and eventually WordPress Websites within minutes.

“Imagine A “Push Button” System That Automates 95% Of Site Creation, Content Creation and Traffic Generation… Now Open Your Eyes, That “Push Button” System Is Here…”

I’ve had a chance to use the Project Green Button or PGB software and I’m impressed. Right now this software is in Phase One and with PGB you’ll be able to

  • Site Creation – Automatically building HTML sites that are fully structured and ready to go with perfect onpage optimization in just 3 minutes (you can do it in under 60 seconds but you have to type fast…) that requires zero technical knowledge.
  • Content Management – 440 articles each month across 11 niches
  • Site Templates – 25 beautiful templates as the initial “bank of templates” from which you can draw upon to build your niche sites
  • Adsense Monetization – Stage one of PGB introduces the core monetization method behind building an income online… Adsense. Stage two will add additional monetization such as Kontera, Clickbank, eBay and Amazon.
  • Full Silo Keyword Search – Each and every niche has all of this already done for you so you don’t need to go search for the next greatest keyword…just look for, and find an ideal keyword for maximum traffic and speed. The keyword research for each niche is done in an easily laid out Excel sheet that you can quickly glance at and find perfectly targeted long tail keywords to start generating traffic in as little as 5 days.
  • 10,000 strong blog network – This networks makes it easy to get one way backlinks via PLRpro’s Article Marketing Automation system. As a Member of PLRpro you’ll get access to this system completely free of charge.
  • RSS Feed Submission module
  • Social bookmarking poster module
  • PGB desktop command center. You simply install the PGB software on you computer and from there you can access the site building software and traffic related modules.
  • $0-6000 a month training plan – If you follow the system that the guys at PLRpro have put together you should be able to make between $2000 and $6000 every month.

There are many additional features that are available right now too many to tell you about in this article! Product reviews, the ability to drag and drop YouTube videos into your articles, aided rewriting of your articles to make them unique, weekly live training and more! Plus Project Green Button isn’t finished! There will be a second and third phase which will add even more modules that will assist in the building of site and generating traffic.

They could easily charge double or triple what they are charging for membership.

I’ve used the system to create a few sites and it works. I’m pleased with the sites I’ve created, I’m pleased with the quality of the PLR content and I’m excited about Project Green Button.

Now, as I said at the beginning of this article PLRpro is opening it’s doors this morning and it will likely only be for a short time as there are only 262 spots to fill. That’s it. When those 262 memberships are taken the doors will be closed again and likely won’t open again until sometime in 2009.

So if all that I’ve written above sounds like it might be something you’re interested in please go and check out the PLRpro website today.

What Is RSS?

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Do You Understand What RSS Is?

RSS can have more than one meaning behind it. Usually, RSS stands for “really simple syndication” but it can also mean “rich site summary” or “RDF site summary”.

The meaning behind, ’RDF’ is resource description framework. That should help explaining the meaning associated with RSS, now let’s look at what it can do.

Exactly what is RSS in the realm of really simple syndication? It is a tool that allows sites to give a quick summary of important links and descriptions in XML format. This essentially allows them to syndicate their content by allowing other blog owners and webmasters to use this summary as part of a list of summaries on a specific topic.

Webmasters and blogmasters will gather a number of these summaries using a feed aggregator or feed reader. Rather than asking, “what is RSS”, this tool will ask “where is RSS” and then find it.

The aggregator tool will locate RSS feeds and collect them from various sites such as, Yahoo and MSN, and will select smaller sites like a personal blog or a news sites.

The blogmasters and webmasters then take the script generated from the aggregator and insert it into their blogs. The RSS feed is then created in this way and will automatically start pulling news items and blog posts each time they come up. Whenever the blog or site page is refreshed, it will display the latest items.

Taking advantage of this tool is good for two reasons. By using your own RSS feed, you will be able to have your content distributed across the internet without having to pay each time you submit a press release, or contact other blog owners and webmasters.

If you have your own personal blog page, then by using an RSS feed you can add fresh content to it much easier and faster. This will allow you to constantly put new content links and summaries on your blog without spending the time to hunt around for related information. You just need to choose a feed aggregator to select the potential feeds you can use and these can be found on a list of news sites and authority blogs. Plus, you can create your own custom feeds by adding any of your own selections that you find.

Do you now understand the basics behind RSS? Simply put, using RSS is a very easy way to generate traffic to your blog and to display additional summaries you find on other blogs.

Have you considered using PLR content to supplement your site content?

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OK, I’ve seen all the GURU’s talking about it for months now so i decided to finally go and check out what all the fuss was about. I joined a membership site called PLRpro a little over a month ago. I haven’t actually used any of the articles I’ve received on any of my sites yet, but I will be soon. The quality of the articles are very good.

Just like you I was a little skeptical at first, but I have to say I was SERIOUSLY impressed. The quality of there PLR content was great, but what I was really amazed with was the amount of free resources that were in there. I thought I was just signing up for content but with all the resources in there it’s been like my own personal coaching from the experts.

In fact, if you want to see what I’m talking about have a look at http://www.ninetydaychallenge.net It’s a fool proof system, it tells you exactly what to do, where to do it and on what day to do it on from start to finish and guarantees you’ll make money.

Anyway, here’s a basic overview of what your PLRPro membership contains:

440 articles across 11 niches (40 articles in each niche)
Full keyword research in each niche
Affiliate lists for each niche
Header Graphics for each niche
5 Website Templates each month
Articles done in 8 languages
50 PR4 sites that you can get links from to get your sites indexed and crawled

I’ve also found that they’ve added new resources in the month I’ve been with them and there are some fantastic additions to the service planned for October. I can’t wait!

PLUS here’s a few of the things they normally keep secret:

You’ll have access to their Automized Site Builder
Specialized WordPress Installer
Automatic WordPress Uploader
181 Page VRE Handbook (I’ve slowly been going through this and it’s very helpful)
SEO Training (includes 6 part Video Program)
PPC Training
Plus more….

They really do put together the full package… you’re not just paying for content, with all the extra’s this is probably the only membership you’ll ever need.

As far as the PLR Content game is concerned, they truly offer the best package out there bar none.

If you don’t believe me, check out what others have to say at PLRpro.

Company misses payment glitch – now I’m at fault?

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Can you believe this? A company that I’ve been doing a little internet work for over the last two years or so just discovered that they’ve been overpaying me by about $80 since FEBRUARY! Now I either have to pay them back to the tune of about $500 or do a ton of extra work for them to pay off my debt.

What kind of company doesn’t notice that they have a glitch in their payment system for over 6 months?

A few months ago when I noticed that my payments had increased I wondered what was up, but the site that I do work for them on had increased in rank and popularity so I thought I’d just had a pay increase. Unfortunately their system is kind of hard to get into and it’s difficult to see just how they pay for different tasks. So I don’t consider this my fault although I guess in hindsight I should have thought to question them about the payments.

This totally sucks. I hope that the extra stuff I’m going to have to do to pay off the debt doesn’t ruin my site! Argh!

BTW I’m purposely not mentioning the company name as it’s against their TOS and well I don’t want to suffer a slap from the internet gods – even though it’s not this site that is involved in the glitch.

Strange wordpress problem

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On Sunday as I was looking some of my blogs that share the same domain I noticed that the “A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now.” message had disappeared. I didn’t think much of it, but a while later when I happened to scroll to the bottom of the page I noticed that it said my WP version was 2.5.

That was strange. You see, the blog I was working with had just been updated to version 2.3.3 using files stored on my computer. The same files that I’d used to update a few blogs on my other domains over the last couple of weeks.

I went and looked at each of the other blogs that I’d updated from 2.1 or 2.2 to version 2.3 and those that were on their own domain still said they were using WP version 2.3.3, but all of the blogs that are located on my Feverishthoughts.com domain – even the ones that are still using much older versions of WP say that they are using WordPress version 2.5 now.

I checked the files for each of the now 2.5 blogs using FTP and by looking at them using my hosting c-panel and there were no extra files that shouldn’t be there. I even checked my web hosts Fantastico version of WP and they are still only using the 2.3.3 upgrade so there’s no way that they did some kind of automatic WP upgrade on my behalf.

The fact of the matter is that the blogs that now say they are using WP version 2.5 are still really using whatever version of WP that they had been prior to my discovery. Nothings changed in the admin panel – you know the new look that 2.5 is supposed to have? Everything about the way the admin area of my blogs are set up are still the same.

So why do some of my blogs say they are using WP version 2.5? Is it some kind of WP glitch? If it is, why don’t my blogs that are on their own domain now also falsely say they are using 2.5?

Has anyone else noticed this strange problem?

BTW I do plan on upgrading all my sites to WP 2.5 shortly, but I’d like to wait a few weeks to be sure that most of the glitches are out of the latest version. I also want to make sure that the plugins that I’m using have upgrades that work with 2.5 as well.

So for now I’ll stick with 2.3 which the majority of my sites are now using and those that aren’t will be upgraded within a few days. Just upgrading to 2.3 has been a pain because I had to widgetize some sites and change from really old themes with function calls that didn’t work with 2.3 to newer themes. For some blogs upgrading has been a total overhaul!

Make sure your next WP upgrade goes well with Preflight plugin

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Earlier today as I was surfing the net and reading some of the blogs I favor I came across an article about a new plugin that will help you prepare your WordPress installation for an upgrade to version 2.3.3 and coming soon WP 2.5.

The WordPress plugin is called the WordPress Upgrade Preflight Plugin. The current version, 1.1, is meant for those who are about to upgrade their WP installation to 2.3.

The Preflight Check plugin will attempt to check your other plugins and themes for any problems that might cause errors when upgrading. It apparently also works in 2.3 and may help identify the cause of any current errors as well.

As I stated in March I was slowly going through my sites and upgrading them from WordPress versions 2.1 and 2.2 to 2.3. I have a lot of blogs and to be perfectly honest with you I still have four left to upgrade!

I’m using some highly customized older themes on a few of my blogs and as I’ve upgraded I’ve found code that I had to alter to work with WP 2.3. I also had to update a number of plugins. This was time consuming work. I’m sure the Preflight Check plugin will make finishing my upgrades to my final four WP blogs a lot easier. Of course I’ve already updated the plugins.

The plugin author is currently working on a version for WP 2.5 so if you’re planning on upgrading to 2.5 soon be sure to check the Preflight Check page for updates.

Oh and don’t forget to backup your WordPress database and files before you do any upgrades! I use the WordPress Database Plugin which allows you to not only backup your files to the server, but to have your backup emailed to you as well. You can also schedule regular backups too.

Finally updated WordPress

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I have a lot of blogs. A LOT of blogs. I’ve been delaying updating them because I knew it would take forever.

I’ve slowly been updating my installations over the past week. For my newer domains it wasn’t such a problem because I could use Fantastico to update them … and since their newish they weren’t all that out of date.

However all my older blogs, including this one, moved servers twice last year and I lost the ability to automatically update with Fantastico when I moved the sites to new servers. If I’d done fresh installations using Fantastico to install WP on the domains and directories first and then transferred my former databases into the new installations I could have avoided this problem, but that’s not the way things worked out.

Oh well … I don’t mind manual updating the blogs. It just takes time.

I’ve had a problem with my blogs for a little while. My problems started back when the Bad Behavior plugin had a problem a couple of months ago. Remember something with the blacklists went wrong and it blocked people out of their WP installations until they either turned off their plugin or updated it? Well I did the update and I updated my Google Sitemaps plugin at the same time and ever since then I had an error message whenever I published an article (on 7 different blogs!) and I don’t think my do follow plugin was working correctly either.

Well now, along with updating this blog to WP 2.3.3 I’ve also updated Bad Behavior (it’s latest version is 2.0.13 if your keeping track) and Google Sitemaps ( Version 3.0.3). At first I thought I still had a problem, but I refreshed the permalinks and tada – it’s all working well again.

I wasn’t that far behind in updating WordPress. I think this blog was 2.2 … so it hasn’t been that long since I updated. However, WP has done a lot of updates in recent months and between the problems I was having with the plugins and being behind in upgrading WP I knew it was time to upgrade. I won’t fall so far behind again!

So far I’ve updated 6 new domains plus this domain. Now I’ve got 7 blogs on Feverishthoughts.com and one on yet another domain to manually upgrade. It will probably be a few days before I’m completely done … sigh.

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