by ZombieSkittles on October 8, 2009
I love message boards. While I’m not as active on them as I used to be, I used to live on roughly twenty different forums, and would post left right and centre. The conversations had on them were priceless and I had lots of fun.
Darren Rowse, creator and runner of Problogger and TwiTip has recently opened his latest venture; Problogger Community. The website is a paid community message board specially for bloggers to promote their sites and discuss blogging techniques. After just a week it already has well over two thousand active members.
I paid for a months subscription (at the moment the site costs $1.95 USD a month, but Darren has said that as the site gets bigger and things get added the price for NEW subscribers will go up, so it’s pretty cheap.), and wasn’t sure what to expect.
However, once my payment finally went through and I had access to the boards, I was impressed. While some of the discussions don’t prove directly helpful, it’s good reading. There’s a community challenge held weekly as well, which is a really good idea to encourage interaction between people and their blogs, and plenty of opportunities to be exposed to other people’s writing styles.
It’s a great way to improve my writing and blogging, and I thought it’d be something cool to show you guys, if you were interested and had the money to burn.
by ZombieSkittles on July 12, 2009
I’ve tried it in the past and it failed me, but I decided to start advertising on a few of my sites again in hopes of getting maybe a few dollars extra. The idea is that I already write on these sites for free as my own personal hobby of sorts, so if I manage to make a few extra dollars here or there through it, then that’s just an awesome perk.
Currently I have two types of ‘ads’ on my sites. First, the obvious advertisements are the Google Adsense ads at the bottom of posts. They’ve never earned me anything in the past, but I’ve decided that it’d be better to have them just in case.
The other attempt at additional moneymaking is through a small amount of affiliate marketing. On this site to the right, there is an image of the 31DDDB eBook. The book is for sale for roughly twenty dollars through ProBlogger, and focuses on helping a user make content for their blog. The image is a link to the product’s information page, where you can buy it from. The trick is that it’s an affiliate link, and buying it through that link gives me a percentage of the sale. I don’t know if this will actually make any sales (it’s made absolutely nothing so far), but once again, if it worked even once and got me a few dollars, it would be worthwhile.
It’s pointless and I doubt it will help bring in any significant money, but I’m willing to try anything.
by ZombieSkittles on June 9, 2009
The other day, I bought the eBook 31 Days To Build A Better Blog, and it has given me plenty of ideas, and helped me lots in my blogging.
I love blogging, but often, in particular on my other blog WolfingTime, I have trouble coming up with new content. This results in either long gaps in my posts, or a complete loss of interest, which happened to a few of my other blogging endeavours. I’ve been determined to not let that happen again, but it’s hard. I’ve been reading other blogs to get ideas and helpful tips on blogging. The most helpful site of which I’ve come across is Problogger, which I coincidently came upon just after the start of a blogging program where every day the author posted a new task. These tasks allowed those involved in the program, or just the casual reader, to improve their blog with strategic exercises, and instructions on types of blog posts to make.
Reading it, I found many ideas that were completely unique to me, including an entire post on going shopping to improve your blog; despite being unusual, that was informative and quite a brilliant idea.
To top off how well done the program was, Darren Rowse made the entire thing available in the form of a professional looking 31DBBB eBook. Buying it set me back roughly twenty dollars, but it’s so far been worth it. It’s given me a reference for blogging that I can do in my own time; which in the case of WolfingTime is one post a week. It’s amazing because it even has several ways to get past writers block; which is evil.
As a final addition, Problogger encourages buyers to subscribe to an email newsletter which sends additional tasks for the program as time goes on, a nice little touch which keeps the 31DBBB fresh.
Being obsessed with blogs, it’s definitely a good cheap read for me, and it’s definitely worth plenty more than what it’s being sold for. I’m really happy I bought it.
