Category Archives: Feature

Make Money Online Blogs You Must Read

In the blogging industry, there are very few that give you real information that you can use to build your blog into a powerhouse. Some teach, others lead by example, and still others give out ideas that could make you millions of dollars that they themselves haven’t the time to use.

With hundreds of blogs in the make money online arena, how do you do know which ones to follow? I am here to cut through all the crud. There won’t be any spam blogs in this list, nor any blogs that have recently been sold. I want to make sure you have the best blogs to follow.

Problogger

Problogger – Darren Rowse is an australian who has risen to fame quite slowly, but has deserved all the attention he has created. Darren is a blogging teacher. The way he words his articles, you can tell they have been given significant thought. While I sometimes believe he asks more questions than he answers, getting us to all think is never a bad thing. If you want to become a better blogger, then this is the blog to read.

If you want to make a bunch of money online, you will want to move on to others in this list. While Darren does make a fair bit of money from his blogging efforts, he doesn’t really give away information on how he does it, rather keeping that knowledge closer to his vest pocket, so to speak.

Without Darren’s help, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. One of the best bloggers you will ever talk to.

Shoemoney and/or John Chow

Shoemoney, and John Chow have very similar blogs. I find John Chow pushes affiliate programs a bit more than Shoemoney does, but either blog will give you great examples of how you have to monetize in this day and age, as well as some sound advice.

Also, if you watch their blogs closely, you will get a heads up on great affiliate programs and advertising programs that may help you generate revenue off your blog.

Be warned though, that both of these blogs (especially John Chow), stray off topic, and can be a little “spammy” in nature, as they continue to do whatever is necessary to build revenue from their respective sites.

Performancing

Performancing is a very strong, long lasting brand in the blogging scene. It is a multi-author blog, where anyone can post their opinions and have them widely read, but they only get on the front page if you are good at writing. Their standard list of authors are very knowledgeable and friendly, having helped me out in many ways over the past year.

Performancing is a community, and that is something hard to build. You can learn about link bait, search engine optimization, and many other very important aspects of blogging that some other sites don’t really give much focus to.

Daily Blog Tips

Daily Blog Tips will give you some sound advice, and a great conversation in its comments section. With an active community of people in the comment section of the site, you can learn much more than what is put in the already very detailed articles. I suggest checking out Daily Blog Tips for another view on the blogosphere, and some interesting advice, but more than anything, involve yourself in the conversation going on in the comment section of nearly every post.

45n5

45n5 will give you ideas, and ask questions which we should all be thinking about. Mark, writes very well, and has an interesting opinion on the blogging world, but even better, he is not shy in giving out advice, and ideas. The ideas that he tosses out are amazing, and if you have the drive and determination to follow them through and build something, Mark will be there cheering you on.

Also, Mark is one of the few that actually does video, and while this is interesting, and sometimes more helpful than text, as it provides context, inflections, and other visual cues, it probably doesn’t do as well in the search engines than if he had written all his thoughts out.

Mark has allowed me to join his Group Platform project, where I will be working on AltSciFi

Entrepreneur’s Journey

Entrepreneur’s Journey is a blog by Yaro Starak, a well known online celebrity of sorts. The reason you should be checking this site out is that it gives some entrepreneurial information, and helps drive any self-employment spirit you may have.

Yaro hands out some interesting advice, though I don’t like the posts done by other people on this blog, overall, it is still an amazing resource. With business information, passionate articles, and a bit of friendly advice, Yaro has done quite well with his blog, and I would consider it a needed addition to your daily reads if you want to stay passionate about online business.

Blogging Tips

Blogging Tips is a massively multiplayer online blogging related blog. Currently, one of the biggest MMOBRB’s* out there, Kevin, its owner, has done a great job bringing many personalities, points of view and types of advice together into one giant resource.

Subscribing to Blogging Tips is like subscribing to more than half a dozen different blogs, all of which are relatively high quality. The type of information, tips and advice runs from novice to expert, and includes some really amazing, writers, designers, copywriters, and many other backgrounds.

*MMOBRB – Massively Multiplayer Online Blogging Related Blog is a term made up by me to be funny, but I do think it fits well. Feel free to use it and adopt the term into our wonderful blog society.

Freelance Folder

Freelance Folder is a blog about being a freelancer, and blogging, be it for yourself, or for a blog network is very much like freelancing. It is very inspirational to read some of the posts done on this blog are done by freelancers, some very into the blogosphere. There are a fair number of really amazing posts on this blog, but they also point out posts on other sites that would be of value.

Definitely worth subscribing to if you are going to continue to blog, or write freelance for blogs over a long period of time.

Conclusion

Sure, there are other blogs out there that are great, don’t get me wrong, but with this group, you should be able to learn enough to make your blog successful.

Of course I also recommend subscribing to this blog, eXtra for Every Publisher, as I think my advice, as a network paid full time blogger, will be very different than the opinions found on the above list.

If you would like an OPML (file with all the feed locations) of the above blogs, feel free to download it here: Make Money Online Blog Feeds (right click and select save as..)

Originally posted on November 26, 2007 @ 9:43 am

nextMEDIA: Canada’s Digital Advertising Market Opportunities

Bryan Segal from comScore attended the event and gave a speech about their metrics service, which measures where people go on the Internet.

He also gave some great data on how Canada is doing in the world. Things like how we have the highest broadband penetration in the world with 72% of Canadians on the web, compared to 60% of the USA, and 54% of the UK. We may not have the most visitors online, but percentage based we have the most.

I found that very interesting because our country is so vast, and similar in many ways to the US in our need for technology, and broadband access, and yet, we’ve done better.

As for average page views per user, Canada also ranks first in that metric as well, coming above the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States of America.

Being that comScore is all about metrics, Bryan continued to hand out some startling data, including the fact that over 5.5 million Canadians visit Facebook, every single day. While I knew the social networking website was popular, especially in Canada, I had no idea it had progressed so far. No wonder the founders are so happy.

Sites like Facebook, MySpace and their competitors have grown 21% in the last year in Canada, with social networking sites now reaching 82% of all Canadians connected to the Internet, compared to 62% of those online in the US.

He also noted, via the comScore data, that Facebook is more popular in Canada than MySpace in large part to Canadians not rushing to MySpace. So despite our well connected country, we are slower at joining new services on the web, and so when something “new and better” came along, many Canadians hadn’t spent the time developing a profile on MySpace, and signed up for the first time to use Facebook.

I found the statistics very interesting and it seemed many content creators at the conference were excited as well. Especially, as these Canadian attendees try to attract the attention of the highly connected, multiple page viewing, Canadian Internet audience to their sites and services.

Originally posted on November 30, 2007 @ 2:59 pm

CashQuests Sold: $15000

Soon there won’t be any Make Money Online blog that still has its original author, as another great site, CashQuests, sells during what appears to be a strange wave of popularity for make money online blogs on SitePoint.

The auction only lasted a few hours, and went from a bid of $7000 to a final sale price of $15,000 in just the two bids.

The site, unlike others, did sell for the normal one year revenue mark we are used to seeing from most sales on SitePoint. It will be interesting to see how many more take the opportunity to unload their blogs.

It is interesting to note that there doesn’t yet seem to be any mention of the sale on the site, no doubt to make sure readers are not turned off by the upcoming transition.

Note: eXtra for Every Publisher isn’t going anywhere unless the buyer has really deep pockets…

Originally posted on November 19, 2007 @ 5:57 pm

An Entirely Different Top 100 Make Money Online List

Over on the 45n5.com Top 100 list, there has been some huge movement thanks to Google updating their PageRank system, and starting today, I will have a very different list with which to create the Xfep Podcast.

I have taken a look at the sites in the list before Mark updated it, and after, and here are the new Top 50 Make Money Online blogs. I suggest checking out the biggest movers and shakers, as they are the ones that were being held back by their lack of a PageRank or due to a low PageRank.

Continue reading

Originally posted on October 28, 2007 @ 9:04 pm

Story: I Once Sold a 12 Character Domain for $500

So many people have been wondering what I have done that makes me worth following online, and that’s really a hard question to answer. I fell into my position with Jacob and Bloggy Network thanks to being in the right place at the right time, and my new job with Splashpress Media is all about the connections and impressions I have made over the last two years.

One thing I will talk about today though is how I sold a twelve character domain that had no keywords for $500 US dollars.

Before I was a teenager, I enjoyed super hero movies, and one of my favourites was Phoenix from Marvel’s X-Men. She was very powerful, and also a very conflicted character. I empathized with her and also thought the alias was very interesting. The myth of the Phoenix was also very powerful and interesting to me.

I took on the name Phoenix as my own personal symbol online, and used it in pretty much everything I did. Even my first websites created on Geocities used my Phoenix code name in one way or another. As I grew up, I finally decided to get my own domain name, and I registered Phoenixrealm.com.

I worked really hard on that blog, and as I continued to grow up, I felt less and less like the “Phoenix” name suited the online persona I wanted to portray. So one day, I decided to sell the domain. Not the content, or anything else. The domain didn’t have any keywords really, nor any other major marketing points. It was a personal blog about my life, and my work online. From time to time I would post a smart article about something I was passionate about, but I was taking that content with me. I figured that I might only get a bit more than the registration fee on the domain, but I tried to talk about all the great things I had done with the site. The traffic I had brought in, the back links, and even my Technorati rank. Anything I could do to make the domain seem valuable.

Thankfully Gary, a great guy, saw the site and what it could be used for and decided to purchase it for $500. He turned the site into a great SEO blog which is still around today. I moved on to DavidCubed.com, and continued to write about my life and everything in it there.

While it might be pretty common place to sell a domain for three figures, I doubt too many domains without keywords usually do so well.

The lesson you can all learn here is that value really depends on the buyer. If you can find a buyer and can convince them of an items value, you will make more money than those that just continue to lower their prices to please buyers.

Originally posted on November 7, 2007 @ 9:51 am