David Airey’s $4000 Blog Anniversary Contest

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David Airey, who does amazing logo design work and someone I have been trying to get to know better, has set up an absolutely amazing contest for his blog’s anniversary.

He has set it up to include some great prizes from a variety of different people and amassed an amazing number of products and services for the prize draw.

His Gold Award package makes me super excited as it includes:

The other prizes include USB Thumb drives, telephone conversations with some amazing people, and advertising.

The advertising prizes interest me as well, especially since Xfep is still very young. The advertising opportunities include:

The great thing is that anyone can enter David’s contest, and getting one entry is as simple as subscribing to his RSS feed or e-mail feed, and then contacting him with a secret code that you’ll find within.

A great contest, and good luck to everyone that enters.

Originally posted on September 2, 2007 @ 4:46 pm

Get Your Comment Count Jumping

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Over on Blogging Tips there is a post entitled “Get Your Comment Count Jumping”, and in it are some tips to get readers to comment on your blog. This is something that almost all bloggers fight with. We find ourselves questioning “is anyone really reading what we have to say?”

The tips included in the article are pretty common sense, but they are worth a reminder as we look to get people involved with our blogs.

My biggest suggestion is to show others how it is done by commenting on other blogs, starting conversations with the writers of your favorite blogs, and the people that comment on their blogs. If they see the quality you bring to the site, they might follow you back to your site, and comment on what you have said or done. I find this to be a very fulfilling experience, and one that has started some of my best blogging related friendships online.

Read the article for more tips on how you can get others to comment on your blog.

Originally posted on August 23, 2007 @ 12:44 am

Dropping Dead Weight: Ending Projects

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One of the smartest posts I have read recently comes from JohnCow.com called “We Got Fired!” where Bob writes about spreading himself too thin, and getting rid of certain projects. What is ever better is his usage of a point system to decide what stays and what goes. It is a little difficult to be so rational, but I am sure it works very well.

Here is a snippet from the article:

We took out a notepad and jotted down all our domains. Each domain/project would get a rating between 0 and 5. Anything below 3 is going in the dumpster! Might fetch a penny or two by someone who thinks the project is worth seeing through. Pennies you can put in the projects you’re dedicated to, hence improving them!

I have to say that this is something I struggle with all the time, as I work more and more for Bloggy Network, I have less and less time for the projects I would like to do. This has lead me to give or sell some of my greatest ideas to Bloggy Network in hopes of seeing them come to fruition.

It is hard not to want to do everything, but focusing on a few projects will help them become more successful, and leave less of a chance of burnout, something that I have faced a few times in my blogging career.

Check out the full post at JohnCow (not a misspelling).

Originally posted on September 1, 2007 @ 2:13 am

How I Made $506 Blogging In July 2007

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Adnan of Blogtrepreneur has released a post reporting his July income from his blogging efforts, and while it isn’t a full time pay check yet, it is still a great bit of extra coin.

Here is a snippet:

As I kept writing, so my RSS subscribership kept creeping up, passing milestones along the way: 100…200…500. Traffic too has been on the increase and has been up more so ever since I posted the article on 101 Essential Blogging Resources. But most significantly, online revenues have also been increasing, and I feel that it’s finally time to show my community how far they have helped me come.

This July, I managed to surpass all previous records and earn $506.14 from blogging online at Blogtrepreneur.com.

Another proof that metablogging, being patient and learning from other bloggers is key to making money from blogging.

Check out the full breakdown on Blogtrepreneur.com.

Originally posted on August 26, 2007 @ 3:58 pm

Proper Meta-Blogging is Useful

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Meta-Blogging is a blog that talks about blogging, much like this one does. There has been a recent revolt against this type of blogging now that there are a few very well established blogs out there and so people are giving automatic thumbs down to everyone that starts a new blog about blogging, the blogosphere, or the blogging industry.

I think this is wrong, and honestly, quite silly. Meta-Blogging can be quite useful if done correctly.

Think of it this way, every time a new blogger creates a blog for any purpose, if they really want to stick with it and do well they will seek out advice from others. So most likely they find Darren’s Problogger.net, and maybe they find his articles difficult to understand, or they don’t like his personality or attitude, but then they go to another site, read some similar content, and find a connection with that writer.

I really think that is how many of what I would call “the secondary power bloggers” came into existence. They might have covered the same subject, but they did it in a way that a certain group could relate to and that made the site popular.

More and more, in every niche, I hear “it has all been done” and that really disappoints me, and when I hear people giving up so easily after seeing the hard work and extreme odds they would have to overcome, I tell them that they are right and watch as they walk away back to their day jobs.

I have been around watching things grow and change over the past few years, and I think there is still many new things that need to be said about the ever evolving blogosphere, and that if no one with a new and fresh perspective joins the conversation, everything will eventually become stale.

On certain high profile sites, I sometimes feel like they are repeating the same messages over and over again, re-hashing their archives using new examples, and it is something I am sick of.

I would like to proclaim myself to be one of what I hope will be many new voices handing out tips, tricks and advice on prospering in the current blogging world. I am not Darren Rowse, I am not John Chow, I am Canadian*… I mean David.

* Canadians that have television will get the joke. As for the rest of you, check out Wikipedia and YouTube.

Originally posted on August 23, 2007 @ 1:14 am