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It’s always interesting for me to read the blogs of people my age (14, if you didn’t already know), and Money Makin Guru is no exception. It’s a blog about a twelve year old making money online and all that jazz that comes along with it - SEO, web design, etc. Now, before you go about dismissing that as a “JOHN CHOW CLONEZ!!!11oneoneeleven,” it’s not that bad. Zach’s not a food blogger, for Gods sake!

NOT A CLONE?
Well, for one, Zach’s honest. He doesn’t pretend to get hundreds of thousands of hits and have a truckload of cash. Of course, he wishes he had these things coming in (don’t we all) but he doesn’t lie. Another problem with most MMO blogs is that they are far too vague to get any knowledge out of them. Zach writes in absolutes which take you step by step through his various tips. While the ideas on Money Makin Guru aren’t as innovative or well-written (we’ll get into that later) as some of the advice I’ve read on other blogs, most aren’t generic. I’ve yet to see a “how u maek moneyz with ADSNSE” post on his blog, at least, which makes Money Makin Guru better than all of the MMO blogs that process Shoemoney through their rewriting machine and come out with regurgitated crap.

THEN AGAIN…
One of the things I really hate is when bloggers use their age as a marketing tool. Zach does this as well. Sure, you’re twelve, but is your content any good?

THE ANSWER
One problem plagues Zach that I’ve seen affect most young bloggers - he’s unprofessional. His posts have some grammatical and spelling errors in them (one of his post titles is, “So You Think Your Creative?”) and he often writes very informal, conversational posts that talk about things like which logo design his viewers most like and if this banner ad is better than the other. You’d be hard pressed to find this kind of stuff on Blog Badly, mostly because I think you guys probably don’t care about it - no matter how much you love me - and I find it a bit odd that other bloggers would do this kind of stuff. I would personally just ask a few friends on an instant messenger or Twitter if I needed feedback rather than “wasting” a post. Some refinement in this casual-ness would be a welcome addition to Money Makin Guru.

A FEW MORE COMMENTS

• Currently, Zach brands Money Makin Guru as, well, “Money Makin Guru.” This can be confusing because rather than typing in “moneymakinguru.com” in their browsers, they could type in “moneymakingguru.com.” Money Makin Guru should become Money Makin’ Guru - the apostrophe helps signify that the “g” has been taken off the end.
• The permalink structure on Money Makin Guru isn’t optimized. Zach uses “/%year/%month/%day/%posttitle” instead of “/%postcategory/%posttitle”.
• Money Makin Guru should use the All-In-One SEO program to switch around its titles. Currently, the homepage title is “moneymakinguru.com” - you’re not trying to rank for your website name, right?
• Add an “About” page! Tell your readers about yourself! Seriously, without an “About” page a blogger is no better than a creepy 41 year old that lives in his mom’s basement. That’s not who you are, Zach. Right?

IN SUMMATION…
Refinement is the key word here. Refined posting styles and on-site optimization would do wonders for Money Makin Guru. Zach’s got potential and time, and with some more finesse he can really become what his title implies.

Posted by Max Miroff | 13 Comments »

Every bloggers dream is to get an article on the front page of huge bookmarking sites and reap the rewards of having your servers crash due to the massive amount of visitors you’ll receive. Since it is quite hard to game social bookmarking sites due to their fancy schmancy algorithms and community participation, it’s not an event that can be forced. There are, of course, a few ways to nudge the masses to your favor - with a certain style and subject of writing, you can hugely improve your chances of reaching that front page and building some buzz and backlinks for your blog.

GET INSPIRED
The easiest way to get ideas for a post topic is to simply look at the front page of the bookmarking site you want to get popular on. Digg around a bit in the categories until you’ve Reddit all (puntastic!). If one of the top articles is about a bizarre animal, do some research about another peculiar being and write about that. I did this once for another blog and got a hefty number of views (and a nice sum of money as well). Don’t be afraid to steal borrow ideas.

PICK A FORMAT
Social media users don’t want long, drawn-out articles. They want something digestible and easy on the eyes. Fill your writing with loads of pictures, bullet points, humor, and numbered lists. Great examples of viral content can be found at Cracked’s “Top #” lists.

WRITE
The self-explanatory part. Just follow your format and your topic and you’ll (hopefully) soon have a ready viral article!

PUBLISH
Put your post up on your blog and wait. It’s best not to submit your post yourself unless you’re an extreme power user and you’re SURE you won’t get penalized from the bookmarking sites. Self-submission gets your stumbles devalued at Stumbleupon and makes Digg-ers hate you. Twitter your new post and hint that you’re trying to make it viral. Contact other webmasters in your niche and tell them to check it out. This should get the ball rolling.

THE CATCH
You can’t force social media popularity. After all, it’s SOCIAL - and there is no “I” in soci-

Uh. Well, there is. Regardless, gaming these sites =/= easy. There’s only so much you can do before throwing your content to the masses and hoping that someone sees how good it us.

Posted by Max Miroff | 13 Comments »

Posted by Max Miroff | 6 Comments »

‘

.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what blogging is.

So what’s the purpose of this post? Clever satire, hopefully. There have been so many similes and metaphors comparing blogging to things like ninjas, flowers, and grapefruit - most of which aren’t effective - and they don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. It looks like any ol’ blogger can just think of blogging as [adjective] [noun] and then write a post about it like some twisted game of Mad Libs.

Of course, people seem to like that kind of stuff. I will say that I have been entertained by comparison posts, especially ones that don’t make any sense. Well, I suppose blogging is kind of like being a midget juggling unicyclist hobo in that… uh… well, if you carry the two and divide by zero…

Ah hell, there’s no way those two are even remotely alike. I’d like to see someone take up that metaphor!

Posted by Max Miroff | 10 Comments »

Common sense, unlike blogs in the niche of making money online, is one of the rarities on the blogosphere. Whether it’s people proclaiming that you can make millions just by giving away your SSN or by buying a ten dollar e-book, there is no absence of idiocy on the net. Here are ten newbie blogging misconceptions for your intellectual viewing pleasure.

1. “Alexa is TOTAL BS.”
And this statement is totally UNTRUE! While Alexa may have some discrepancies in it’s rankings and you may be sad that your site is still in the millions, the general positions of the sites on the web are expressed well. You shouldn’t just dismiss any form of online rankings - your competitors don’t, after all.

2. “Linking to authority sites with high pagerank will help my blogs pagerank”
You wouldn’t believe how many times this issue pops up on Digitalpoint (three, at my count). Linking to websites does nothing for pagerank - it’s only determined by the sites that link to you. Sorry, but Google probably doesn’t care whether or not you link to it.

3. “You NEED to post once per day”
There isn’t a blog police that will kidnap you and brutally beat you if you leave your blog alone for a day or two. You can still achieve high traffic levels by posting once every two or three days.

4. “Don’t monetize from the start!”
Monetizing your blog is perfectly fine at any time - just don’t splatter your page with ads like some crazed college art student. As long as your advertising isn’t intrusive upon the content, it’s alright.

5. “Blogger is better than Wordpress.”
The falsity of this statement is self-explanatory.

6. “Dofollow blog comments are worthless”
The key word here is dofollow. That means they’re counted by search engines. That means they help your rankings. They’re just as good as any other link you can get on a blog.

7. “Blogging is easy”
Even if you’re an expert in your niche and you’re writing about the passion of your life, you will be starved for ideas on some days and discouraged on others. The key is to keep on being consistent in blogging.

8. “I can StumbleUpon my own posts”
If you stumble your site more than once or twice, it starts to get suspicious. Even if you’re an active user, your thumbs up will eventually become devalued and you’ll possibly be banned from Stumbleupon.

9. Chow, Rowse, Shoemoney, etc. are blogging GODS.
While these probloggers are undeniably successful, their word is not the law - you should do your own independant research and thinking before following their advice. Hell, even Blog Badly is only right 99.9% (repeating, of course) of the time!

Posted by Max Miroff | 18 Comments »

If you’re blog just isn’t cutting it anymore and your marketing plans are failing, there’s only one thing to do - write craploads of content. One post a day, two posts if you’re really crazy. This will in turn skyrocket your readership, and by skyrocket I mean increase it at a slow and steady snails pace.

WHA? WHY?
Think about it - if you write one thousand posts and each attracts an average of one search engine visitor per day, you’ll be getting one thousand visits per day. That’s a hefty sum of readers! Writing consistently is the easiest way to get more visitors because as long as you have content that is being crawled by Google and Yahoo and you take a few steps to optimize it (All-In-One SEO plugin, anyone?), they will come. This is a technique you can fall on when your readership stagnates because this is a pretty assured way to get things going again.

THEN WHAT?
After your traffic numbers are high enough, declare yourself an authority blog in your niche and make people grovel at your feet just for a linkback flaunt this fact to attract even more hits (see: JohnChow.com). Once you get the boulder (metaphorical, of course. Unless you’re Indiana Jones) rolling, just ride with it until you get all the way to the bottom of the mounta- er… I mean… all the way to the top! Yeah, take that, gravity!

Posted by Max Miroff | 9 Comments »

Tired of getting hit with the banhammer by Google for selling links? LinkShowOff is a fairly new advertising site that follows in the vein of programs like Scratchback because it offers blog and website owners the chance to sell nofollow text links to advertisers. In short, that means that Google won’t lower your pagerank for selling links through it.

ALRIGHT, SO HOW DOES IT WORK?
To sell links through LinkShowOff, you have to sign up, add your site to their listings, and put their customizable widget up (you can see it in my right sidebar). Unlike Scratchback, LinkShowOff actually has a marketplace for the sales of advertising which expedites the process of getting some cash (if you’re a publisher) or finding some quality advertising (if you’re an advertiser). You get payed a flat sum for each link displayed on your widget (a maximum of twenty links can be up at once). As more ads are purchased, older links are bumped off the widget and new ones appear first, allowing for a dynamic structure.

THE REFERRAL PROGRAM
In addition to selling links on your own site, you have the option of referring other publishers to the network. The rates are quite low at the moment - only one dollar for every person you refer that earns a dollar - but this low threshold could work at the moment because of the new nature of the program. If one was to refer a few hundred publishers to LinkShowOff that sold even one link, they could make a nice sum.

GETTING PAID
Payments are monthly with a flat fee of $3 per withdrawal, which is a nice change from horrible monopolies greedy companies programs like Text-Link-Ads which takes half of your profits. You can currently get paid through Paypal (speaking of monopolies…) once you reach the payout of $10.

WHAT ELSE…
LinkShowOff does have a few problems right now, though - namely the fact that there are no site statistics available for websites listed in the marketplace. Alexa rankings, Pagerank, and traffic should be present for each blog to create for a more open sales platform. In addition, the website looks unprofessional and Web 1.5: there are some grammatical errors, the FAQ is short and incomplete, and the site design is greener than Kermit (and it’s not easy being green).

IN SHORT,
LinkShowOff has potential but needs refinement. When more advertisers join, there should be plenty of ad sales (even as a new program, I’ve already had a link bought on my widget). If it gets a facelift and some extra features, it could be a winner.

Posted by Max Miroff | 6 Comments »

 One of the easiest ways to steadily increase your visibility is by getting other blogs to link to you, but this often isn’t an option for people with awful blogs some. Luckily, there is a much easier way of getting natural backlinks without resorting to blackmailing and googlebowling your competitors - blog carnivals.

BLOG CARNIVALS? WILL THERE BE CLOWNS?
No way, inquisitive headline! A blog carnival is when a blogger decides they are too lazy to write a post but still wants to throw something up on their blog - it’s a compilation of links to other articles.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LINK LOVE
The great thing about blog carnivals is that you can easily submit your own posts for consideration on a blog carnival. To do this, just sign up at blogcarnival.com and search for a few blog carnivals that are coming up in your niche. Gather some select blog posts to use for said carnivals and submit them to it. Within a few days, the carnival will take place on someone’s blog and you’ll get an improved Technorati rank, more traffic, and a free backlink!

AND NOW FOR THE CATCH…
There is none. Sorry to burst your bubble, readers - I know you love paying money for things but blog carnivals are absolutely free (unlike real carnivals. Damn clowns peddling me out of my money with their rigged games) and require pretty much no effort to join.

Posted by Max Miroff | 8 Comments »

Anti-SEO, as I mentioned in one of my posts, really does seem to exist in the form of Googlebowling, an extremely blackhat (and asshat) way to lower your competitors SERP’s. The premise is this: if bad neighborhoods (spam sites, splogs, porn, gambling, etc.) link to a certain site using the same anchor text, aforementioned site will invariably drop in rankings. For example, say a website “A” ranks #1 for term “X.” If competitor “B” ranks #2 for “X” and no matter what he does, he can’t outrank “A,” what does he do? Submit site “A” to thousands of porn directories, gambling affiliates, and scraper sites that all link to “A” with anchor text “X,” of course! Google would notice this huge increase in backlinks from crap sites and thus theoretically drop the rankings of site “A.”

WAIT, WHAT? SERIOUSLY?
Well, technically not. Google denies this can happen in its official webmaster guidelines:

“Fiction: A competitor can ruin a site’s ranking somehow or have another site removed from Google’s index.

Fact: There’s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.”

Of course, Google also penalizes for the following things:

Purchasing Site Wide Links
Many links having the same exact anchor text
Links from “Bad Neighborhoods”
“Sneaky” Redirects AKA Doorway pages
Using Cookie Cutter sites

I don’t see what prevents a competitor from linking to you with the same exact anchor text from bad neighborhoods or buying site-wide links for your site, so Googlebowling should be possible if you have enough money, resources, and are an evil genius.

Oh, and by the way, this article was written for purely educational purposes, *wink wink* *nudge nudge*

Posted by Max Miroff | 12 Comments »

Ever find yourself doing something as silly as posting on your blog? I know I have. Here are ten easy, guilt-free ways to talk yourself out of making a post:

1. “My blog traffic is already skyrocketing!”
Because who needs to post when you’ve already had 1000 visitors that day?
2. “I can always do it tomorrow”
The procrastinator’s greatest weapon - playing the tomorrow card.
3. “I’m way too tired! Sitting on my couch all day was EXHAUSTING”
Blogging clearly takes great mental, physical, and emotional effort. Why bother if you’re already tired?
4. “Why blog when I can _______?”
Find alternatives!
5. “My post probably won’t be that good anyway.”
The statement that makes you fail before you’ve even began (and subsequently failed).
6. “Blogging definitely isn’t as important as ________”
A few options to help you fill the blank: playing video games, sleeping, watching TV, making pancakes, raiding with your WoW guild, etc.
7. “Someone already posted about my idea!”
Note: practically nothing is original anymore.
8. “I’ll do it a bit later today.”
A variation on the always good “I’ll do it tommorow.”
9. “My blog sucks anyway”
…and low self-esteem will make it even worse!
10. “Well, I doasghtjyk,gyfkdtjsrtttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt”
The option for when you fall asleep on your keyboard.

Posted by Max Miroff | 9 Comments »