Image via Wikipedia

Just a casual observation as noted on several blog posts of late.If you have tweet arguments (is that a real term or did I just make it up?) they can come back to bite you. There are other examples we could share here, but don’t want to stir up crazy people from past tweet discussions that seemed to drag on beyond it’s life span.

One recent example of that is right here below. Or you can go to the site to see the original post here:

WhizTechCafe’s social media miss by ericasmith A spat between a local business and one of its residential neighbors turns ugly.

It started with a simple complaint.

“	It sounds like there is some sort of party under my window, what the hell @WhizTechCafe, this is why no one who lives here likes you.
	TabithaKMeyer  October 2, 2011

“	@TabithaKMeyer @WhizTechCafe rent space from time to time.. If u don’t like it or us were not mad it’s about business at the end of the day
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe understandable that you rent space. But if you’re going to be a coffee shop otherwise, be open during coffee shop hours.
	TabithaKMeyer October 4, 2011

Then it started to take a turn for the worse:

“	@TabithaKMeyer Its called part of downtown living maybe you should consider suburban living or get a loft that is not on the 2nd floor
	WhizTechCafe  October 4, 2011

Tabitha tactfully tried to end the conversation:

“	@WhizTechCafe Thank you, I’ll take your advice into consideration. Have a fantastic day!
	TabithaKMeyer October 4, 2011

But others already had picked up on the public conversation:

“	@WhizTechCafe Swing and a miss! Come on guys, can’t talk w/ customers like that. At least, it’s a bad idea. cc: @TabithaKMeyer @michaeltomko
	RizzoTees  October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe if you’re going to call out a customer ( @TabithaKMeyer ) at least use proper punctuation even if you can’t be a good neighbor
	PTtheIslander October 4, 2011

“	Wow, @WhizTechCafe, I think you picked the wrong person to aggravate. cc: @TabithaKMeyer @rizzotees @michaeltomko
	therebirth October 4, 2011

“	@therebirth @WhizTechCafe @TabithaKMeyer @michaeltomko Yes, Tabitha is not to be played
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@therebirth @WhizTechCafe @TabithaKMeyer @michaeltomko And btw, the wrong person to aggravate is…… your next customer. #justsayin
	RizzoTees  October 4, 2011

Again, that could’ve been the end of it. But it wasn’t:

“	@RizzoTees @michaeltomko talk like what?? @TabithaKMeyer has some sort of personal issue with @WhizTechCafe our REAL customers are all :-)
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe how many people were real customers before they got bad customer service from you ? @RizzoTees @TabithaKMeyer @michaeltomko
	PTtheIslander  October 4, 2011

“	@PTtheIslander lol punctuation this is twitter @WhizTechCafe offer 10% discount to printer lofts we r good neighbors but we cant pls every 1
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@PTtheIslander @WhizTechCafe have been open almost 1 yr I have never seen @TabithaKMeyer you have to visit to get bad customer service
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe nope, you don’t. This is an extension of your business. And please learn have vs had. Cc @TabithaKMeyer
	PTtheIslander October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer With respect, telling someone to move to the county. Just an odd tweet from a business
	RizzoTees  October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer Unless you’re a real estate agent, that’s just a weird msg to send.
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer Again, with respect, you have customers that have expressed confusion at multitude of changes
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer changing hours, etc. I don’t make it downtown much anymore, but downtown residents feel this way
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer If your message to them is, “Just move, you’re not a REAL customer,” then we’re clear.
	RizzoTees  October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer I sense you guys are trying hard and want to stick it out, and I’ve had good food there
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

“	@whiztechcafe @michaeltomko @TabithaKMeyer But respectfully, & last thing I’ll say, this entire Twitter conversation should not be happening
	RizzoTees October 4, 2011

That last tweet, by the way, is the moral of this story. But I’ll go ahead and let it play out.

“	@TabithaKMeyer @pttheislander stay out of this?? WOW!! You are the one who started this if there was a problem our number is listed 241-whiz
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe @pttheislander Ok, I was trying to stay out of this. But now you’re lying. I ate a Cobb salad there last week! Never seen me?
	TabithaKMeyer October 4, 2011

“	Is the customer always right? Appears that @WhizTechCafe and @TabithaKMeyer have a difference of opinion. #twitterspat #meantweets
	EvanBenn  October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe And you could have DM’d me rather than starting a visible argument.
	TabithaKMeyer October 4, 2011

“	@TabithaKMeyer WHO DO U THINK U R?? YOU STARTED WITH THAT IS Y NO ONE LIKES U N THE BUILDING SO DO NOT TELL ME WHAT I COULD HAVE DONE!!
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

About 30 minutes after this story was published and shared, Whiz Tech Cafe deleted all of its tweets related to this conversation.

“	@WhizTechCafe nice strategy to delete all your tweets. Good thing it’s been given the @storify treatment
	PTtheIslander  October 4, 2011

“	@PTtheIslander deleted = non-factor @WhizTechCafe
	WhizTechCafe October 4, 2011

“	@WhizTechCafe Wow. If you think that, you understand social media even less than you let on.
	LoganJames October 4, 2011

By then, this story was trending in St. Louis.

I’m a big believer in learning from mistakes; I hope everyone has.

Related articles

• Removing the “Jerk” from Knee-Jerk Reactions (psychologytoday.com)
• The Jerk (melgibstein.wordpress.com)
• Washington Insider Exposes Political Jerks in New Book (prweb.com)
• You Need to Be (Better Than) a Jerk (problogger.net)
• How Not To Be A Jerk (At Work) (buzzfeed.com)

Ever ponder why Black Friday, Facebook, and Twitter are so successful? Want to duplicate the same feat with your startup or your venture? Just follow these 3 keys to success, and I’m sure you’ll have VC‘s and angel’s knocking at your door. Duplicate the 3 keys, no need to re-invent the wheel!

Step 3 – Go Mainstream

Well that goes without saying. If Black Friday wasn’t the term commonly known as the day after Thanksgiving, it wouldn’t be mainstream. Once it reached this level, it became quite apparent that to be in retail, you had to honor the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Facebook would not have survived as a college only social network. Once you are out of college, you are in the mainstream. To have been stubborn and not open to new ideas, it would have remained a small niche social network that, gasp – MySpace might have buried!

Twitter in 2006, 2007 was yet to reach mainstream. Once it clicked or resonated with the masses at SXSW 2007, it was off and running to the mainstream.

Step 2 – Get people talking about “it“

Whatever “it” is, you need people talking about “it“. If you don’t have the people buzzing about “it“, you won’t ever reach step 3 which as you just read is the mainstream.

For Black Friday, that mainstream was when the media picked up on all the sales post Thanksgiving and dubbed it by it’s common known name. Yes, Black Friday not only leveraged the media into believing the name it gave itself, it lent the tip to media to help spread the word of the “it” which of course is Black Friday.

Facebook became the “it” by simply being the “in” place to be first as a college only site, and by holding off the next level it pushed the anticipation of “it” by opening up the site to anyone. Once that happened, it quickly surged into the mainstream.

Twitter had a more difficult time since it wasn’t your classic social network. It was something new, but so new that it could never put it’s finger on”it“. Once it figured out that “it” was actually step #1 below, it quickly leveraged “it” to make a run to the mainstream quicker than either Black Friday or Facebook did.

Step 1 You follow therefore you become a follower

Black Friday would never have had the success it currently enjoys unless there were people seriously following the run up hype to the Friday after Thanksgiving. Retailers now even open on Thanksgiving morning since the hype (look for a new media dubbed name soon for the morning of Thanksgiving sales!) is so big for Black Friday. By hype, I mean lines of people (followers) that maybe won’t buy a thing unless they are tempted with super sales that the date offers. They still might not buy any item, but will be highly tempted by all the accompanying hype, so chances are they will spend some money.

Facebook would have never had the success without opening up and loading up their user base. Once they figured out that you hooked ‘em in college, but now most of their users were post college days, they needed to open it up so that their mainstream friends could connect. Once they did that, the next 2 steps were easier to achieve and success followed up quickly.

With Twitter this first step was more crucial since no one had a clue what Twitter was or how it was going to work. Twitter is/was almost like how this post started out. It had no idea where it was going, but figured that out when step #1 magically took off on it’s own. Once that happened, the powers that be at Twitter realized that it’s true calling was the followers that propelled it to be the darlings of water cooler chat, and then talk shows. It had “it” to talk about, even though “it” was still an unknown, but talking about “it” via the crucial follower step #1 helped it reach mainstream faster than Black Friday or Facebook.

Technically Speaking, if you gain some followers who talk about “it“, you’ll reach the final step in the 3 keys to success which is mainstream acceptance. If you want to put that in your pitch to VC’s and angel’s, tell ‘em you read it here first! Oh, btw, Happy Safe Thanksgiving to all!

Related articles

• Black Friday Deals 2010: 7 Ways To Use Social Media To Score At Sales (huffingtonpost.com)
• Use these apps and save big on Black Friday deals (en.onsoftware.com)
• 10 Social Media Deals to Check In to on Black Friday (mashable.com)
• CyberMonday2010.com is Here! (bradsdeals.com)
• AMD Twitter Contest Goes Live; Along With Some Killer Black Friday Deals (geardiary.com)
• Getting The Jump On Black Friday Deals With These Sites & Mobile Apps (makeuseof.com)

This is a good post to look at if you need some of these 12 Popular Free Social Media Icons:

This is a guest post by Neeraj Kumar who writes at Bloggerdomain. If you like to Write for Shoutmeloud: Do read Shoutmeloud Revenue sharing program.

Every blog is incomplete without a beautiful set of Social media icons. An important rule in social media is : Networking and more networking. It is indeed a necessary evil for all blogs to provide its readers with contact information so that they could network with you everywhere possible. Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, LinkedIn, Digg are some of the most frequently used networks, by both bloggers and readers.

Here’s small collection of best Free social media icon sets I have come across on the web.

1. Post-It Note Style Icons Set By Brian Yerkes

Download

2. Social Moleskin Icons Set

Download

3. Polaroid Icons Set

Download

4. Social Trucks Icons

Download

5. OLED Social Icons Set

Download

6. Social Media Icons Version 1.0(Silver) By Cheth Studios

Download

7. Elegant Social Media Icons Version 2.0 By Cheth Studios

Download

Technically Speaking, there was more so go read more …

A ton of resources here and didn’t feel I’d do it justice by cutting and running, but feel free to visit the original source:

How I replaced my day-job with earnings from this blog

In less than 2 years I went from not knowing what a blog was to making more with one than my corporate desk job.

The purpose of this article is to show you how to make money with a blog. I suspect most people won’t stick with it long enough to make a full-time income, but even making an extra few hundred dollars a month isn’t bad either. The good news is that even if you don’t make as much money blogging as you’d hoped, you can always sell your blog.

This article is extremely long (more like 10 articles), but I wanted it to be a thorough and helpful resource for those wanting to start a blog or make some more money from the one they already have. For the sake of convenience, I added links to different sections of this article, so you can easily skip ahead to the section you want…

• How it all started for me
• Blogging basics
• How to get a self-hosted blog
• The importance of a customizable theme
• How I make money with this blog
• How long does it take to make money from a blog
• How to get traffic to your blog
• SEO tips for blogs
• How I increased Adsense income by $1500 in under 3 months
• 11 Tools that have helped me succeed
• Warnings for those just starting out

Sign up to find out about additional tips, tricks, and tools that I use to increase earnings with my blogs.

I should also mention that I really haven’t written about blogging or making money from blogs on ChristianPF yet, because I wanted to make sure that it was a viable option for making some cash. Now that I have found that it is, I decided to pour out everything I learned the last two years about it…

---

How it all started for me

About 2 years ago I was talking to a friend of mine about the idea of building websites full of free information to help people. After brainstorming a bit, I got a couple ideas of topics that I was passionate about: Proverbs and Personal Finance. My first idea was to post a Proverb each day and comment on it. As I explained my idea further to him, he informed me that I would basically have a blog. I didn’t know what a blog was, but I thought, “oh, ok, sure.” So, over the next few weeks I read as much as I could find about blogging and ultimately decided on creating a blog about Personal Finance from a Christian perspective. I had been very interested in helping people with their money, so blogging seemed like a great way to reach people all over the world. Over the next couple months, I started writing articles and officially launched ChristianPF in June of 2007.

At this point I had thought about making money from the site, but had no idea how and honestly didn’t really think it was possible to make a living at it. I threw up an Adsense ad just to see what would happen and I still remember how excited I was when I saw that I had made my first 7 cents! From there, I set a goal to make $100 by the end of 2007 which was pretty easy to accomplish – even without knowing anything. I should also mention that from June 2007 to June 2008 I spent about 4-6 hours each weekend writing articles and averaged about 4 new articles each week. And I spent a few more hours each week on site maintenance, emails, social media, etc. So in total I probably was spending about 10 hours each week working on the site.

Getting laid off

In July 2008 things got interesting. The large brokerage firm that I had worked 5 years for was bought out by a larger firm. I was told that my department would no longer be needed, so they handed me a severance check and I was on my way. By this point I was making some money from the blog, but not enough to even pay the rent each month. After much prayer I decided against looking for another “day job” and decided to work full time on building the blog. Thankfully we had paid off most of our debt, and had my wife’s income as a support to buy us some time. I figured I would give it a shot for a few months and if it didn’t work out I would find another 9-5.

From that point, the income generated from this website has increased each month and in February 2009 it exceeded my monthly income from my old day job. I am still a little bit in awe and can’t believe that I am actually paying the bills from this website!. But, I thank God everyday that I get to do this – I really did not like working in Corporate America and am so thankful! It is hard work, but it doesn’t really seem like it when you are doing something that you are passionate about and love doing it.

---

Blogging basics

I am going to try to boil this down to the essentials. There are whole books written on this subject, so I am not going to try to cover everything here. If you are looking for a good book about blogging for beginners, I suggest reading Darren Rowse’s Problogger. But for a quick, bottom-line version keep reading…

What is a blog?

A blog is short for “weblog”. Basically, it is just a website that has entries listed in reverse chronological order. The original idea behind it was to be a online journal or diary that was updated daily (or as frequently as the writer chose). Over the last decade many software programs and blogging platforms have been created to make the process VERY EASY. As the blog writer, depending on which platform you use, you can just type your entry, press submit and it shows up on your blog for the world to see. Most bloggers don’t know any programming languages and are not “techies.” Starting a blog is one of the easiest ways out there to start a website. If you haven’t started one yet, why not try it? It can be very quick to set up and can be completely free.

Is it easy to start a blog?

It is very easy. Even if there are steps along the way that are confusing, there are plenty of resources to get the help you need. There are over 20 million blogs in existence, so it can’t be that difficult.

How much does it cost to blog?

There are many services that allow you to start a blog for free (see below). I suggest using one of the free services to get a basic feel for blogging and “get your feet wet.” Once you decide you want to stick with it and that you want to make money with your blog, I suggest moving up to a self-hosted blog (see below). Anyone who is really trying to make money with a blog will probably be more successful with a self-hosted blog. Getting a self-hosted blog may not be free, but still can be VERY inexpensive. You will need to pay for nothing more than a domain name ($10) and web-hosting (as cheap as a few bucks a month).

Getting a blogging platform

All 4 of the options listed are free. The first 3 options are the easiest, but the are also limited on features. If you are just trying to make an extra few hundred dollars from your blog, these options could work. But if you are really serious about trying to make good money from your blog, I recommend self-hosting your blog (which we talk about in the next section…).

Tumblr.com – This is probably the simplest blogging platform to use, but it also is the probably the least customizeable. So, it might be something good to start with, but it would be more difficult to build an income-generating website with it.

Blogger.com – Blogger is also very good, easy to set up, owned by Google, you can customize the theme, and the domain name includes “.blogspot.com” (in some people’s opinion a little less professional). Blogger continues to become more customizeable and currently has a lot more options than they did a few years ago.

WordPress.com – I like wordpress.com they are completely free, easy to set up, you can customize the theme, but other customizations are limited, domain name includes “.wordpress.com”.

WordPress.org – Wait, what is the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org? To put it simply WordPress.com is where you will go to set up a basic, easy blog with limited features. WordPress.org is where you will go to get a self-hosted blog. If you get to the point where you are serious about blogging and really want to make some money with it, you need to self-host your blog.

---

How to setup a self-hosted blog

If you are going to be using one of the first three options above, you can skip this section. If you are serious about blogging and are looking for the best way to customize your blog’s look and other features, then getting a self-hosted blog from WordPress.org is probably the best way to go. It is currently the top choice for most bloggers. It does require more work up front and does have small costs associated with it: buying a domain name ($10/year) and hosting your blog ($10/month).

One of the big advantages is that you can use your own domain name (i.e. yourblog.com). While this might not seem like a big deal, it is a lot easier for people to remember yourblog.com rather than yourblog.blogspot.com which is what you will be given if you use Blogger. I will warn you, being a non-techie myself, this took me some time figuring out how to get my self-hosted site set up. WordPress.org has a great step-by-step guide for getting you set up. While it is more work on the front end, I am really glad I got good advice and did this at the beginning, than having to do it now.

Pick a Domain Name

1. You should start by purchasing a domain name. Psychicwhois.com is a great tool to see what names are still available. I would suggest going to for a .com rather than a .info or .us or anything else for that matter. It is just too easy for people to get confused. A .com is always going to hold more value than any other extension.

2. Once you get it picked out, you need to find somewhere to purchase it. I bought my first few domains at GoDaddy.com and have bought the remaining ones from Dreamhost (and now BlueHost as well). While GoDaddy is about one of the biggest names out there, I can’t say that I recommend them because of some of their advertising campaigns that they run. But the good news is that there are thousands of options of places where you can purchase a domain name.

Pick a host for your blog

The webhost is the company that you pay to store all of your files for your blog. There are also a million web hosting companies out there. I don’t suggest just looking for the cheapest one, because a lot of these companies are not very reliable and your site might be down quite a bit. I like to go with the bigger companies who have a longer track record and are more established. They may cost a dollar or two more a month when you are starting out and it is well worth it.

I have hosted my websites with Dreamhost from the beginning, mostly because I knew a lot of people using them and I got a hosting package for about $7.00 a month. I did find hosting cheaper, but with hosting you often get what you pay for – so keep that in mind.

I still host most of my websites at Dreamhost, but have moved ChristianPF.com to MediaTemple. The main reason was that since my livelihood now depended on the website I wanted a higher level of service from my hosting company. MediaTemple has been great in that regard, but as always it comes with a price. I am currently paying $50 a month for hosting with them.

(Added 01-05-10 – I am currently in the process of buying a website that is hosted on BlueHost, and after digging around the backend quite a bit, I am starting to think they are a better choice than Dreamhost. Their prices are slightly lower than Dreamhost, but they seem to have things a little better organized and create an easier experience for new users. I haven’t dealt with their customer service yet, so I can’t comment on that yet, but my overall experience so far leads me to like them a bit more than Dreamhost. For what it’s worth.

Added 05-04-10 – After using Bluehost a bit more and calling their customer service reps, I can safely say that I definitely like them more than Dreamhost. Just the fact that they have phone support gives them a leg up – but the rep I spoke with was very helpful. So Bluehost gets my recommendation for beginner hosting.)

Company	Cost	Support	Notes
Bluehost	$6.95/month	24/7 phone and email support	I host a few of my sites with Bluehost and they are currently my favorite and who I am recommending to newbies. Their site is easier to navigate than others I’ve used, they have a simple and cheap pricing plan, and have great customer support.
MediaTemple	$20/month	24/7 phone support	I currently host this site with MediaTemple. Starting at $20/m they aren’t cheap, but I have had a great experience with them so far.
iPage	$3.50/month (current special)	24×7 Phone, Chat and Email Support	I haven’t used iPage. They appear to be geared towards beginners by simplifying the web-hosting process. They offer a money-back guarantee.
Host Gator	$6.95-$9.95/month	24/7 phone and chat support	Hostgator is another one of the well-known hosting companies. I haven’t tried them out either. They offer a 45-day money-back guarantee as well as a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
JustHost	$3.45/month (current special)	24/7 phone and chat support	JustHost is one I recently heard about, but have no experience with. They offer a money-back guarantee and a free domain for life.
Dreamhost	$8.95/month	Only email ticket-support or pay extra to get a callback	I started with Dreamhost and still have a few sites hosted there. I was happy with them for the price, but I always longed for phone support and they don’t really offer it. If you decide to use them, I have a coupon code you can use for 25% off… just enter “Christianblog” as the promo code.

---

Get a customizable theme

After I took the step the self-host this site, the next step that greatly helped me increase earnings was choosing a highly-customizable theme. I don’t necessarily recommend doing this at the beginning, since it does cost money to get a good theme, but once you are committed to blogging and are willing to invest a few bucks, putting that money towards a good theme is a good investment. For this site, I purchased Semiologic, which is a fantastic theme that gives you a lot of control. It costs $300 for the full version, but I quickly made that money back because the theme allowed me optimize my ad placement in ways that no other themes did.

If you are a programmer, you really don’t need to buy a theme because you can make the all the customizations yourself to any basic theme. Since starting to blog a couple years ago, I have learned some HTML codes, but I am still about the furthest thing from a programmer! So for people like me, a customizable theme allows me to control things and areas of the site that I would never be able to change with out the help of a programmer.

My Themes

At the time of this writing, I am still using Semiologic for the theme on this site, but since I had been hearing so much buzz about the Thesis Theme, I decided to buy it and try it out on another one of my sites. I have to admit, I never thought it would be able to compete with Semiologic, but I am finding out how wrong I was. After testing it out, I really am very impressed with it. Right out of the box, it provides you with a very pretty looking site that is very easy to customize. It is SEO optimized very well, has a ton of support for it, and once you figure out how to use the hooks you can customize it to oblivion if you want. The kicker is that you can buy it and get lifetime updates for $87. I still really like Semiologic and think it is a great theme, but for the price, if I were shopping right now, I would go with Thesis. I am going to get to know and learn Thesis on my other site for a while and make sure that it really is everything that I think it is and eventually I will convert this site to Thesis.

Update: I have now switched this site over to Thesis and I couldn’t be more happy with it. If you do get Thesis, I highly recommend the OpenHook Plugin – you will be able to easily do just about any customization that you can imagine.

If you are shopping for WordPress themes, the Frugal theme and Socrates are two more that might be worth looking into.

---

How I make money with this blog

When I go to family functions or social events I often get a blank stare when I explain what I do for a living. I think people understand the part that I write articles and put them on a website, but when it comes to making money from it, they don’t get it. In this section I will lay it out and hopefully it will help bring some clarity…

CPC Ad Networks

There are a few different ad networks that I use on CPF. The most successful one has been Google’s Adsense program. Basically what they do is read the article that I write and find ads that are relevant to it and display them next to the article. The great thing about it is that by having extremely relevant ads, it actually can be quite beneficial to the readers as well. For example, if I write an article explaining what an IRA was, but didn’t mention where you could open one, Adsense would likely be displaying ads of places to open an IRA.

So as a reader, if I read that article and decided that I did want to open an IRA, the ads would be providing options that the article did not. I am currently doing a few tests with another CPC network called Chitika. Apparently, you can use it in conjunction with Adsense. The jury is still out, but I am interested to see how it compares to Adsense. All things considered, I have found that if optimized correctly, Adsense really can work well. I will explain more about how to optimize it in sections below.

CPM Ad Networks

While Adsense pays on a click basis (CPC), I use other ad networks that pay by the total # of impressions (CPM). At the beginning, these networks didn’t produce much income, but as the traffic grows CPM networks seem to work well in conjunction with Adsense. I use (or have used) Adsdaq, AdClickMedia, Adbrite, Adify, BuzzLogic, and Casale Media. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses and may be suitable for one kind of a site and not another.

Affiliate Product Sales

Basically an example of an affiliate sale would be if you sold lawn mowers and I referred a customer to you, if they purchased you would pay me back a % of the sale for referring them. There are a million options for this on the internet now. The main programs I use are Amazon’s Affiliate program, FlexOffers, LinkConnector, Commission Junction, Shareasale, E-Junkie, and LinkShare. There are many others, but these are a few of the more popular ones available.

I have a very strong policy about honest recommendations. I give my honest opinions about products that I find regardless of how it will affect affiliate sales. This is probably why I don’t really make too much with affiliate products. For example, I wrote about Cash Crate and updated the article to show what I didn’t like about them. Because Cash Crate has such a generous referral program, I know some people making lots of money from it, but I just don’t feel comfortable recommending it since I had a bad experience using it. On the other hand there are products like ING Direct, Ebates, Amazon Prime, Ebay, and Sharebuilder that I recommend and also have some sort of affiliate or referral program as well. These are what I love because I can help readers by pointing them to good resources and tools that have helped me and get paid in the process. I know some people don’t have a problem promoting anything that will pay them, but I just can’t, in good conscience, recommend something to someone that I don’t genuinely believe will help them.

Direct Ad Sales

I also sell ad space directly to advertisers. This hasn’t provided much income for me yet and may or may not even be worth my time. I know that in certain niche markets direct ad sales can work out very well, but thus far it hasn’t been a big money maker on CPF.

---

How long does it take to make money from a blog

The second question that people normally ask after, “how do I make money with a blog?” is, “how long is it going to take?”. Well just like most things in life, there is no legitimate quick and easy way. It takes time and hard work. As you can see from the chart below it took me a long time before the trend started moving upward. But, for more than a year I was working at it about 10 hours a week. And don’t forget I didn’t know anything about blogging, advertising, getting traffic, etc when I started. So, if you know that ChristianPF is a blog, then you have a head start on me. Also, you have the wonderful privilege of reading this article where I am going explain most of the things that I did to help create that upward trend seen below – that I didn’t know the first year.

Blog earnings visualized

From other people I know who make a decent amount from their blogs, this curve seems to be typical. While the first year didn’t yield much income, it was crucial for the second year to be able to. While I wish I could tell you that you could jump right ahead to where the income starts increasing quicker, but I just don’t think it is likely. There are some tips in this article that I wish I would have known at the beginning and I think they will make things go a lot quicker, but there is no getting around the fact that it is going to take time to get there. But just like anything, the more you put in, the more you get out. The two keys are consistency and a willingness to learn. Without them, I would say that it will be very difficult to make money with your blog.

---

How to get traffic to your blog

So now are getting to the point of this article where I start sharing everything I have learned over the last couple years about blogging. So, if you are like most, you want to create a blog so that others can read what you have to say. Sadly, people will not find your blog (in the beginning anyway) unless you do a little legwork. These are some of the things I did to get traffic and some that I still do. The first thing I suggest doing is writing a few great articles about your topic and feature them in your sidebar. Then I would start working on generating traffic, because you not only want traffic, but you want returning traffic as well.

Guest Posting!!

I think this is one of the best ways to start getting some quick traffic. Almost every blog I know allows guest posts (even this one) – and almost every one of those does not discriminate. What I mean is that most bloggers (that I know anyway) will accept or reject a guest post based on it’s quality, not on whether they know the person or not. This provides a great opportunity for a newbie to write an article that could be seen by 20,000 readers.

I don’t know of any other method that could bring traffic as quick. I must admit, I could still do more guest posting myself. I have been pleased with the results in the past. The key is to write a great article – don’t hold back your best stuff. I have seen people grow their blogs very quickly by giving some of their best articles away as guest posts. Also, only submit unpublished content as a guest post. If it has already been published, then the blog that is allowing you to guest post won’t get any search engine traffic for that article. But there are places to republish your articles you have already published – we will get to that in a minute…

Sign up for blog community sites

Just a few off the top of my head are mybloglog.com, technorati.com, and blogcatalog.com. Look for other blogs in your niche and join their networks and ask to become their friends. Networking with some of your fellow bloggers here will send a few visitors your way and is a good way to get started.

Submit to Blogcarnivals

One of the best things beginning bloggers can do is to sign up for blogcarnivals. At this site you can submit articles that you wrote on your blog to be included in a list of articles by the hosting blog. It is kind of like “open mic night.” If you have a good article with a good title, you can get some good traffic from blogcarnivals, not to mention incoming links from other related sites.

Join Directories

If I were starting a blog today, one of the first things I would do is Google “whatever topic I want to blog about” + “directory” This should return a list of web directories about your topic. Getting added to these directories will only help. You may not get a lot of traffic from them, but ultimately they will help you get more traffic from the search engines. A few of the more valuable ones to get you started…

• Yahoo Directory
• BOTW.org
• DMOZ.org
• Blogged.com
• JoeAnt.com
• Greenstalk.com
• Familyfriendlysites.com

Blog Commenting

One of the absolute best ways for new blogs to get traffic is just to comment on other blogs. Commenting with a thoughtful and provocative response will often send a few visitors your way. The blogging community is generally a very social community and those who are active in the community often reap the rewards of it.

Forum Commenting

Becoming involved in forums related to your topic and having a link to your blog in the signature line can send a few visitors. Google “your topic” and “forums” and you are sure to find a few. Just don’t be annoying and go in just to promote yourself. People can see that from a mile away. The new age of the internet (aka Web 2.0) is very much a “give and you shall receive” environment. If you seek to give and be a benefit before seeking your own rewards, you will be much better off. Why not get started at the Christian PF Forums?

Linking to other blogs

I don’t know what it is, but everyone wants to know when someone is talking about them. So it is with blogs. When people link to my site, I get a notification and often go check out who linked to me and what the context was. I have had some good relationships form just from this.

Create Squidoo pages

Squidoo.com, Hubpages.com and a handful of others are sites that allow you to build a simple page about a topic. You can do it very quick and the pages often rank well in the search engines. If you build a page that gets a little bit of traffic and have links coming back to your site, you will catch some of those visitors.

Article submissions

Submit articles to article submission sites. These sites collect articles and most allow a bio-section that can include a link back to your blog. Here are a few that are worth looking into…

• ezinearticles.com
• goarticles.com
• articledashboard.com
• buzzle.com
• articlecity.com

---

SEO tips for blogs

It will take a while to get a decent amount of traffic from the search engines. The search engines do not like NEW websites. They like more established sites that have a lot of people linking to them, hence proving that they are reputable. This is why getting links from other bloggers, directories, other web sites that have a good reputation in the search engines’ eyes is very important. As your blog begins to grow by having more pages and more links the search engines will begin to send you more and more traffic. This is a good thing!! But, as I mentioned earlier, they are very wary of new websites – so time will be your ally when it comes to the search engines.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an science/art (depending on who you ask) that focuses on getting your website or blog to the top of the search engine listings. Being at the top of Google’s results for any decent keywords can be a great source of traffic and the greatest part about it is that it is FREE TRAFFIC!!!

I am not going to get deep into SEO much here, there are far more thorough books about it (i.e. SEOBook) but as your blog grows you should try to learn more about it, as it will only help you by knowing more. Just like most of the things you will learn while blogging, you don’t need to be an expert at it – just having a working knowledge will provide great results. The thing to remember about the search engines (especially Google) is that they are trying to create a perfect system where any searcher can find exactly what they want. Google wants to display the most relevant websites to their searchers. They will never have a perfect system, but they probably won’t stop trying. If you can keep this in mind, it will be very helpful when you are trying to optimize your blog. Don’t waste your time trying to trick them, they will figure it out and will punish you for it. Just focus on making it very clear to them what your site is all about and writing great content for your reader and the rest will take care of itself.

So, let’s get to some SEO. These are some of the most important (in my opinion) pieces of SEO that every beginner should know. If you do these right, you will be much better off than most people who don’t know anything about SEO.

1. Title Tags

This may be the single most important part of on-page SEO. The title tag of your website is what shows up in the top of your browser window. It is also one of the most important determining factors that the search engines use to determine what your site is about.

In the above picture you can see that the title tag is “Christian Personal Finance – Financial help, debt help…” You WILL want to make sure that your title tags contain the keywords that you want to rank for in the search engines. If your site is about rock climbing, you will not want to have “welcome to Bill’s blog” in the title tags. Something better would be “Rock climbing 101 | the best rock climbing techniques”

2. Anchor Text

Anchor text – the text that people use when linking. For instance, if I created a link for a great search engine you can see that the link will go to Google. “great search engine” is the anchor text. The anchor text is a big deal, because it tells the search engines what other sites say your site is about. Google really places a lot of importance on what words are in the anchor text. Obviously, you will not be able to control how other people link to your site all of the time. But, for those times that you can, you should use your keywords when possible. Linking to other pages and posts on your website, directory submissions, blog carnivals, and your signature line in forums all may be good places to make sure you get your keywords in your anchor text.

3. Keyword Research

If you are trying to get traffic from search engines, it is always a good idea to know what people are searching for before you start writing. I often use Aaron Wall’s keyword tool and run some keyword ideas through it to get estimates of how many people are searching for them.

4. Get links

We already lightly discussed the importance of links coming into your blog. Other that the great benefit they play in improving your search rankings, they also send visitors to your site. It is an obvious benefit, but often overlooked by people focusing on SEO. If you get a link from a blog that gets a lot of visitors, you could see a huge traffic spike from it. If you get links from lots of blogs, you could and will see visitors coming from most of them. Maybe not a bunch, but as you get more and more links, you will see more visitors coming. The bottom line about link-building is that you have to create something great that people want to link to. If you can consistently do that, many other things will fall into place.

---

How I increased Adsense earnings $1500 in less than 3 months

This section is going to be a little bit beyond the basics and I will provide details of how I dramatically improved earnings from Adsense. Just to clarify, at the time of this increase I was already making some money with Adsense, but I had no idea how much difference a few tweaks could make. In my case I increased earnings over $1500 in a short amount of time. The thing you have to understand about Adsense is that no two sites are alike. Every blog has a different audience and different articles and most likely a different layout, all these things affect Adsense earnings. Knowing that, testing and trying new things is critical to find the winners!

1. Added a Privacy Policy

This is such a simple thing to do. I never realized that is a “requirement” for Adsense publishers, but when I added a link in my footer to my Privacy Policy there was a noticeable increase in earnings. I assume that Google rewards those who have a privacy policy and punishes those that don’t by trimming their earnings. In a perfect world you would want your lawyer to draft your privacy policy, but here is a sample template of a privacy policy to make your life a bit easier.

2. Put ads where people’s eyeballs went…

For me there is an eternal struggle between usability and profitability with ads. While I want need to make money to pay my bills, I still want to make this site as user friendly as possible. So, I have made some sacrifices with this site in order to maintain certain levels of usability, but one of the main keys to making money with Adsense is ad placement. Like I mentioned before, this needs to be experimented with. But for the first year or more of this site I just kinda threw the ads where ever I had extra room. Once I changed the location of my ads, my earnings tripled overnight. It really freaked me out. I had no idea that just moving an ad a couple inches would have such a dramatic effect. The diagram to the right (from Google) provides some good starting point for what locations work and don’t.

3. Section Targeting

This was another tweak I made that made a noticeable difference in earnings. Basically “section targeting” is telling Google what text on your site to look at when deciding what ads to show. Google is pretty good at figuring this out if you don’t do this, but if you have a lot of stuff going on in your sidebars and footer sections, it is probably worth experimenting with. It is very easy to implement. You only need to use this tag… to tell Google to start, and this tag… …to tell them to stop. I just added a text widget at the top of my post for the start tag and after the content for the end tag.

4. Who Sees Ads Plugin

This is a great plugin that allows you (as the name suggests) choose which visitors see which ads. There are lots of criteria that you can select, so you can specify that Search Engine users see a particular Adsense unit when regular readers see something else. I have found that search engine visitors click Adsense ads a lot more than regular readers. I still show some Adsense to regular readers, but I focus my energy on the visitors from search engines – this plugin makes this very easy.

5. Changed the colors

When Adsense first came out, people said to make the colors as loud and ugly as possible to draw attention to them. Next I heard that the best thing to do was to blend them into the site. Of the two methods I think that blending works a little better, and definitely looks a lot better! But, I have a slight variation of that has worked even better for me. Currently I have have most of my links set to a lighter blue color. I used to have many of my Adsense ads match that, but I saw a nice increase when I changed the Ad titles to the old standard Link Blue. I feel that visually it is a complement rather than a match. It stands out a little bit more, but doesn’t look bad either – IMO…

6. Wrote articles people are searching for

This might seem unrelated, but it is very important. If you are like most bloggers, you have a regular readership and you have readers from the search engines. For some reason, a lot of bloggers just don’t give much respect to search engine readers and don’t really try to reach out to them other than trying to “convert” them to a regular reader. I approach things a little bit differently, rather than getting frustrated at the fact that so many search engine visitors don’t come back, I started to embrace it. I realized that my main goal of this site was to help people, so why should I care if they only visit once or on a daily basis if they are getting helped? So while I very much appreciate and value my regular readers, I also understand that I can help those who find the site via a search engine. I started doing keyword research to see what people were looking for in the search engines. If there are people searching to find out how to sell stuff on Ebay, I want to help them find out! What happened for me as I started to become more conscious of what people were searching for was that I started getting more search engine traffic – which of course leads to higher earnings from Adsense.

7. Added a Google search bar

This is a no-brainer. Google is the master of search, so you can bet that their search capability on your site is going to be better than the default WordPress search tool. By installing this, you will help your visitors find the information that they are looking for on your site and make some extra cash in the process. When the search results (from the websites you choose) are displayed they have the standard Google ads present, just like normal Google search results.

8. Hooked Google Analytics up with Adsense

A few months ago, Analytics started allowing the option to integrate your Adsense data. This has been so helpful for me. It provides webmasters with a wealth of information about earnings. It is simple to see which articles are making the most money, which keywords are yielding the most, what sites send the most valuable traffic, and a whole lot more. If you use Adsense, don’t pass this one up.

9. Tested, re-tested, and tested again…

When running Adsense tests, I typically let them run for a month in order to make sure they are very thorough. I have a calendar that I use to mark down when I make changes and what changes I make. Then when the test is complete I compare CPM and eCPM rates to see what performed better. A/B split testing is a better method when possible, but for certain tests is just isn’t possible or practical. But either way, if you want to make more money with Adsense, experimenting and testing is a must!

---

11 tools that have helped make it all possible…

Not all of these tools directly contribute to the bottom line, but each one of them have been very helpful over the last couple years.

1. Google Analytics – which is a wonderful (and free) statistics tool that will help you keep track of your visitors and analyze a lot of data about them. As I mentioned before it now integrates with Adsense to give even more valuable data.
2. Semiologic WP Theme – This is the theme I used to use for most of my WordPress sites. It costs about $300 for the full version, but I started with the free version, which I think is far more customizable than the vast majority of WP themes out there already. So if you are just starting out your probably don’t need the full version yet, but eventually it is probably worth considering. For what it has allowed me to do I know that it has paid for itself many times over.
3. Google webmaster tools – This will help you see how Google views your blog. They will also let you know if there are any problems with it that you may not be aware of. For me I had some issues that were really hurting my search rankings, but I found out about them and fixed them and voila! All better.
4. Aweber Email Marketing Service – I haven’t been using this too long, but if you read anything about internet marketing, you will certainly hear about the incredible value in having an email list. I have been happy with Aweber thus far.
5. Google’s Keyword Tool – This is a great tool to get ideas about popular keywords as well.
6. SEObook Keyword Tool – I use this to get a ballpark estimate of how many people are searching for particular key phrases.
7. SocialPoster – This tool allows you to submit articles to multiple social sites. I used to use it to submit to about the top 5-10 social sites.
8. Hittail.com – This one provides ideas for articles based on what you have previously written about and could probably rank for. I just noticed that the free version is gone. If you have a blog that is established it might be worth paying $10 a month for it – I suggest doing the free-trial and see how much it helps you.
9. Stock.xchng – The best free stock photography site I have found.
10. iStockPhoto – The best cheap stock photography site I have found. They have lots of images that you can get for just a few bucks.
11. Feedburner – If you have a blog, you will want to burn a feed. Feedburner makes this fun, organized, and easy…

A few more tools that may be worth checking out…

• Scribe SEO Tool for WordPress – I wrote a more thorough review of this tool that the blogging tips subscribers received (you can sign up for free below if interested). But basically, I tried it out and decided not to continue to use it because I thought it was priced a little to high for what I got from it. It can make the SEO process a bit easier, but I just wasn’t sure about spending $27 on it. If they lower the price, I might recommend it a bit more.
• Frugal Theme for WordPress – This is another premium theme like Thesis and I haven’t tried it out yet, but it seems to be gaining popularity.
• Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind Training Course – I haven’t tried this, but have heard good things about it. Yaro is an extremely successful internet marketer and I have learned a whole lot from him. If I were starting out today and could afford the program, I would do it. Since it has a hefty price tag, it would probably be a good idea to wait until you are actually making a little money from your blog before signing up.

---

Warnings for those starting out…

Don’t quit your day-job

Even if you know a lot about making money with a blog (which just be reading this article, you have a tremendous advantage over me when I started) it is going to take a while. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it is more of a work-for-free-for-a-long-time-and-then-reap-your-reward type plan. The beautiful thing is that I can now say that it does work if you are diligent and open to learning from your mistakes. But either way, convention wisdom says, build your blog part-time and when you start making more from it than your day-job consider making it a full-time deal. My situation is a unique one and I don’t recommend doing what I did unless it really is God calling you to do so. In my case I am now thankful that I got laid off – if I hadn’t I would probably still be doing a job I didn’t like!

Learn everything you can

One of the advantages I have is that I love to learn and don’t stop when I make a mistake. I work really hard to learn from my mistakes and figure out what the better course of action would be for the next time. You are going to do things wrong, but you just have to keep going and keep learning. Learning how to use Google search is very important. If you do, you will be able to find an answer to just about every problem you encounter on the web.

Avoid time-wasters

Checking your stats every hour, reading 500 blogs in your RSS, playing on Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, or Youtube all day will kill your productivity. Focus on what yields results and stay disciplined to stick with that. Social media is an important part of building traffic, but you have to keep it in check.

Have fun

While I wrote this article as a guide to help those who want to make money with a blog, I understand that many people don’t really care about that. Either way, life is too short not to be enjoying it. So whether you want to be a full-time blogger or just communicate with friends – have fun!!

Technically Speaking, you may want to still read more …

Some really good scheduling and blogging tips here:

Humans are fascinating creatures!

They can easily spend thousands of dollars in buying expensive gadgets or beautiful cars even if they struggle with paying their bills at the end of the month. Being this kind of person is not coherent with a successful blogger persona.

Intelligent people understand that they should not go beyond what they can afford.

First Things First

You cannot build a house without first gathering the needed materials. If you try to do that, you will end up losing time, resources and money. Instead, you need to have a long term plan before doing anything and taking the right decisions is the most important part of it. As a blogger, it is essential that you take an approach on accomplishing the things that matter for the current stage of your blog’s growth. For instance, there would be no real point in worrying about monetizing your blog if you have not acquired a traffic base first. This just serves as a way to lose focus and time over what really matters.

A Clever Blogger Schedules

There is something that all successful bloggers have in common. They know what needs to be done, they feel it. Wasting time is not what they would ever do. On the contrary, they invest their time properly and make the most out of it. In short, they schedule. Don’t think that they create a real step by step procedure on what will happen 3 days from now. However, they have a plan on what SHOULD happen in 30 days, they set up milestones, watch how they evolve, evaluate and correct them. I thought that giving you an example of an effective schedule would be a nice idea. Using it as is now is not really the point. What you need to do is go in your own pace, but be consistent and stick to the plan. Let’s start scheduling, shall we ?

Days 1-15 : Go Live, Write Your First 10 posts

The first thing that you need to do, is of course start working on your blog. It is always a good idea to create the basis of your blog by writing about 10 posts. Try to include topics that you feel confident about, the ones that you would think they have the potential to go viral. After all, your first goal is to start blogging. In order to do that, you need to create your first content.

Days 16-31: Put Your Blog Aside For a While, Guest Post And Network

Now, you may groan a little about that. I am sorry, but this is what you have to do now. You have just created some nice posts in your blog, but nobody knows about you. Would it make sense to keep on writing more content for your blog, just to look at it while it rains outside ? Beginners think that they should just keep on creating more and more content and people will eventually find their blog. It does not work like this though. You have to spread the word about your blog.

A great way to do this is guest post for other blogs. Write posts, but write them for other influential blogs of your niche. This way, people that are interested in your niche will get to know that you exist. Better yet, if your guest post presented some valuable information to them, they will visit your blog. Your networking with the market that you target has just started. Further expand with socializing in blogs, forums and social media.

Days 32-63: Iterate Between Writing For Your Blog And Other Blogs

A successful blogger is a passionate writer. He wants to please the crowd. Even if that means that he does that by means of writing for other blogs. Now that you have already written content for other blogs, balance things a bit. For every 3 posts that you write for your blog, write 1 guest post for another blog. Decide whether you want to write multiple or single posts for a blog. Writing multiple posts serves for better interacting with a blog’s community, while writing a single post for each blog, gets you more backlinks that increase your search engine results over time.

Days 64-95: Establish a Visitor Base, Make Everything REALLY Easy

Technically Speaking, always, always read more …

This is a good article to read more of:

Guest blogging is one of the most powerful practices for making yourself known as a blogger or writer and will seriously push your blog promotion to a higher level. Personally, it has helped me to build some solid relationships with other bloggers, quickly grow my site’s traffic and dedicated readership and granted me the privilege of becoming a writer for one of the most popular blogs on the web, Blogging Pro.

Here is an excellent guide that will show you the great benefits achieved through dedicated guest blogging as well as how to master these golden opportunities. I will start the guide off with some Techniques & How To’s.

Guest Post on Popular High Traffic Blogs

As a new blogger one may feel intimidated by other successful bloggers in the industry and feel that they’re not good enough to even approach a star blogger with a request for guest posting. No worries, this is a natural feeling and is simply human nature. However, it is a fear that is not worth nurturing and requires bold steps to overcome. Forget your fears or doubts and go for the most popular blogs you can find and make that request. What’s the point in aiming small? You aim small, your traffic and popularity will be small as well.
Host Blog Should have an Author Profile Section & Allow Linking

Though you’re not guest posting for the sole purpose of gaining and not giving anything to the community, host bloggers really should offer some benefits to their guest bloggers. The basic benefits include, at least 2 links back to your blog, an author bio box below the post or an author bio page. Some bloggers will allow up to 4 links back to your site.

Technically Speaking, there is an entire network here that helps this read more…

Found another good article on students blogging and making money:

The general definition of a student all around the world is same – a child who studies. Their daily routine comprises of going to school/college and completing assignments related to your subjects. Normally, a student’s life is considered boring because he do not have much to do except studying and securing good marks.

But in this era of modernization and materialism, students need extra money to live their life and so they are indulging in part time jobs. And lot of them has opted for blogging. I personally feel that blogging is the best part time business for any student. There are lots of positives in blogging which can compliment your all round performance.

The general definition of a student all around the world is same – a child who studies. Their daily routine comprises of going to school/college and completing assignments related to your subjects. Normally, a student’s life is considered boring because he do not have much to do except studying and securing good marks.

But in this era of modernization and materialism, students need extra money to live their life and so they are indulging in part time jobs. And lot of them has opted for blogging. I personally feel that blogging is the best part time business for any student. There are lots of positives in blogging which can compliment your all round performance.

Here are the top 5 reasons why a student should go for blogging if he/she is thinking of a part time job:

1. Very Little Investment – Blogging does not require huge investment. If you are passionate or very knowledgeable about something (cricket, technology, commerce, environment etc.) and can spare an hour or two and Rs 200 per month from your pocket money, you can easily start a blog with own hosting and domain. My blog, BloggersPassion, just cost me Rs. 1000 per year. You need to do hard work in the beginning and after that, life will become easy for you as a blogger.
2. Work At Your Own Leisure – The major problem with students is the time. They have to adjust their schedule for other jobs. But for blogging, you can work when you want. Late at night or early in the morning; it’s entirely your choice. You decide the work hours and effort without anyone’s supervision.
3. Great Boost In Resume – If you will mention in your resume that as a student, you are into serious blogging and are successful; that will be a strong point in your hobbies or extra curricular activities and will surely impress the Human Resource Department, thereby increasing your chances of being selected.
4. Popularity With Knowledge – A successful blog can get you fame more than topping your examinations and you can be a popular guy in the college. Blogging is not considered a common activity in India and a blogger is bound to receive huge compliments, but only if his blog is successful and recognized. If you fail, then you will be ignored and labeled as just another internet psycho.
5. Huge Returns – Nothing could be better in a student’s life than earning an extra few hundred bucks. Blogging can fetch you lot of them and if you consider the fact that every thing is earned in US dollars and the conversion rate of USD to INR is quite good, an extra amount of Rs. 4000 would be too much to say. This is enough money to take care of your EXTRA EXPENSES (I hope you get them).

Technically Speaking, you will want to go read more for all the cool links in that article…

I’m deleting my Facebook page today at 1pm Pacific today.

You can watch live here, and perhaps join me!
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/this-week-in-startups

So what about YOU? Waiting for May 31st to roll around? Are you deleting your Facebook account, or at least by June 1st when this poll ends?

Vote in this Twtpoll:

Technically Speaking, are YOU joining everyone else and commit social media suicide as Frank put it?

Found this one about social landing pages and social e-mails:

Do you want your landing pages and emails to be shared in social media, but don’t know how to encourage your readers to do so? It is not as hard as you might think.

A simple way to make your landing pages social media friendly is to use a plug-in like ShareThis or AddThis. These sites add a small bar to a blog post or web page that allows content to be distributed to hundreds of sites.

The problem with this is you may want to customize the message that is going to be shared. This means sharing more than a URL by adding the content title or promotion into the message as well. Fortunately, custom links that share your content in social media are easy, too. This can be done in emails or landing pages for lots of sites including Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, and more.

Simply replace (xURLx) with the actual URL and (xTitlex) with the actual title for these popular sites.

Technically Speaking, and personally speaking, I still believe that the plugin is the best route to go, but this is good information!

It looks like one of the leaders of the podcasting, blogging, videocasting movement if you will has decided earlier today that he had enough. He paid someone to trim his stream to a trickle. That almost sounds like a cheap porn movie title. In reality the stream became Scoble’s porn. He was addicted to it. Blogging, Podcasting, Videocasting, Twitter, Friendfeed, Area 51! Er, Building43! I think you get my point. Someone who has made his livlihood by living in the stream, drinking from the stream, has declared stream bankruptcy.

I saw that coming though. While certain people like Marshall will never unfollow you, there are others like me who have taken smaller drinks from the stream known as twitter, Friendfeed, blogging, podcasting, and videocasting. Sorry, no Area 51 for the moment for me! I’ve come to find that my current ratio of follow to followers keeps things interesting enough, yet not overwhelming. It also keeps my stream a worthwhile pursuit vs a living daily nightmare to even look at or make any sense of.

The bigger picture of course is the graphic I found earlier today on Seth’s site this morning. That is the question of the moment more important than any stream trickle trick. The main question that is brought up while we are in this downturn time we live in is where do we go from here. He laid it out in a very simple graphic on two axis that made sense. We see what works. We also see what takes longer to work and requires more work to get there. Twitter is something that worked due to Scoble and some of the early believers in it. They kept squirting their stream all over everyone, every single moment, every single day – until you just had to try it!

Technically Speaking, with Seth’s graphic from this morning in mind – A television show about a book reader that likes to IM his or her friends, while occasionally e-mailing a mysterious person they saw at the movies last weekend while they were tweeting someone from their cell phone and watching cable news and blogging their reaction to it – should go over like gangbusters! Wait for it… Wait for it…. >:-?

This is your last chance to leave your opinion via a twitter hashtag – #freeschtuff – and all you have to do is check out one or all of the Church Tongue songs below and leave your thoughts on twitter. Made it a simple click operation (ie: you can listen right here on this page) since I just installed this WP-Plugin.

Simple! You’ll be entered for a chance to win a – $25 eGift Card from RizzoTees.

– i’d f**k elvis (ruff memphis demo) – JUST released in the past week!
– SEX KISS – semi-NEW SINGLE!
– impress us with your drugs
MySpace Page – Church Tongue – leave comments/friend if you have a MySpace account!

More info / background is here:

The Gutter : pre-Church Tongue (for a bit of a background)
– Casket mp3
– Outlook mp3

Church Tongue : Your Opinion could be worth $25 via – #freeschtuff

Technically Speaking, I’ll be drawing the entrants to the #freeschtuff (only 3 so far) out of a black top hat tomorrow – Wednesday 7/15/09 – Live on UStream! Here are the 3 that have entered (left their opinions via #freeschtuff) to win that $25 eGift Card from RizzoTees or FREE T-shirt:

@klasinski
@kopper
@jonconnelly

I just so happened to be on twitter search a few hours ago when I saw the #followlist tweet. While I was there checking that out, I decided to see what was up in the #STL. The below was sitting at the top of the list. I just went back on another search for #iab, and it was still sitting at the top of the list.

The question is – who is @thedarz and why is his hate for the STL so big that he has to come out and F-Bomb the whole city? Interesting things you find via hashtags.

Update: One of the cool things about blogging, is sometimes you can get immediate reaction. My apologies to @jjeffryes, at times I can pull the trigger really quick, in this case I was totally wrong about this person.

Another thing that I saw was this guy here, @jjeffryes saying how the STL is 10 years behind in social media. He even went on to say it again via another tweet right here. Yes, I went to his site – saw no way to contact him – so left a comment on the blog post he had there. I even did a ping on his above tweet.

Technically Speaking, the first part of being any type of social media person, is the first part of that over used phrase. If you can’t be social or even respond to pings that you asked for, than you may as well be classified in the first F-bomb person’s group.