zerotomed.com

For those that don’t know, school has started for me. Classes have yet to begin, but I volunteered to be an orientation leader. That means that I will be doing a lot of work from 7:00AM until 12:00AM. As you can see, I will be working for about seventeen hours in one day, but I am alright with that. The only downfall with doing all of that work is that I will be unable to GET any website work done. I mean, my websites are going to lag, but I think it’s alright. August will be coming to an end and that’ll leave me a chance to make September amazing.

First and foremost is Dorm Earning will be getting a minimum of two posts a day. This is important because it’ll really increase traffic. Content is king and that is imperative. I am hoping that I can also get the RSS up as well as the PR to something other than 0 so I can get it some good link sales as well as some good reviews written. I intend on kicking out the middle man if this other program gets up and running. I wrote about it on my blog all about removing the middle man.

In the end, all that happens is that I will be working heavily on trying to increase the profitability of that blog. Since I am not going crazy on small content sites like I had intended at the end of last semester because it will be too much work, I have to ensure that the larger sites get even larger. I’d love to have a unique theme for Dorm Earning by the end of September, but I may not have the money. If I do, that is where my money will go without a doubt. But, in the end, what I need to do is get the site’s traffic doubled. But, this weekend I will be away, so the start of September will definitely be eventful. Let’s hope for the best!

One of the hardest things I think for me when I first started on the web was starting. Look, I may not make a lot of money and that’s cool, but the hardest part for me was actually getting started. I was nervous to jump into this field and I was especially nervous to make a blog. It’s one thing to content write. I did it all the time. But, when it was time to create a blog and start getting more personal, I had no idea what to write about. I mean, if I were to paraphrase a conversation I had with my friend Lithman, it would sound something like this:

Me: So, what do I talk about?
Him: Whatever you want.
Me: So, if I wanted to talk about how microbiology sucked today, I could?
Him: You talk about whatever you want, it’s a personal blog.

I think that was the hardest part for me was getting started. So, I thank David for giving me that push to really get my blog started. Now, I’m going to do the same thing. I’m helping my friend get started. She’s making a blog, has never made one before, but I told her that I would help her. She wants to make money, but, I think she understands that you need a passion for writing on a blog to make that money. Blog for fun and you’ll make cash; blog for cash and you won’t have fun.

So…In a sense, I’ve become her mentor. That’s a good feeling knowing that someone will ask me questions and ask me advice. I want to give her all the advice I can because if she succeeds, it means that I helped her. Or it means that I just suck and she took better advice, which is a big possibility. To be completely honest, it really could benefit a lot of people if there were more people like David who offered help to a complete newbie like me. I was as dumb as possible about blogging. But now, I know a thing or two. Offering help is alright and that’s something a lot of people don’t really appreciate these days. We all started somewhere and rather than shunning people away, be a mentor. Offer help. So, that’s what I’m going to try and do. I’m going to help my friend create her blog and get her set up so she can really start going somewhere. Let’s hope for the best, eh?

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I believe in a very simple theory when I do work on the internet. Actually, it’s my theory straight across no matter what. My theory is very basic: be honest with the people who make you money. Now what does that mean? That means that since WE are the publishers, it is of great importance to companies to be honest to us. Don’t lie to us and definitely don’t steal our money. You’re doing us no favor. We’re doing you a favor. Without the publishers, you’d have no money. But, we could still survive because we could sell text-links or banner ads or reviews or anything else privately. So, don’t lie to us.

Unfortunately, the owners of Auction Ads seem to feel that this is a good call. On Digital Point, a thread was made about Auction Ads. You can view it here. Now, one of the members, GTAce, decided to question some of the things that were going on behind the scenes of Auction Ads. Now, if you remember, Shoemoney sold Auction Ads, so whatever I say here has absolutely NOTHING to do with him. I hear the program was exceptional until it was sold. Now, as you can see here, he has a few queries about what the hell is going on. First and foremost, why is it that suddenly, he’s made NO money? Now, it’s not that he isn’t making money that irritated the owner of Admin Fusion. It’s that the questions weren’t being answered.

Twice he submitted a ticket to the company. Now, this is the same company that owns Text-Link-Ads (I use them on this blog, but I am beginning to question whether I really want to). From what I’ve seen, they have been exceptional with their customer service. Yet, numerous publishers have been complaining about what was going on. No profits, hundreds of clicks, but no money. And when questions were asked, the company did not answer. They were either ignored or given fluff. Fluff is a bullshit (and I will curse) answer to a serious question. Did the company decide to finally start making money? If so, they ought to let the publishers know.

Personally, I think it is absolutely irresponsible of this company to have such horrible responses. Or no responses whatsoever, which really is bad. It’s one thing if one of the e-mails just goes unread. We’re all human, we make mistakes. But, if GTAce really did submit TWO separate tickets about this and instead of answering the question, it was denied that it was even happening. Now…I’ve stopped running AuctionAds because I was making crap from it. But I will say this…Honesty is of the utmost importance when you’re dealing with people who make your money. We make those companies money. We do the work, we make the money. Perhaps kicking out the middle man is a good idea. Whatever is going on…If this continues, I might question the security of my earnings on TLA and I would hate for that to happen.

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You know, one of the biggest things I was depending on for a profit this month was the PageRank toolbar update. Now I know that the toolbar update has absolutely nothing of importance to where your site ranks in the search engines, but it has everything to do when you are trying to sell links. And since ten bucks every single month comes from this blog here thanks to Medical Records Software, I have to say that the sale of links would mean a great increase of profits for me. Unfortunately, the update has not come. And part of me wonders if it ever will.

Google is obviously fed up with the sale of links. They don’t want us making money that they have no control over (yes, I am calling Google greedy) even though they sell links. Furthermore, they don’t want us to potentially skew their wonderful search engine by the sale of links. Want to know what I think? I think that’s rubbish. I think that Google needs to stop with their arrogance and allow people to do what they want with THEIR websites. If they are going to become greedier and greedier and give less money to their publishers, we need to find a way to make money elsewhere.

Now…I don’t know if this is true. I don’t know if Google just likes to make us sweat and I don’t know what the hell is going on. There are rumors that Google might get rid of the toolbar. If they do, whatever. I’ll find another way to make money. But I think since I do rely on that toolbar to make a little bit of money, it’d be nice to know what’s going on. Google says selling links is bad, but they do it. Why can’t we? Anyone got an opinion about this or am I just talking a bunch of trash?

A few days ago, I began to get to work on a few changes to Dorm Earning to try and expand the profitability and the growth of the site. If you go there and look now, you will see a few new things. The first is that you will see a totally new design. My mentality was that if I got a totally new design for the site, it might give it some unique feeling. I was unable to buy a custom one, but I did try and find one that wasn’t downloaded all that much. I am having a few problems with it, but I am sure if I tweak it and all, I will get it fixed.

The next thing that I did was change the adsense. The important thing to do is always experiment with ad placement. The original box was doing nothing, so I decided to make it easier on the reader’s eyes and put the ad at the bottom. It may not convert as well, but it might still convert well simply because it is in a different location. I think that since they will be done reading the article, they might click an ad. More likely, in my opinion, to click an ad when the text was finished being read than when they first started reading the article.

There are only a few things that I need to get done for the blog to really become profitable. The first that I really want to do is get some links sold. I am selling them for $15.00 a piece which is sort of expensive, but I think it might be a good price, especially if the PR does change during the month. The other that I would like is to get Kontera on there. Now, if I could get their manager to e-mail me back, I’d greatly appreciate it, but alas, you can’t always get what you want. The point is this…I really want to add a series of profitable programs to it and try to expand my profits. It’ll really make things easier. Oh well. Let’s hope for the best!

Over at Dorm Earning, I wrote a four part series all about creating a forum. One of those posts had to do with picking the right forum software. Now, I was able to give a general opinion about two out of three simply because I have them both. I’ve used vBulletin and I have used phpBB and both of them are spectacular. That didn’t use to be the case. The paid software is vBulletin and it’s a great software. The free software is phpBB and that, as well, is a great software now that it is in version three. I’m going to go over the cost benefits as well as which one I would recommend.

First and foremost, when you are creating a forum, I’d recommend really determining what you want to do. With my science forum, I bought a vBulletin license because it was considered the best. Now, would I still do this if I had known about phpBB3? The answer to that is no. Had I known that phpBB3 was coming out, I would have stuck with that simply because it would have saved me close to $200.00 that I could have used for promotion. Now, why do I say this? Because, phpBB3 is good enough that it rivals that of vBulletin. My friend over at Jackuul Empire absolutely LOVES phpBB. He considers version 3 to be the vBulletin killer.

As for aesthetics…I still think that phpBB is about the same as vB. The one thing that I will say about vB is that it has the ability to have a sidebar, at least, that’s what I’ve seen in a lot of their themes. Go take a look at Science Chats. As you can see, there is that “Affiliates and Sponsors” section. If you look at Debateful, we don’t have that. I like that, so when it comes to, at least in this case, the aesthetics of the forum, I’d have to go with vB. But, don’t get me wrong, some of the themes on phpBB that I have seen are spectacular.

Now…The final thing that I want to touch on is the Admin Panel. Which one is better, which one is nicer, and which one just makes me grin? The answer: phpBB. It’s more organized, it looks nicer, and just looking at, it makes me grin. On the top, it provides a series of buttons to take you to different other buttons that are in that section. On vBulletin, it’s all one long side panel. That’s cool, but when you’re in a hurry like I am sometimes, I don’t have to really look at the side bar. I just want to click click click and be done with it. The free software offers that. However, vBulletin is STILL good.

Now, if I were to make another forum, which software would I use? I’d go with phpBB. They’re free, so it saves me the necessary money I can use for marketing. They have a great admin panel and finally, they are open source, so they are quick to get new updates, new themes, new mods, everything, because they are open source. Firefox is open source and people love it. Linux is open source and people love it. phpBB is open source and I’m beginning to really choose that over vBulletin. So, if you’re looking to make a forum and you don’t have all that much cash, devote that money to growth of the site and don’t bother spending over $150 on vBulletin.

Today, I won’t be around because I will be doing something I have thought about since I started working on the web. I speak heavily on the importance of creating relationships and networking and all of that fun stuff. Well, I am finally getting out there and networking and forming relationships. Today I get to go into Manhattan and meet with an Ad Company that I run on my sites. Not only do I get to meet with them, but I get paid to meet with them and all of that. I really love the idea of getting paid (since I could use the cash), but just going down there is awesome enough.

Since I don’t know what I will be asked or what we’re going to talk about, I won’t go into too much detail about it today. However, on tomorrow’s blog post, I’ll tell you all what happens when meeting with an ad company. They want me to meet with their project manager, so I guess it’s exciting. All I know is this…I feel like I am finally moving up in this business. I’m in the beta program for this company and now I get to go meet with them in New York City. I love the city anyways, so this is is a real treat. Anyways…Let’s hope for the best!

I got an awesome e-mail today from Patrick Gavin, the President of Text-Link-Ads where he was offering a great deal to people. By just plugging in a single word, you can get 15% off any link you purchase. This is great, but there is more to it. Not only are you getting this off for THIS month, but if you continue to buy that link for two years, every single month, you will get that 15% off. So, this is really a great deal if you are going to stick around because every month is going to be the deal off.

For those that don’t know, Text-Link-Ads is a service that allows publishers to sell text links on their site and allows advertisers to find it. It’s got a massive marketplace, so there is definitely a lot of money to be made if your site is really growing. Now, I was thinking and it suddenly dawned on me on how you could expand on this great deal. If you have never signed up for Text-Link-Ads, I realized that if you were willing to put $25.00 down, you might be able to get a deduction even better than just 15%. Here’s what my thought process was. By just signing up for Text-Link-Ads, you get $100 in free links so long as you also spend $25.00. Well, what if you also put the special offer in? Now you’re getting that link for even cheaper on top of still getting the $100 free dollars in links. Now, since I am already in the service, I can’t try this out. But if you’ve never used the service, you’re definitely missing out. To sign up for Text-Link-Ads, just click here.

If you are interested in getting a link on this blog (which you all should totally do), then just buy the link here and you’ll be off. Now, since I have probably teased you enough by making you read the entire blog post before you get to the good part, here is the special word:

august

That’s all. Put that word in and you’ll get the 15% off. But remember, this offer is ONLY available for the rest of August, so get it before it’s too late. And since it is 15% for the duration of the order, this can really save you some good money and still provide you with some great link love. Good luck with the deal and let me know if the deal works.

Well, I thought about it tonight and I figured that since I am probably getting new readers all the time, why not show them what is making me my money. I thought I’d give a link to all of my top sites (which really aren’t all that many) and show you what my interests are (since I only do things that interest me) and what really works and doesn’t work for me. So, this is going to be a relatively short post just to talk about my top four sites.

• Science Chats: This is a science forum. And since profits have increased on the site, I have begun to appreciate more and more because of how much is beginning to show from it. I’m not making much, but I can say that with time and with more traffic, that’ll change quickly.
• Zero to Med: This is my personal blog. I mean, I’ve been writing on this since November and I really have to say, I love it. I love writing about what’s going on and I love writing about different news articles that are interesting. It gives me a little profit thanks to that TLA ad and I am pleased with it. Now, if only I could get the PR up so I could make more per TLA ad.
• Dorm Earning: This is my other blog all about how to make money online. I’m no expert. I know that. However, what I provide is information to steer the reader in the right direction. I don’t go into much detail, but I do provide the push to get them asking more questions. And when I learn something, I pass it on to them. Another fun site of mine.
• Debateful: This is my debate forum. It is my newest site and yet it is doing wonderfully. It is getting a lot of posts, a lot of heated arguments, but things aren’t getting out of control. I love the fact that people are just going on and posting their hearts out. If I was building a house, these members would be my foundation without a doubt. Next step? The floors.

So there you have it. Those are my four top sites currently. Now, I intend on writing another blog post about my top SIX sites if I ever get them up and running. In that post, I’ll talk about the work that needs to be done for each of them. But for now, I just wanted to show you what I do every day. What sites do I work on. What makes my day go by when I am working. Welcome to my life. Welcome to my sites.

WEEKENDS! The worst days of the week are weekends. I feel the laziest, my sites are the laziest, and visitors are the laziest. I was finally showing some progress with the new CPM company I was using and bam, the weekend hits, posts on my forums slow to a damn near halt, and profits dwindle. This blows and I say that in the meanest of ways. I guess when you don’t make any money, a bad day and a good day, there really is no difference. But when you’re finally starting to see some consistency and some constant days of profit, you begin to get angry at those days when that profit dwindles.

Now, tomorrow is Monday…Because of that and because I am getting excited about the money I am earning, I want to try and set up a check list of my weekly plans. It won’t be rigid because I could go over it. However, it will give me a base to ensure that I don’t go under. I think that’s something that I need to learn. I sometimes do the bare minimum and I have to wonder, is the bare minimum REALLY the minimum I should be doing. So, I figure if I can set up this check list, I might be able to increase my productability as well as my profits. We will see, I suppose.