photo credit: MoToMo

Around 1994, I was introduced to bulletin board services. I had this 286 computer that I bought at an auction for $50.00. I subscribed to one of the local bulletin boards, logged on and was amazed to be able to “chat” with other people on the network.

Well, shortly later that year I was introduced to America Online and the Internet. That was amazing experience as well.  That same year, I began publishing a free newspaper called “Music Contacts.” My magazine was online even before Billboard was online.

That was 14 years ago. As I watched this video of “Blog Across America, Part 2″ I realized the blogging community is at the beginning of a huge phenomenon that is taking place right before our eyes. The blogging explosion is at its infancy. I predict that bloggers will have the ability to build their own televison networks right on the internet. “The Oprahs” of the intenet will be born in just a matter of years as technology develops.

photo credit: Iain Farrell

Entrecard

Last night I signed up for Entrecard. I didn’t really know what to expect. However, when I work up this morning, I read an interview  with Graham Langdon, the 22 year old owner of Entrecard. I was impressed. When I got to work to discover more about Entrecard, I was hooked on the service.

Entrecard offers a way for bloggers to drop what are considered business cards at websites that have the Entrecard widget. This allows you to gain points for adverstising.

What I liked most is the custom designs of the Entrecards, the forum, and the way Graham has catagorized the blogs.

Bloggers have already created something which they call “speed dropping” in which they will visit a blogger’s website, drop their card and go to the next. However, I think they’re really missing the “gold” by not stopping to read some of the members blogs. There were so many good articles that I read from the marketing catagory. This alone was worth joining.

Today Hits (19)

My goal is to build my web traffic to average about 200 hits per day. I think I’ve figured out my blog stats problem and why the hits were off. It’s because of the timing. My WordPress blog stats plugin were off by 5 hours. I hope in a few days it will get sync with my other web analysis program.

photo credit: Jesper Rønn-Jensen

I’m a big fan of forums. There is a forum for just about any type of community you can think of. Bloggeries is a great forum for bloggers.

Today I thought I would experiment with building traffic by particpating in a few forums. Well, since I was at work, I couldn’t go into my personal email at home to verify the new accounts that I was creating.

One of the forums I created an account with is called Bloggeries. What I liked immediately about Bloggeries was that I was able to put my Adsense publisher’s id to split 50% of the Adsense revene generated by any thread I created. I liked that alot.

Second, I like the fact that you can’t start a thread until you’ve posted at least 10 post. This cuts out on the spammers.

Third, Bloggeries has some great resources. I found an article entitled “75 Website you can add your Blog to.”

As you can see, forums are little secret communites that store a wealth of knowledge on any subject. You can build traffic there because a lot of times you signature will be picked up by the search engines boosting your page rankings.

photo credit: lumaxart 

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve used three different web analytics to determine my traffic and the efforts.  Yesterday was a record breaking day. However, I don’t know which analytic program to believe.

• Google Analytics – 1 Visitor
• WordPress Stats – 68 Visitors
• Awstats – 98 Visitors

Even though the numbers are off by almost 30 visitors, one thing is for certain, the traffic came from Stumble Upon.

This has lead me to implement two ideas. Add more stats to the page and focus on Social Bookmarking for traffic

I ran across another relatively new social bookmark manager called Wagg It. As of today, it showed that it only had 2,190 members.

photo credit: A Touch of GlassDarren Rowse wrote an article on how to increase your traffic in 30 days with 3 actions. Using Technorati was one of them.

What is Technorati?

I actually have had an account with Technorati and I still didn’t know what it is or how to use it. This is where I start my search.

Technorati  is a search engine like Google. It was launched in June 2002.

In Darren’s article, he mentions using a plugin called Simple Tags. I follow the instructions and downloaded and installed the plug in. I activated it as well. However, now, I don’t see how to use it. This will be continued until tommorrow.

photo credit: fredcamino 

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with new ways of making money online, getting web traffic, adding nifty plugins, blog promoton and other ideas. I’ve decided to focus on building web traffic. Why? I’ve concluded it’s one of the most important things to do if you plan on being a professional blogger.

The chart above only shows the data of hits. I will start to incorporate my sources for creating traffic starting today.

photo credit: Jesper Rønn-Jensen 

I just finished receiving 14 credits in Blog Advance. I was forced to leave open websites for about 40 seconds. Not bad. If you have a lot of time on your hands. 

Here’s the problem that I had with this. To earn credits, I had to view a gaming website which I have no interest in. I had to view the website Thinking Right website 7 times. There were two websites which hadn’t been updated  in 6 month. And the last website that was in a language I didn’t understand,  I thought, what the hell and clicked it anyway.

 For me to cash my credits in, I will have to visit Blog Advance for the next 20 days. So, if you’ve got time on your hands, Blog Advance maybe for you. As for me, it might take 6 months for me to earn enough credits to be able to cash them in for clicks.

photo credit: bandita

After signing up for plenty of “Get Paid to Blog” sites, it became apparent that just having a blog didn’t qualify me to start earning an income online.

Yesteday, I finally was approved by Blog Advance, a get paid to blog site. However, I was put on probation because The Blog Novice is less than 90 days old. Cool. However, I searched the site and didn’t find any assignments. Oh well, I suppose all I can do is keep blogging and wait.

Over the course of two weeks, I’ve learned there are three things that are required before spending countless hours filling out these forms to only to have your account denied.

Build Traffic First

One of the requirements with many of the Get Paid to Blog website is that you must have strong traffic, a number of readers. Concentrate on building traffic first.

Learn CSS

A lot of earning an income online will come from adversting, like Google Adwords, private ads or an affiliate website. You must learn how to put those codes in the page correctly and know which page to do it in. As you can see, I still haven’t learned this yet myself.

Blog Consistantly

Even after getting approved from Blog Advance, I still have to maintain an updated blog. If you blog consistantly for 90 days, when you apply to these types of accounts, your account should be approved.

photo credit: thetorpedodog

Last night, I stumbled across a program that guarnateed me $100.00 if I didn’t make any money. I couldn’t pass that up. The program is called Project PayDay. This is going to be my affliliate program that I’ll work to make money online.

photo credit: independentman

photo credit: i could sleep through a world war

This is my 4th theme. I tried to insert yesterday Google Adsense code. Once I put in the code I had 75% of my blog missing. This just goes to show you that their are a few things that a blogger needs to know before trying to earn a living blogging.

8:53 p.m.

photo credit: ?hïrty a.k.a mïn™

Tonight I just found out I won the “Fill in the Blank for a Chance to Win” contest on DazzlinDonna blog. I was a bit surprised. I felt very honored being that it was my first contest I’ve entered on the web. In addtion, I feel that I’ve been has embraced within the blogger’s community by winning this contest.