by Philip on April 19, 2007
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So did you hear about DMOZ founder Rich Skrenta’s Topix.net purchasing the Topix.com domain name from a Canadian company for a cool USD 1,000,000? I guess too many people were being lost in the type-in traffic going to the dot-com.
So, think about that when you choose a domain name. If it’s a dot-net (or something else) and your site becomes hugely successful, you might need to pay big buckeroos later for the dot-com.
Here’s the link to the article at WebProNews.
by Philip on April 19, 2007
When I started I Help You Blog, I knew that blogging was a collaborative medium and something that would enable people from around the world to share ideas. What I didn’t expect was to actually be able to connect with some many helpful and friendly people, all of whom are willing to help and share ideas. I found that when you really have something worthwhile to write and share with others, people are so appreciative and that just makes me want to keep the blog alive!
I’m writing this post because I really want to plug someone who I think is just an awesome up and coming blogger with really fresh ideas and thoughts! If you like reading my blog, then I know you’ll also like reading what Collis Ta’eed’s has to say. If there is such a thing as a “blogging buddy” then I have to count Collis as my blogging buddy! Luckily for us, Collis writes profusely at eye-candy designed blogs North x East (his personal/problogging blog) and Freelance Switch (which he also blogs with his collaborators Cyan and Jack).
Collis has been one of the people I mentioned above who has been so willing to listen to my ideas and participate in my blogging discussions. I am very thankful for that. His North x East blog has some excellent posts that I often find myself visiting to flush out ideas I have about blogging and making money online. Some of my favorite posts Collis has written include:
- A comprehensive guide to starting a freelance career
- The nine essential posts that every blogger should know
- A classification of web business models
- A comprehensive guide to starting your freelance career (which is really a plug for Freelance Switch)
Frankly, there are many other posts! I think all of Collis posts at North x East is worthy of a read and many are worthy of a bookmark. Heck, just make sure to add North x East to your RSS reader!
Also, if you haven’t heard about Freelance Switch, you are really missing the boat on the hottest up and coming blog for freelancers! Freelance Switch is just so packed with great posts already even though there are less than 30! Thing is, Collis, Cyan and Jack have really put a great deal of heart and soul into the posts. And it shows. 3,000-plus subscribers in less than 2 weeks!? :shock: They must be doing something right! Do it now and subscribe to Freelance Switch in your RSS reader.
Some of Freelance Switch’s articles I’ve really liked include:
- The monster list of freelancing job sites
- The twelve breeds of clients and how to work with them
- Staying motivated without a boss (Part I)
- 101 essential freelancing resources (the post that launched Freelance Switch into the stratosphere)
Just to set the record straight, this post was not paid, not sponsored. It is a completely unconditional endorsement of what I believe to be two awesome resources I think my readers would find helpful. And I do walk the walk on this one–I read both North x East and Freelance Switch personally.
Thanks Collis, Cyan and Jack for all your thoughtful contributions! And thanks Collis for letting me bounce ideas off you.
by Philip on April 19, 2007
Sorry this wasn’t posted earlier this past weekend. Here are some awesome “Great Blogging Posts” from loyal readers. In particular, I’d like to point out the great post by Collis and his team over at Freelance Switch with their 101 Essential Freelancing Resources that helped launch the blog and get the site over 2,000 readers in less than two weeks! Simply awesome resource! Now, the site has over 3,000 readers and is less than a month old!
Here are all of the readers this past week who’ve taken me up on my free linkback for a great post offer:
- Thoughts From My Life creates a “Checklist for Traveling - The Ultimate Guide”
- Romance Tracker’s “Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Fall In Love”
- Freelance Switch’s “101 Essential Freelancing Resources”
If you want to read more about how Collis and his buddies were able to get over a thousand subscribers in less than two weeks, head over to his most excellent blog North x East for the write up. Just so you know, his 101 list made it to the front page of del.icio.us (link to the bookmark page) and has been bookmarked over three thousand times! Well done Collis and company! Very, very kickass!
As I posted previously, I provide a free linkback so long as you make a Great Post from one of the ones listed on my 101 Great Blogging Ideas list. Complete rules are here.
If you haven’t participated, why not? Here’s your opportunity to motivate yourself to writing a Great Post. There’s 101 ideas on the list so surely everyone must be able to find something on there to write about!
On the other hand, maybe you are just one of those people who like to read about great ideas (like my list of great post ideas) but don’t actually do anything to get involved. If that’s you, I can’t help you until you help yourself.
by Philip on April 14, 2007
Wow! What a crazy two months I’ve had since this blog went online! I’ve met some awesome people both online and offline and have been thrilled with the progress of this blog. I’ve gone from zero subscribers to 100 after one month to over 470 after two months. Thank you to everyone who read my blog!
What kicked things off was my blog post about 101 great blog posting ideas. That brought in a flood of subscribers and visitors who still come in regularly nearly a month after the post. Thanks again for all of you who dugg, stumbled and linked to it; that was very kind.
I also decided to make a change in my offline job. I will be leaving the legal world and joining a bank on the business side. With that should come better hours and more predictability. Anyone who works in New York City as a corporate finance lawyer will know what I mean when I say that sooner or later almost everyone leaves law firm practice because of the unpredictability and the hours.
I started this blog intending to post daily and on a regular basis. This was going pretty well until I stumbled across Frank Schilling’s blog while preparing to do a post about domaining. As I read about this strange little niche, I found myself becoming increasingly captivated by its potential. And over the last two weeks I have been trying to absorb as much knowledge about this industry as possible.
For those of you who have visited my Cell Phone News site, I am in the process of redesigning the template and layout to better take advantage of advertisers who have frequently requested to be featured on the site. Right now, the income on that site is about one-third of what it could be. I’m very excited about the new design and it should be live within a month. It will make an interesting case study on how design can influence revenue for a professional blog.
Finally, I purchased a domain name recently in the four-figure range. I plan to develop a site that I hope will be able to bring in steady revenue and I’m very excited about it. I plan to do a feature post on how I went about researching and picking this particular domain name.
by Philip on April 14, 2007
Thanks Tamar and Collis for tagging me with a meme on why I blog!
I started this blog because, like most bloggers, I had something to share and I wanted to connect with people who had similar interests in blogging and making money on the Internet. I enjoy, as a hobby, creating websites around interests I have. I consider myself moderately successful with search engine optimization and know a fair bit about how to get a site up high in the rankings of Google, Yahoo and MSN. Hopefully, by starting up a blog like this, I will be able to share my thoughts and views on a number of subjects with similar folks!
I’m also hoping to use I Help You Blog as a medium to improve my own blogging as I participate in various online community projects.
Other than that, I hope to meet up with some of you who have so graciously read my blog for the last 2 months!
by Philip on April 7, 2007
I think I’m going to make this a weekly thing instead of waiting for 10 posts at a time. This has been a really great exercise from my end as well as I see how different folks approach problems from their different perspectives. I’m thankful all of these great bloggers have decided to take me up on my offer. Besides just creating great content, there is link love involved in doing this.
This week, these bloggers have taken me up on my offer of a free linkback for a Great Post:
- Reader Appreciation Project writes a story about apprehension at leaving a comment on another blog in “The Lost Comment.” (Number 53: Write a story)
- Let’s Explore! invites a regular reader to contribute to a blog post about why he doesn’t blog. (Number 26: Be a guest blogger)
- Wells on Education writes about the “Importance of Communication.” (Number 48: Simplify a complex problem)
- Tight Brain writes a comprehensive tutorial on installing Wordpress. (Number 3: Write a tutorial)
Some really great stuff there! Please visit, study and do something similar!
As I posted previously, I provide a free linkback so long as you make a Great Post from one of the ones listed on my 101 Great Blogging Ideas list. Complete rules are here.
If you haven’t participated, why not? Here’s your opportunity to motivate yourself to writing a Great Post. There’s 101 ideas on the list so surely everyone must be able to find something on there to write about!
On the other hand, maybe you are just one of those people who like to read about great ideas (like my list of great post ideas) but don’t actually do anything to get involved. If that’s you, I can’t help you until you help yourself.
by Philip on April 6, 2007
I picked up a couple of blogs in my RSS reader over the last two weeks: Frank Schilling’s Seven Mile and Rick Schwartz’s blog.
For those of you who don’t know who those two gentlemen are, they are two of the biggest names in the business of domaining. Frank’s portfolio of domains is worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars (and he only got into the game in 2000) and Rick Schwartz is the guy behind T.R.A.F.F.I.C., one of the biggest conferences on domaining (like what SES Strategies or PubCon are like to SEOs and webmasters).
It’s interesting what we can pick up from some of their thoughts in terms of choosing a domain name. A generic domain name like CubicZirconia.com or CellPhones.com can bring in thousands of pre-qualified customers 24/7. That’s why CellPhones.com was sold a couple of years ago for something in the neighborhood of $3.6 million. Every day, people would bypass search engines and type directly into the address bar of the browser “cellphones.com” to look for cell phones. Then they would click on PPC ads which paid the owner $1,900 a day.
Here’s an article from Business 2.0 that examines the world of domaining and is a fascinating read. What were you doing in 1995? In 2000?
by Philip on April 3, 2007
What is community-driven blog promotion:
Community-driven blog promotion is the term I use for describing any technique a blogger uses to promote his or her blog and that involves getting a blog’s readers to do something that will result in greater exposure for that blog. This definition includes review-for-linkback schemes, memes, contests, etc.
Community-driven blog promotions I’ve participated in:
- I Help You Blog’s free linkback for making a post based on the list of 101 Great Blogging Ideas list.
- Chris Garret’s free linkback for a review of his excellent ebook, “Killer Flagship Content.” Chris is quite clever here–he gets a linkback from the review blog but then also requires his visitors to subscribe to his RSS feed in order to download his ebook! [Here is my review of Killer Flagship Content.]
- Daily Blog Tips’ “Blogging Mistakes” community project. In this case, each person who participates writes a post about learning from a blogging mistake and then links to everyone else who participated. [Here is my blogging mistakes post.]
- Dosh Dosh’s “The Feed Count Meme: Studying the Impact of Feed Count on Blog Feed Subscriptions.” A meme is a question that is posted on one blog and responded to by others on their own blogs. [Here is my response to Dosh Dosh's feed count meme.]
Other community-driven blog promotions I’ve come across:
- John Chow’s free linkback for a review of his blog, John-Chow-dot-com.
- Existential Venture’s “My Blog Log Giveaway Contest” where he gives anyone who joins his MyBlogLog community a chance to win a Canon printer.
- Problogger’s community writing projects that are featured from time-to-time.
- Quasi-Fictional View’s “Fine Art of Blogging” series where he asks bloggers to answer his question, “What is a blog to you?” The idea here is to hopefully get linkbacks and exposure from the bloggers he features.
How to use community-driven blog promotion for your blog:
The best community-driven blog promotion techniques offer something of value to everyone involved. My linkback for a Great Post encourages bloggers to write great posts. Similarly, Daily Blog Tips’ and Problogger’s writing projects encourages bloggers to write great articles on group topics. But before one can ask others to promote their blog, the blogger has to have a blog worth promoting. New blogs should have excellent content already up. While pure monetary bribes may work with some, most bloggers won’t bite.
Besides just initiating community-driven blog promotion for your blog, there are also benefits to actually participating in the promotions of others. Participating in various promotions gets your name out and noticed. Moreover, participating usually involves creating great content for your site.
by Philip on April 1, 2007
Collis from NorthxEast asks, “Is it more important to post really, really regularly OR to put together more on-topic posts less regularly?”
My response is the two options shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. I don’t think any blogger should post anything that is not on-topic to the blog. Doing so is a waste of everyone’s time. People read the blog because of the topic advertised and posting off-topic is like inviting someone to come over for a Halloween party then proceeding to make the party a very formal dinner instead. Imagine the shock someone gets when she walks in the door in a witch’s costume only to be directed to the dining room where everyone is dressed formally.
On the other hand, rushing a posting when the thought is only half-baked is equally damaging to your blog’s reputation and quality. All posts should be well thought out before being posted. If you have a new blog and your posts are half-baked, your blog will quickly be dismissed as irrelevant by the more established blogs and readers. Without their support, you can forget about ever being heard or well read.
One of the things I’ve realized since starting this blog and attracting so many subscribers quickly is how much time I have to dedicate to writing really useful posts so my readers won’t be disappointed and unsubscribe. Unfortunately, the ingredients for great posts take a lot of time to marinate and cook before the truly great post is produced.
As you know, I don’t blog for a living. Unfortunately, the demands of my day job means that sometimes I can’t blog on a daily basis. Instead of just posting for the sake of posting, I’ve decided so far to post only when I’ve fully “baked” the idea.
In summary, you have to post regularly or else you will lose readers but posting off-topic regularly or posting incomplete thoughts are even worse evils.
[If you have a question you like answered, email me at ihelpyoublog /at/ gmail /dot/ com.]
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