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It’s hard to believe that I wrote my first blog post one year ago! For most of 2007 I blogged casually, made a lot of mistakes, and learned a lot. In fact, nearly all of the growth my blog has experienced came from early 2008. But rather than try and wrap up an entire year in just one blog post feel free to check out my archives on the side bar or you can also read five of my favorite posts here.

In any case, to celebrate my blog’s first birthday I’m offering up 5 of my 125 x 125 advertising slots and the 468 x 60 banner ad that runs just beneath the blog’s header. The contest will run in a similiar fashion to my blog rush advertising giveaway.

Here is how to enter the contest:

Blog about the contest

You receive 10 entries in the contest by blogging about my Blog’s Birthday Free Advertising contest. You do not have to dedicate a whole seperate blog post for the contest although I’d appreciate it if you did. In fact, if you want to just mention the contest in a weekly wrap up and link to this post that would be fine too!

*Blogging about the contest is also the only way to win the 468 x 60 banner ad.

Subscribe to my RSS Feed via email

You can earn 5 entries in the contest by subscribing to my RSS feed via email. Only verified subscribers will be eligible, so make sure you log into your email and click the link to verify your subscription. Also, as long as you stay subscribed to the RSS feed you’ll also have the chance to win prizes for any future contests I run on this blog that involve RSS subscription.

StumbleUpon my blog posts

You can also earn 3 entries per post you Stumble in this contest by simply going to one of my blog posts and giving me a “thumb’s up” via StumbleUpon. You may only use 3 stumbles as entries in this contest (for a total of 9 entries), but I won’t be upset if you like what I write enough to stumble more of my posts than that hah hah. You can simply send me a message via StumbleUpon and mention the posts you Stumble’d and I’ll tally your entries. Feel free to send me a friend request while you’re at it too.

I will tally up all the entries for the drawing of the five 125 x 125 ads as well as the blog posts for the 468 x 60 banner ad. Remember you do get 10 entries for blogging about the contest which will help your chances at earning one of the 125 x 125 ads in addition to helping you possibly win the 468 x 60 banner ad.

Contest ends April 9th and random winners will be announced on April 10th. You must claim your winning prize via emailing me chris [at] chrisguthrie.net and include your 125 x 125 banner ad by April 12th or the prize will be given to another randomly drawn. The ad slot will run from April 12th to May 12th after which if you would like to pay for the ad slot to continue running the ad you can do so (see my advertising page for pricing details).

Please note: I do reserve the right to ask for a different website or 125 x 125 banner ad if I deem the content to be inappropriate, although I’m sure there won’t be any problems.

Good Luck!

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How many times have you seen “MMO” in a blog’s tagline? No, I’m not talking about a massively multiplayer online game, I’m referring to that ubiquitous phrase “Make Money Online”. This phrase popularized by JohnChow was a great tagline for his blog. You immediately knew what the blog was all about and considered him an authority on the topic especially after reading a monthly blog earnings post (Last month it was around $30k).

Now what do you think when you arrive at another blog, and see that same blog tagline Make Money Online? For me, my knee-jerk reaction is to ask these bloggers where is your creativity? I think to myself, “Great another MMO blog, I doubt this person has ever made money online.” Already a skeptic, I then give the blog a paragraph or two to prove some value as they already have to fight an uphill battle to convince me they’re worth the time to read.

Either way this MMO additiction has got to stop. Just look at the number of MMO blogs on EntreCard. This category comes second only to the personal diary category:

Numerous bloggers have expressed their disgust with this MMO phrase, but no one has offered any help for those of you still addicted to MMO. To help you out I’ve created a list of 21 ways to avoid saying Make Money Online:

1. Building my wealth without getting a job
2. Paying the bills one click at a time
3. Earning a living off websites
4. Generating wealth off websites
5. Paying the rent without leaving my chair
6. Forging an empire one site at a time
7. Monetization strategies that work
8. Making that cheddar by blogging
9. Learn to pull down profits by blogging
10. Work less and start blogging online
11. They call me the baker with how much dough I earn online.
12. Skills to pay the bills (Someone already has that one I think)
12. Rolling in dough created on the net
13. Raking in the cash off the www
14. Making money like it grows on trees
15. Padding my wallet with contextual ads
16. Living large off website income
17. Earn a killing armed with only a laptop
18. Creating wealth on the world wide web
19. Hit the jackpot without visiting the velvet table
20. Producing wealth off web properties
21. Be your own boss by earning a living on the web

I thought of these Make Money Online alternatives in about 30 minutes with a little help from a thesaurus. Several of the phrases I wrote as a joke, but some of them aren’t too bad. Now just think if you spent 30 minutes on coming up with just one unique blog tagline instead of following the MMO masses? I guarantee if you remove the Make Money Online blog tagline and replace it with something else you’ll see an increase in the amount of time people stay on your blog and an increase in traffic too. I’m not the only one that wants to hit back on my browser as soon as I see another MMO blog.

That’s the end of my rant, now I’m off to play some WoW…

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Hello everyone, if you were wondering why I haven’t posted in a while it’s because I’ve been working with my great designer over at Weborithm on this new custom theme. Sergio over at SOSfactory did the character design, but the rest was done by weborithm.

I’m still working on a few modifications on my end here, but overall it’s finished.

What do you think of the design?

And yes - I am a Seahawks fan, but that wasn’t the reason for the choice in colors.

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For those of you that have been long time readers of my blog you may remember a post I wrote about the YouTube partner program after it first launched. I sent in my application so long ago I almost forgot I had applied.

Now after nearly three months I’ve finally heard back from YouTube about my application being denied. With the size of Google/You Tube I don’t think I can weazel my way into this publisher program like I’ve done in the past so many times. However, I thought I might slip into the program by barely meeting the requirements. But I really don’t have time to maintain a steady stream of halo videos that the program requires.

I plan to apply again using the profile I set up for one of my forums that receives user submitted game videos on a regular basis, but for now I believe the profile is still too small (see it here). However, I still believe video is a great way to help bring in new visitors to your website though as most of the people on YouTube will have never been to your website before anyway.

Seeing the email from the YouTube partner program reminds me of the Adsense Video Beta. I’m also really interested to see how people are doing with that program, as I am going to need way more video views to make it into that program.

Has anyone here made it into the YouTube partner program or as an Adsense Video Beta participant? If so, how have the programs performed?

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I have been using Text-Link-Ads for about 9 months on my websites and it has been a consistent earner throughout most of that time frame. I love the ability to display unobtrusive text ads on my websites and earn a flat monthly rate for each link displayed. I really enjoy flat rate advertising because you know exactly how much you’re going to make that month. With Adsense or other CPC publisher programs your earnings can vary greatly from month to month and it’s hard to count on anything consistent. However, like Adsense it’s great that after setting up the Text-Link-Ads code you don’t need to do anything else. Whenever the work can be taken out of a process I’m already a fan, because when you have a full time job and run websites on the side you’re always working against the clock to get things done.

The beginning of the end for TLA came when they started releasing updates to their Ad code and asking publishers to not use phrases like “Featured sites” or “Sponsored Links” above the Text-Link-Ads code. They also asked publishers to try and use images that stated “Featured Sites” or “Sponsored Links,” whenever possible in an attempt to stay under Google’s radar. After TLA offered the various changes it didn’t stop Google from targeting bloggers and reducing their Page Rank to 0. At first I thought it was just Google trying to use scare tactics by targeting people they could easily find that were advocating the use of TLA. Unfortunately, I ignored the writing on the wall and one of my mid sized forums Xbox Live Arcade had it’s PR4 dropped to a PR0 last week. So rather than wait until the rest of my sites would be penalized by Google I removed the TLA code from my other major websites early last week.

I should have removed the links from my websites as soon as I saw that bloggers were being targetted, but I was greedy and didn’t remove the TLA code until I was finally hit. I still believe that it’s an excellent source for monetizing your websites; however, I would not recommend running it unless you don’t care if your Page Rank is penalized.

Has anyone else been penalized by Google for running TLA on their site?

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