No you didn’t read this post title wrong, you just haven’t seen these words arranged this way. Most people know the common phrase as, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” But something I’ve learned is that blogging doesn’t really work that way. You need to give first in order to receive.

How you can get more bloggers to link to you:

The perfect example of this principle of, “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” is illustrated by the recent increased number of links I’ve received from other bloggers. Four weeks ago I started my link love series and linked to around 20 different bloggers. I focus on linking to new bloggers every time because not only does that help me reach out and meet other bloggers around my niche but it also improves my odds that one of them will return the favor and link back to me. I’m sure I can’t continue my link love posts like this forever because I’ll run out of bloggers and I’m sure I’ll still read great posts from bloggers I’ve linked to before; however, that is how I’ve started my link love series.

After the third link love session, I posted an article that most of you reading this blog have probably already read which is my tip on how to get free private registration on your domains at Godaddy. I knew that this post was truly very useful, especially for readers that don’t currently have private registration on their domains and have failed to recognize the danger. So what I did was send a personalized email to every blogger (I may have skipped a couple) that I linked to in my past three link love posts and provided a link to my post and told them that I believe it would be valuable to their readers. I then followed that up by saying that I recently linked to one of their posts and would appreciate if they returned the favor.

The following people linked to that post that I emailed:

Self Made Minds
Affiliate Confession
Everybody Go To

Closing Comments

While this was less than half of the people I emailed, their links in turn helped to generate some more buzz for the post and as a result even more people linked to it as well. So while I knew that this idea of, “I scratch your back you scratch mine” was true when I included it as my third point on 10 ways to improve your Technorati rank, it’s always nice to provide proof that the techniques I discussed on that post are worth doing.

It’s important to note that while I had some success in getting these bloggers to link to my post, it’s important to remember that unless you offer something that is truly useful you may as well not waste your time by annoying other bloggers asking for a link back to your useless post. Rarely have other bloggers linked to my content if I haven’t linked to them first, so you have to spread the love first before you expect to feel any come back.

Do you agree with my assessment on the blogging community? If I scratch your back, you’ll scratch mine?

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Viral Networks just pre-launched a few days ago and has been developed for the last 17 months for internet marketers. This new social networking website shows a lot of promise and I’ve decided to try and help promote it from the get go.

While I’m interested to see what other information crops up in the coming days I do know how they are trying to promote the website. This is being done by a five tiered referral system. So the more people you can refer from the launch of this website, the more you can earn. I think it’s a great idea for them to promote a website like Viral Networks through viral marketing and I’m sure that it will be a success. I’ve already seen several bloggers promote the website.

To kick off the launch, they are running a contest for $6,800 in prizes to the people with the most referrals. I know it would be very hard for me to earn any of the prizes based on my blog’s size I have set my own modest goal of 20 direct referrals. Now if you’re even somewhat familiar with internet marketing, blogging, earning money online etc. you can see that this link to Viral Networks is a masked referral link. However if you don’t want to register through my link simply because I told you about the website in the first place, I am going to further entice you into joining through my referral link. I will give away 500 free EntreCard credits to each person that registers though my link:

Register at Viral Networks and earn 500 free EntreCard credits

Why may you ask am I giving you EntreCard credits to register at a completely unrelated website? Well, while I can assume that there may be a way to give future earned credits from Viral Networks to other users in the future, their website does not explicitly state that functionality will be added yet. So rather than promise you future credits from Viral Networks, I’ve decided to just offer you 500 free EntreCard credits instead.

So what are you waiting for? Go register at Viral Networks (it’s free of course). Worst case scenario you earn 500 free EntreCard credits.

What do you think of the site? Next best thing? Or just plain stupid? (i.e. Agloco / BlogRush)

If you register through my link just send me an email with the first and last name you used upon registration and then your EntreCard information. Then I’ll send you over the credits.

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I’ve had this post draft saved in my control panel for nearly a year and I decided it was time to share my story about how I nearly lost all of my domains. This is a longer than average post for me; however, for anyone that is concerned about having their domain names stolen (everyone should be!) I highly recommend you continue reading this post. Now for those of you that may have missed my post about how to save money on private domain name registration be sure to check that out as well.

The Story Begins

The story begins with some drama that started on one of my video game forums. Apparently some of the members from one of my forums had been going over to this other halo forum and posting about how much their forum sucked and how much better mine was. Now of course this is stupid behavior (typical of younger gamers) and something I knew nothing about until I received a chilling voice mail.

The Plot Thickens

I still remember this moment vividly - I had just arrived at a Seattle Sounders game to watch my friend play and as I sat down in my seat I checked a message that I received after missing a call from an unknown number. It was some guy that ranted on about how I better f***ing control my people or else there would be problems. He also mentioned that he would take my f***ing domains. At the time I thought it was just some idiot playing a prank until I got home and tried to log into my GoDaddy account. The jerk was not bluffing and he did in fact already have control of my account and was able to change the admin password! I was able to phone GoDaddy support and provide enough info to regain control of my account. So now who was this jerk that left a hate filled message full of expletives? It was the admins friend from the other halo forum where some of my members were posting about how lame their community was etc. etc.

Apparently the friend of this admin never told him to do anything he just mentioned that some people from my video game forum were on his site stirring up trouble. This jerk took it upon himself to try and steal my domains rather than discuss the issue with me first.

I was able to call the other forum owner and found out who this jerk was. After I explained that I had no idea this behavior was going on, I then asked them for the members IP addresses so I could ban them from my site as well. They could tell I was truly trying my best to patch things up.

How He Did It

Now after I was able to clear the situation up I asked the jerk how he was able to gain access to my account in the first place. He basically went on to describe how he collected my information in a social engineering way.

He used WHOIS records to get his first start on collecting my information. Obviously I made a huge mistake by not adding privacy to my domain names in the first place. I strongly recommend you add privacy to your domains if you have not. (Besides, it can be cheap too). Now after he had the information gathered from my WHOIS records he then set out to contact businesses that he surmised I would be involved with. He would then pose as an employee from another branch of that business, state that his computers were down and that he was trying to pull up some more information on me. He would then give the limited amount of information he had from my WHOIS records to sound more legitimate in an attempt to obtain more pieces of my personal info.

After doing this over and over he had all that he needed, he then used the collected information to gain access to my GoDaddy account and change my admin email address. During the process if he ever encountered a business that would not give him the info that he needed he would simply hang up and call another branch. He stated “There is always someone dumb enough to give out your information if you sound convincing enough on the phone.” The way he avoided detection was by masking his whereabouts by making all of his phone calls through Skype. Apparently he had done this numerous times before and even told me that certain call centers for some global businesses in other parts of the world don’t ask as many security questions so he’d often turn to them first.

Wrapping It Up

I didn’t have enough info about the jerk to ever turn him in or do anything about it in fact I never even heard his real name; however, I have learned a valuable lesson about protecting your personal information from this relatively new form of criminal behavior. I know I’ve said this several times in this post but it’s very important that you add private registration to your domain names as a first line of defense. Be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t miss out on my next post on how to further secure your personal info.

Does anyone else have a horror story out there as well? Fortunately mine ended well, but it could have been much worse.

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Several weeks ago I announced that I was going to be selling some variations of my Wordpress themes and I’m happy to say that they are finally complete.

My good friend and theme designer Hyder told me several months ago that many of his blog design clients are requesting themes that are very similar to what he made for me. So I decided that it would be a good idea to hire him again to put together three color variations based off my original unique theme and offer them for sale. What he came up with is listed below and they are all available for purchase.

Kickoff Sale:

The themes are usually available for only $39.95 each or $99.95 for the whole bundle (59.95 for themes without a footer link back to my blog or $149.95 for that bundle); however, because I’m excited about their completion I’ve created some promo codes for you to use during the month of September to celebrate their release.

Save $10 on individual themes by entering kickoff at the checkout screen.
Or
Save $20 on the theme pack by entering kickoffbundle at the checkout screen.

With the kickoffbundle promo code you’re basically getting one theme for free!

Now before you get so excited you buy the themes without even seeing them, be sure to check out these demos first to see what you like:

Guthrie Red - $39.95

Guthrie Red Demo

Guthrie Romantic - $39.95

Guthrie Romantic Demo

Guthrie Vibrant - $39.95

Guthrie Vibrant Demo

Package Deal:

If you’d like to purchase all three themes as a package deal you can do so for only $99.95!

No Footer Link Themes:

Buy Guthrie Red No Footer Link $59.95

Buy Guthrie Romantic No Footer Link $59.95

Buy Guthrie Vibrant No Footer Link $59.95

Package Deal:

Buy package of all three themes without the footer link back to ChrisGuthrie.net for just $149.95!

View your cart before you check out here:

Please contact me if you have any questions about the themes.

Remember the sale!

Save $10 on individual themes by entering kickoff at the checkout screen.
Or
Save $20 on the theme pack by entering kickoffbundle at the checkout screen.

What do you think of the themes?

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August marks the fifth month that I’ve offered advertising on my blog and while I more than doubled what I earned last month I did not set a new earnings record.

Check out the earnings break down here:

Private Ad Sales: $75
PepperJam Blogger Incentive Program: $10
Read this post for more info (I didn’t get paid out until this month)
Affiliate Sales: $50
Text Link Ads ($25) and SEOBook ($25)

Grand Total: $135

Last month someone picked up my 468 x 60 banner for $35 a month and used a banner promoting BANS. If they renew again this month then I’m going to have to assume that they generated at least one sale or more so I’ll be interested to see if that happens. Perhaps I should just run my own ad if they continue to renew hah hah?

Potential advertisers should know by now that my blog does convert visitors into buyers as you can tell by some of the affiliate sales I’ve generated in this month and previous earnings reports. With that said my 300 x 250 inline ad is still available for $75. For several months it was sold out from the time I first began offering advertising so expect it should sell this month. So if you would like to take the slot head on over to my advertising page for more details or click the link above.

Again I’m still surprised that no one has taken advantage of the 125 x 125 sidebar ads that are only $15 a month! I honestly don’t think that my sidebar ads are overprice especially because in this month and the previous month a few of these have converted for affiliate sales. So if you’d like to purchase one of these banners you can do so by clicking here.

I also expect that more $10 site wide links will sell this month because every person that has paid for a link has continued to renew it every single month. If you’d like to snag one of the last site wide text link ad slots click here. This is a good price for a PR4 blog.

August Closing Thoughts and Comments

This month’s wrap up is similar to last month’s summary because I never really need to focused on blogging on a more consistent basis. My goal for this month is 20 posts which I’m confident I can hit. If I can write 20 quality posts I’m certain I can also hit my small goal of an increase to 170 RSS subscribers. I’d also like to still hit $200 in a single month especially because I have a long way to go to reach my $1,000 a month goal by the end of this year. If you’re interested in advertising on this blog please read my advertising page for more detailed information. For more ways to earn money on your blog or to read about the companies I work with check out my recommendations.

If you haven’t done so already be sure to Subscribe to my RSS feed to keep track of my progress for next month and read about more practical ideas for success online.

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A couple days ago Google announced that Google Ad Manager’s availability to all.

Ad Manager can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure both directly-sold and network-based inventory. It offers an intuitive and simple user interface, Google serving speed and reliability, and significant cost savings. Best of all, Ad Manager can be optionally integrated with Google AdSense to offer you an automated way to maximize the revenue of your unsold and network-managed inventory.

Head on over to read the full details of the announcement, but what I highly recommend is logging in to your account to check it out for yourself. All that is required is an Adsense account to gain access to Google Ad Manager. Like most Google products (all?) Google Ad Manager is free.

I’m in the process of migrating most of my forums over to the platform now; however, with that said I doubt I will ever replace OIOpublisher as this blog’s ad management system because I love how it works now.

Has anyone spent a lot of time using the ad management system yet? What are your thoughts? I’ll write a follow up post once I’ve used it more extensively but I was really excited about this program and am happy to see it’s open to all now.

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One of the areas that I’ve been exploring more of lately is the potential to make a small yet consistent income stream from mini sites. I’ve been doing this with BANS for a few weeks (I will touch on this during a later post); however, I’m certain that with the right niche I can build a few sites that earn a modest sum of at least $100 a month.

I will be documenting this process and providing the steps I’ve taken to increase traffic, improve in the SERPS and most importantly - make money.

The first site I’ll be working on is a niche travel site based on a place I’m going to on vacation (I should be there as of the time this post is published). I will be taking pictures, and coming up with a rough outline of the fun activities to write about for this website while I’m on my vacation. I know there is a lot of money in niche travel sites so I’m interested in taking a stab at a travel based site.

The second site I’ll be working on is my Video Game Fonts website which I set up over a year ago and haven’t touched since then. It makes minimal income; however, I have several plans to improve the site and in doing so - the income it generates.

I am sure that there will be more mini sites that I will work on, but these are the two that I will be starting with. My overall goal is to create mini sites that require some work up front but little time to maintain in the future. I currently spend a lot of time managing forums and am interested to see just how much potential there is in mini sites. no time to update (or just an update once every 6 months or so) that each generate a small income. speak of I know there is potential to dominate this small niche.

Have you found success with mini sites? Share your stories below.

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As you can tell by looking to your right my FeedBurner RSS stats have dropped in half and this is due to the Google Reader stats outage for Feedburner.

This isn’t the first time there has been a stats outage for Google Reader but I’m surprised it has happened again just 3 months later.

So if you noticed a drop in your stats don’t panic that’s why your numbers are lower.

I wonder why this happens? I’ve never noticed stats outages with other RSS readers. Has anyone ever heard of something official from Google on what has gone on?

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