Blogging for Dollars Blog

Starting a personal blog? If so, WordPress.com may become your blogging platform of choice.

Interesting news in Free Space to Three Gigabytes « WordPress.com; Matt Mullenweg says:

“Today, one of those developments comes to fruition — everyone’s free upload space has been increased 60x from 50mb to 3,000mb. To get the same amount of space at our nearest competitor, Typepad, you’d pay at least $300 a year. Blogger only gives you 1GB. We’re doing the same thing for free.

Our hope is that much in the same way Gmail transformed the way people think about email, we’ll give people the freedom to blog rich media without having to worry about how many kilobytes are left in their upload space.”

I’ve just read the Terms of Service again, and this is a concern:

Termination. Automattic may terminate your access to all or any part of the Website at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately. If you wish to terminate this Agreement or your WordPress.com account (if you have one), you may simply discontinue using the Website.

The TOS no longer seems to specifically prohibit commercial blogs on WordPress.com, however the “termination” clause packs a lot of punch, and makes your WordPress.com blogs vulnerable.

My advice? Get your own domain name and hosting; it’s safer.

Freelance Blogging: Fun, Easy and VERY Profitable

Want a new career? Become a freelance blogger.

I’ve been blogging since 2001, and for the past 12 months I’ve been swamped with offers of blogging gigs, and so have other freelancers who are highly visible on the Web. Blogging has huge returns on investment for businesses, so they’re hiring bloggers to update their blogs each day – often several times a day.

My new ebook, “Blogging for Dollars: How to become a career blogger — in your PJs, if you want”, teaches you how to blog for money.

Technorati Tags: platform, blogging, WordPress.com

For various reasons, I took the big step of moving several of my blogs last week. I’d been meaning to do it for a while, but put it off, as you do with things you suspect will be an unpleasant hassle.

Well – I was wrong. The move went smoothly – so smoothly that I’m still pinching myself and waiting for the other shoe to drop. I heard so many stories before the move that I kept expecting things to go wrong. But everything’s fine.

How to move your blog to a new host – the easy way

I’m not a tech wiz, so I had no intention of moving a clutch of WordPress blogs myself. I got in touch with Host Gator, which hosts many of my sites, and asked them whether they could do the move for me.

(Host Gator has live chat, so you can contact someone at any time, whenever you have concerns. Every time I’ve used live chat, my problem has been smartly solved.)

They could, and they did, within a very short time indeed, less than three days, including the time it takes for the DNS to propagate.

I’ve got one hosting package with Host gator, and it’s getting rather full, so I opted for a new hosting package for the moved blogs. Host Gator will move 20 sites/ blogs for you completely free of charge.

Here’s how the process went:

1. Buy a new hosting package at Host Gator;

2. Set up accounts for the blogs to be moved;

3. Send HG my login information for the old accounts, including the names of the MySQL databases;

4. Once I received notification that everything had been moved, check that everything was working fine on the new host;

5. Transfer the DNS and wait for it to propagate across the Web;

6. All done!

I can’t commend Host Gator enough. They did everything for me, all I had to do was ask.

The only regret I have now is that I didn’t move the blogs sooner.

So if you want to move a blog, and the idea makes you queasy, take your courage in both hands. Once you’ve moved, you’ll wonder what took you so long.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, hosting

Like many other keen bloggers who’ve been blogging for years, I’ve got a large number of blogs.

Managing them all isn’t a challenge. I’m a Gemini, so multi-tasking comes naturally to me.

However, for some people it doesn’t, so if you’ve got blogs and you suspect that you’re spinning your wheels trying to manage them because they’re not taking off, this post may help you to decide whether a blog is worth the time you’re spending on it.

The three-month test: is the blog getting traffic?

The three-month test is simple. It assesses the amount of traffic you’re getting, and whether that traffic does anything for you in terms of your goals for the blog.

For example, let’s say you’ve spent three months blogging on an automobile blog. You’re getting traffic, and you’re making money – less than you wish you were, but you’ve made a dollar, and can see that over time you’ll make more.

This blog might be a keeper. Keep a close eye on it, and see whether you can boost its income.

OTOH, you’ve got another blog on pasta recipes, and this blog is not doing much of anything. There’s little traffic, and the blog has earned zilch.

When a blog does nothing, you need to revise your strategy for that particular blog, or leave the blog to sink or swim on its own. Blogs can surprise you – a blog which does nothing can suddenly take off when you’re not looking.

Let this blog go for the time being, and see what happens.

Try the three month test on any blogs you’re not sure about. Let the non-performers find their own level, and start blogs on other topics, after you so some research.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, income, goals, strategy