Blog About Your Blog » Blogging Tools

Free Web Hosting With LimeDomains

Matthew Henrickson — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:27:15 +0000

Last week I wrote about how to find the different web hosting for your needs. From reviews to simple recommendations, agonizing over which web hosting company to go with can be stressful. What if you are just looking for something cheap or new?

One of our readers mentioned looking for a second host, to build links to his blogs and not have it on the same server. Running a different host can be expensive, but I think I found the solution.

Free Web Hosting!

Lime Domains is offering free web hosting! when you register a domain with them, you can get on their basic web hosting plan, absolutely free. It includes: 500MB Storage, 1GB data transfer per month, 10 emails, and of course ad free web pages.

This type of offer sounds good if you are trying to build different niche sites. Having the websites on different servers can make your links carry more value if you choose to link to your other websites on a different host.

Of course you can chose to use their “standard” or “premium” hosting to fit your growing websites. The standard package is $4.99 per month, and the premium is $9.99 per month.

Domain Registration

As I mentioned the free web hosting plan comes when you buy a domain name. For a standard .com you pay $8.99 each, which is pretty competitive from other registrars. I know my current web host charges more per domain than that.

Alternatively if you already have a domain name you can transfer it to Lime Domain for $6.99. If you do that you will still get the free web hosting.

Not only do you get free web hosting with each domain, you can also try the premium web hosting plan for 15 days free, just to try it out.

One Click Installation

Almost more impressive than the web hosting offer, is “one click installation”. I remember when I first made a Wordpress, I was pretty lost. I had to find where to install it, how to do it, and where to put it.

At LimeDomains.com they have and application page where you can see all the different platforms. This includes Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and phpBB. With just ONE CLICK you can install whichever application you choose.

Lime Domain

Usually you get a free domain with your web hosting, but I’ve never heard doing it backwards. What do you think? Is the free web hosting sufficient enough to host your site, or would you end up having to buy the hosting regardless?

Random Posts

Advertisement: Join the Linkshare affiliate program for great affiliates to earn money with.

ShareThis

Submit Your BlogPosts at BloggersBase

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:16:58 +0000

A lot of successful blogs have more than one author. Most of the ‘famous’ bloggers I doubt rarely even blog themselves anymore and often open up to guest posters. Just like here at Blog About Your Blog, we’ve never had just one author. BloggersBase has taken that idea and ran with it.

BloggersBase Review

“BloggersBase is a citizen journalism magazine powered by YOU!”

The layout looks great and diving into this website I think it is a great concept. You the blogger rate, publish, and view the articles you want to read on a variety of topics.

You can earn money by being a top blogger as well as referring bloggers to the site. You can of course build links to your own sites in the posts you submit. Of course, you can also read great articles by bloggers.

However, in my opinion, the system is complex and a little difficult to understand, especially if you’re not familiar with a blog like this. Terms like Nuggets and Goldmine are thrown around. Even after reading what they mean I am still slightly confused. I could imagine others having the same problems and not trying at all. Basically you have to ‘prove yourself’ as a blogger before you hit the front pages. As a newcomer, you can post in any blog that you want a contender post, in a location which is a little out of the way and not very visible. Such a post is denoted a “Nugget”, marked with a golden-nugget icon to indicate its potential and its residence is called the blog’s Goldmine.

So instead, the process needs to be a bit more simple. Instead of all of these terms and a long list of how the site works it really can be easier. Similar sites to BloggersBase just promote the articles through the website based on votes. A certain amount of votes can get you to the front page, just like any social network.

BloggersBase is still young and appears to only be a month or two old. I imagine they will find out what works best for them as well as their bloggers. They have the set-up, the quality, and the incentive for bloggers to blog.

Rewards and Referrals

I’m big on incentive especially when blogging on other sites. Whether it’s compensation, or link building, Bloggers Base has both.

The top two bloggers in a certain ‘timeslot’ (I think it’s a week) earn money. First place receives $40, while second place receives $10. On the BloggersBase blog, they announced their top blogger amabaie, won two weeks in a row, cashing in a cool $80. Not bad for a few articles. (amabaie is at it again winning first place and second a few times, bringing his total to $150)

The other way to earn money is to refer bloggers to BloggersBase. Each time one of your referrals earns money you will get a bonus as well. They don’t exactly say how much you will get which is unfortunate and definitely needs to be added. After you earn $20 or more you can cash out with Paypal.

Update: Since this review was published BloggersBase has went ahead and updated their referral payouts. You will be awarded exactly the same money prizes as your referred users do, up to 3 wins per user. So if they person you refer wins as a top blogger, you get the same amount they do.

BloggersBase Verdict

I think BloggersBase has a really good idea and set-up. After this review I may just submit a few articles and see how it goes. Take a look and leave me a comment on what you think of the website.

Join BloggersBase

Random Posts

Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

ShareThis

What Stat Counter Do You Use For Your blog?

Matthew Henrickson — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:02:19 +0000

A new feature I am introducing is a poll on the sidebar. This is just to gauge the BAYB readers to see what they think about whatever question I post.

I suggested which stat tracker to use. Our pick is Statcounter, I have it on all of my blogs. What was most popular on the poll?

Poll Results

Out of 22 votes, Statcounter ended up being most popular. 36% use Statcounter for their stat tracking.

Our second choice was Google Analytics, which tied for second with Sitemeter at 22%.

13.6% chose all of the above, while 4.5% chose other.

It was surprising to see that 0% used Awstats as their primary stat tracker.

New Poll

Do you own a blogspot blog?

Online Surveys & Market Research

Random Posts

Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

ShareThis

Squidoo Is Perfect For Bloggers

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:36:43 +0000

Ok, I know I am a little late on this one. I’ve found quite a few people making a Squidoo Lens everyday so I figured I would find out what all the fuss was about. Overall I am pretty impressed and think that it’s perfect for any blogger to use. Yesterday I created my first Squidoo Lens.

Why Squidoo?

Every time I go back to Squidoo I find something new. I probably can’t cover everything in this article.

Building a Squidoo lens is like making a mini blog that exists on one page. It’s basically a landing page for any niche you wish to write about. Basically it can be an extremely targeting web page about whatever you want it to be about. You can even create multiple lens’ to basically link them all together.

But why? Well for many bloggers building links to your blog can be difficult, but it is also very important. The more links that you have the better your website will rank in Google, and for the terms you want.

For example, I made a Squidoo Lens about free samples. In the lens I put links to my own blogs, as well as displayed their RSS feeds and put a bit extra ways for me to make money.

For every Google Adsense click, Amazon Sale, eBay sale, I get my own bit of commission for it. As well, I put my own affiliates on my lens to give me 100% of whatever I can get sign-ups for. If you haven’t taken advantage of Squidoo lens’ for affiliate marketing, you just might want to.

Squidoo is Easy!

I was surprised at how easy Squidoo is. Blogger took me a bit to master, but it is pretty easy as well. You can start a blog and publish an article in a few minutes at blogger. With Squidoo it’s even easier. You can have an entire lens finished in 5-10 minutes after a bit of navigating around.

There are different modules you can incorporate into your Squidoo Lens to make it interactive. One of my favorite Squidoo Lens’ is about online contests. There you can submit your own contest or even a contest blog if you want to. I’ve used this function on my own Squidoo Lens and allow visitors to add their own free samples.

Squidoo Referral Program

I didn’t even know Squidoo had an affiliate program until after I joined! It’s not much, but if you can refer people and they earn money, you can get money too. When your referral earns its first $15, you AND your referral will each get $5.

Basically it’s incentive enough for you to join as my referral so we can both earn $5!

Sign-up to Squidoo.

Squidoo Wrap Up

While writing this article I got inspired to create a few more lens’. The possibilities and topics for Squidoo are endless. You can build links to your niche sites, as well as earn a bit of income doing it. I definitely plan on keeping updates posted about how am I doing with my Squidoo. If you are already on Squidoo make sure to comment on my free sample lens and point me to your lens’. We can exchange ratings as well as favorites and fans.

If I haven’t convinced you to join, maybe Janet can. She has the #1 lens on Squidoo. She writes about how shes made money with Squidoo. From June 4th to July 10th she’s made $483 on Squidoo alone, not including her affiliate commissions. Check out her lens, but make sure to come back and join as my referral!

Random Posts

Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

ShareThis

Which Stat Tracker To Use

Matthew Henrickson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:29:34 +0000

I’ve seen the question asked many times as to which stat/traffic counter is best for a blog. In my opinion counters are a pretty important blog tool to have installed. There are many different services to use. I would definitely recommend a free one. Unless you are doing some serious stuff, paying for a stat counter won’t make much sense.

Our Pick – StatCounter

One of the first things I do is add Statcounter to my blogs. It only takes a few minutes to install the code and you can manage your stats all in one place, with one account. I can view all 18 of my sites that are currently being ‘tracked’.

With Statcounter you can view what the last 500 visitors on your site was doing. You can view where they came from as well as keywords they found your blog on. Now 500 isn’t that much, but there is an alternative

Second Choice – Google Analytics

For my main sites I also like to add Google Analytics to the blog. With this you can get a better idea of the SEO of your blog by viewing which keywords are most popular. You can also better view your traffic stats and find your top referrers. This isn’t limited to any number, you can search by day, month, year or any custom period of time.

You can also view which posts are your most popular, perfect for round-up posts, or featuring your most popular posts on your sidebar as we do. This not only allows you to display your best work, but also keep them alive and fresh. It only took me a few seconds to find that our all-time most popular article is Stumbleupon Using Captcha (which went crazy with stumbles).

Other Traffic Counter Choices

Sitemeter

“Site Meter Basic offers a free, easy to install tool for sites looking to better understand who’s visiting their site, where customers are coming from, and where they are going within the site.”

I don’t actually use Site Meter, but it sounds like a good alternative to either Statcounter or Google Analytics. It’s all in preference and the ease of use for each service. They do offer a “premium” service that “starts at $6.95″ which gives you more abilities.

Awstats

I’ve never been a big fan of Awstats, even though I do have it installed on BAYB for yet another traffic tracker. The one thing I do like about it is (again) the referral tracking. You can view how many people came from each URL.

Awstats never seems as accurate as Statcounter or Analytics. Those two stats are often fairly similar, but Awstats is always significantly higher or lower.

Which traffic counter do you use?

Need Post Ideas? Browse Your Keywords

Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

ShareThis

The Release of the Entrecard Toolbar: Entrebar

Matthew Henrickson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:50:35 +0000

Entrecard is moving forward with bloggers. A huge percentage of bloggers are utilizing Entrecard as a traffic source, as well as a way to network. Entrecard is making new tools for bloggers to do that. They have just hit a homerun with their latest release, the entrecard toolbar, the Entrebar.

Entrecard Toolbar / Entrebar

The Entrebar has gotten me back into Entrecard. Sometimes I would drop if I felt like it, but now it has given me an easy way to browse new blogs.

The toolbar is full of features to make your Entrecard experience easy.

Easily go to your dashboard, messages, and more
Browse blogs in any category
Browse blogs by any price (+more options)
Jump from blog to blog, or open 10 windows
Add a blog to your favorites with one click
Advertise on a blog with just one click

The benefits of installing and using this toolbar was enough for me to upgrade to Firefox 3 to use it.

What has always been a problem for me is logging in to my account everytime. By logging into the entrecard toolbar I can stay logged in.

The toolbar also makes it a lot easier to spend those credits. Don’t go broke!

Have you downloaded the Entrebar?

Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

ShareThis

WP Affiliate Elite Wordpress Plugin

Matthew Henrickson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:40:07 +0000

I’ve noticed more and more bloggers are turning to affiliate marketing to make money online. Of course, a popular way to promote the affiliates is through blogging. Why not make that process easier?

Turn Keywords Into Affiliate Links

With WP Affiliate Elite you can simply choose a keyword that you’ve used on your blog and make it an affiliate link.

Here are some bonuses with using WP Affiliate Elite:

Takes only a few minutes to install (very simple plugin)
Hides your affiliate links to avoid losing commissions.
Tracks each click making it easy to analyze which are the most profitable keywords/links.

Timesaving and No Follow

I hate backtracking on posts. Sometimes my affiliate links change and then I have to go back and fix them. If I’ve put the link several places, it can take a while to track down. With the plugin, you can do this all in one spot.

No follow is another problem I’ve had. The same thing with updating affiliate links, sometimes I have to go back and add no follow. With simply one click, you can add no follow to your links or affiliate links!

Price Check

The cost for this plugin is $47, accompanied with a 60 day money back guarantee. I generally have a hard time paying for a plugin (although I did buy OIOPublisher) but this particular plugin may just save you the time and effort to pay $ for it.

Buy and download the WP affiliate elite plugin

Take a look at the video in case I missed anything.

No Self Pings Please

Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

ShareThis

5 Wordpress Plugins To Make Your Blogging Easier

Matthew Henrickson — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:13:32 +0000

Lately I have been installing Wordpress Plugins like crazy. Probably about 10 in the last few days. I wanted to share a few ‘new’ ones that I have found from other bloggers. After reading the 15 Most Under-Utilized Plugins for SEO I installed many of them.

Askimet

This is the #1 Wordpress Plugin to make life easier as a blogger. This particular blog gets at least 100 spam comments per day. Not sure why it’s so high, but imagine trying to moderate that yourself everyday. Waste of time!

I recently just upgraded this plugin, which is sporting a new feature. You can now automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month. Check!

Download the Askimet plugin

TagMahal – Automatic Tag Suggestion

This plugin will simply find suggested keywords you can tag your post with. I am a bit lazy and would like to see more from this plugin. After generating these suggested keywords, I’d like to then click and add them, instead of copy and pasting them in. Still a time saver.

Download TagMahal.

Technorati Incoming Links

I hated upgrading Wordpress after finding out my Technorati links would be replaced with some Google garbage. Well if you miss Technorati you can have it back. Simply install the plugin and you will have your incoming Technorati links back in the dashboard where they belong.

Download Technorati.

Broken Link Checker

We have posts dated all the way back to Nov 2006. We’ve done a lot of linking to try and share our traffic and really promote other bloggers. As we know, many come and go. This has left us with tons of broken links, way more than I had ever thought.

At the time of this post, the plugin has found 183 broken links. That’s after I’ve already cleaned some! How many broken links do you have?

Download Broken Links.

No Self Pings

I already blogged about No Self Pings Please, but I had to mention this again. Ever since installing I haven’t had to deal with any annoying self pings.

Which Wordpress plugins make blogging easier for you?

Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

ShareThis

Find the Best Web Hosting

Matthew Henrickson — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:26:35 +0000

With our recent web hosting troubles, I figure why not revisit Web Hosting Geeks. At WebHostingGeeks.com you can find the best web hosting for your needs. The website hasn’t changed as much since the last time we reviewed Web Hosting Geeks, however it is different.

Top 10 Best Web Hosts

One thing that is different is the top 10 list of best webhosts. The number one host is still BlueHost. Two new ones I’ve never heard of rank 2 and 3, Inmotion and HostingPad. HostMonster, our host, is at #5, with a 96% rating.

The top list is done by web hosting reviews of users. Each web host is reviewed, however I would definitely like to see more. The most popular web hosts obviously have more reviews and seem to rank higher because of that.

The top 10 list also includes the bonus features that each host gives. Many give you a free domain name, advertising credit (yahoo and google) as well as the ability to host unlimited domains.

Perfect for First Time Buyers

I wish I would of found a site like Web Hosting Geeks when I first was in the market to buy hosting and domains. They provide great web hosting articles for any beginner or even novice users.

You can even find web hosts by your budget or type of site you wish to run. Bluehost was named their best blog host. For Ecommerce they chose Yahoo.

Some Improvements Needed

I do like the site overall, but with so many different options, navigation wasn’t as easy as I would like. There isn’t even a search bar.

When I tried to find a particular host (that wasn’t Bluehost or Hostmonster which are written about everywhere) I couldn’t find it. Hostgator is almost nowhere to be found, except under the best reseller hosting. However on that page there are no reviews of the actual service.

Make sure to head on over to the Web Hosting Geeks and leave a review of your host.

Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

ShareThis

Project Wonderful Not So Wonderful for Bloggers

Matthew Henrickson — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:35:31 +0000

After entrecard adopted project wonderful many bloggers seemed to adopt the same system. We gave it a try and wrote a Project Wonderful review.

Project Wonderful in Re Review

I gave project wonderful a pretty positive review, stating that it was a great resource to use for monetizing your blog. However, don’t expect much money from it. I ended up running Project Wonderful for nearly 2 months and barely got to cash out twice ($20).

For the first week or two, our price was up to $2.20 per day. By the end we could barely get .30 to .40 cents per day. I would actually be losing money if I would take Project Wonderful over a private ad ($20 per month for a banner).

I don’t think Project Wonderful is very good for monetizing your blog. However, for advertising, it can be golden.

Advertising on Project Wonderful

If you are a bargain hunter for advertising, project wonderful may be just what you are looking for. Some websites and blogs cost as low as .01 per day (some are even free). Just by getting one click on your ad, that’s already a steal.

Two of my favorite blogs to advertise on have been Ninja Success and It’s Write Now. The cost per day is pretty low and my cost per click is only a few cents. It’s been a perfect way to use up the rest of my Project Wonderful leftover funds.

If you aren’t trying to squeeze out every dime, you can do a huge bulk order and advertise on 100’s of blogs if you want to. HomeBizBlogger has written his experience with Project Wonderful Advertising Campaigns, that could be of interested if you want to bulk advertise on Project Wonderful.

Do you reinvest the money you earn on Project Wonderful? If so which websites or blogs do you advertise on?

Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

ShareThis

Blog About Your Blog » Blogging Tools

Free Web Hosting With LimeDomains

Random Posts

Submit Your BlogPosts at BloggersBase

Random Posts

What Stat Counter Do You Use For Your blog?

Random Posts

Squidoo Is Perfect For Bloggers

Random Posts

Which Stat Tracker To Use

Other Traffic Counter Choices

Related Posts

The Release of the Entrecard Toolbar: Entrebar

Related Posts

WP Affiliate Elite Wordpress Plugin

Related Posts

5 Wordpress Plugins To Make Your Blogging Easier

Related Posts

Find the Best Web Hosting

Related Posts

Project Wonderful Not So Wonderful for Bloggers

Related Posts