When dealing with the hosting of your website, make sure you know the rules. Many webhosts don’t allow adult images. My host, Hostmonster, has very particular rules. What you may think is okay, they may consider adult.

What is Adult?

Hostmonster has very strict rules when it comes to what is adult or not. There can be no nudity (including photography and art) as well as escort services, adult toy sites, and other adult materials.

What Happens?

Today I spent my entire morning working with my host. I was trying to get all 9 of my websites that is hosted at Hostmonster restored. My entire account had been suspended for hosting an adult blog on their service. Instead of shutting down that particular site, my entire network was suspended.

I was never given a warning or anything. When I had asked if they could restore that site for another week so I could find another appropriate host, they declined. Instead I spent the next two hours trying to figure out what to do and download the needed files so I could remove it from the host.

Not only did the two hours cost me traffic, it also essentially cost me money. The website that I had to take down now is without a host and is losing traffic and money as long as it’s down.

The problem could of been resolved easily if I had only a few images that were deemed inappropriate, but that wasn’t the case. It was a little tough removing the entire site of images, which would of been near impossible.

The silly thing is though, the same thing would of happened with just ONE image. An entire suspension of the network.

Developing a website for sale can be time consuming, especially if you want to make a lot of money. I wrote a few tips about how to sell your blog. The tips included having value, determining a price, then finding a platform to sell it on.

Well what happens after you find that buyer?

This has always scared me a bit. I know basics about hosting and WordPress, I am by no means an expert. After I had a buyer for the sale of my blog, Blogging Addiction, I decided to turn to my hosting for some help.

I got some great support from Hostmonster about what I needed.

First, I needed to set up an FTP account that was just for that domain. The FTP account is needed so all of the files could be downloaded to move. This is fairly simple, just go into your hosting CPanel under FTP accounts. Make sure to include the directory that you need.

Secondly I just made another admin account for wordpress and sent the buyer the login for that. Now that they have the access to all the files, the last thing is the domain transfer.

I buy my domains at GoDaddy. Transfering a domain on Godaddy is also fairly easy. Just go to My Domains and select one. Select account change. Now you just need to know the buyers information like login name and email. After the transfer, the buyer simply needs to “accept” it. My domain transfer was over within a day.

Selling a blog can be a bit confusing and a tad scary, but it’s all experience. Now I feel confident in getting into website and domain selling.

Happy Father’s Day! Here are some new contests for you. Perfect to use your blog and good luck!

Digital Camcorder

The Flip Mino is one of the smallest and nicest camcorder. You have the chance to win it by joining the The Net Fool contest. First subscribe, then you can gain more entries if you write about it, create and submit a video on YouTube or submit one of his posts to social media networks.
Ends on June 25th.

$25 Gas Card or Cash

Win a $25 Gas Card or the equivalent amount in Cash (by Paypal) with Save Money. Rules are very simple: earn your point by subscribe to his RSS feed by mail or by writing a post about this contest linking to the site.
Ends on July 1st.

Software and cash

First contest for Volk Defense with a lot of prizes: Norton license, domain names, banner design and cash. To enter subscribe to the site, write about the giveaway and submit it to social networks.
Ends Today! Hurry up!

If you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!

I’ve tried lots of ways to make money online. I’ve found some work, and some don’t. Yet I’ve never tried to sell a site… until now.

Blogs with Value

First, of course it needs to have value. The number one rule of selling a website or blog is that it’s value is how much someone will buy it for. Value comes in different things that can range from a good domain name to unique content, to money made to PR and traffic.

Determine What You Want

This is important. You don’t want put your price too high, it will scare off the buyers. You don’t want to put it too low either, you could rip yourself off.

With my sale of Blogging Addiction, I asked for a start price, with $50 reserve (minimum I would take) as well as a $200 BIN (buy it now). Of course I didn’t expect $200 and am considering lowering it. You can follow the auction at Digital Point.

Find a Platform

You need to find somewhere to sell it, for a successful sale. The options are mainly, a forum like Digital Point, Sitepoint, or Ebay.

For domain sales and cheaper website sales, I would recommend Digital Point. I’ve received a lot more bidders than I would of expected for a domain that I was almost going to flat-out drop.

Sitepoint is more for higher value domains. It does cost to list your auction.

I would suggest eBay as a last resort.

Find a Buyer

After you have the price negotiated, thats about it! You then just need to transfer your domain and files to the buyer.

I originally wanted to write this article to show how to do that. How to transfer your domain and website to the buyer, however I couldn’t find any good information. Instead I will be contacting my hosting company in order to figure out the best way to do so. Stay tuned for Part 2 of How to Sell Your Blog.

Welcome back! Below a little selection of the simplest blog contests from all around the net. Take a look at the previous contest roundups as well. Maybe you’ll find something interesting that you have missed.

Cash and free advertising

SweetHacks is celebrating is 1st year of life and he’s holding a simple contest. You have the chance to win over $1300 in prizes (including cash and free advertising) for a total of 16 winners. Write a post about it, subscribe to his RSS by mail, leave a comment and you are in!
Ends on June 13th.

$50 Amazon Gift Card.

One Million and Beyond is giving away some Amazon Gift Cards. The contest will run for the next four weeks. If he reaches his weekly goal (to stay on track with his budget), he’ll give away a $25 Amazon gift certificate (each week). If he makes all of his budgets (all 4 weeks) at the end he will give away a $50 gift certificate. To enter you only have to write a post about this competition and leave a comment on the contest post.
Ends on July.

Cash and Entrecard Credits

Win cash and Entrecad credits from Commuter Chronicles. You can gain points by doing different things (see original contest post for details). Contest deadline has been extended to 11th June.

This week has just been about different planning for me. Different planning to make money in different revenue streams. I am focusing on several niches with several ideas. I hope some of them pan out!

If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 200 entrecard credits.

As of late a lot of my articles have been about affiliate marketing. I plan on doing several more that way. What is your favorite affiliate network?

Since I posted about Pepperjam and eBay yesterday, I figured  would do a few more posts about different affiliate networks that I use. Today I will be letting you know a little about the Hydra Network.

Hydra Network

Hydra is a great affiliate network with lots of different types of offers. Looking at today, they already have 5 brand new offers to run. There are plenty of offers from incentivized to health and education, even strictly UK offers.

My Favorite Offers

It all depends on your niche, but of course my favorite offers have to be freebie or free sample. I’ve mainly used other networks for my free offers, but with Hydra’s bulk of them as well as different types, I am beginning to try that out.

The two offers that have been best for me are:

Best Home Security = $15 per lead
Kaboom Neverscrub Free Sample = $9.50 per lead

Referring to Hydra Network

It’s important for a successful affiliate network to have a good referral program. Looking at the Hydra Network affiliate program I am pretty impressed. A few other networks offer 2%, $2, or $5 per referral. Hydra offers 5% for every referral, the highest I’ve seen.

For every referral you will receive 5% of all the campaigns your referral runs with Hydra. The one who referred me has already earned $2.50, and I’m just getting started.

Any other questions about the network, please leave your comments below.

Start making money with Hydra!