Hello, my name is Garry Conn. I run a personal blog site titled, Garry Conn dot Com. I help thousands of readers by delivering successful blogging tips. I am a full time blogger and maintain a ton of dot Com blogs and websites. I enjoy helping others and that is one of the main reasons why I write and share my thoughts and ideas here on BAYB. I want to invite you to view my BAYB profile page to quickly find references to all the articles I have written here.

Running a blog can be a challenge as well as a huge learning experience. Making money online using your blog can be an even larger challenge. One of the most common mistakes people make is that they forget that they are presenting their sites to real people. Sometimes people forget this simple fact and then wonder, “Why doesn’t my site make money online?”. It is common for a frustrated blogger to feel, “Hey! I am participating in Google Adsense, I have got my ReviewMe.com Badge up and running… so what’s the problem? Why can’t I make money online!!!” The problem is simple. When people visit most monitized sites, they feel like you are treating them like objects and not individuals.

Consider how you feel when someone rings your doorbell, stops you in the mall, or calls you on the phone. There are some many people out there who are interested in only one thing, your money! And when you run a blog that gives people this perception, you are not going to succeed. In my last post titled, “It’s Not Always About Traffic“, I explained how it is not as important to focus on getting tons of traffic to your site as it is important to discover ways to keep the traffic you do get and convert them into regular readers.

A second aspect to converting traffic into regular readers is to NOT make them feel like cattle being shipped to the slaughter. If you show people how sincere you are as a person and illustrate your passion for your blog topic, then that is what will win people over. Trust and Respect is the key… and readers find sites that have an unbalanced ratio of sponsored or third party ads to actual content, then that creates ill perceptions. Your site should have a 9/1 ratio of actual unique content to stuff that can make you money online. Secondly, when you do participate in certain programs that make money online… support them and speak highly of them. You can’t expect to make money online just by slapping up some HTML code on your site… just like a car salesman, you need to work the deal… you need to give people reasons why they should click the ads, buy the product, etc…

Good luck with making money online. I would love to hear your comments, questions and suggestions. Please drop me a comment below.

Blog about your Blog is growing at a nice rate, I’m happy to share we received over 10,000 unique visitors last month! The early month surge of traffic had to do with Lee’s Spiderman 3 Venom post that received over 3,000 hits in a few short days.

Another of Lee’s post has been receiving a lot of traffic, and is easy our most popular post. Ever ask Why People Send Spam Still? Last our two other popular topics of course are our comment fridays, and Jennifer’s awesome post of Increasing Blog Traffic by Using HTML in Comments.

Thursdays still seem to be our popular day of the week. Stumbleupon is our biggest traffic earner,and world oneness day was a popular search term for us this month.

For the first time I’d also like to disclose our earnings for this blog.

Google Adsense: 8.34$
Text Link Ads: 7.45$
Review Me: 23$
Pay Per Post: 35$ (counted as posts done in the month)

Sponsored Reviews: 32.50$

Auction Ads: 7.55$
Donations: 20$
Direct Ad’s on Site Feed: 6$

Grand Total: 139.84$

If you subtract the fee’s I’ve spent promoting I probably break even. We aren’t making a lot of money… yet, but we will. I will also be paying 5$ to Stefanie from Random Encounters of We for her Post Level Ad on Text Link Ads that was sold!

May was a great month traffic wise, and we’ve got a few new authors contributing that is making this blog even better.

According to a phone survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, spam is on the rise, but fewer Americans are bothered by it. Specifically, the frustration users have with spam has dropped to 18 percent from just three and a half years ago. The reason for this decrease in being bothered is that email users have become more adept at handling these “gnats of the Internet”.

Another reason is that there has been a change in the type of spam being delivered to a user’s email inbox. For example, the report cites that pornographic spam is not as prevalent as it used to be. Over the past three years, spam of this type has gone from 71 percent to 52 percent today.

One highlight I found interesting in the report is that Web users over the age of 50 are less likely to find spam as annoying as younger users. I don’t know if that’s because the older generation doesn’t use email as much as their younger counterparts or what, but I suppose they’ve left the worrying to those “whipper-snappers”. 😉

The survey shows promise, too. People are smarter about spam than they were a few years ago:

• Users are making more use of the spam filters that are provided by their employers or they use filters of their own (up to 71 percent of users do this). So even though spam continues to rise, less of it is actually reaching the user’s eyes.
• Being able to recognize spam has increased.
• About 44 percent of Web users are better about not leaving spammers an easy way to get their email addresses.
• And less than 25 percent of users avoid the temptation of clicking on links in spam messages.

If you’d like to know more about how to see less spam in your inbox, I wrote an article that you’ll find beneficial: 4 Ways to Protect Your Email Inbox

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For my birthday I asked for donations, and received about 20$. I stated that I would use the money for blog reviews and I did just that. I had contacted Kumiko about possibly reviewing Blog about your Blog. She agreed and there I spent my birthday money!

I knew Kumiko was going to do a great review of BAYB, but I had no idea how it was going to be. After reading it, I decided that it was one of the best reviews of BAYB we’ve ever received.

The Stats

Before I get into the review, not only did we get an awesome review, we got a decent amount of traffic. We received about 150 unique visitors just from her review, and counting.

The Review

Of course she hit on the main topics of our website goal. By posting on BAYB you are promoting your own site, and building links to it. Not only that, but we do get a nice amount of traffic, so your articles filter that traffic to your own site as well.

She included a few posts that she liked, one was written by me! This is NOT a sponsored post

Comment Friday

Comment Friday has been a big hit among our readers, subscribers, and authors. I started Comment Friday way back in February, and the first couple weeks we only got a handful of comments. Our Friday’s now receive anywhere from 20-40 comments!

The Criticism

Too many bloggers? She mentions that too many bloggers could ruin the feel of the blog, and it could be just filled with affiliate links and self-promotions. That has been the argument against us since we started back in November, and I can’t say I have had an author really stink up the blog yet. We do allow our bloggers self-promotion, but the best self promotion is a good article, and I think our authors have realized that, which is why we have such great content.

Sponsored posts, could be a problem on every site, but I haven’t let it become on one ours. I imagine we will be able to maintain less sponsored posts, as our site has become more desirable to post on. Therefore, sponsored posts will generate more revenue.

AuctionAds is become a brand new way to monetize our website, and I believe I will be taking Kumikos advice on this. After the total reaches 10$ I will probably cash out, and remove the ads from the blog. It doesn’t fit our niche, and the ads aren’t very relevant or money earners.

Lastly, and probably most importantly (to our authors at least), she mentioned that our authors don’t get paid. That has been a concern for some, so they chose not to post with us. However, due to TLA’s Post Level Ads and other factors, we will be able to reward our active authors with the money that their articles generate.

This is a new experiment, and we’ve sold only one ad, however that article wasn’t written by me. Looks like someone will be getting paid. Remember with post level ads, the articles have to have their own page rank. So it’s extremely important for our authors to link to and promote the articles they have written.

Thanks Kumiko for our great review. I strongly recommend getting a review by Kumiko. Her price is pretty fair, it will only cost you 40$ on ReviewMe. Our review was definitely worth the money!

I’ve amassed quite a collection of bookmarks over the years. I was reviewing them recently and came across some that are similar in nature in that they’re generators — sites designed to do something for you. These could either take the boredom out of a task or create something for you that you don’t have the time or skill to do on your own.

Mycoolbutton: Those “glassy” buttons you see on sites nowadays may be difficult to create, especially if you don’t have the tools to make them. Well, now you do. You have control over the color, size and even the ability to add an icon from their list of offerings (e.g., del.icio.us, YouTube, Technorati, and others).

Sloganizer: Perhaps you have a client you’re working on a slogan for. Or maybe you need one for your blog. This sites for you. Here’s an alternative: The Advertising Slogan Generator. Though they may yield odd results from time to time, they’re sure to get your creative juices flowing.

Color Palette Generator: Now you can integrate your CSS colors with your header image on your blog (for example). Just give this site an image to work with and it will give you color swatches and hex values based on the colors in the image.

Web 2.0 Name Generator: This one’s pretty cool. Just click a button and it spits out names that sound like Web 2.0 companies. How about Realtune, Jabberdog, Pixoyo, Ooba? Availability of the names it generates is not guaranteed, but it comes in handy if you’re looking for ideas.

Fake Name Generator: Create fake names of people and associated information: address, email address, Social Security Number, credit card number, and a bit more. Please note that this is fake information, so the SSNs and credit card numbers is generates are not valid.

Official Seal Generator: Quickly create an official-looking seal. With seven designs to choose from you can control the size, the text that’s on it, colors, and more attributes. Be sure to check this one out!

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Comment Friday received a cool 24 comments. I know I posted it late, but thats alright.

This weeks topic seem to surround the weather. It’s hot for you, but cool for me!

This week I have chosen a new blog to be our Blog of the Week. Blogging4Everyone obviously seems to be new, so I figured they were in need of some link love.

They have some pretty decent articles, and posted a great comment. Too bad it was late in the comment friday for anyone to respond, it would of been a great topic starter.

Hope to have you all back next week!

Our RSS Feed Competition is CLOSED. We will be announcing a winner in the next few days, including a video of who won. Make sure to claim your prize in 48 hours or I will be drawing again! We may even have a 2nd prize winner!

A few rambling thoughts on life …

All we have is now. The measure of our peace of mind, and the measure of our personal effectiveness, are determined by how much we are able to live in the present moment. Regardless of what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow now is where we are. From this point of view, the key to happiness and contentment must be focusing on the present moment.

One of the beautiful things about children is that they absorb themselves fully in the present moment. They manage to stay completely involved in whatever they are doing, whether it’s watching a beetle, drawing a picture, building a sandcastle or whatever they choose to devote their energies to.

As we become adults many of us learn the art of worrying about several things at once. We can allow problems and future concerns to crowd into our present so that we become miserable and ineffective.

We also learn to postpone our pleasures and our happiness, often developing a notion that sometime in the future everything will be much better than now.

The High School student thinks, “When I’m out of school and don’t have to do what I’m told, everything will be great!”

He leaves school and suddenly recognises that he won’t be happy until he has left home.Â

He leaves hope, starts University and soon decides, “When I have got my degree, then I’ll be really happy!” Eventually he gets his degree at which time he feels that he can’t be happy until he has a job.

He gains employment and has to start at the bottom of the heap. You’ve guessed it. He can’t be happy yet.

As the years roll by he postpones his happiness and peace of mind until he gets married, starts buying a home, gets a better job, starts his family, gets the kids out of school, retires … and then he dies before he allows himself to be blissfully happy. All his present moments were spent planning for a wonderful future which never arrived.

Living in the now is about expanding our awareness to make the current moment more delicious. Each of us has the choice, moment by moment, as to whether we really want to live and allow ourselves to be touched and affected.

Whenever we are living in the present moment we drive fear away from our mind. Essentially fear is the concern over events which might happen sometime in the future. This concern can be paralyzing to the point where we find it impossible to do anything constructive.

We are, however, only open to intense fear when we are being inactive. The minute we start to take action and actually do something our fear subsides.

Living in the now is about about taking action, without fear of the consequences. It is about putting in our effort for the sake of involvement, without worry as to whether we will get our just rewards.

Time doesn’t really exist, except as an abstract concept in our head. The present moment is the only time we have.

 It’s up to us to make something of the moment.

Good luck,
Mike.
Mike’s Money Making Mission