Over at WordUp, I’ve launched a contest that is for all you designing folk. I’m looking for a logo. If your design wins out, you’ll win some cool prizes. If you’re not into designing, but have a blog, there’s an opportunity for some free BE credits. View the post here.

Over the past several months we’ve seen many “link trains” from the infamous “Z List” to Technorati Favs to Feed my Feed. Each list obviously is a little different, yet completely the same.

The Positive Side

I think these trains can really help out a brand new blogger, especially one who wouldn’t achieve a page rank without the “list”. By getting on the list early, you could be looking at dozens of link backs. This will not only increase your technorati rank but it will also build back links to your blog.

By participating in these themed links you may even achieve what the list is designed to do. Whether it’s to gain more subscribers or get more favorites. Any stat increase is a plus.

The Negative Effect

There are several negatives to these “Link Trains” which is why I don’t participate in them.

I strongly believe that Blog about your Blog stayed at a page rank 4 last update because of the Z List. It was great to get all of those linkbacks and really made our technorati score look real nice, however it literally cost me money. We were included on the Z List early and received the full effect. The good and the bad.

Invaluable Links

The “link train” links aren’t that valuable. The trains are essentially a list of URL’s in a post. Almost every word in the train is a link, and usually the list gets very long. With each blog added to the train, it potentially decreases the value of your link.

Many of the people who participate in the lists are newer bloggers that are trying to get links to their new blogs. This means that many of the links you are getting are even less valuable because they don’t have a page rank. The majority of the links you will get aren’t valuable and carry very little weight.

Trains Are A Thing of the Past

Personally I think link trains are a thing of the past. Yet, I still see many bloggers participating in such trains, and trying to create their “own”. To be unique, start a completely new idea.

Are you still on the link train?

It is very possible to earn money online with free blogs using blogspot or something similar. However, there are more possibilities when you purchase your own domain and hosting. Domains will run you only a couple of dollars per year, while hosting is several dollars per month. Many web hosting companies make you pay 1-2 years up front, which can be about 100$.

One Year Free Web Hosting

Easy CGI is now offering a one time promotion where you will receive 1 year of free web hosting. Easy CGI guarantees that you website will have 99.9% uptime.

Not everyone is an expert right out of the gate, which is why they also offer set up and knowledge base tutorials. Sometimes problems can’t be solved within a tutorial, which is also why they offer great support. With Easy EGI you can have 24/7 phone support for anything you need regarding your hosting program.

Features Included

• Windows 2003 Hosting
• 350 GB of Disk Space 3500 GB of monthly Bandwidth
• Community Server Script Installation
• Site Builder
• 24/7 Phone and Email Support

Not bad at all for free. If you are considering making a change to your own domain, now is a great time to do it. For a year your only cost would be about 7$ and that would be for a domain name.

I really like sharing with our readers what I am making with this blog. Last month the grand total ended up being only about 95$. This doesn’t reflect any earnings from other blogs, just this one.

Our traffic was better than June. I use two different services to record stats so the numbers vary. Awstats reports 7506 unique visitors while statcounter reports 8,412.

Some of our most popular posts of the month include

• 9 Reasons to Use a Desktop Blog Editor
• Do your page titles properly reflect the content of the page?
• 5 Must Have Comment Plugins for WordPress
• 6 Great Tips for Hosting a Blogging Contest
• Three Steps to Keeping your RSS Feed Readers

I’m also glad to see that our RSS Feed Subscribers increased by nearly 100 in the month of July!

Now on to the earnings

Adsense 3.38$
Text Link Ads 15.70$
TLA Referrals 50.00$
ReviewMe 0$
PayPerPost 13.65$
Sponsored Reviews 32.50$
Auction Ads 0$
RSS Feed Ads 0$
Private Ads 100$

That brings the total to 215.23$. I left a few things blank seeing as I had earned from them last month, and earned nothing this month. I think it’s time for auction ads to be removed. I would really love to replace it with a sidebar banner of some sort.

You can buy advertising on this blog by using Text Link Ads to be “featured”. There is also monthly space available on the sidebar of this blog for 10$ and RSS feed space for 6$ per month. Longer deals can be arranged.

Please use the contact form if you are interested in advertising.

That title is supposed to be sung to the tune of Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools”. Okay, it’s nutty, I know. Anywho, I’m running a Technorati Favorites Chain on two of my blogs and everyone is invited to join in. I know things like this is being done all over the blogosphere, but there are two things to keep in mind. You can never have to much Technorati love and I will post the updated chain on the front page of my blogs every week. That means your blog link will be shown on two more blogs every week.
If you would like to put a link in the chain, go to That Says It All or Mike’s Money Making Rants & Raves and join in.

Do you like art? Check out my art blogs.

My Art Quest

My Art Quest 2

Just simply being passionate about a topic isn’t enough for having a successful blog. I have found this out first hand. If you want a successful blog, you can always go with the trends. Pick a popular niche, and watch the traffic roll in. Well it’s not that easy… but it can be.

My Blog Experiment

Well, it wasn’t exactly an experiment, but it has turned out to be. If it’s not enough being busy with Blog about your Blog and several other blogs I contribute to, I have started two new projects you may or may not be familiar with.

I was definitely hoping for more interest in my poetry blog, however that hasn’t exactly been the case. The traffic levels and click-throughs on the ads have been very minimal to non-existent. Mind you I am not exactly actively promoting it, besides on forums.

It has been the complete opposite for my newest project. Apparently, everyone loves free stuff. It’s All Free Online has had a great jump start. In less than a week, the blog has received 1,000 unique visitors, with 11 RSS Feed subscribers. By finding a popular niche and delivering good content I have been able to drive traffic to the blog.

My Inspiration

That’s all good, however there’s been better. I have been following Mikes Money Making Mission very early in my “blogging career”. He recently launched Celebrity Insider which is about celebrity gossip, news and rumors. He has driven some great traffic to that blog, largely due to search engine referrals.

In only 47 days, the traffic he reports is 33,669 unique visitors. With some quick math that works out to be about 715 unique visitors a day. With the blog monetized by adsense, this could possibly work out to several dollars a day, just with that program alone. That kind of traffic is amazing, and as I understand it to be, he hasn’t had to really promote the site actively.

You don’t have to be exactly knowledgeable about the topic, however you have to be able to find information about it. If you simply want to blog about whats popular, you can see what top tags people are using on technorati, or the google trends. Google Trends is a tool I have found recently, and it may be pretty beneficial for any blogger to determine keywords to use within a blog post.

Whether your blog is about freebies, or celebrities, there is money to be made on niche blogs.

Checking back into our contest, I did a quick tally of the entries. So far we only have 10 entries for our Laptop Briefcase Giveaway. With another week left, I hope at least for another 10. Remember, the bag is valued at 180$ and each bag they make is unique. The contest ends next tuesday august 7th.

I really want to show our sponsor, Eco-Handbags, that they made a good choice in sponsoring our competition. The prize is really great, and you have a good shot at winning.

For those in Canada who couldn’t participate the last time, you can enter this competition. To enter the competition all you have to do is link back to Blog about your Blog and our sponsor. See the contest post for more details.

In the comments section I will post the entries I have listed. If you don’t see your name let me know.