Apologies for not being around much recently but hopefully back on track again now.

As this blog is called Blog About Your Blog that’s what I’ll do.   I’m pleased to say that Mike’s Money Making Mission has now gone through the $900 mark in earnings.  It’s been a bit of a slog but when I hit $1000 I’ll have a small celebration.  I think you need to have something to look forward to when you set targets.

My recent posts have been on my opinions of various money making programs I have tried. Some of them I have given a rating – a personal one based on my experience.

The last few posts are: Money From Dating about the DIY Dating affiliate program; Money Making Program Updates where I talk about TreasureTrooper, daytipper, and review me plus Money Making With PayPerPost. There is also my warning about Commission Junction which I have mentioned previously.

On a very personal note my thanks to everyone who has left me comments or sent me emails following the loss of Janice.  They helped so much and are greatly appreciated.

Good luck,
Mike.

 

It has been a frustrating couple of weeks moving home, and losing internet access in the process. In many ways, the time off put into perspective what the blog means to me.

The inability to publish my blog as regularly as I would have liked, made me realise how much I enjoy putting the various posts together. The multi facetted format certainly keeps my mind sharp and being up to speed with current events gives me at least 2 minutes of lively conversation with my wife everyday.

Time off also highlighted how much time I spend ordinarily sat at a computer, researching, posting and promoting The Pisstakers. In the scheme of things I am quite lucky to be able to pick up on angles to a news story and twist it our way. But even though I don’t labor as such over every post, it does take time to find a good image and a couple of pertinent links, create the home page links and finally check it over.

Now the technical atrocities are over, thankyou Comcast -not, it was quite exciting to actually get back on-line and have an out-of-date blog staring me in the face. Like a first day back at school, I whizzed through the posts. And now we have an uber fast connection, publishing was a giddy pleasure too.

In conclusion, I think it is good to be focussed on a blog, but also it is important to be able to stand back from it. This could help you see what it maybe looks like to others and “see” what it looks like to you too from afar. I am chuffed with how our blog looks, and it does have something different about it. However, I realise the limits of a one-man band blog.

If I am going to build on the good foundations and maintain the service come rain or shine, I need to build on the tentative steps taken so far with Techboggle. 2007 is time to attract some witty contributors. If you are witty, and/or your blog is humor, web/tech or news oriented, and you would like to work something out to leverage our escalating traffic and our snazzy looping display box, drop me a line.

Leave us a comment about whatever you want. Hopefully we can get a little discussion going in our comment box. I will personally visit each commentors blog, and I hope others will too! I will select a random blog to add to our BlogRoll for the week. Your link will also be added to this post. Last week we had 13 comments, let’s break that!

Start commenting!

… and everyone should try to make that dream come true.  That’s the practical upshot to our blog, One Old Green Bus.

During some “hard times”, our whole family talked about our dreams and visions to take our minds off some bad troubles… Well, the troubles ended up being lifted, but our dreams still remain… and one of them is important to our whole family and we’re trying to make it happen… and yeah, we need help.

If you surf on over to http://doubledeckerbuses.org/blog/ you can read all about it… and about a whole lot of other stuff too!  (We try to be entertaining, amusing, and thought provoking as we hopefully we get our dream to become a reality!

Help us rescue and own an old double-decker bus… save a piece of history… and see a dream come true.  Please visit One Old Green Bus. Well wishes, and new advertising, promotion ideas always welcome!

Are you getting Spring Fever? Do you have a favorite Major League Baseball team? If so, you may want to be a guest blogger over at Chad Gramling’s Baseball Blog (CGBB). Click here for the details.

Like Blog About Your Blog Pop Culture Heroines is a multi author blog where you can submit story ideas and get published (promoting your own blog too by including a link in the by-line). I’m happy to announce that the first of our contributors has just published her first piece there! Here is an excerpt:

Often the role of those who lurk in the shadows is overlooked by those who grab the limelight with their obvious displays of heroism or gallantry. While heroes are often the people who receive the praise and become the focal point for saving the day, a hero is often made up of more than just their individual selves. In many cases there are key people who support or critically contribute to the actions of the hero in question.

Take for instance the role of Tara in Buffy. There is of course no doubt that Buffy is the star and the hero of the hour, the day and the year. Contrast her role with the initial introduction of Tara and you could be forgiven for dismissing Tara as unimportant and unnecessary. With her sideway glances, avoidance of eye contact and wish to avoid conflict, she would not be considered instantly memorable. However just as in real life, the importance of supporting characters should not be judged too quickly.

Come over to the site, read the rest and comment!!!

Also if you have a story idea or would like to write a piece please contact me via the blog!

Sorry for the delay on this, it won’t happen again, this was supposed to be up last week!

Tom from Tom Jackson Online has been chosen to be our third Blog about your Blog author interview. I have asked him a series of questions about some personal things, blogging and blog about your blog. I hope you enjoy the interview.

First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Tom Jackson, I’m 26-years old and I’m a chemist from the rural northern county of Northumberland in England, UK. Anyone who wants to know more can read my welcome post at Tom Jackson Online. I’ve been blogging for about 6 months now and I thoroughly enjoy it, although I’ve had to scale back recently because of work commitments.

Are you married? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?

I’m single – probably just as well because when you’re in science, particularly research, your life kind of gets taken over by your work. It’s not a job you can forget about when you get home – you’re always thinking about which piece of work needs done next and how to tackle it.

What do you do when you are not blogging?

When I’m not doing my day job I’m a part time Army Officer, so that’s really work too! I steer well clear of that aspect of my life when blogging because it’s rather a delicate issue in the current political climate. I’m also a part time First Aid trainer and assessor and do some work for training agencies around the North of England, as well as for St John Ambulance.

Jeez how do you find the time to blog?!

What is your favorite blog to read besides your own?

This is going to sound a cop out, but most people on BAYB read the same sort of blogs. I’m following Mike’s Money Making Mission, My Quest To Make Money On The Internet and The Million Dollar Experiment Heads Down Under. Don’t ask me to choose a favourite! I read them because I like to follow their progress without risking failure myself! I also believe they provide a very valuable testing ground for blogger’s wishing to monetise their work.

Well we do have the best blogs here, impossible to chose a fav.

Ok, now the personal is out of the way, let me ask you a few questions about your blog.

When was your blog created?

YouTube Karaoke, my newest venture, was created in October 2006. My other blogs can be found on the sidebar in there. Why did you choose your blog topic?In Soapbox Jury I did a review on a blog called Name That Tube (by Mike, the friendly chap who gives you money at Money for Blogs). The things I admired most about Name That Tube were the originality and quirkiness of the concept, audience participation and the ease of maintenance. I wanted a blog with similar traits – particularly the ease of maintenance and audience participation, which only a very small proportion of blogs currently offer. A karaoke oriented blog puts a tick in all the boxes. It has worked well so far – PR4 after only 3 months and 150+ uniques every day, 95% of which is from the search engines.

We get a few hits a week from that exact term ‘youtube karoake’ from one of your posts lol

Did you think you were going to be instantly successful?

With YouTube Karaoke I had done some homework beforehand and received a lot of positive feedback from my work colleagues. I had an inkling it was a good concept and it has been from my point of view because I enjoy adding to the collection of music videos – it’s like my own online record collection for the world to enjoy (or not as the case may be). About 20% of the visitors are returners, so it obviously works for them too.

What do you enjoy most about blogging?
To be able to network and share tips and ideas with my fellow bloggers. I often leave small nuggets of information for Mike, Martin, and Rob and they do the same for me which is nice.

That’s one of the most important things to becoming a successful blogger I think, networking.

Do you have any new upcoming projects or ideas you want to announce?

No new blogs in the pipeline because I have my hands full already! I am hoping to refine the layout of YouTube Karaoke. It has one distracting flaw at the moment – when you scroll to see the song lyrics you lose sight of the music video. Ideally I’d like to have videos that floated as you scrolled, but that’s for the future.

What is the best feature of your blog?

A good feature of my blog is that you can crank up the volume, scroll, sing and be merry. I think everyone, even the most miserable of people, likes to sing along to music sometimes.

What do you rely most on to get traffic to your blog or website?

Search engines – in particular the big G. When you give posts a straightforward, focused title like ‘Song Name – Artist’ you tend to fair well in the search results.

And the final series of questions, a little bit about Blog About Your Blog

How did you find us?

I could be wrong, but I believe you asked me to do a review about BAYB on Soapbox Jury. You could say I helped launch this community.

Haha yep, that seems like such a long time ago though, we were still at blogger. We need a re-review!

What do you like most about BAYB?

I like the concept and ease of maintenance. I know PoEt didn’t like it when I mentioned this in my review, but BAYB is elegant in its simplicity – the idea of getting other people to write your blog posts is borderline genius if you ask me.

I don’t really like it put that way. I am trying to help out other bloggers and send them traffic as well as getting their articles read by more people. With the review and linking that I want to start doing with pr4 blogs we’ve built I think we can help bloggers even more

And for the hardest question of all…

What do you like the least?

Tricky one this. I have to answer diplomatically here! I think that some posters are shifting the focus away from blogging about their blog and tending towards blogging about their product or advertisement. Hope that was tactful enough!

Who have you chosen to be the next one interviewed?

Stefanie from Random Encounters of We. Bless her, she got a tiny slating from Soapbox Jury too but she took on board our recommendations, so obviously thought they were worthwhile.

Ok Stefanie, we are coming for you next! I’ll send out your questions right away so the next interview can be posted on tuesday!

Thanks to Tom for the interview! We hope to see you blogging with us more!