Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

The launching of my blog network, equipped with a new layout, new blogs, and a brand new name, is less than 24 hours away!

I’m working on some finishing touches as well as making sure the associated blog network launch contest is ready to go. I’ve checked with the post office and they tell me I’m allowed to send the contest winnings through the mail so now all I have to do is fine tune the contest rules and the contest will be in the launch.

The contest is going to need YOUR! participation to make it a success so please stay tuned to see how you can help and win.

Oh, yeah, and I hope you like the new look and are able to navigate the new color themes. I’ve allowed users to switch between a University of Michigan Inspired theme, a Green Bay Packers inspired theme and a neutral red and black theme. Have fun with the colors and enjoy the new looks.

Almost there….

Only three days to go and I’m feeling a little anxious. I will be launching the blog network, with new site designs and a new name. It’ll also come with a launch contest and the only two hints that I’m giving is that it will be used to help promote the various blogs that I have as well as allow those helping to win a little piece of paradise (or at least something cool from Hawaii.)

The reason for me getting a little anxious is because I haven’t found a blog design for this blog and was a little worried that I’d be launching with the same old design or something that I just threw together and wasn’t pleased with. Instead, I think I just found a design that’ll allow me to do the things I’ve wanted with this blog and keep things looking a little professional. So with that, I’m sorry if there’s a little blog dust around these parts. I’ll be prying up the floor boards every now and then and might make it look a little crazy at times.

Hope you like the design, the blog network and the contest. Stay tuned…

All blogs have now been redesigned, except this one. For those of you who are regular readers you can get a sneak peak if you know how to find the blogs. (Not too hard)

I also plan on making a weekend of redesigning erikvossman.com, coming fresh with a new name and all (but still same Erik Vossman Weblog). It’s been a process developing and redesigning and especially coming up with a name. But I’ve managed to put it all together and will be launching my blog network in 5 days.

Also I’d like to keep you all excited about the contest that I’ll be launching the network with. You’ll be able to win, in my mind, a very sweet prize straight from the Hawaiian Islands.

Stay tuned to see how you can win. By the way an interesting tid-bit. When I launch my network I will have been blogging for 1 year and two days. Boy what a year it’s been.

Updates: I have finally named my blog network and have been working on a blog network homepage, redesigning all blogs involved, and preparing a contest for the launch.

As much as I liked, and thought was catchy, erik’s blog network, I or shall I say we, needed a blog network name that was going to be easily remembered, catchy, pertain to blogging, and have kind of a news feel all at the same time. I’ve been toiling over a name on and off for the past 8 months. I even posted here asking readers to help me out, as well as at Yaro’s Business Forum, but mainly got encouragment rather than ideas. (By the way that was probably the best thing that I could have gotten at the time so thanks to those who helped out.)

Then one day I was out on a run, which I must admit I hadn’t been doing since that last triathlon about 2 months prior, and it hit me. After all those months of thinking of nothing it just came upon me. So I passed it by my fiance when I returned home and it was a hit. I reg’d it, as well as some other names I had been thinking of, and the network was born.

CONTESTI plan on rolling it out on Tuesday Novemeber 14th, 2006 with a great contest which will cost you nothing to enter and allow you to win something great from Hawaii!

Stay tuned and watch out as this blog will get a drastic redesign in the next few days.

Blog design is tough. Coding, for myself, is way easier than sitting down in front of Fireworks or Photoshop and trying to layout a blog template, or a forum template. Colorschemes, logo design, font choice. Why is it so hard? Am I less of an internet entrepreneur if I can’t design a blog template and get the coloring right?

I have been asking myself this over the past day as I my weeks long laboring over my blog network main site has been getting nowhere, should I desing these sites, graphically that is, or should I hire someone else?. I’ve never sat down to design a graphically elegant design. Or maybe I should say I’ve never succeeded. For those of you who’ve been to my blogs within the network, you’ll notice that they all have the same layout with a 3 color pattern and slight changes here and there. Nothing big.

Now that I’ve got a name and a decent size network in place, I want to get a design that sets itself apart from all the other blogs. I am sure, or at least I feel, I could sit here and labor over designing a site for a while and maybe, just maybe I could strike something that I like, something that makes me say, sweet! Now that’s a design. But how long would that take, and would my time be better spent coding and producing content, something that I feel I’m much better at.

I gots to thinking, what would a true entrepreneur do, or a business leader do? He or she would realize their shortcomings and hire someone to do the job that they were meant to do. It’s more efficient, and it will save money. If I spend 60 hours coming up with a design that looks half as good as some creative type can come up with in 5 hours, maybe less, wouldn’t spending 60 hours producing content for the network be a better use of my time.

Silly that I even had to think about that one.

More to come…

I’ve been battling the naming beast for about 5 months on and off. Meaning, I tried for about 1 week 5 months ago then gave up until this past week, searching for a good name for my blog network.

Do I name a a media company that would incorporate all of my media needs or do I just name my blog network, which has now expanded to 13 blogs with a 14th and 15th blog on the way (yeah it’s twins). I’ve been asking a couple people close to me and my Internet endeavours, what should I name my blog network?

Some good names have come around but all of them are taken, not necessarily naming a blog network but naming something. I couldn’t find a .com name that rolled off the tongue and fit the blogging world. (Of course b5media doesn’t really scream blog network, but it does have a great ring to it.)

Well I went running this afternoon, after the Michigan Wolverines defeated Penn State!!!! They gave a little scare towards the end but remembered they had to play the whole 60 minutes and played tough to stop em. BCS standings come out this week!!!

Anyway, about 5 minutes into the run and bam, it hit me. The name of my network. Now I’m not going to give the name away right now, that would be silly. I’m going to do an official launch in about a week with a network home site and a sweet contest that I know everyone will want to take part in. YOU WIN SOMETHING, and IT’S FREE!

I’ve been learning how to create “web 2.0″ feeling graphics and hope to have a great looking site in a few days.

Finally!!!

Darren Rowse just posted over at problogger.net that the blog network he is helping to build b5media just got funding!

That’s right, two Canadian VCs are helping to finance their company and make it grow and earn more. I hope you all realize how motivating this is and get out there and blog or build like crazy! If not, it was $2 MILLION.

I’m currently up to 14 blogs that I try and update several times a week for each blog. I’d like to update 2 or 3 times a day on each blog but I’m basically a 1 man show (aside from my guest poster over at fuelingtheworld.com. But that’s OK, for now I just want to slowly build an internet presence, build my virtual real estate, build backlinks, and get listed in search engines.

Have a great rest of you Thursday, as my good friend Brett in would always say, “One more day ’til the weekend!”

technorati tags:Blog, Network, b5media, blogging, money, investment, venture, capitalist

Ok, so this post really should be on a main blog network blog but since I have no name for my blog network besides, erik’s blog network, you guys are stuck with hearing about my site updates. Besides it could help you out.

Rumor Patrol, my blog on Hollywood rumors, got a little bit of a facelift today. I have a source for new graphics (that I will reveal to those who need some sweet graphics) and just got this one sent over to me. I think it makes the blog look a little more,…. sassy, and I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Also, on a blog network note, I need a name for a media company, any ideas? Let me know, preferably something that doesn’t have a .com taken (don’t go giving me a sweet idea and then snagging the name only to sell it to me for a sizeable amount) but if you do have a good name for a media company and have the .com already, I’d be happy to offer.

technorati tags:Blog, Network, Graphics, Design, Rumors, Hollywood

SprintRants.com, which is seeing a surge in both traffic and quality ranters now has a forum. It’s my first attempt at a forum but it was pretty easy to start and install through netfirms. I’m using phpbb and they basically do the whole install for you.

The forum is just an extension of the rant board and will allow users to interact to get their questions answered and their rants heard. We’ve had a sprint customer service supervisor hanging around the rant board lately and helping a lot of people out so I thought it was fitting to begin the forum now. Hopefully people won’t be shy and head over to it and begin posting.

So if you have sprint and want to support a good cause, check out the Sprint Rants Forum, sign-up, and talk about your sprint service, phone or anything else related to sprint PCS or Nextel.

Yeah, Yeah, I realize its the middle of the month and I haven’t given an update on earnings last month, August. It was another good month and an improvement over last month, which was $122.05

Text-Link-Ads — $8.29
Adsense and Chitika– $21.61
Namedrive — $76.44
Affiliates — $44.75

Total = $151.09

This month, which is almost over!, is going OK. I think I’ll see a drop in overall earnings because affiliates last month really boosted my cashflow and it doesn’t look like that will happen this month.

I’m planning on reinvesting the earnings over the last two months into more domain names. Even though their short term ROI is super high (most are coming out to over 100% a year) I’m not sure what the long term outlook is for domain names and unsure if that’s where my earnings should be invested. But…, the return is nice and I’m going to focus on higher traffic names that still make a return. You can always do something with the traffic.