Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

Here are some links to keep you busy this weekend and a sweet video of someone who is a little crazy.

For those of you who are bar goers this link will hit home and amuse the crap out of you. It’s from a site called Modern Drunkard Magazine and list 86 Rules of Boozing. My favorite on the list is number 30 Never complain about the quality or brand of a free drink.

For those of you getting into the wide world of ajax you should really check out this site, Miniajax.com. It has tons of great little gadgets to make your site wonderfully interactive.

Probably the best color scheme generator on the web, better than colorschemer online due to it’s layout. Check it out over at the well-styled color scheme generator. You can drag your mouse over the color wheel and see the outcome in the mock website setup.

And now on to the flying squirrel!

March was a decent month once again in terms of earnings. Although I’m still closer to a break even stage in my Blogtown Press blog network, due to paying bloggers and hosting fees, I feel as though it was a good month for me. I’m progressing towards a more realistic goal of a money earning business.

I’m making progress towards a more organized business plan approach and learning as I go along. I’ve been much more active in seeking out buyers of both text links, ad space, and posts for the blog network which has helped in the short term. I’d like to build a presence on (gasp) Text-Link-Ads so I don’t have to spend time tracking down potential advertisers right now.

Earnings for the month of March were:

Adsense: $182.88
TLA: $ 35.28
Posts Sold at Forums: $ 57.66
Links Sold at Forums: $ 80.67

NameDrive Domains: $102.38

Total Earnings: $458.87

Some of you may notice that my namedrive totals have increased since my last earnings report. That’s because I’m working on determining the scale-ability of my domain name investing method. So far so good although I would have liked to see a little higher earnings due to the investment. Still on track to make 100%(ish) return in a year.

Some others who divulge their earnings so you can be inspired…

Yaro Starak recently discussed earning money online and gave us a detailed analysis of his earnings, $6000+. He’s not a regular at doing this but these are the ones that really get you going! Thanks Yaro.

The Internet Cashflow Guy keeps moving up, great to see the progress. $485.40 last month

And that’s it!!! Looking through my blogroll showed me that I have to update it and get rid of some links from people who either don’t have blogs anymore, or don’t update them at all. I think 3 months is a good time period to go by.

I’ve been told personally by several prominent bloggers, as well as read countless times that the easiest way to launch another blog or website is to have an audience. Of course this is quite obvious, and of course I didn’t follow the advice.

Launching Blogtown Press would have been much easier had I really focused on building the traffic to this blog first. Instead, I decided to spread myself thin write on 5-10 blogs at a time and get mediocre traffic to all of them, then launch the blog network, then get minimal traffic to all blogs in the network.

Since then I’ve revamped my thought process and along the way built several of the blogs in the network to good traffic. I’ve followed good SEO technique to rank higher in the search engines, hired bloggers to increase content generation and allow me to spend time on promotion, and I’ve slowed down on launching new blogs.

Next launch I’ll have an audience!

The proper way to launch a website can be seen from the video I have embedded below. It’s a clip from some tech show, The Screen Savers, that Kevin Rose, founder of digg.com co-hosted (or have a spot on or something).

In this short little clip you’ll see Kevin Rose use his current position at this TV show to weave into the show a little segment about social news and bookmarking websites out there at the time (2004 the video says) and their shortcomings. He then goes on to talk about this new social bookmarking site that solves some of these shortcomings.

The website he mentions just happens to be digg.com which he leaves out the part that he founded. Now whether or not that was semi-shady to use his position of what looks like all knowing geek power or not. It’s a pretty slick move and no doubt helped him get the word out. Pretty sweet move Kevin

Found this gem about a month ago and decided I needed to share it with everyone cause it’s just that cool.

For those of you that are MTV junkies, like myself, you might remember the sweet TV show, that I hope they bring back for season two, Rob and Big. They had a bull dog that they found out could ride a skateboard pretty well.

This dog is ten times better than the one they saw originally do it, and their dog. Although I do think Rob could produce the best skating dog ever, just give him some time. But here it is, this dog leans to turn, kicks and pushes (lupe would be proud) and coasts around the parking lot.

I have to spread the love for someone who has dugg the idea of the link to a coconut contest and is now running a sweet contest of his own. And the title says it all.

You can win a a nice big juicy Argentinian steak! by joining in the contest Cesar has running over at his (sexy design) Argentina Travel Blog. Although I’m not sure if they’ll send you a steak from Argentina, I would imagine a lot of dry ice would be involved he is sending you the love and a steak, worldwide.

Although this is a contest, I should have linked to this blog a while ago. If you’re a travel blog enthusiast such as myself and dig seeing pictures of people enjoying different parts of the world, then this is the blog for you.

He has several writers posting over there, some who are traveling around Argentina and always giving great info and views. I personally really want to visit Argentina and expect a full country tour when I go Mr. I also really want to spend a Buenos Aires party night until 6 in the Morning which he told me about often while we worked. Sounds like an awesome time.

Besides partying I would really like to go to the Patagonia area and found out that there’s a Patagonia Glacier tour you can go on. Which I didn’t even know there was glaciers down there, but I should have guessed. Where else would they have tried out all those sweet thermal clothes they make.

Also, since my fiance and I are into adventure travel, I would probably end up stopping by the white water rafting in Mendoza. I’ve never gone before but the picture he has posted with it sure does look like fun.

Man, entering this contest and thumbing through more pictures of your Argentina Travel Blog has made me want to head out there. Might have to plan a trip soon….

The rest of you, head over and join the contest!

If only there were enough time in the day to do all the reading I want to do.

Magazines; currently I only get monthly magazines, Wired, Business 2.0, Transworld Surf, and Food and Wine. I’d like to also read Time and Business Week.
Newspapers; currently reading none daily but would love to have time to read, The Wall Street Journal and The Honolulu Advertiser (local paper).
Books; anything business related and books similar to what Jared Diamond and John Stossel write.

Blogs: These are what I’d really would like to spend more time reading and keeping up to date on. Mainly because they’re updated with things I’m trying to get into.

Blog Maverick - Mark Cuban rocks! Plane and simple. I love his opinions and the way he runs his basketball team. He writes a lot which makes it tough to keep up with everything, but he writes things that make you think and not just force opinions on you, and that’s great writing.

TechCrunch - It’s by far the best way to keep up with cutting edge ideas happening in on the Internet and keeping up with all the brand new business ventures.

Problogger.net - How anyone produces that much content is beyond me but I wish I had time to take in and learn from everything he posts. Just reading the titles of all his posts isn’t enough sometimes, you gotta read them.

Lorelle on Wordpress - Because I love wordpress and find this blog to be the most comprehensive up to date blog on wordpress. I’d love to follow everything you can do with the software and then have a team of programmers create greatness from what I can piece together.

Of course there are blogs that I do read, but that’s another blog post altogether.

First off I want to say that I didn’t spend more than a minute at the site. Just long enough to sign-up and notice that during sign-up and right afterwards the site doesn’t tell you what it’s about.

The site I’m talking about is Geni.com and was recently talked about over at Tech Crunch. I guess when you have the likes of Tech Crunch and Jason Calacanis talking about your site you are going to get a lot of people to sign up and that could bring you some money.

But a valuation of $100 million with $10 mil in second round VC funding is a bit high for a site that currently makes no money. Seems a little bubblish if you ask me.

I guess there are a few roads that the company could take to monetize and it’s an interesting idea. Getting your family members involved and showing where they are in the world. Sounds something right up Googles alley and a drop in their bucket in terms of buying it. Google did buy dodgeball.com.

Social networks are great for kids; Myspace, Friendster, FaceBook, etc, and even good for entrepreneurs LinkedIN (ish). But trying to get the baby boomers of the world to come around to a social network based on their family tree? I have a hard time getting some of my relatives to use email correctly.

I think it’s gonna be a hard road is my opinion. I’d really like to see where they take it. I guess with $10 million you might be able to send out a few fliers with the monthly AARP membership papers.

Everyone and their mother seems to have at least one iPod. I admit, between my fiance and I we have 4 iPod’s. There cool, hip, with it. I dig the wheel, the screen, the clicking, the earbuds. It’s all great, but it isn’t the part of the iPod that I’ve been hooked on for the past 3 months.

It’s the case!

I know, call me wierd, call me nerdy, but the newest case for the iPod nano is sweet. They finally did away with the huge box that the iPod’s used to come in and have gone to a sleek plastic see through case. Which one has less of an environmental impact I’m not sure. The cardboard box was large but I do know that creating plastic beads, melting plastic beads, and molding plastic beads takes a lot of energy (oil).

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. The case is pretty, but it’s the iPod nano holder that I think is sweet. This thing…

Sorry for the images, our camera had a rough new years and we’re in the process of upgrading. But this is the invention that has stuck in my mind. The plastic holder cups the iPod nano at the ends like so….

This is the coolest part. To remove it, you don’t need to use a scissors, or a knife, or teeth, or anything like that. All you have to do is place your thumb on one end, your middle finger on the other and press with your pointer finger on the middle. It bends and it’ll pop out!

Isn’t that cool! It has stuck with me for the longest time and I had to spread the love about it.

OK, the actual design of Aloha Update wasn’t automatic, but the way it’s setup creates quite a few automatic adjustments to the blog.

Wordpress Static Front Page
First off, I’ve decided to use Wordpress’ built in static front page to create a more news like, content in your face. It was tough at first because the addition is rather new to Wordpress and there isn’t much documentation out there.

If you are trying to add a static front page with a working inner page that shows all posts you need to remember that the page you setup as the “all posts” page needs to be run off the index.php file. If you don’t do this, wordpress pagination, ie /page/2/, will not work. At least it didn’t work for me. The other page, the static front page, can be created from a template page. Check out Aloha Update and our All Posts Page.

Adding a Drop-Down Horizontal Menu to Show Categories
The next sweet thing I did was add a drop-down menu using some javascript and a css/.js method I found over a A List Apart.

The menu drops down and reveals the sites categories which are organized based on the different islands of Hawaii. The cool thing is, the drop down menu is smart. It is able to recoginze which category you are in, be a single post or a category, or a sub category, of one of the main categories. This way, you don’t have to setup separate headers and nav bars for each category.

It took me a while to get it right and I’ll surely write a little wordpress tutorial for you all soon as in my searching I found a lot of people wanting to have this happen.

Added Tabbed Interactive Boxes
Next I added some tabbed interactive boxes as you can see on the front page where I list the images as well as on the inner pages where I list top things about Aloha Update.

I found everything I needed over at BarelyFitz Designs. This was probably the easiest to implement out of everything. All you have to do is cut and paste and FTP some files over and you’re done.

UPDATE:
Automatic Picture Formating
The last thing I did which is probably the most automatic thing and took a while is utilize the “read more” tag in wordpress, along with The Excerpt Reloaded plugin.

Basically what I do is within a post I first put a thumbnail image, then I put the more tag, then the noteaser tag, then the large image, and finish it off by adding an excerpt. This allows me to control what image shows up where.

On the front page I have the latest image show up as a sized version of the large image using the php “the_content(’ ‘, ‘TRUE’)”. Next within each sub tab of that same area I show the thumbnail image as a link to the page, then the title (also a link) and finally the excerpt as I wrote it in the post.

Next, in the image category I have it show the thumbnail image, and then when you go to individual pages you will have the full image and that full image will be link to the large image.

I’ll try and do tutorials of all these because I know from searching around that there are others out there that would like this help as well.

As I said in my last article, I’d like to try my best to help others build their blog networks, and in doing so I’ve put together a little list of articles that I think might help some of you work your way towards a successful blog network.

1-5: Should you Start a Blog Network

Darren of Problogger.net wisdom writes about why you should join a blog network. Knowing why others would want to join a blog might give you more insight while recruiting bloggers.

Then Darren turns right around and tells us all why you shouldn’t join a blog network. Again, you can use this to counter anyone elses doubts about joining your network.

As if you didn’t need more to add to your doubt about starting a blog network, here’s a little begging the question are blog networks worth the money.

The recently controversial (due to their name) problogging.com network asks the question to network or not to network.

Should you start a spam blog network? Before you do, maybe you should read this great article over at plagiarismtoday.com about the birth of a spam blog network.

6-14: How-to Articles on Starting a Blog Network

Building focus in your Blog Network - I’m gonna start off with that first article I wrote, because I think it’s one of the most important things to think about when starting a blog network. In this new world of “everyone has a blog”, you need to use your time wisely to move to the top of the list. You need to focus on one niche, then build from there. Once you have income, you can create more time by paying others to write for you.

I’ve always liked this post by Mark Cuban about Blogs that just write about other blogs. There’s a lot of them out there, some of the most popular, where I get information, are of this type. Should you use this model in your network.

Why not listen to the President of B5 Media about blog networks. He may have something worth following.

10 Questions to Ask a Blog Network within this article by Jeremy Wright will give you a big advantage over the next guy or gal if you always keep this in mind while building your blog network.

Mac Slocam of the fodder network lists 5 mistakes he made in his first year in a blog network. These are always big gems when you can hear mistakes others makes.

Richard at ReadWriteWeb.com talks about sticking with niches. Which is always a good lesson.

Here’s a list of 10 things for your blog network to take it through the Web 2.0.

Here’s a top 5 list about how to make your blog network standout.

Although not a step-by-step guide, this how to create a blog network article can get you started in the right direction.

17-32: Making Money from Blogging and Blog Networks

Making money from blogs is tough, and if you want to start a blog network with many blogs, focused on different topics, that’s even tougher. Yaro Starak over at Entrepreneur’s Journey has put together a killer series on looking at blogging as a sustainable business model and what it takes to be a professional blogger. Whether you manage them or are one these articles will help.
I - Blogging as a Sustainable Business Model
II - Can you be a professional Blogger
III - Advantages Top Bloggers Have
IV - Key Resource For Sustainable Blogging
V - Are there more Business Blogging Models

Here’s a few interesting articles on the mother of all blog networks, Weblogs Inc. They’re from Blog Herald and deals with payments from weblogs inc and the other is and extension of the first and is about the state of pay rates in blog networks. Although it’s from 2005, it gives you a little more info and keeps you going on your blog network.

Performancing has an old article about payment models for blog networks and can help you out if you’re trying to figure out what to pay bloggers on your network.

Another Good article about payments for bloggers come from Blog Herald and looks into what’s the best payment model for a blog network owner. Abe Olandres looks at B5 media and Weblogs, Inc.

David Peralty of BloggingPro.com explains how payed blogging works. He lists several possible options like funding it from your own pockets, revenue sharing and using other projects as a fund source.

David also has a great article with actually blog payment numbers $$$. This is really what everyone wants to see anyway.

Jon over at the ArtofMoney.com recently posted about needing $130,000 to start his blog network. Which if you don’t want to spend all the time in the world blogging, promoting, link building, etc, etc, you may need a good chunk of change to really make an impact in the blogging world.

John Chow blogs about his blogs income for a few months which is always entertaining. He also helps you learn how to best monetize blogs with and without Google.

Here’s a good Wall Street Journal article discussing blogs and can they make sustainable money. The article features Weblogs Inc founder Jason Calacanis and JupiterMedia dude Alan Meckler. (Can you guess which one thinks they can and which one doesn’t?)

Rogers Cadenhead, of cadenhead.org, responds to a recent Toronto Star article in which they wrote a claim that only 100 of the 65 million blogs make money. Small articles, not as outlandish as you may think.

Here’s an old post about what to pay bloggers and how B5 Media caught heat during some fo there earlier rounds. Although there are enough blog networks out there and people realize you can probably make more joining a network (promoting, traffic, monetizing all takes lots of time), this article gives you more insight.

The blog-republic.com, a blog network itself, has some great articles about starting and maintaining a blog network. One, A Business model for small blog networks talks about how smaller networks might want to begin making money from their blogs.

33-41: The Bad and the Good about Blog Networks

The CEO of 9 Rules wrote recently over at his blog about Why Blog Networks Failed. It’s quite insightful and why not learn from what others fail at to help you succeed. This article also sparked quite a few other articles that I list here about blog networks failing. I included most of them cause you can learn a thing or two from each commentary on this wisdump post.

And here’s a rebuttal by VC’s. Tell us what you think about the VC money that’s now started to trickle into blog networks. Could it be that they actually do have a place in the business world.

Nate Ritter began a blog network related series about how to start a blog network that looks like it should have more in the series, (I but I couldn’t find them.) It’ll help you get those juices flowing.

The problogging dilemma, is there a dilemma? Do you blog your passion? If you’re starting a blog network you may want to start with blogging your passion because it’ll keep you going. But can you make money from starting a blog network about your passion?

How about one called why blog networks suck. Interesting points, good things to avoid? Warning though, sorry to send you to a site with a popup ad. (People still use these? that aren’t at sitepoint.com?)

A top 40 Blog Networks list to give you something to shoot for. There’s a lot of blog networks out there but making it to the top takes something special. Learn what these networks have that yours might not.

The popular SEOBook.com gave their opinion on why blog networks suck in that article. However, they did mention B5 Media as a prime example of “why we don’t need more networks” and that was before B5 raised $2 mil. None the less, once again, learn from the critics.

Although I don’t agree that “blog networks are fading,” having it pointed out once again that Weblogs Inc took 18-24 months to build some of their blogs readership can be relief when you hit road bumps.

Blog Networks in the limelight is an article that talks about money raised, networks that have failed, and networks that have succeeded. Good resource.

And there you have it. I hope these articles help you on your way to starting a blog network. I have followed a lot of the advice and need to learn more to help grow my blog network even more.