Blogger Tips
July 31, 2005
Problogger is calling for is calling for blogging tips.
My blogger tip is if you would like to be successful and get a lot of people reading your blog, I believe you need to be fairly generous in talking about your own personal experiences.
Linking to articles you have read somewhere on the web, won’t get you many new readers. People want to hear about successes and failures you have experienced. Successes to inspire your readers and failures to make your readers feel that their situation isn’t so bad.
Flickr
July 31, 2005
I have register for a Flickr account and I have started uploading pictures to my account. I heard of someone being offered cash to use a picutre in a magazine so I thought that I should try starting to load some of the 100s of pictures I have on Tokyo and my travels in Asia.
On a side note, I find it unbelievable how a site like this could be bought out by Yahoo. From my own limited experience, Yahoo already had inroads into this business.
I like Flickr, but only because it is something that everyone is currently talking about it.
If anyone can tell me, why is Flickr so popular?
Hostel Affiliate
July 30, 2005
I am doing ok with the BookHostels.com affiliate program. I hope it’s not just the summer influx of visitors. I found the affiliate program from the LonelyPlanet website.
Problogger Interview
July 28, 2005
I am listening to an interview with Darren Rowse click here to listen
There are alot of good ideas in the interview. I was just thinking of the potential I have with taking pictures of a city that no everyone can get to.
I really need to upgrade my phnone.
Summer Time
July 28, 2005
I don’t know if it is my crummy posts or it’s the northern hemisphere summer but my traffic on this blog is way down this month.
The good news is that my tokyoessentials site is doing fairly well. I have had a few hotel bookings which is also promising. I have also seen a lot more foreigners in Tokyo than usual.
I also just converted an ASP database site from Access based to MS-SQL based and I have seen a big increase in traffic. Most good hosting services offer at least one MS-SQL database. On a side note, I am studying how I can convert dotJapan.com to a Mambo site.
It looks fairly simple, but again it is just finding the time to do everything.
Dating Sites
July 26, 2005
I am an affiliate of the Friendfinder.com program. I earn around $70 a month from them. You earn $1 for every male and $2 for every female that signs up. People can sign up for free. To actually send people email you need to become a paying member. I have been with the program for a while and they never miss sending a cheque, so I am reluctant to try a different program. In all the time I have promoted their site, I have only had 1 female sign up!
Planning new site
July 26, 2005
I am thinking about creating a new site. I have seen the potential with Adsense and motivated by people like Problogger.
I am thinking all the time what areas might be profitable and reach the widest audience and require the minimum of maintenance.
One of the hardest things is finding a suitable domain name these days. Something which is memorable, possibly has a key word in it and preferably a .com site.
My next site needs to be something totally not related to Japan. I think I am getting a little too focused on the subject, especially since I don’t plan on living here forever.
Tokyo Earthquake
July 23, 2005
Tokyo just had an earthquake. It was magnitude 5 on the Japanese scale. I was in the basement of a building which is a supermarket.
It was a little scary. The stopped the elevators in my building and I had to walk up 10 floors.
Mention on Problogger
July 22, 2005
I got a mention on Problogger on a post I created about Darren’s $14K month.
This is what I wrote: “I don’t know if I could put that much effort into blogging. I would prefer to maintain a website, that you don’t have to keep adding entries to and doesn’t require too much maintenance.”
This is what Darren wrote: “You’re not the only one - I’d love to have a passive income from a static site too - however the fact is that very few sites ever do achieve this. Search Engines like fresh content these days so sites that don’t update don’t tend to rank well over time. The idea of ‘easy money’ online isn’t one I subscribe to.”
I don’t believe there is any “easy money” that you can make on the web. It takes a lot of hard work. Although, if you get some success like Darren has got, the cash can really start to roll in.
I like writing my blog, but also like creating other websites. An old static website that has well created content can sit at the top of the search engines. An example is my tokyoessentials website which I bought. It is currently around 90 pages of content. I was thinking of taking it up to around 150 pages and then updating only occasionally. Just keep it as a nice little passive income earner.
Hyatt Affiliate Program
July 20, 2005
Hyatt has rejected my site from their affiliate program. “After careful review of your site, it does not meet our traffic and targeting goals for this program.”
Out of curosity I have asked them for examples of a site that does fit their targeting and traffic goals. How can much more targetted can you get than a travel site to one of the biggest and richest cities in the world?
