My blog hacked
June 8, 2008
Thanks to Mid life travel and Work on a boat for email me about this site, I found that it had been hacked. The hack is very sneaky as no matter what I did I could not see the re-direct.
Do a search in Google on wordpress and anyresults.net and you will see that this is a common problem and you are still vulnerable if you are on the latest version.
There seem to be a few variations and my case seem to be the same as described here.
This is pretty scary. Spammers and hackers seem to be going out of control. I hope the owner of anyresults.net is investigated. I seem to have spent most of this week fixing script related problems because of increased security from Dreamhost, which of course is a good thing, but it is taking time away from writing content and marketing my sites.
No feedburner in China
April 2, 2008
If you are wondering why you get traffic from China but don’t have any RSS readers and you use feedburner for your feed, well the reason is that feedburner is generally blocked in China by the great Chinese firewall.
Most blogs hosted on their own domain are fine, Google Reader and Bloglines work fine too. The problem lies when you try to subscribe to a blog which uses feedburner and you click on the RSS icon.
There are many ways around this of course and net savy users will know what to do, but there are times when you just can’t be bothered jumping hurdles.
I just thought I would mention this if you are targetting users in China with your blog.
Updating the theme
February 4, 2008
I am currently updating the theme, so please bear with me as I implement it live. It should be done by the end of today.
Ads in feeds with Bidvertiser
January 24, 2008
I recently signed up with BidVertiser and it has taken me a bit of time to get around to start implementing the code. There are just so many advertising options lately. They have various advertising options, including Google like ads.
They now also allow you to put ads in your RSS feed. They support Feedburner which makes life easy for most bloggers. I don’t expect I will make much from this new potential source of income, but as they say every little bit helps.
Fake Steve Jobs blog video
November 19, 2007
I started watching this video after seeing it on Problogger. It is funny to watch, but aside from the humor it is a good example of how traditional and new media are converging.
A successful blog has to appeal to other bloggers
November 12, 2007
I can’t remember ever seeing it before, but it kind of just of occurred to me that a successful blog’s audience is usually made up of mostly other bloggers.
Who else understands RSS, feeds, technorati, linkbacks, comments and PageRank other than people who actually have a blog?
Of course you will get some people who bookmark your blog and some people will find you through search engines, but to get a lot of RSS readers and comments you need to be able to write about stuff that for most of the time interests other bloggers.
I think you have to be honest that people who don’t blog, just don’t get what it is all about. I think in many ways this is why Problogger, Shoemany and John Chow are so popular.
Perhaps some celebrity and political blogs could prove this theory wrong, but I think my theory holds the majority of the time.
Anyone want to prove me wrong?
Recent money making blog sales
November 5, 2007
I generally don’t like writing about what another blogger has already written, but Problogger wrote a post on making making blogs that have sold recently. I was thinking of writing a similar post, but I guess now I need not bother.
Bloggingfingers.com - $6000
Ryanshamus.com - $2500 (who said you can’t sell a blog with your name as the domain!)
Onemansgoal.com - Bidding currently at $8000.
I would like to add one more to the list that Darren missed and that is cwire.org, which more than likely sold for more than $2300 which is what is listed on sitepoint at. Does anyone know what it sold for? The blog sale posts were deleted.
I remember when Onemansgoal.com started and it got a bit of attention amongst other bloggers. People visited his blog to see how this guy was going to reach his goal. I also remember him writing a lot of comments on the more popular blogs. It could be an easy model to copy, but I think it is a bit of cop out setting a lofty goal, gaining interest in your site and then selling it before the goal is even completed. But then again by selling the blog for $8000+ he is going to get even closer to his goal.
I don’t have plans to sell this site, but it is good to know that if ever needed money I could get something for it. I started the site in late 2004 (on blogger) but I did pick up the domain fairly early and just redirected it to blogger (back when I thought godaddy was a good company!)
I have been penalized for selling links, resulting in a drop of PR, but I have some pretty good incoming links. One way I have found lately to getting more links to your site, is getting your site into various lists. People then tend to reproduce those lists on their own site. The reproduced lists tend to be static and don’t get updated by the owner. Creating your own original list is also a good way to get new links to your site.
It is going to be interesting to watch if the new owners will be able to maintain the interest levels in these blogs.
Update: The deal for onemansgoal.com fell through and it has been re-listed. It will be interesting to see if he can get $8500 for it.
Another 4000 sale as reported by 45n5. The blog started just in July this year.
Why I didn’t join blogrush
September 21, 2007
Nothing against John Reese who is an unbelievable marketer, but is anyone else getting sick of these programs getting pushed by the top bloggers, just to see who can get the most number of referrals?
It seems like you probably just need to send an email to Yaro Starak, Shoemoney, John Chow and Darren Rowse about your new product. If they promote your product/service positively, you can almost guarantee an immediate success with your launch.
Looking at Alexa graphs and charts it would seem that blogrush has been a huge success, but who is it really benefiting, other than perhaps the top few? I doubt that these bloggers even need visitors, from what is basically a traffic exchange program.
Blogging and internet marketing is becoming more like MLM everyday. People are already talking about “downlines”. *cringe*
I think John when he launched this, his idea was either to build it and sell out quickly after getting thousands of sign-ups, or to collect lots of data which he will then use to launch some kind of contextual advertising program, complete with a 10 tier affiliate program.
Get hundreds of links to your site
September 10, 2007
I recently wrote about ways to get links to your site. It is a painstaking effort trying to get links by emailing webmasters and submitting to directories. I suppose I was fortunate enough that a couple of people responded to my email and added my site. I am doing it for my next big project I am working on.
I need to get a lot links, very quickly to the site as I am working on a deadline. The only way I can see it happening is by creating some interesting and slightly controversial content. I will be traveling to China within the next few weeks. I may even have a place to stay in Beijing.
So to get a bunch of quick links I will need to write something or take pictures/video of something that is going to get bloggers talking about. I have a few ideas, but would love to hear from anyone else. I would be even happy to award a cash prize to anyone who comes up with some good ideas.
107th noisiest blogger
July 20, 2007
I am now the 107th noisiest blogger in Australia. What a claim to fame! At least I am up from 165th position.
