Category Archives: Blogging

Succeeding At Blogging

Posted on December 2, 2010 by JMarsden| Leave a comment

I have learned over the last @2 years about different things a person can do to get further at blogging.  Our sites are between PR2 and PR4 at times.  Our visitors grow by the day.  I have made a list of different things that I do that have gotten us as far as they have.  Some of these apply to bloggers that review things so keep that in mind.

  • Goodle Adsense – You can gain revenue from ads appearing on your site.
  • Affiliates – Be sure to join affiliate program that will display ads and earn you commission on sales from those ads.
  • Marketing – If you see a product that you like then search for the PR contact information and contact them about the product.
  • Self Promotion – Make up business cards for your site, and if you want the extra visibility get magnets for your vehicle.
  • Social Networking – Join as many social networking sites.  This helps publicize your site and gain you traffic.

Here are a few general thoughts for you if you are thinking about blogging.

  • Make sure you are up to speed with the FCC guidelines about disclosure about reviewing and compensation.
  • If you are going to blog first find a domain name that helps sum up what you are doing.
  • Blog as much as possible.  Companies like to see you posting more than once a week.
  • Once you are established you will get contacted by companies looking to advertise, and they will pay going rate if your site fits.
  • Don’t get a subdomain blog.  Most companies have stopped working with subdomained blog sites.  (ex.. JoesStuff.******.com)
  • Register your own domain name.  Don’t go through a company that does it for you because it will take work to move it later.

In the beginning I self-hosted my sites from my own servers.  I have found a few good sources that offer huge discounts when you sign up.

Here are some of the sites that I recommend for any blogger…

Facebook, MySpace, BlogCatalog

Commission Junction, Linkshare, ClickBank

If you need any other help please feel free to contact me and I would be willing to give you some assistance.  I don’t mind mentoring anyone.  I have done it before, and will do it again.

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What Do You Get From Commenters?

Posted on November 4, 2010 by JMarsden| Leave a comment

We have been blogging for quite some time now.  We are always amazed at how many people send us emails, and comments about reviewing their product.  That wouldn’t be that bad if those people were expecting a review without ever touching, or experiencing their product.  I have received emails about reviewing services based on a website, and also reviews based on medical information.  We left a group of bloggers that were supposed to be “Ethical”, when in fact some of their bloggers do reviews on things that they have never touched.  Some of those same bloggers receive payment for those reviews, and the reviews are purely garbage.  We sometimes review things that we buy, or are given because we feel that any information is good information.  We will not stoop below the line of what some bloggers do.  We do reviews to help others in their search for information.  We specifically look for the signs that the people have actually tried it.  When my daughter started having acne problems we specifically looked for acne treatment reviews, but made sure that there was some sort of information that told us they had actually experienced it.

Do you have a site?  Have you ever gotten pitched to review something without receiving it?  How do you handle it?

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Surpass: Hosting Company To Watch Out For

Posted on October 28, 2010 by JMarsden| 1 Comment

I have been blogging @ 2 years.  When I first started out I was self hosting my blogs from my own servers.  I decided that it may be easier to go to a hosting company for what I had understood pricing was at.  I took my sisters advice, and moved everything over to Surpass Hosting.

Throughout the first half of the year I had intermittent issues with my sites lagging drastically.  I also had a problem where Surpass did some server maintenance, and my sites were completely down, and they didn’t even have the common decency to advise the users that they were going to do this work.  I routinely went into a chat with them to address the problems.  I had been told many times that a user (NOT ME) was abusing the system, and they would resolve it immediatelly.  They also offered to move me to another server, and I quickly told them I would move.  They claim they never got the email, and my sites never got moved.  The last instance I had with Surpass which made me move my sites was last week.  I went into a chat, and was advised that another user on the same server was abusing the MySql connections, and they were taking care of it.  My sites stayed down for the next 24 hours.  I was on chats with them every couple of hours, and they claimed that everything should have been working, but they would work on it.  After a whole day I had another chat, and was advised that “Due to spam comments” they were suspending my account.  I told them I would put captcha code in if they opened my site up.  They never opened it up, so my sites stayed dark.  The next day I was put in contact with the main company that works with Surpass.  (Hostdime)  I was assured that they would look into the issue, and that they didn’t understand the issue either.  Here is the funny part… I received a ticket from them about the abuse, and the dates in the abuse were well over 3 months earlier.  I didn’t get any satisfaction from Hostdime either, but being they weren’t directly involved I can’t hold them accountable.  I will do what I can to help those on Surpass understand what kind of a shab job they are dealing with.  Here’s the last kicker… even thought they cut my service early they aren’t even offering any money back for “Lack of service” which is considered Theft of Services.

If you want to know how bad they are do a Google search about Surpass Hosting reviews.  You will see that everything I said is consistent with everyone else that had complaints.  If they say anything different… They are LIARS!

Plain and simple… If you are on Surpass Hosting… RUN!  They don’t have any phone support, and even the host I went to now has phone support, and I am paying almost the same amount of money.  In my opinion Surpass Hosting is the worst hosting company that you could choose if you are running a website of any type.

Check out Powweb.com.  They will work with you to get everything running, and they will treat you like a real person.

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