Full Time Blogger - Looking to make a living online!

It appears that Google AdSense will now let you change the fonts in ad units!

There’s not a huge choice, but it’s better than nothing, find out how to do it on the official AdSense blog.

It’s been a long time since we posted at Full-Time-Blogger, but we hope to get back into the swing of things now.

I was particularly impressed by Hendry Lee’s guest post on Caroline’s site, he discusses some of the most common myths to making money online and the biggest one of all - that it’s not EASY!!!!

Definitely worth a read, if you haven’t already!

As EasyWordpress.com points out, the new service from BlogRolled sounds a fantastic way of making a little “side” cash.

Unfortunately I’m with Gobala on this one, this is selling links again and Google are unlikely to be happy about it, I wonder if Matt Cutts will have anything to say?

What’s interesting is the pricing is determined by (in part) your Google PageRank, now my gut reaction is you won’t have a PageRank for long if you start doing this - if anyone knows better (particularly the BlogRolled team, or anyone at Google) let me know!

I run several Wordpress blogs and most of them never run the current version because I don’t have time to walk through all the upgrade process, time and time again (plus I always have to look up how I do it again as I don’t want to screw it up!)!

That was until yesterday when I found Wordpress Automatic Upgrader, here’s how simple it is:

• Download and unzip the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade zip file to your plugins directory.
• Activate Plugin.
• Go to the page specified in the plugin.
• Insert FTP details.
• Download the backup of the file system.
• Specify extra database tables to backup (I backed everything up).
• Download the backup of the database.
• Tell the plugin to use the latest release.
• Let the plugin put the site into maintenance mode.
• Let the plugin deactivate all of your plugins.
• Let the plugin upgrade your files.
• Click to upgrade your database.
• Let the plugin reactivate your plugins.
• Let the plugin take your site out of maintenance mode.
• Wait for the next Wordpress release to play with it again!

It does have an automatic mode (which I haven’t tried), but the above is the manual process and seems to work!

Interestingly it didn’t go quite so smoothly going from a Wordpress 2.3.1 blog to 2.5.1 and my plugins weren’t reactivated properly.

Definitely a worthwhile tool and will make my life so much easier!

I’ve considered this before, the whole GetFriday.com thing, “free up your time by outsourcing half of your life”. But, when I looked in more depth at the tasks these companies were performing I really couldn’t find that much in my life that they could actually do!!

What have I done so far today (remember it’s a Saturday!):

• Got Up
  (can’t see them helping there, my wife is enough of an alarm call!)
• Checked my email
  (Hmmmm, they might be able to pre-process it for me, but I’d never want anyone replying for me)
• Made coffee
  (anyone willing to do this for me is always welcome in my life)
• Had a shower
  (hmmmmmm)
• Directed lost delivery drivers to the house
  (someone doing this would take away some of my pain sometimes!)
• Eaten breakfast
  (nobody can do this for me!)
• Sorted out a server problem for a customer
  (I could outsource this but I won’t for reasons I’ll get to in a minute)
• Caught up on a few blogs in my Google Reader
  (quite a leisurely read)
• Hunted out my digital dictaphone to lend to a friend
  (hey, I struggled to find it and I put it in that box!)

OK, why am I telling you all this?

I’ve recently started reading Amanda’s blog and she’s a Virtual Assistant. We’ve been discussing doing things in business you have a passion for. The reason I couldn’t oursource the email, or the sorting a server problem is that I have a genuine passion for what I do!

So here’s my challenge to Amanda - what could you do for me, that would make my life easier and be cost-effective for me! Call it a case study!? This goes for any other VA’s out there - but Amanda get’s first dibs!

The only thing I’ve really managed to come up with so far, is typing if I were to dictate to my digital dictaphone - but I’m a reasonable quick typist - so would it be cost effective for me?

On the flip side, if hiring a VA has already changed your life - let me know - I’d be keen to find out how!

I’ve been on a bit of a anti-commenting binge recently, mainly with the amount of spam coming through - Akismet deals with a good percentage, but I really reached the point where I had to have a commenting policy for all the “Keyword Links” being set by people on variety of my blogs.

These people add their comment invariably just to get a one-way link to their site for SEO purposes - what they forget is that quite often it’s permanent as Maki quite rightly reminds them.

The behaviors this has introduced to get these links are not always healthy for your long term brand management (yes, you yourself are a brand!):

• Only commenting on doFollow blogs (not necessarily a bad thing - it is a form of community!)
• Being the first to comment, but commenting with something completely irrelevant.

Maki explains that it’s not just about getting a link to your site, it’s about opening a dialogue with the author and their readers. People with short term goals tend to cut and paste the same response, or say something irrelevant let me give you an example:

One comment I had this week complained about having to read my blog - quite simply, don’t bother if you’re not interested. Clearly they weren’t interested because their name was something irrelevant like “Bahama Holidays”. Needless to say I deleted it!

I’ll leave you with Maki’s final comment on this:

Think long-term, think relationships and think about getting repeat benefits.

I’ve got to be honest, I’ve not been particularly involved with blogging recently…

Why?

I’ve recently moved house… DIY is not my favourite passion, but when someone has painted AROUND the wardrobes you really (I mean really) don’t have much of a choice!!

So… What’s this post about?

I only really want to post when I’ve found something really, really interesting (if you want to find out what I find interesting, why not subscribe?) and plus I’ve got to the point recently where I’ve avoided all the “WebGuru’s” and “Interent Marketer’s” in my feed reader.

Alright, I know these guru’s are (allegedly) making a fortune from blogging, but most of them are regurgitating the same things:

• Twitter
  I still fail to see how twitter is going to allow me to give up working for a living (I mean who wants to know everytime I scratch myself? - for the minority that do, simply let me know and I’ll give you a call as and when?!?).
• Web 2.0 / Social Networking
  I’ve got a Wordpress Theme (I’ve just bought another one from Chris Pearson that I’ll probably migrate onto this blog soon once i’ve customised it). I will be upgrading to Wordpress 2.5 once I’ve had more of a play with it on one of my niche blogs (and no, I still don’t like it that much - I’ll get used to it I’m sure!).
• The Something for Nothing Brigade
  I also completely agree with Alan Johnson, who made a guest post recently, Instant Riches? Pah! - Not going to happen! You have to put some work in, and so many people don’t want to. A millionnaire overnight for just three clicks of the mouse??

Now the first good thing I came across….

After all that negativity I did find something quite refreshing my Google Reader, a Q&A from Shoemoney . He doesn’t read books, he tells people to write good quality content, doesn’t build email lists, and admits it took him 7 years to make his first $1,000 in a month (he also comes clean on the rumour surrounding his incredibly large penis) - but he is honest and he does make money out of blogging, check him out!

I’ll be back soon as I plough through my Google Reader trying to pull out some of the good stuff from the rubbish!

It’s not often what I read in my Google Reader and on the BBC News site combine to make me think about something and read both of the articles twice!

You might think this story is funny,  in that a Lonely Planet writer did not even visit one of the countries he wrote about (although Lonely Planet are quick to ensure they have reviewed his contributions and have found no inaccuracies).

Mr Kohnstamm revealed this whilst publicising his new book “Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?”, in which he talks about his travels around South America selling drugs and enjoying casual sex, sometimes in places he was writing about!

So what does that all have to do with stuff that I’m reading in Google Reader (not my normal subject matter I hear you say!), Andy Beard posted some interesting points in his (extremely long but) imaginatively titled post, UK Consumer Protection Unfair Trading Regulations That Might Affect Advertising, Links, Affiliates & Product Launches , he makes some fine points about:

• Sales letters that may close at a given price after a set period of time (I for one would be glad to see the back of them!!).
• Affiliates making clear that you are promoting a product for monetary gain, without clearly labeling it as an ‘Advertising Feature’ or ‘Advertorial’.
• Calling something free when you have to make another purchase to actually get it free (all those bonuses!)
• Giving the impression that you are something else (are you just an average guy making a fortune or is there a whole team of “you”).
• Misleading stats (make sure that stats package is accurate if you’re reporting those figures!).

This is amongst other things, that could affect marketers and how honest they are, testimonials, split pricing, delivering real proof and, above all, disclosure!

Read the guidance on the new regulations here, note that it only appears to cover “trader” to consumer regulations (and not business to business transactions).

Whilst Andy is concerned he might be reading too much into this document, Tim Nash has produced a guide to legal notices that you almost certainly should follow - I’m writing mine as we speak!

You may remember a while back we discussed the ability to use a Wordpress plugin to find Flick Photos for your blog.

I emphasised that your blog contains adverts, that you should probably consider it commercial and only use images allowed for commercial purposes (to be on the safe side), if you felt I was being a little over the top here with my level of caution, you may find it useful to read Josh’s post about Creative Commons.

I’m catching up a little in my feed reader at the moment, and stumbled across this post by Darren @ ProBlogger, check out Hunter Nuttall’s free PDF ebook (that’s free with no subscription, no junk mail  - FREE)  on The Zen of Blogging

A welcome addition to my coffee!