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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!

This is something I’ve done on occasion, but won’t be doing anymore after reading Michael Martine’s comments on it.. I completely see the point on his change to ban keywords in names for comments - I will be adopting this on all of my blogs and incorporating this into the comment policy in the next few days!

Why?
Mainly after getting a comment from “Teeth Whitener recently and not being sure whether to address them as Teeth, or Mr/Ms Whitener!

Do I need to say any more?

Doesn’t everyone? But I don’t get all that many (even though I’ve got a lot of regular readers here at Full-Time-Blogger).

So I went doing a little digging, we don’t want to be spammed to death (you people know who you are!) but we really would like to get a few more comments (go on, be the first to comment on this post - you know you want to!).

Users Must Register to Comment

The first thing I’ve done is remove the need for users to register to comment, it might sound mad but I’d completely forgotten this option was even switched on! If I had to fill in a form and register every time I commented on a blog I probably wouldn’t bother either!

Incentive

I’ll be introducing a “Top Commenters Feature” every month, and will start to provide links to them on every page (now if that’s not an incentive I don’t know what is!).

Banter

I like it when we do get a comment, if after we’ve replied there’s a little bit of dialogue. It shows that you’re not a fly-by-night comment spammer just looking for a link to your Viagra content - our comment policy should cover that!

What Else Can you Do?

I quite liked Neil Patel’s post over at ShoeMoney about 6 easy way to increase your comment count, most of these we’re doing already!

I would like to reward top commenters here with links back to their site (we’re already part of the dofollow community!), and possibly even guest posts if they are interested?

How do you build commenters on your blog?

Commenting is a fantastic (when it’s not full of spam and breaks all of my commenting policy) way of finding out if anyone is actually reading your posts.

I realised yesterday that after commenting here on Damien Riley’s post about what he was going to do next year, that when he tried to respond about my offer of a guest post he couldn’t comment, I’ve now rectified that and allowed users to comment.

Which Mona promptly did, however - I suddenly realised I’d not setup subscribe to comments on this blog!

I’ll be honest if I leave a comment on a blog and this plugin isn’t there, it’s very rare that I either:

• Leave a comment in the first place!
• Check back to see if there’s a reply after leaving a comment!

So it’s now installed here so you can stay in touch!

I can’t backtrack so hopefully Damien will see I’ve replied to his comment!

Alright, alright so I screwed up - it’s Christmas!! Comments were set to registered users only, but I hadn’t set up the blog so anyone could register as Damien has quite rightly pointed out, although pointing it out to Chris Pearson and not me will probably just add more confusion!!!

Damien, Chris, I apologise!

I’ve long been concerned about the amount of spam I receive on my personal blog, and I’ve noticed it starting to creep into a few of the others now, don’t get me wrong Akismet nails 90% of the rubbish for people with small things in their trousers, who need something for the weekend etc. etc.

However what it doesn’t catch is those that are trying to get a link back to their own site, creating their name in the comment box to give them anchor text, I’m sure one of my prolific comment authors hasn’t really changed his name to “L.A. Confidential Photographer”, so the new comment policy found here is in force from now on, here initially and migrating to my other blog as I have time. This is a dofollow blog but I refuse to let it be abused!

Thanks to David Culpepper at PureBlogging.com for allowing me to use this.

The biggest decision I guess just after reading the first 5 or 6 pages of Blog Profits Blueprint is whether I use one of my existing “Niche Blogs” or create a whole new one. Those niche blogs are currently making “beer money” and I need something to compare this whole project to. Hence you’re looking at the new blog!

Giving up work and becoming a full time blogger (well full time as in I can mess with computers all day and not have to go to work!) is something I’m clearly passionate about, read about a lot and can probably talk about until I’m blue in the face. So here goes…..

I’ve read reports in my time, I read Affiliate Project X and Day Job Killer, I get thousands of emails a day to my “Internet Marketing” email account (I have a separate one as it tends to collate junk). I just haven’t been able to make a go of things like this! They seem short term ideas and the only people who make serious money out of them is the person who wrote them!

So why today? What’s changed?

One word: Yaro

Never heard it before? I’m fortunate I had heard it before today. I’m referring to Yaro Starak, and I’ve just downloaded his Blog Profits Blueprint - why am I going to follow Yaro? It’s now down to his big hair, or the fact that he talks a good talk. It’s simply because he admits that making money from a blog isn’t easy! I could have told you that, but at least he’s honest about it.

Yaro makes $4,000 to $6,000 USD per month from his blog (that’s between £2,000 and £3,000 at the current exchange rate) for a couple of hours work per day (or second day). That’s not a bad figure! He also admits it’s not hard work, but it is consistent work.

Now you see I’m not going to tell you everything that’s in Yaro’s report, but I am going to document my progress and provide discussions, hints, tips and my reading here - if you want to know more you’ll have to go and get your own copy of Blog Profits Blueprint, let’s face it, it’s free.

Yes, you heard me, free! I’ve not got you to this page to sell Yaro’s great idea to you before pushing you through to some 19 page ClickBank sales page (you’ve all seen them), with 16 testimonials on, declaring “buy this product now, so you can make $5,000 in the next next 10 minutes and every 10 minutes thereafter”, before asking you to part with $97 of your children’s inheritance and then signing you up to Yaro’s list so he can sell you loads of stuff forever and fill up your spam bucket.

All I’m offering is my experiences as I go through this adventure, you’ll find some of the tips noddy, some controversial (maybe!), or you may downright agree with me - whatever you feel - let me know! This will be a dofollow blog (more on that later!) so you will be rewarded!

I’m having a seriously, seriously bad week! I’ll be honest with you (and you’ll find that out as this blog progresses!) I’m an addict - just kidding, let’s try that again.

I’m Keiron, and I’d like to give up my day job! That’s more like it! I turned 29 several weeks ago, and would really, really like to retire before I’m 30. I can’t see that happening but I’d at least like to have given up working for someone else!

What I do

I’m a Software Engineer, a Business Owner and Serial Tinkerer with websites!

I currently work by day for a large multinational firm as a Software Developer, it’s not a bad job really - but I would like a change and to become my own boss. I work with some great people, my closest friends in fact, but since returning to work after an illness two years ago I know I need to get out.

I also (by night) run my own webhosting company which is doing quite well for itself, and several other blogs and websites - they’re just not quite making enough to do that fulltime, in fact they probably amount to making me some beer money!

Here at full-time-blogger.com I’m going to document my challenges as I start to make steps on the road to doing this fulltime.