Well, what can I say. The year of 2008 is gone, and the new one is here. My head and stomach is still reminding me what I have consumed yesterday, and the photos are reminding me that I was dancing naked outside in the snow, and this morning I woke up on a kitchen table next to a shot glass which had my sock in. But this post isn’t about that.

Where we were a year ago ? What we did ? Personally I had no idea that I will be making money online and doing what I love. A year ago I was still buying ebooks that promised me thousands and even millions of dollars. A year ago I wasn’t even sure what I want to do in my life. A year ago I was skipping school, had problems with police and always had problems with parents, I was on a really bad road. All my close people were saying “Stop Chris, Stop what you are doing right now”. My parents and other close people had no hopes in me anymore.

My parents now support me, and they have realized that I am mature and old enough to choose my own road, and this road has no stops saying “Average Office Guy”. And one of the best phrases what I heard in 2008 was from my dad who said “Chris, I am really proud with you, and I am sure you will end up living the life that you have dreamed of”. I was waiting for this moment for a very long time. I somehow have gained inner peace because I am on my own road, and I know what I want, all I have to do is to reach out and grab it. Where you were a year ago ? Have you become a better person during’ 08 ? I can answer this question with a great smile on my face saying “Yes”. I have become a better person, a more mature person and I sure damn love it.

The Reward

Oh, and one more thing. Like I mentioned earlier, I will now reward you every month ! This blog is my baby and I love every piece of it. You - gals and guys is the biggest piece that I love in this blog. Thank you for spending time to read my daily jabbering, thank you for spending time to leave a comment and share your experience ! I am maybe not the best blogger out there, and maybe I am not a guru of internet marketing, but I am trying to give you all the best that I can.

Anyway, I will now reward the best commentator of the month. Not the person who has commented the most, but the person who has added the most value to my blog via comments. And the prize is going to be - the person will have an free advertisement on this blog, a 125×125 banner on the sidebar of this blog for a month. It’s not much maybe, but I just want to reward my readers somehow, and this is the way how I am going to do it. For this month the free ad space goes to Felix Goh Wei Liang from abloggerblog.com. I will reward my readers each month, no matter how big this blog is going to be, even if it’s gonna be bigger than JC’s blog or Problogger I will still always keep a free space to reward you !

I just want to say thank you all ! Thank you all ! Without you this blog couldn’t be what it is now. You have added priceless value to this blog trough your comments, and I want to congratulate all of you in the new year. Let this year be better for all us, let’s love more, let’s share more, let’s give more and you will see that the world is changing around you according to your actions.

I just want to congratulate my top commentators and other bloggers:

Wei Liang from A Blogger Blog - Love your advice mate, keep them coming

Veronica and Elijah from The At Home Couple - I love your humor and ideas that both of you are giving out. Nice read.

Shanker Bakshi from Shanker Bakshi - Great Info and Great Tips.

Ben Pei from Pei Profit - This guy has inspired me to become a “commentniac”. Thanks for tips and guides.

Ardit from Blogict - Mate, I wish you to get out of that Pizza Delivery Job, and start making serious cash online !

Wesley from Improving the Web - I wish you that your blog gets bigger and grows faster than mine did. Cheers for that.

Dan from Race For A Million - Dan, Keep on running, I wish you that your race finishes as fast as possible.

Yan Susanto from Thou Shall Blog - Thank you for giving those great blogging tips. Without your tips, no doubt I wouldn’t be here today. Thanks for writing a “blogging bible” for us.

Erwin Tan from Erwin Tan - I have always liked your post ideas. Keep them coming in 2009 !

Simon from Otooo.com - Thanks for giving great tips and guides. If anyone wants to know about site flipping, then he/she should read your blog

I can’t name all the people that have inspired or helped me, the list is endless. If I have left anyone outside, then please - sorry, if I would name here everyone, then there would be no space on internet left.

Anyway, Happy New Year to all of you. Let our blogs grow, let our bank accounts grow, and let’s share more !

HAPPY 2009 !

This year has been quite interesting for me. Many things have been experienced in the Internet Marketing and Blogging field. Long story short - I’ll share the tips that I have learned in 2008.

1. 90% of Recession is in our head
2. Grammer are importent - improwe ur Engrish skilz.
3. Copy Writing
4. Give and then only take
5. Reward your readers - they’re your blood
6. Use another email for freebie sign up
7. Communicate with other bloggers
8. Don’t  copy JC, if possible don’t read JC.
9. Have a good rest before a hard work
10. Read other blogs
11. Get contacts and friends in your niche
12. Be silent and deadly - research your competitors
13. Be ready to lose money before you make money
14. Be ready to fail to get success
15. Don’t fu*k with PayPal
16. Don’t fc*k with Google
17. Get a custom logo for your blog
18. Get a favicon
19. Be unique as possible - including blog template and looks
20. Drink a beer
21. There is no such a thing as failure - there is only a bad day. Learn from it, so it does not happen again
22. Diversify your income streams
23. Don’t f*ck with the IRS - sooner or later they gonna f*ck you up real good.
24. Research your niche if there are any chances that you can make money from it before spending your time
25. Time is more valuable than money
26. Don’t be greedy. One thing at a time
27. Learn how to invest
28. Get your butt up, and start doing what you must do
29. If you can do something today - do it
30. Got an idea ? Start working on it - you never know until you’ve tried
31. Master one method, then only jump to another one
32. Don’t f*ck with your readers, be honest to them.
33. Search Engines are important - readers are more important.
34. Don’t waste your time explaining to other people what is internet marketing
35. Spend time on motivating yourself - read a book, watch a good movie that could motivate you
36. Remember - the only thing that can stop your success is you. Don’t be your own enemy, be an ally
37. Drink another beer
38. Make an action plan - work towards it
39. All the time ask this question - “Would an unsuccessful person do this ?” If the answer is yes - stop doing it
40. Always listen to your commentators, give them your tips, and take theirs
41. A picture will tell more than million words - use pictures and images when writing your blog post
42. Comment on other blogs
43. Comment on your commentator blogs
44. Have a time of your life
45. Read The Moneyac and subscribe to RSS feed

I hope you can learn something from this list as well. If you would like to add anything - feel free to comment ! I won’t bite

Everyone has their own goals for 2009. Many people, including me, look at the new year as the chance to start with a clean sheet of paper. Goal setting is a part of making a good and reliable action plan. Okay then, here are my goals for this blog in 2009.

Traffic Goals

1. Get at least 250 UV/day till 28th of Feb, 2009 - at the moment I am getting ~120 UV/day.
2. Get at least 500 UV/day till 30th of April, 2009
3. Get at least 750 UV/day till 30th of June, 2009

Action Plan For Traffic Goals

To accomplish these traffic goals I’ll have to:

• Comment more often on other blogs. Perhaps even I’ll have to become a “CommentNiac”. More precise - 10 blog comments/day. Not spamming, but valuable comments on other blogs.
• Research more long - tail keywords and write posts that have these keywords. In result I’ll have organic search engine traffic.
• Write and distribute articles. I’ll hire one article writer for this job. I’ll distribute about 15 articles/month to all the biggest article directories.
• Get traffic via Pay Per Click.
• Host some contests.
• Write 2 guest posts/month.

RSS Subscriber Goal

1. My RSS subscriber goal for 2009 is to get at least 150 RSS subscribers till 1st of April.

Action Plan for For RSS Subscriber Goal

• Host contests.
• Write better copy.
• Promote my RSS feed more.

Other Blog Goals for 2009

• Heavily promote my blog via commenting. There is a thin line between spamming and commenting. And I will not cross this line. I’ll add valuable comments on other blogs.
• Bring more brand awareness. This also can accomplished with commenting and guest posts on other blogs.
• Reward my commentators and readers. Ahhh yeah, I love this one, I have one terrific idea how I’m gonna reward my best commentators each month. Stay tuned guys, 1st of Jan is about here.
• Make Money. Well, I’ll not keep this in secret, this blog has become my “baby”, and I love it. But as an young entreprenuer I am also interested in making money from it, but this is in the 2nd plan. I will only try to squeeze out any money from this blog if all other goals are accomplished and if the money making methods will not interfere with my beloved readers - you guys and gals.

This is pretty much it. As soon as I will accomplish any of the above mentioned goals, I’ll let you know.

Maybe I have forgotten something essential. Feel free to comment my goals and add if anything is missing. Two heads are always smarter than one.

First of all, I want to say thanks to Yan of his great post about Link Building Habits, you should really read it. I am not going to steal his post, so I would like add my share of thought how to build quality one way links that Google really loves.

If you’re not a comment maniac, or in my language a “CommentNiac” such as Dennis Edell or Ben Pei, then this post could be just for you.

Link Building With Free Blogs

I have been doing this for a decent time, and it is working. You must create a blogger blog, wordpress.com blog, a hub on hub pages and a squidoo lens.

The idea of this link building strategy is quite simple. Make free blogs, write some unique content, and link back to your blog or niche site. Some of you will probably think what’s the deal to link back from a little blog that has only 2 or 3 articles. The main idea of this is that all of these blogs (blogger, wordpress.com, hub pages, etc) are actually subdomains of a big PR website. Even if your small blog at blogger is 0, still it’s a subdomain of  a PR 8 site. This will make Google to “love” more. And it has been working for me quite well. This strategy really helps my small niche websites to climb higher in search results.

My advice - When you write the content for these small blogs put these links that are linking back to your blog in the text of the article - contextual links, so Google thinks it’s a natural link.

By any means I am no SEO expert, and maybe there are better ways how to this, but this is what has worked for me so far quite well !

TIP: To make your small blogs in the eyes of Google more worthy, submit your posts to social bookmarking websites using Social Marker.

We - the affiliate marketers, bloggers, etc. sometimes just forget one essential thing - traffic.

This has happened to me, especially when I was just starting out. I make my website, write some decent conent, install AdSense, insert affiliate links and then just… nothing. Then I start optimizing my website, looking for more appealing website designs, optimizing the content, make cool looking header/logo, find even more appealing affiliate products, optimize adsense ad blocks. And then… again nothing. Then I am really frustrated, then I start to search for a better domain name, I buy the new domain name, totally remake my site, hire article writers and write some great content by myself, SEO the hell out of my website. Then I check my stats and still I’m getting 3 cents per day via AdSense and 0 affiliate sales. Then I am really frustrated, I start blaming the whole world, I start blaming Google, I start blaming my cat and I start blaming myself.

And then I just realize that I have forgotten one really small, unimportant thing - traffic. Then I just imagine how my website looks like, and it looks like this

Then I realize that I have been avoiding this problem, or have totally forgot about it. Of course, after realizing this I submit crap loads of articles to article directories, promote the hell out of my site, and who would have guessed - after some decent promotion, and 2 weeks, my small niche website is looking like this.The point to this pointless monologue’ish jabbering is that we sometimes just work so hard and forget the most essential and valuable things. This just doesn’t happen in internet marketing, it also happens during our day to day life, we sometimes just accidentally forget out best friend’s birthday, forget that we locked youngest sister in the basement 2 weeks ago, and that the last time when we filled our cat’s bowl was 2 months ago. This just happens and it’s normal. Just sometimes stop what you’re doing, and if you’re not getting what you want, just look around you, and think WHY you’re not getting those sales, why you haven’t heard anything from your sister, why your cat has not pooped in the last 2 months, and why you’re not there where you planned to be.

Just admit the fact, find the problem, find the solution and solve it !

Please, share your experience about this. Me and others would like to hear -  Leave a comment !