Kontera has been on the offensive recently by writing to many bloggers and inviting them to use their network. They’ve sent emails to me repeatedly to use them. I don’t intend to use them at any point of time, frankly because I think those horrible text balloon ads are only fit for “MFA” type sites.  This is not one of them.

45n5 posted a message on his twitter followed up by Jim Kukral here I wonder who else is on their “list”. Jim Kukral asked for some $$$ to use them, which is the smart thing to do as I believe the conversion rate with using them for a regular blog audience is probably zilch.

Shoemoney also wrote sometime back about how he saw a gazillion things loading when he visited John Chow’s blog. Who is probably the most vocal partner of Kontera. Hey, for a flat fee of $1000 a month I wouldn’t mind talking about them as well.

Have they written to you yet?

This is my first video so please excuse the “newbie” feel it has. I managed to get it right in my third take, did a little bit of editing to it as well.

Anyway, here goes -

Text overview -

Instead of searching for hot topics to blog about on the internet pick your own topic and work on making that “hot“. You can easily build your own niché and authority for your topic this way. Watch the video for more…

You can also subscribe to my revver channel. That’s where I’ll be posting all my videos, so the best way to stay up to date is to subscribe.

As many of you know I’ve been blogging for 2 years now and I can now say that it has helped me find what I’m truly passionate about, and it’s not blogging itself. Writing on this blog has helped me find my niché and passion on the web. You may know it as Weborithm, my own web development company.

At first, when I started blogging, I thought this was what I wanted to do for a long time to come. I loved it in it’s infancy and watched it grow to what it is now, a big money making machine. Then somewhere down the line I think it all started getting a bit too tedious.  I didn’t like the ugly side of it that you see quite a lot around the blogosphere today.

I was always a design person and even while blogging I maintained my freelance career. Only after getting into blogging and backtracking “competitively” out of it did I realize that I’m truly passionate about design, so I went back full swing to it.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy blogging {Weborithm has a blog, not hugely updated- but it does}, and I still plan on continuing to write. I’m just not all about the “make money online” and beat the other guy with a bigger list of “Top 10 Ways to…”. I’m way past that, it’s ridiculous nonsense if you ask me.

So how did my passion develop back onto web development? Here are the four most important points I could think about -

• I figured that’s what I wanted to do - I only realized it after doing something else for a period of time. Sometimes you need to take a sidestep to see if you like that path. You can always come back and go forward again.
• I took the time to learn more about my passion - I took on as many challenging jobs as possible to better my skills. It’s quite a feeling to know what a page will look like by just typing it out in code instead of code, refresh, code, refresh, delete, look up reference, code, refresh. Now it’s just code it out and I know exactly how it’ll look {90% of the time, the 10% is IE 6}.
• I got rid of stuff I couldn’t spend at least one day in a week working on - If you cannot spend at the minimum one day a week looking over your own projects then you better not start any. Even if it’s just for a few hours to look over things. There’s no such thing as “Set it and forget it” on the internet.
• Most importantly, I had fun doing it - It’s not work anymore, sure it pays the bills and I’d have a hard time paying them if I didn’t do this. But at least I’m not complaining about what I’m doing.

Blogging will always be an extension of me. It’s something that I’ll probably always do, as long as the internet is around, and I thank it for helping me find my passion.

Has blogging helped you find what you are passionate about doing yet?

I’ve been doing a small case study on affiliate marketing while looking at promoting my own product using PPC methods.

So far, I’ve noticed that there has been very low volume in searches. This is mostly to blame on my careful selection of keywords. In total I’m using only 13 keywords, as I’m going for specific targeting rather than everyone searching for “auctions” and “WordPress“, which would probably give me more traffic but not necessarily convert.

So what can I do from here on to gain more “converting” traffic?

• Use more Ad Variations and Keywords- So far I’ve only used one text ad. My next step is to use come up with 5 different Ad Groups, each having around 10 - 20 keywords, with each Ad Group having at least 2 different Ad Variations. Then I’ll delete the keywords per Ad Groups that have low to little volume and take it from there.
• Go for expensive keywords - This might get costly but I’m willing to give it a shot just to see the amount and kind of traffic that would come by bidding on a keyword like “auctions” and other long tail variations.

I’ve even thought about doing some Image based ads, but I don’t have the time to design them and making text ad variations is much more time effective right now.

I’ve some more content to read up on how to properly scale my campaigns, as I read up and implement them I’ll report back to you here.

P.S - Don’t forget to enter for prizes in my blog anniversary celebrations!

On this 31st of May, EverybodyGoTo.com, your favorite blog, will be celebrating 2 years online.

What started out as a small review site for me, in an experiment to try and make some money online, has turned into 1000 posts, this is post 1001 btw, covering a large variety of topics.

Here are some points to provide a little synopsis of what 2 years of blogging looks like -

1 - Times my blog has crashed due to the “digg effect”

120,000 - Visitors in my best traffic month {Oct 2007}

4 - Theme changes

69,000 - Spam comments blocked

4.7 months - It would have taken me to delete all those spam comments, @ 3 seconds per comment, if I did not have Akismet.

3 - Number of personal projects that I’ve launched as a result of starting this blog

Priceless - The number of new connections I’ve made via this blog

To celebrate I’m having a little giveaway. Before we get into the rules here’s what’s up for grabs -

• 2 Copies of OIO Publisher: If you’re serious about monetizing your blog you should use this fabulous plugin. Now 2 lucky readers will have the chance to win it. {Value: $74}
• 2 Copies of Killer Domains ebook from DailyBlogTips.com - If you tried to find some good domain names lately you know how disappointing the experience can be. Use this ebook to find the perfect domian name for your new venture. {Value: $34}
• 2 Copies of WP Auctions Gold - Use this plugin to set up auctions on your blog and keep 100% of your profits! {Value $50}
• 2 Copies of FreshPress Premium - My first premium theme is in production and will be released in around a week-ish. {Value: TBD}

To enter to win simply leave a comment here which will give you one chance in the drawing.

If you would like more chances at winning then -

• Write a blog post with a link back to the blog and this blog post. A linkback will give you five extra chances in the drawing.
• Sign up for email updates to this blog, each new email subscriber will receive another two chances.

Sign up by email here -

The winners will be chosen on the 23rd of May. Good luck to all and thank you for two wonderful years, here’s to a lot more ahead!