• Blog Links
• Social Media and Bookmarking
• Press Releases
• Directory Submissions
• Local Search
• Select Authority Link Leasing

This list comes from an SEO company called Globe Runner who can help with link building services should you need them. But if you read up about the techniques used, it’s not really rocket science.

What techniques do YOU use for link building?

And this is where you might want to have a look at AffinityClick ads for blogs. It works by matching appropriate advertising to the content of your blog to help target your readers with offers they might be interested in. It works around the fact that more traditional forms of advertisement do not generate the business that advertisers want. Text link ads aren’t intelligent enough and AdSense just isn’t attractive enough.

I’ve actually signed up for the service and will be running it on AskOwen, my Q&A blog. I have been running Amaon ads, but the main problem is that if I use ads from the UK site, then clicks that redirect to the US site aren’t credited and vice versa. AffinityClick matches the advertising to the user on the blog, so you’re guaranteed the best possible return.

Check it out.

• Change color styles with a single click
• Choose a featured category via the theme options area
• Integrate Feedburner and Email link subscriptions
• Integrate TweetRoll widget with one click
• Simple and clean design
• jQuery sidebar
• Supports threaded comments
• Drop down categories at a glance
• Prominent search area
• Easily integrate “Recent Comments With Avatars” plugin
• Compatible with WordPress 2.8+
• Easy access to admin area for logged in users
• Optimized for search engine traffic

I find WordPress an excellent platform for blogging, as you can change the look and feel of your blog anytime you wish, without losing any of your content. And I use it for non-blogs too. It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional Orange County web design firm or just a sole developer building websites in his free time (i.e. me), but it’s always a great asset having a platform you can build on easily.

What do you think of it? What would you change?

And interesting post on Techmeme started my day this morning called Time To Hang Up the Pyjamas. It was an article by Daniel Lyons who had set up a highly-trafficed blog called The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs a couple of years ago. The gist of the article is that he put loads of effort into monitising the blog, but failed to generate anything that would surpass what he could earn holding down a normal job. Here’s a poignant part of his article:

My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I’d kept secret. On that day more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I’d ever had—and through Google’s AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81

A number of other blogs were quite quick to point out that the blog resulted in his rise to relative fame, a book deal and his new job at NewsWeek, but millions of bloggers around the world will never earn as much from AdSense as he did. What he DID DO, however, was raise his profile so that his net worth was much higher than it would have been otherwise.

Articles like this always help put blogging in perspective and help people focus on the why they blog. Using a blog to earn money isn’t impossible, there are a number of companies out there who will pay a blogger for their efforts, but it’s no different to being paid for dropping leaflets in someone’s mailbox. The amount you can earn is constrained by the time you have available and the moment you pull back you’ll see your earnings dry up. Selling advertising space on blogs is another money-earner, but without fresh, compelling content and the traffic it brings, well, that’s another non-starter. In my humble opinion, the worst reason to start a blog is to generate enough income to quit your day job.

On the other hand, a blog can do wonders for your profile, image and self-esteem. It can serve as an outlet for you to talk about your passion, to meet like-minded individuals, to show off your strengths and seek opportunities. A blog can help you build online relationships which will benefit you in the long term in many diverse ways. Monetary benefits are a possibility, but they’re always much harder work than you originally imagined when you decided to set down the blogging path.

photo credit: Dan4th

• iPhone Magic
• Great ideas for finding new sources of energy
• Techcrunch’s demo of Microsoft Touch Wall
• Twitter in Plain English
• How to piss off a geek
• Will it blend? The iPhone

Intrigued? Just look in the top right corner, turn down your table lamp, cover your legs with a blanket and start watching.

Hope you enjoy them!

photo credit: ph0t0 {loves you too}

I’ve just had a run-in with my old hosting provider ServerGrid and it has just escalated to a point where I can’t work with them any more. The latest debacle consisted of them turning off one of my websites last week because they alleged that I was using a section of  it to send spam! Those pages hadn’t been in use for a couple of years, so this was highly unlikely, but they deactivated the site without any notification. I realised this a couple of days later, so raised a ticket about the problem. It’s now 5 (FIVE) days later and I’m still waiting for the ticket to be resolved! How shoddy is that!

I’ve just looked over my ticket history and I raised 27 tickets this year, most of them caused by sites being down or non-responsive. Most of the tickets were pretty frustrating. I would raise a ticket that there was a problem, they reply a few hours later saying that it looks fine at their end, I tell them I still have a problem, then a few hours later the box gets reset (problem goes away) and they email back saying that it still looks fine from their end.

As I’m writing this post The Only Network is still offline but I’ve already made the domain change to move it to my new host (Tubu, whom I love). I raised the ticket last Thursday about this and it’s Tuesday now and well, I’m sick of being treated like crap. The ineptitude of their staff and their sheer reluctance to help means that they have lost one customer who was happy to sing their praises in the past.

Goodbye ServerGrid. I won’t be missing you!

There’s a host of brand new features you can read about, but I’ve been playing with it on WordPress Guru and it looks pretty stable so I’m not expecting any issues. It’s important that things work right when you’re your own PC support. Just remember when you upgrade, always take backups and deactivate your plugins first. Here’s how to do it ..

From that point forth, I decided to start up a number of different blogs each focused on a particular niche. It means that each blog only gets a few posts a week, but that’s probably a good thing, as content stays on the front page for longer (lower churn). Here are some of my blogs in case you’re looking for something to read:

• MBA Geek: I try to keep my pure business posts here. Based on my current employment in the Isle of Man I’m doing more “enabling” work than actual technology, so there’s been some interesting things to post about.
• A bit of this and a bit of that: My personal blog, which contains a real variety of stuff, mostly personal and my family, my diet, holidays and lots more
• The Joke Shop: Pretty much all my jokes go here. It’s pretty busy I must say
• WordPress Guru: My WordPress exploits go mostly here, though I do put some more mainstream ones on this one. Might turn this into a WordPress consultancy one day .. who knows!
• AskOwen: If someone asks me a technical question, say about automated OS recovery, then I use it for a way to store the question and it’s answer.

I have another couple of blogs but those are the main ones. But the net effect is that taking those topics out has allowed this blog to mature into something that’s a bit more me. Ok, it’s still very varied and rich, but hopefully it’s a bit more consistent. What do you think? Do you enjoy reading it?

I’ve just put some final touches on the new theme to try and improve the way it looks. I’ve spaced out the sidebar widgets a bit and configured the footer to use 3 widget bars instead of 2. I’m not too sure if I have too much going on in the narrow sidebar widgets, so happy to accept any criticism from anyone.

I’ve also activated the Sidebar Ads module to see how it works and it seems to complement the blog really nicely. I’m using the Top Ads module to display some photos from the Isle of Man, which aren’t quite the right size, so that needs correcting.

Anyone see anything else they don’t like?

I’ve finally finished putting the last few tweaks on how the theme is working on this site. It’s not complete yet, I have a new colour scheme being prepared for it, but the page layout is going to stick. The theme itself has some other nice bits I’m not using, but who knows, I might in the future.

I like all the extra facilities this theme gives me. I like the Media section on the right; I’m hoping to populate this with cool tech videos I like. It’s a bit like getting a Magnet kitchen in, then chasing down some top-of-the-line Hansgrohe taps and some perfect blinds for it. You can hunt and hunt and hunt and when you find what you want it’s just bliss. I’ve been looking for a theme with sidebars the way I like them for ages. Well, this theme has a wide sidebar and 2 narrow ones and I can split my content every which way I like. I’ve had to resize some things, but I still have lots of space to play with.

Anyway, if you spot anything you don’t like, just drop me a comment. And if you have any suggestions on how I can improve it; just let me know.