MMO Blogging Wars

War has broken out in the MMO Blogging niche. I could see this coming from a long way off and did a post about some of my concerns way back in September 2007. The first I saw about the War was when reading JohnCow’s blog. I am only an occasional visitor to his blog, but I found the article interesting for several reasons.

John has a go at Vic from BloggerUnleashed when he ranted about the purchase of OneMansGoal.com. If you are not familiar, Marc Galeazzi bought OneMansGoal from Bryan Clark for $10,500, which Vic seemed to find pretty funny. I have never visited either BloggerUnleashed or OneMansGoal.com before now, so in fairness to both, I will read both sites a little more before passing judgement. What I will say though, regarding Vic’s take on the matter, is that I found his post nearly unintelligible. We all make typos in our posts, but Vic’s is laden with them, possibly because it was written in a state of rage, or possibly because that is the normal quality of his writing. As I said, I need to read the site a little more before I can pass judgment.

JohnCow has written a follow-up post of sorts, where he has a go at Garry Conn and his post on the subject. Once again, Garry’s site is one I had not visited before today, but based on what he has written there, I have to say that if what he reports here is accurate, then I totally agree with his sentiment. Based on his post, the sale of www.blogrepreneur.com does seem like a total scam. the misrepresentation of the site stats is atrocious and as far as I am concerned indefensible.

In defense of JohnCow, he has built a pretty successful MMO blog in pretty quick time. Also worth nothing is that his blog is for sale. You could interpret that he has a vested interest in allaying fears about the MMO bubble bursting, as well as stamping out any negative articles on blog flipping and people paying too much for a reasonably new blog, especially in the MMO niche. I am not suggesting that JohnCow’s stats are manipulated in any way. I would be very surprised if they were, so I do not have an issue with him selling or marketing his site.

Caveat Emptor

One point that seems lost in all of this is that at the end of the day, the buyer or blog reader needs to use due diligence in any purchase they are considering as well as with what they are reading.

In the case of a blog purchase, there are several ways you can check the stats of a site to determine if they are as good as the seller is representing them to be. I use pMetrics for my own site stats and it provides me with a much more accurate representation of traffic then the outdated Awstats. You can read my review of pMetrics here.

Obviously you have a right to expect that you will not be ripped off and in the case of the sale of www.blogrepreneur.com, that would seem to be what has happened, but you also have to do your homework.

Likewise, with the fodder you are being fed by some MMO bloggers; you should use due diligence to determine if the information you are reading is transparent, valid and useful.

MMO Bloggers Need To Make Money

Many bloggers derive an income (some even a living) from blogging. Obviously, if the blog is in the MMO niche, there is a fair chance that the blog is being used to make money for the blogger; there is nothing wrong with that, I do it myself, so you cannot harshly judge a blog just because it uses advertising or affiliate marketing to monetize the site. You need to be aware of this though when reading a blog and for certain blogs, you should be very skeptical about the products being recommended.

Looking through some rose colored glasses, I would like to think that the majority of MMO blogs do really believe that the products they recommend are useful and add value. There are others however, who simply promote whatever gives them the most value at the expense of the unsuspecting reader. This is no different from any other business, there are ethical businesses and others who are less so. As a blog reader, you need to decide whether you are receiving value or jut being fed a line from a slick salesman.

Posts That Keep On Giving

About three weeks ago, while viewing my Web stats, I noticed something interesting on one of my other blogs. A story I posted way back in December had suddenly become the top story for the day.

What is unusual about this post is that although I hadn’t previously checked how much traffic it was bringing in, it had never been near the top of the stats, so hadn’t jumped out at me as an effective post. Sure, the day I posted it, it received a quick spike in traffic, but after that, nothing major.

Now though, that one post has brought in somewhere around 30,000 new visitors to the site in the last three weeks and is regularly rating as the top post on most days. Even better, each visitor is averaging 4 page views per visit.

The story itself is not that good, I have, and do post much better content. When I wrote this particular post I set out with the intention of generating a lot of traffic and while the content may have been simple, it took some time to put it all together.

What’s The Story

So what caused this sudden boost in traffic for this ‘old’ post?

Several factors came together at the same time, but the primary one is that I redesigned my theme. The new theme seems to generate a lot more Google search traffic. So it would seem that with the previous theme, the post simply wasn’t being indexed as well by Google. It jsut goes to show the value of a good SEO enhanced theme.

Will It Last?

So how long do I expect this surge in traffic to last? Going by the stats of my other posts that rate quite highly, I expect this post to do the same. It will taper off and eventually drop down to bring in 300 - 400 new visitors a day, but that is still a nice healthy figure.

Capitalize

Now there is not a lot of point in generating traffic, if you are not prepared to take advantage of it. Rather then sit back and simply wait for the surge to drop, today I wrote another post along a similar thread to the previous one. Rather then simply wait for this post to be found by the search engines, or by readers looking at the related links, I put a link in each of these posts, promoting the other one. I also did a couple of other little things…

Now my new post is rating number two on my stats, not all that far behind the top rating one.

Know Thy Stats

Of course, none of this would be evident unless I was actively following my Website stats. I do this several times a day, and it takes nothing more then a quick glance at the dashboard to see how things are going. There are a lot of stats tools you can use for doing this. My favorite though is this one. I have posted about it previously here and I can highly recommend it as an invaluable tool to have.

Traffic Kahuna Is Coming

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I received an email from the founders of DealDotCom this morning announcing the launch of their new service, an excerpt of the message is repeated below.

Something BIG is coming. Next Wednesday (April 16th) the founders of DealDotCom are launching a “get traffic” service.

What Is Traffic Kahuna?

I will have more details for you soon. But, in a nutshell Traffic Kahuna is a high-quality network of 650 blogs and 1100 websites that will publish your articles and content (and give you high-quality backlinks).

If you have even basic knowledge of how the search engines work, you are probably jumping out of your chair right now!

Yes, this is VERY exciting.

There is nothing out there like Traffic Kahuna. This has been 2 years in the making.

Look for more details early next week as we move towards featuring Traffic Kahuna on DealDotCom next Wednesday.

As I am a DealDotCom member, I am able to take advantage of the affiliate program when it launches. By the sound of it, it could be very big. If you are not a member of DealDotCom, I suggest you join now, because the affiliate program is closed to the public.

Have I Got A Deal For You

I held off long enough for the hype to die down, but have signed up to DealDotCom. If you are not familiar with DealDotCom, what it does is offer deals on software, PLR, membersip sites, scripts, info products, e-book and more.

What Is The Deal

Sorry about the pun. How it works, is that each day DealDotCom offers one product and only one product for sale at a reduced price. You can see today’s product in the sidebar here. The products they offer are ones I have either bought previously, such as the OIOPublisher WordPress Plugin or ones I have been thinking of buying, like today’s special on the Wp Auctions Plugin.

The other great thing about DealDotCom, is that you get a free product just for joining. Once you become a member, you can then refer others to the site and earn commissions. From their site:

Whenever you refer someone to DealDotCom via your handy-dandy affiliate link, you get paid 35% of DealDotCom’s profit for every item that they buy. If someone you referred to DealDotCom refers someone else, you get paid 15% of DealDotCom’s profit every time they buy something for the rest of your life. This is a big commitment, so we suggest you take it very seriously.

So joining gives you two benefits, cheaper products and affiliate commissions.

Diamond Encrusted iPhone

For those of you who liked the previous post on the Gold iPhone, comes an iPhone with even more bling.

Australian jeweler Peter Aloisson has designed the iPhone Princess Plus.

The iPhone Princess Plus is the world’s most expensive iPhone. It is encrusted with 318 diamonds, with 138 being princess cut, from where it got its name.

The diamonds n this baby total 17.75 carats and are inlaid on 18k white gold. The price is a very reasonable $176,000.

If your budget can’t stretch that far, you can get the down-market version encrusted in brilliant diamonds for the measly sum of $66,000.

What Multiple Orgasms Can Teach You About Viral Blogging

Strange title I know, but I was looking at some video on Youtube tonight and came across a video of Donna Summer singing one of her hits called ‘Love To Love You Baby’.

I remembered reading something about this song years ago, so I did a little research and found what I was looking for.

Now you may be wondering what a Donna Summer hot from the 1970’s has to do with the title of this post and blogging in general, I’ll get to that. Read more

I am Going Viral Tomorrow

I am going viral tomorrow. This is just a heads up.

I think you have all had a good run, but it is time to give you all the Webtrepreneur bug; well that’s what you come here for isn’t it?

So tomorrow, I give you a viral post to demonstrate the technique.

I have never tried to go viral on this blog before, so you may be asking how I can make such a statement. Well, I have done it on my other sites and even on this one without really trying I have had stories really take off.

So how will I do it, come back tomorrow to see…

Blog Advertising - Cut Out The Middleman

Many people dream of cutting out the middleman and selling their own advertising; who doesn’t want to keep the money for themselves, rather then pay an advertising company a percentage of everything you earn.

Cut Out The Middleman

The trouble is, managing everything associated with your site’s advertising space can be very time consuming. Sure, you can just stick with Google Adsense, but generally, for the minimal amount of money that it will bring in for most blogs, it is useful for nothing more then acting as a filler. I know, there are exceptions, with some people making a great living off Adsense, but there are a lot of factors at play that the average blogger can’t easily attain. Adsense ads are also getting stale; they are losing their impact.

For most bloggers, the real money is in selling their own advertising space; for most, this involves signing up with an ad program, where you give them 50% of your ad earnings in exchange for letting them sell your ad space. Worse still, you often don’t get to set your own price for the ads and have very little control over many other aspects.

Control Your Own Advertising

Wouldn’t it be great if you could have your own simple system that took all the hard work out of running your on advertising sales, allowed you to control every aspect and also let you keep 100% of the profits? Well there is and it’s called the OIOPublisher Wordpress plugin.

Configuration

OIOPublisher WordPress Plugin is very configurable, and can handle, email advertising, text link ads, inline ads, banners and reviews.

One of the great features of this plugin is that advertisers can see for themselves, the type of ads you are accepting, the price you are charging, and if it is what they are looking for, fully automated system makes it easy for them to upload their banners, input their links or request a sponsored reviews without you having to do anything more then approve it (and that is only if you select that option).

Payments are fully automated with PayPal and you can set it up for specific campaign durations. Even the previously tedious task of contacting advertisers to organize renewal of their ad prior to the expiration is handled automatically by OIOPublisher. Prior to expiration of the ad it will notify the advertiser via email if they’d like to renew their advertising. If they choose not to renew, the banner or link will expire, and the ad space will then be available for a new advertiser to purchase.

Extras And Price

OIOPublisher also provides a marketplace where advertisers can search for specific areas to advertise, so there are even more ways for you to be found.

I am using this plugin on most of my sites (I’ll use it on all of them, once I get around to adding and configuring it) and can definitely recommend it to anyone looking at monetising their site.

OK, the thing that most of you are interested in, is the price. You can buy OIOPublisher WordPress Plugin for only $37. If that isn’t good enough for you, it gets better. If you have more then one site, no problem, you do not have to purchase extra licenses. The one payment is for all and any site you want to use it on. A one off payment of $37 for unlimited use! Doesn’t get much better then that.

WP Remix Wordpress Theme

When searching for a WordPress theme, you are presented with literally thousands of options, both free and commercial. Choosing the most appropriate design for your blog can be a daunting task. Lately, a lot of premium themes have become available that allow you to have a considerable amount of customization with minimal effort. This post deals with one such theme.

WP Remix

I came across R.Bhavesh a couple of months ago and was immediately impressed with his Web designs. It is refreshing to see the clean and uncluttered interfaces he produces.

Bhavesh’s premium WordPress theme is called WP Remix. This theme differs from many of the other premium themes in the market, by being easy for novice users to set up. Saying that, it is still offers a great deal of customization options for the experienced developer.

Optional Home Page 1

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The Beginning Of The Brand

My new business venture has been successfully operating for two months now, so it is about time to tell some of the secrets of its success, and now it has nothing to do with the naked cowboy; I just put that image there to grab your attention.

Several months of planning went into getting it off the ground and making it profitable from day one. Considerable time was spent analyzing the business model, value adding, brand building and a growth strategy. This is fairly standard planning for all businesses, but it got me to thinking about how, many people do not fully plan a business venture, giving it no more thought then how much they can make and what the costs will be.

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