Reading the various MMO-blogs

Almost all of us are quilty of this and it is actually quite normal – you want to have an idea of what other people are doing to make that online income a reality. Every now and then you find a nice blog which you start reading, and sometimes you get hooked. I personally don’t read too many blogs but I do spend way too much time sometimes on the few that I read. You might think that you can’t spend too much time on a blog once you have read the post but oh yes, you can…

Commenting on the MMO blogs

Sometimes you really want to be social and you have to make a comment about the post that you just  read. It might be the fact that you appreciate what the author wrote, have more experience about it, have some questions about it or just want to let him/her know that you were by that blog. You want to socialize because the majority of your time is spent building websites and trying to shut everything social out from your life. Once you start to respect another internet marketer, it is normal to try to be friends with him/her because your thoughts are similar. Well, once you have made your comment it is time to waste some more time…

Wait for your comment to be published

Blogs which automatically approve of comments that are not spammy by nature are the worst enemy of people who refresh the page every five minutes just to see if their comment got through Akismet, and is approved by the author. I have definitely done this at some point of my life, and it has to be one of the most time consuming things you can do. At some point you might even think that you are not going start writing that ezine just yet because your comment might be published soon, and after that comes the…

Wait for your comment to be answered

It is approved now.. What next? Is he/she going to answer it? She must have read it because it is published! WHY IS HE/SHE NOT ANSWERING IT?! Well sometimes people just write comments that can not be answered, and sometimes bloggers just can’t be bothered to. If you commented on Griz’s blog you most likely did some digital fellatio and are waiting for him to ‘approve of it’. You are waiting for the nod of the head from the guru which is a clear sign of the fact that he now is your friend and in future you can bother him with any possible thing that comes to your mind. Comments are great and if you ask something that has not been answered in the post then it is excellent. But you if you claim to be a long time reader and are asking something that has been written 10 times in the 5 last posts and asked 20 in the previous comments, then you are most likely not going to be answered every single time.

Also because of the fact that some blogs get an insane amount of comments, it could be possible that the author did not just see yours – but if you think this is the case don’t go back begging for him/her to answer your comment, it’s not cool. I don’t get an insane amount of comments in any of my blogs, and that is why I feel obligated to answer all of them, even if they are those ‘fly-by’ comments “hi! nice post”. Well if they get through Akismet I do.

Waste your time on the forums

Do you really think that you can make money online reading forums? I am definitely guilty as charged on spending too much time on one of the various forums there are. The truth about forums is this. If you are reading forums like Digital Point or Warrior Forums, you are most likely not learning anything that you can use. There are a lot of people just gaming the forums and marketing useless crap to newbies who are trying to earn a passive income, and they are doing it simply because these guys are ready to buy everything you feed to them. If you identify yourself from the previous paragraph, it is a good idea to get out from there and forget about your username – forums are not going to provide you with any sort of income unless you are selling stuff to the readers.

I spend most of my time on Ben’s make money online forum and I concider it being quite a high quality forum, even though there is a lot of the regular crap there. The fact is that if you are a part of a forum and you are not there to ask questions, you are most likely going to give newbie advice to people who are even newer to the business than you are. Congratulations you have found someone who knows less of internet marketing than you do! I do give advice there and I do spend way too much time there, and I can honestly say that sometimes I think that I am a more experienced marketer than the guy asking the question. Well the problem is that I don’t know how much he is making, or how long has he been doing it. I can give advice that are based on something that I have learnt by doing, or something that I have learn by reading, or something that I have learnt by just trying to figure out. There are usually as many advice as there are people giving them, and you are probably going to get a wide view of peoples opinions if you dare to ask a question that is interesting, There is no one method that works, and there are many success stories and you are going to have to do the work to see the money, not change your methods every week.

Doing pointless keyword research

The Keyword Academy method for keyword research is actually quite great – build a large list of keywords before you proceed to work on that list. When you are constantly trying to do some keyword research and come up with new ideas, you are most likely neglecting the ones that you had last week, month or year. Do you have a website which is built, has a few backlinks but is sitting in the third SERP because you have had too many other great ideas to be able to get that one site making you money? I noticed that I have at least three websites that I have sitting in positions 12-15 for their main keyword, and I have not even done too much work on them. These are sites with potential and I am getting zero visitors because of the fact that I am too busy not promoting them.

Staring at the screen

There are moments when we feel like we are burnt out and don’t have anything to write or do. Don’t just stare at your screen and hope that you are going to get an inspiration on what to do next, but instead take a break or try to get that inspiration from somewhere. If you are spending most of your time writing articles then you are most likely not taking breaks. That is great if you can work like a madman, but if you are one of those guys who can’t write a word once they are done with what they had to say it is time to chill out a sec. You are not going to be efficent if you are working for six hours straight, you need a few ten-fifteen minute breaks once in two hours to be able to keep on working efficently.

Perfecting your MMO blog

Don’t get me wrong here – if you have tons of search engine traffic and are making a lot of money it is a great idea to try to hone that adsense placement and that theme to be able to make the most out of it. If you take a look at the most popular blogs there are, you are going to see a simple blog which is clear. This is because the owners are people who are actually making money online, and don’t have the time to do nice graphics for their header, or make their site look nice. They are doing this as their business, and if you would have a business of your own, would you prefere to spend your time telling a friend how you are doing, or would you spend your time trying to improve your business. People get it all wrong, and think that the MMO blogs are the actual business – they are not.

Not working because it might not work

There are times when you are uncertain about yourself. You will think that you are not going to gain anything from writing this article, and that this one blog that you create is not going to make you money. You will never know if something is going to work if you don’t give it a try. The funny thing with making money online is that usually the thing that you least expect to make you any income is likely going to be the one most profiting thing you ever did. If you think that writing about making money online is going to make money online and that building a niche blog around left handed scissors is not, then you are probably wrong.

Not working because it is too late

I see this asked over and over again on different blogs and it is closely related to the previous way to waste time while trying to make money online. You are afraid that your efforst are not worth anything and you think that you already lost that chance with that one blog because you started out the wrong way. WRONG. You can always go back, change the content and interlinking, build the support sites and reap the benefits, unless, you did something stupid and got a ‘permanent’ deindex.

If you don’t think these are the 10 best ways to waste time while trying to make money online then feel free to comment and add your two cents!

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1. Blogger

Had to be number one. There is absolutely nothing bad to say about blogspot blogs except that these days it takes some time to get them indexed. The templates that they offer are nice and SEO friendly, and clean like I prefere my themes to be. You can even display your own ads on the blog if you get enough targeted traffic in the first place. Most of the issues that people have with it is that it is not customisable enough, even though there is quite a lot of ‘widgets’ available. There is a wide range of themes available if you just use the Google to find them, and the ones that are already there are easily modified using their built in editor. Definitely the best free blog host there is but is suffering a little from the fact that the spammers have found it also. It is easy to create hundreds of accounts and hundreds of blogs, and that is causing the blogs to take a little more time to get indexed in the search engines.

2. Blog.com

Has always worked great for me, and if you are looking for wordpress hosting then this is a great service. They say that there are some limits to the amount you can use their services, but if you are not going to make it your flagship, then there is no problem. There are some of their ads displayed, but not too much. Overall they provide a good service for free. The registration is quick and reliable and there are still quite a lot of subdomains available so you can usually get what you want.

3. Vox.com

This seems to be a pretty trusted domain, since blogs are usually indexed quite quickly for a free service. Once again, it is not for professional blogging, but if you want to just write stuff down and even get some visitors for it, it is great. I have had some problems with the confirmation e-mails sometimes, but usually they have arrived within 12 hours. The layout is quite customisable but the themes are not. They provvide a wide variety of themes but I bet most of them don’t suite the eyes of the bloggers that much.

4. Dreamhost Apps – After reading this dreamhost review I can not recommend it to anyone, and if you have any decent websites that are in any way associated with that company, I suggest that move away before any problems occure!

A great service to host a WordPress blog and a number of other apps. Completely free, and if you feel like you are going to make it with your blog, you can  easily upgrade to paid hosting ( DON’T ) and have total control of your blog. There is quite a good selection of themes already included, but with like most of the free hosts, you are not allowed to install any more. Registration worked perfectly.

5. Blogsome

Yet another wordpress bloghost. Works great but you are forced to display some of their adsense ads. If you are not going to build a blog that will be huge and used for monetization, then its a good way to get some property online with another C-class IP. Not too much thees to choose from. I have had no problems with them and the process of creating the blog was easy just like with almost all the WP-installs. There are some exeptions though.

6. Blogomonster

I usually don’t like free blogs that are not created to a subdomain, but with Blogomonster I have had my blogs indexed so quickly that I can’t really complain. WordPress hosting with no problems in the registration and tiny ads on the top and bottom of your posts

7. Blogetery

Basically a duplicate from Blogsome, with the exeption that there are no ads displayed. The themes are boring and simple, just the way you should like them.

8. Bravejournal

It is always a good idea to spread your blogs to different platforms to give them a more variant profile. That is why services like Bravejournal are great because they have their own platform. The biggest problem with them is that you have to display a huge banner ad on the top of your blog, so if you are not willing to give anything back to your host for offering that free hosting, then it is not for you.  You can modify the themes quite a lot and they do boast a good selection of themes, but if you want to make your blog look good then this is definitely not the place for you.

9. WordPress.com

As much as people like it, I don’t. I have to agree that it has some street credibility and that the domain is powerful because they have a strict policy against spam. At the same time they are a bit too strict in my opinion – you can get easily banned from linking to a website that is monetized and does not look ‘legit’ in their eyes. They are not going to answer your e-mails but instead take your content and shut down your account. If you plan on building a blog there, it is a good idea to do backups of everything to avoid losing your content. Also if you have multiple accounts there and one of your blogs get deleted, there is a chance that they track your IP and wipe out the other ones too.

10. Blogdrive

This has got to be the ugliest free blog host that there is. The themes are pure pain to eyes that are used to fancy wordpress, and the permalinks to your posts are going to be simple 1.htm, 2.htm. The thing with this is though that it gets indexed also quite quickly. It has not been abused, possibly because of the crappy interface and the looks, but it works and gets the job done.

There are so many different hosts that I have used an I have some great experiences even with more than these and I would like to list them down here, so if you are looking for a bunch of free blog hosts, or are not happy with the ones that I listed here, you can choose yourself from the large variety offered.

• Bloggerbite
• SosBlog
• Ohlog
• Tripod
• Wetpaint
• Clearblogs
• Weebly

There are a great number of other hosts available but since this is about the the 10 best free blog hosts, I am not going to mention them here. Many of them never sent me the confirmation e-mails even after multiple re-requests and some of them just did not get the blog set up correctly – it always displayed an error message. So if you want to have a wide variety of blogs, then there is your list – the best option is always to buy hosting so you can be in total control of your website, but if you are not willing to spend that extra money that would be spent on high quality affordable hosts like Hostgator, Fatcow or Bluehost then you will have to go with the free ones.