KhalidsLife.com

BloggersBox.com is my latest blog, packed with wordpress themes, plugins and articles. The idea quickly became a project after a culmination of factors lead me to believe it would be a good investment.

One, I remember the popularity of FreeTurnkey.net when it first came out (a site I used to own that gave away turnkey scripts for free). Two, I know how difficult it is trying to find decent WordPress plugins so I hand picked a few and put them all on one page. Three, WordPress blogs are easy to maintain and work well with regards to SEO. Four, I have experience in the first three.

I personally think the name is easy to remember and pretty cool. The site is easy to naviate and user friendly, with articles explaining how to install a wordpress plugin and more. I won’t be investing a lot of money marketing the site just yet as I need to add more content and I need to raise more cash too!

With two blogs under my belt I think I’ll be too busy updating them daily to consider taking on a third just yet, therefore I am going to explore other viable options. Your opinions on the site would be much appreciated.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Blogs seem to pay off in the long run. Quite a few successful sites are blogs or some form of content management system (CMS). The immediate benefits are that WordPress is setup in a few clicks, you can add useful plugins to improve your SEO and it is extremely easy to rank in the SERP’s using a blog (if you do it correctly!).

OffBeatInk.com is doing well and my unique, daily content is getting GoogleBot hitting my site close to 4,000 times this month! That’s probably the highest I have ever seen on any site I’ve run…and that can’t be a bad thing! Search engines love unique content that is keyword rich and website relevant (all my posts are about bodyart, nothing else - no paid reviews of anything like that).

As a result of the minor yet profitable success of the site, I’ve decided to continue my trend and make a small blog network with fresh daily content. I have one new site that is online but I still need to add a few more posts before revealing it to you. If I can do one post in 15 minutes and have 4 blogs each generating $5 per day, that’s $20 for one hour of my time…no bad.

Long term I’d want that to be a lot higher and there will be occasions when one site will require more work than another but the beautiful thing about it is that, no matter how big or small the site is, one post per day works. So, if OffBeatInk.com began bringing in 10x the amount of visitors and 5x the amount of revenue…my 15 minutes work would still stand.

I would consider increasing the post length and quality to ensure the traffic and revenue increase remains stable, the theory behind it works though! What do you think?

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Hope you all had a good Christmas, I’m currently relaxing in bed listening to music and enjoying my day off! I plan on walking into town and checking out the sales, what are you up to today?

Santa was good to me, I got £300 ($600) in total from my parents for a TV for my room, clothes and toiletries. Now the difficulty…finding a good tv in the sales and fitting it in a good space in my room!

As for my projects, I continued to work a little bit through Christmas day, you can’t neglect your investments ever!

Tell me about your Christmas…?

p.s. I wish you all the best for the festive period and 2008!

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Apologies for not blogging in a while, my cousin was slagging me saying I promised to blog 1-2 times per day then my next post was after a week! I do apologise, sometimes I am just far too busy to update this blog daily and besides, not everyday something new occurs.

Last week was pretty eventful though! I got a new phone due to my old one being faulty. It is a Sony Ericsson K850i with 5mp camera and partial touch screen. It is amazing what you can achieve when you take the time to complain about bad customer service.

I’m going to try video blogging with it, see how it works out. I’ve got my eye on a webcam but don’t want to purchase one unneccessarily if my phone will do the trick.

On the web front, I’ve been working hard and finished my latest project today! I’ll launch it just after Christmas and perhaps get some reviews completed. I was thinking of using Pay Per Post, has anyone had any success with using them to review a site? If so, leave a comment and let me know, thanks!

Kortaz and Off Beat Ink are both doing well, with featured links on Kortaz completely sold out until January and people waiting to order! I’ve decided to keep a spreadsheet of advertisers and their details to create a mailshot when links will become available.

Similarly, Off Beat Ink is getting between 500 - 1,000 uniques per day, which is a slight drop in traffic but I’ve not spent any money on advertising this month. The site is ranking in SERP’s so I’m hoping more organic traffic will come through soon. The site is averaging $1.5 - $2.0 per day which is money I never had before so I’m happy!

I’ll be posting my goals for 2008 shorlty, watch this space! Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

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I thought I’d share what I’ve asked for (and know what I am getting) for xmas…

1. LCD TV - for my room to create a cinema experience
2. Jacket - it is like -5 degrees at night just now!
3. Webcam - to do some video blogging - watch this space!
4. Krav Maga book - further my martial arts knowledge.
5. Kettlebells - a good piece of bodybuilding kit.
6. Trainers - or “Sneakers” as they are refferred to across the water.

As my birthday is on 2nd January and I’ll be 21, the LCD tv will probably be a xmas/birthday present depending on the price. I’ll no doubt get some other random goodies but these are things that I have asked for.

I’m really looking forward to Christmas as I’ve actually bought some pretty cool presents this year. So, what’s on your list?

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I’m really pleased with my progress online recently. I have managed to begin covering my costs and start making some profit, I just hope this success is long term! Running quickly through my sites, Off Beat Ink continues to pull in around 1,000 uniques per day and provides $2 income, Featured Links on Kortaz are sold out with a whopping 12 sales this month and this blog has generated a few dollars through post sponsorship!

So far so good, the next stage is to increase the popularity of my site’s further thus increasing my income. I have began on a third project that I mentioned here, I just need to add content and flood it with traffic. This is another blog but not one I need to update daily. I plan to launch either this week or next.

Taking advice from dedicated commenter Marc, I intend to attempt to sell advertising space on Off Beat Ink to private bodyart companies in the near future. Roll on 2008!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

p.s. I have decided to blog 1-2 times per day in an attempt to increase my readership! 

The following is a paid review that is completely my own opinion…

PayPerPost is a website that brings both bloggers and advertisers together in order to create a single portal to connect the two parties. The site is completely free to use and works as an effective marketplace where advertisers and bloggers both have choices.The system works in a simple way - An advertiser posts information about their site/product/service they wish to be reviewed, along with post criteria such as minimum word count and price. Bloggers can then look into the opportunities directory and review the sites/products they qualify for. Once the blogger has completed this, they submit a link to their post and the transaction is complete! Simple really.All posts are then reviewed by Pay Per Post staff. When they are satisfied the job has been completed, the advertisers account is debited and the bloggers credited. Voila!The immediate benefits to advertisors is that they can get access to hundreds of bloggers from around the world and create a frenzy about their product/site/service overnight! To the average blogger, Pay Per Post is a cash machine that they can tap into 24 hours per day…providing they put the work in.Being lazy at first, I decided to sign up for an account and have a quick peep, but nothing more. It wasn’t until I logged back in and earned a few bucks for a short review (here) that I realised the opportunities available to me to earn. I quickly became addicted and intend to try to post a review at least once per week.

At this stage, my only hesitiation is separating the sufficient from the spam. I am curious as to how Pay Per Post intends to ensure bloggers just aren’t writing crappy review for a quick buck and thus lowering the quality, which will in turn lower prices. I’ll be monitoring this situation and will probably post reviews from higher paying advertisers to separate myself.

I would certainly recommend Pay Per Post as a secondary income to your blogging hobby or career…it can be rather fruitful.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

The following is a paid review that is completely my own opinion…

OOPrint.co.uk or OOPrint.com is offering the newest trend for bloggers looking to network with their “Business 2.0” card. Business cards are a great way to leave your mark with someone outwith the digital world.

The cards come in a number of different formats, including Standard, Square, Vertical and Large. After choosing the format that best suits you, the easy-to-use customisation process begins. From here, you can choose colours, designs and even tag clouds! Yes, at the bottom of every business card you can have a tag cloud showing what your blog is about and what keywords you mention most often! How cool!

Right now, OOPrint are giving away 100 free blogger cards (you only pay for shipping), so get your order in before the offer expires!

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When you are bored you tend to do things you regret…especially on the web. No I’m not talking about surfing porn and getting loads of popups appearing (how do I know that?), but buying domains when the light switch suddenly goes on in my business head.

One of them I’ll definately monetize as I want a recurring income without need to update daily. With OffBeatInk.com and my future gadget site (still in the pipeline), I need to post something new every 24hrs. Although this has its advantages, it can become a headache, especially when working full time.

Some nights I won’t go to bed till after 12am. I don’t mind because I always thing of the long term gain but I couldn’t manage a handful of sites like this unless they generated enough money for my to work part time.

The new project aims to target bloggers, a market that has experienced rapid growth in recent years. With the success of dot com moguls like John Chow and Darren Rowse, blogging has evolved into a very profitable industry. I want to tap into that market by offering products that will benefit bloggers…more info soon!

Anyways, I just thought I’d tell you my plans. Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

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As the week drags along and you look forward to the weekend, most people think of relaxing, take it easy, chilling out. Me…I think of time to work on my sites. I’m sure this view is share by fellow webmasters who also have the unfortunate rat race lifestyle I do.

In a bid to keep myself going, I’ve been reading other blogs, watching inspiration youtube videos and thinking of how nice it would be to actually be out my overdraft for a change!

To make things worse, it started snowing here in Scotland today and I got caught in it…lovely eh?

Tonight I’ve got no plans so after eating dinner and tidying up I’ll continue what I started earlier. That consisted of updating OffBeatInk.com, driving traffic to the site, researching new ideas (I can’t help it!) and trying to sell the last few remaning links on Kortaz.com.

With just over 1k uniques per day and no money spent on advertising, OffBeatInk.com is making around the $2 mark. If I could double it by the end of this month and keep it consistant I’d be really pleased. However, waiting on the SERPS updating is a nightmare! Most of my traffic is from November’s exposure, fingers crossed that’ll continue and I’ll get a good search rank…double the traffic…double the earnings?

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.