14 replies to this topic

[despot]

Well, it's not actually adsense-related (I guess), but it's still related with trying to cash in on the net, so I thought I would post it.
I've just been looking around the digitalpoint forums and I saw a thread about a guy trying to make $15,000 from $150. He's started like a week ago or so... Well, maybe it's a scam site, but so far it looks quite okay to me.
Anyway, here is the site:
http://www.15kchallenge.com/

And fallowing the DP forums, I would also post a link to the actual progress report so that you wouldn't have to enter your e-mail or anything:
http://www.15kchallenge.com/blog/


Thougt, I would add a post two the forum and also enter his contest at the same time. Anyway.

[glen]

thanks for the link despot. i had a quick look at the blog and it sounds like these guys are working pretty hard at it. i think we would all do better (no matter how knowledgeable we are) if we put in lots of hours to site building i have been a bit slack lately! time to get back on the case.

[despot]

Yeah, myself, I have started coding a website too

That guy mentions posting in forums (which is pretty obvious) and myspace (which is kinda new to me) as the main free traffic builders. Maybe I should try them if I get to build the website.
Gotta sharp up my programming skills, firstly, though.

[glen]

yea this myspace thing seems to bee really taking off. i hadn't even heard of it a few months ago.

not sure if you can use adsense on a myspace site.

cheers, glen

[despot]

Okay, he's doing some interesting stuff.

Still be looking forward to see if he can make it and maybe sometime I would even try to repeat that myself.

But anyway, people seem to be copying him. There is another site.

http://www.30kchallenge.com/blog/

Nothing too fancy there. But I had a quick view over the site and one thing caught my eye there.
Read this post:
http://www.30kchalle...ffic-generation

That's something new to me.
Well, I knew trackbacks can generate traffic, but that's quite a new approach. And 10k hits in 24 hours seems cool.
Ever heard of/tried this?

[glen]

hi despot, i am just starting to experiment with blogs but i don't think i have fully understood the whole track backs concept.

i have been playing around with wordpress but obviously i still have a lot to learn! thanks for the tip,

cheers, glen

[despot]

Hi, glen.

That's quite a slow response... but - what don't you understand about the trackbacks thing?
I think it's pretty easy to comprehend.

I've started a little extra blog a few days ago - I had a domain, so I installed wordpress, selected a theme and wrote a couple entries.
I've also played a little bit with trackbacks.
And so far the results are quite okay, I guess. Well, not too fascinating.


Currently I'll maybe be working on a small scale and learning stuff - so that I would see if I can make something out of that. If it works out well, heh, that might even turn into a business... :-)

I'd maybe would be letting you know more about the site in case if you would be interested.

[glen]

Feel free to post a link to your new site.

I looked up "trackback" on wikipedia and got the following explanation. The last paragraph about trackback spam was what worried me. Do you find this is a problem on your blog?

Cheers, Glen

Quote

TrackBack is a mechanism for communication between blogs: if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a "TrackBack ping"; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.

See also: referrer

Blogging software that supports the TrackBack protocol displays a "TrackBack URL" along with every entry. This URL is used by the commenting blogger, whose software will send XML-formatted information about the new entry to this URL. Some blogging tools are able to discover these TrackBack URLs automatically, others require the commenting blogger to enter them manually.

The TrackBack specification is due to Six Apart who first implemented it in its Movable Type blogging software in 2002. It has since been implemented in most other blogging tools. Six Apart started a working group in February 2006 to improve the Trackback protocol and have it potentially approved as an internet standard by the IETF. One notable blogging tool that does not support trackback yet is Blogger. (Blogger now has backlinks - very similar to the trackback feature in Movable Type.)

Some individuals or companies have abused the TrackBack feature to insert spam links on some blogs (see sping). This is similar to comment spam but avoids some of the safeguards designed to stop the latter practice. As a result, TrackBack spam filters similar to those implemented against comment spam now exist in many weblog publishing systems. Many blogs have stopped using trackbacks because dealing with spam became too burdensome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback

[despot]

Well, it's just a few days since it's on so it's probably too early to make conclusions. I'll maybe hit you up with the info later or something.

About spamming - noone has spammed me yet. I have like 5 comments so far, so whatever.
And about the trackbacks spam - that's similar to what I am doing. Well, not on the bad-level, though. Like, I just see some interesting posts, I come up with a few words about the posts, put a link and dropa a trackback to the site. So, it appears on the comments so I get: visitors (by direct links), some SEO (as the link actually appears on the page) and also you can find exposure from other bloggers as they see you posting about them and might post about you on their blogs too.

And the technical part is quite simple too.

[glen]

thanks for the info despot. sounds like a good way to get links

[despot]

Fine, it's been a week since the test. Here are the results of my blog.



I was getting a couple uniques a day before. Then, I believe, on Sunday I did a short blogspost with a trackback to an entry on the blog of one of the big bloggers. Since then I haven't really posted anything, except for a few little entries which I think did not reach the target - they did not boom.
Well, 100 uniques is not that many. But considering how little effort I've practically put into it I think there is some potential in it. I guess it's earned a couple dollars for me. Bah.

Also, I've put up another little blog post with a trackback today. Was expecting some traffic. But oh well, I wake up and - surprise - my site is down (duh). It was also down a couple of times during the week. Well, since it's a test-hosting, it's okay. But gotta choose a better hosting for bigger stuff...


But considering all of the above, in fact, I was expecting some more than this. Well, if I had blogged every day rather than once... Anyweay, the market is tough nowadays.

[glen]

keep at it despot. one day you will come up with a super idea and make mega big bucks!

if your hosting is on the crappy side i can tell you who i host with. if you just want really cheap hosting then i would recommend www.asmallorange.com. they let you host multiple sites on one account which is a big selling point for me.

i think i disabled trackbacks on my blogs... silly me! i have a few wordpress blogs but i sort of just set them up and forgot about them so i better go back and do some further development!

cheers, glen

[despot]

Um, thanks for the suggestion. I'll have a look.


Anyway, to talk about the original topic, the challenge is pretty much over. The guy has earned like $12k, has released some info and will be releasing some script.

The top link at the resources page interested me a bit. Have you heard about that project before?
They also seem to use blogging a lot there. Have listened to some podcasts. Let's see what I can get.

[glen]

hey despot. how exactly did they make the 12k?

[despot]

Hmm... sales.

He's got a product (some e-books) up, done some forum posting, myspace advertising and so on and let it go viral.
There's much more about that on the actual webpage.