Caroline’s Favourite Links & Blogs #2

Over the course of the week I have spent hours trying to get through my backlog of unread blog posts. I had a big purge a few days ago and I’m now down from 1800+ to just over 1200 so that’s not bad. During my purge there were many blogs that seemed to publish a lot of pointless posts which I wrote about. I had a lot of feedback to that post including a couple of comments suggesting that I was being overly harsh.

Just because there was a lot of rubbish, doesn’t mean there isn’t an enormous amount of fantastic content out there too! So this week, rather than just highlight individual links, I’m also going to focus a little on a few blogs that I really enjoy.

Some of my Favourite Blogs

DoshDosh by Maki

DoshDosh is hands down my favourite blog about making money online. The reason for that is simply stunning content. Maki writes in the style that I like - detailed, comprehensive posts about a topic bringing in unique angles that nobody else thought of. For example, A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon is a post that I must have read 3 or 4 times.

What I also like about Maki is that he will research something thoroughly, test it and share those results and isn’t afraid to change his opinion on a topic. For example, going back to StumbleUpon (check out my free course on driving traffic with StumbleUpon), Maki has a new post now saying that there’s no need to bother building a ‘power profile’ for StumbleUpon. This is really insightful information and is based on tested results, not just speculation.

There have been many blogs that have started out great and then kind of waned after a while but DoshDosh keeps pumping out the goods week after week. There is no fluff here.

Blogging Experiment by Ben Cook

Ben Cook has set himself a very clear goal - to make a full time income (defined as $5000 a month) from blogging within 1 year. His blog, Blogging Experiment, is not only the source of that revenue but of course the story of his journey. Ben’s story strikes a chord with me because it’s similar to my own journey. The two major differences are that he is still working his day job, and he is earning through blogging and I am using mainly niche marketing.

There are lots of blogs like this. What I find refreshing about Ben is that he is really creative and often surprises me with the things that he tries. For example, he’s just put up a rather innovative advertising option on his blog which is a very clever use of a new Wordpress plugin. He’s also not afraid to rock the boat. When BlogRush came out lots of people were hyping it up, but Ben told us not to rush to sign up, and furthermore he also posted some rather evil ways to inflate your Blogrush credits which I thought were quite amusing.

I’ll be really intrigued to see how Ben does over the course of his remaining 271 days.

Cornwall SEO by Lyndon Antcliff

I don’t read many SEO blogs - I find most of them clogged up with way too much industry news and very little content of any use. Lyndon has a special skill - the art of link baiting and I actually found his blog through Sphinn and I was attracted to a number of his headlines. He recently posted a summary of the blogging he had done over the last 10 months and I was practically dribbling when I saw the posts in there - I must have bookmarked about half the list for later reading!

The reason I like this blog is because of the genuinely unique content. Link bait is something that interests me, something I am not very good at and something I really want to learn. Lyndon is the man to learn it from and he’s not afraid to share. What I also like about his blog is that he has a habit of making some really comprehensive roundup posts such as this collection of linkbait articles.

Other Cool Links

[1] 10 Reasons Why my Blog is Better Than Your Blog - This post came out shortly after I published 11 posts that waste my time and I thought that this post by WarriorBlog complemented mine rather well. On the surface it sounds like bragging but of course it’s actually a good list of things to watch out for on your own blog.

[2] Can You Make Money Guest Blogging - Most people do guest blogging to get exposure for themselves on other bigger blogs and those blogs that recruit guest bloggers usually do so to take the pressure on their own writing commitments. This is not something I have considered (for either side) but this post on CashQuests is a very mercenary way of looking at the situation which I found interesting.

[3] Help me Stumble YOU - More StumbleUpon goodness from BigBucksBlogger. This is a very simple post but I wish I had found it earlier on as I didn’t actually know how to link my own blog from within my StumbleUpon profile until a couple of weeks ago!

[4] 10 Ways to Hurt Your Blog’s Brand by Commenting on Other Blogs - Some of you may know that I have started paying more attention to blog commenting recently - both on this blog and others. Therefore I was eager to check that I wasn’t making any of the mistakes outlined in this great roundup by ProBlogger. Luckily I wasn’t, but it’s a great reality check.

[5] How to Build a Blog with a Small Budget - Jeremy Shoemaker, or ShoeMoney as he is known in the industry, is famous for making a LOT of money online and his blog is one of the most widely read around. Usually his blog is idle chatter around the industry, and a lot of opinion but this post was a real gem and gave me some great insights into how he values traffic and uses that to manage his PPC campaigns.

Just a Few More…

These are not blog posts as such, but places where you can read more. Last week I started experimenting with Blog Carnivals. They are basically a blog post on a particular subject that is contributed to by many bloggers. So I submitted a couple of my posts to a handful of carnivals. Some of them were actually rather awful but there were a couple of decent ones which looked like they had some good submissions:

http://www.patbdoyle.com/?p=77 - I’m top pick on this one, ooh!

http://webdosh.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-to-earn-october-2-2007.html

http://www.webmaster-source.com/2007/10/02/webmaster-articles-blog-carnival-october-1-2007-edition/

Lastly, you may have heard of the Top 100 Make Money Online blogs hosted by Mark of 45n5. This is just what it sounds like - a top list of blogs about making money online. They are ranked according to a number of factors such as Google PageRank, Technorati Ranking and Alexa Ranking. All the good ones are on there. Mark now has over 100 which is good news for me as I managed to sneak in at (ooh I’ve gone up!) 139. I was 157 before… Check it out, lots of good reading on there.

Stumble it!